Marx against the state (1995)

From the January 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1988 Alan Carter wrote a criticism of Marx's views from what he called a "libertarian communist" position under the title Marx: A Radical Critique. His basic argument was that Marx's theories of history, economics and politics all paved the way for the emergence, not of a stateless, classless communist society, but of a new class society ruled by a new exploiting class similar to what was then about to collapse in east Europe and the USSR. His conclusion was that radical critics of capitalist society should actively oppose Marx's ideas.

Marx of course is not above criticism—and we have our own criticisms of some of the things he said and did—but to see him as nothing more than the precursor of a state capitalist society is inaccurate and unjustified.

Marx genuinely wanted to see established a stateless, classless society and the means he advocated to achieve this—democratic political action by a democratically-organised working class—are still relevant and valid. But how does carter reach the opposite conclusion?

Somewhat surprisingly, Carter gets Marx's theory of the state more or less right. That, as a coercive institution standing above the rest of society, the state is a product of the division of society into antagonistic economic classes, and that, once these classes are abolished through the common ownership of productive resources, then the state will become redundant; its coercive features will be dismantled and its useful administrative functions merged into the democratic structure of classless society.

This was a position Marx reached in 1843 and maintained for the rest of his life. As he wrote at the height of his controversy with the anarchist Bakunin in 1874:

"All Socialists understand by 'anarchy' this: the aim of the proletarian movement, the abolition of classes, once achieved, 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" (Conspectus of Bakunin's 'Statism and anarchy').

So, how does Carter get round this? How does he turn Marx into an accomplice of Lenin and even Stalin? This is not an easy task since Marx never used the Leninist terms "vanguard party", "professional revolutionary", "workers' state" or "socialist state". He did unwisely once or twice use "dictatorship of the proletariat" but this was meant to be a contrast to dictatorship by a revolutionary elite as advocated by some other revolutionaries of his day.

This is recognised by Carter who doesn't rest his case on Marx's unfortunate use of this misleading term. What Marx had in mind was the working class winning control of the state and using it, for a relatively brief period, to abolish capitalists' class monopoly over the means of production, thereby abolishing classes and so also the need for a state, which would then be dismantled.

Carter's argument is that it is Marx's theory that the existence of the state is in the end dependent on the economic structure of society that opens the way for Leninism:

"Lenin did not build his theories on air: they arose on the basis of serious inadequacies in  Marx's conception of the state and political power" (p. 218).
"The perceived need for authoritarian and revolutionary organisation is sanctioned by Marx's theory because his theoretical subordination of political power to economic causes apparently renders post-revolutionary political power unproblematic" (p. 231).

This is a very weak argument based not on what Marx actually said (Carter can't produce any evidence that the supposed need for "authoritarian and revolutionary organisation" was "perceived" by Marx himself) but rather on what Marx allegedly omitted to say.

What Carter appears to be trying to say is that because Marx believed that the state would automatically disappear once economic classes had been abolished, he didn't attach much importance to the form the state should take during the brief period when it would be bing used to abolish classes. and that this allowed others to "perceive: that it needed to be controlled by an authoritarian vanguard during this period.

This is wrong on two counts. Marx did in fact have something to say about the form of the state during this period. He thought it should be thoroughly democratic, with mandated and recallable delegates. This, for instance, is what Marx write about the Paris Commune of 1871 which he then described (somewhat inaccurately, as he later conceded) as a government of the working class", i.e. having the form the state should take while being used by the working class to abolish classes:

"The Commune was formed of the municipal councillors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of the town, responsible and revocable at short terms  . . . Instead of continuing to be the agent of the Central Government, the police was at once stripped of its political attributes, and turned into the responsible at all times revocable agent of the Commune. So were the official of all other branches of the Administration . . . Like the rest of public servants, magistrates and judges were to be elective, responsive and revocable" (Civil War in France, 1871, Section III).

But even if Marx had omitted to specify  this, this would not justify the inference that the state during this period could take any other than this ultra-democratic form and authoritarian or a one-party dictatorship. This has to be ruled out as incompatible with Marx's aim of a stateless, communist society based on voluntary co-operation, which just could not be promoted by such means. How could people be forced to co-operate voluntarily? They can only do this if they want to, which means that socialism has, by its very nature, to be the outcome of a consciously expressed desire of the majority. Because socialism can only be a democratic society, it can only come about democratically. In the phrase Marx endorsed: the emancipation of the working class can only be the work of the working class itself.

So, Carter is factually wrong as to what Marx's views on this subject were. He is also wrong in urging radical critics of capitalism to shun Marx's ideas. Although Marx's views, like anyone else's should not be accepted uncritically and dogmatically, they are still relevant today. Among other things as a criticism of the sort of elitist and vanguardist ideas peddled by Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and the others.

Adam Buick

Fromm’s sane society (1956)

Book Review from the July-August 1956 issue of The Western Socialist

The Sane Society. By Erich Fromm. Rinehart & Company, New York, 1955, pp. 370, $5.00

I

According to Fromm, and in distinction to orthodox Freudianism, man’s “basic passions are not rooted in his instinctive needs, but in the specific conditions of human existence.” These are now the conditions of capitalism. In the light of the requirements of mental health, as seen by Fromm, the prevailing society may be regarded as “insane.” Although some people are more affected than others, all behave irrationally in this irrational world. In order to change this situation, Fromm suggests the transformation of capitalism into some sort of “socialism,” into a “sane society,” — the precondition for the individual’s mental health and happiness. He calls his approach to the problem of mental health and society “humanistic psychoanalysis” which appears largely as an elaboration of Marx’s concept of commodity-fetishism. It is here generalized as the phenomenon of “alienation” and, in Fromm’s view, is as old a problem as the “idolatry” against which the prophets of the Old Testament raised their voices.

In Marx’s system alienation refers to social class relations based on the divorce of the workers from the means of production in a market economy of capital accumulation. The goal of production is profit. As capital, the products of man’s past and present labor take on an “independent” character, determining both the volume and direction of social production, depression and prosperity, peace and war, therewith the condition of human existence. And thus, even though man makes history, he is not master of his destiny. He lives under the compulsion of socio-economic circumstances which circumscribe his attitudes and actions. Neither the capitalists, nor the workers, nor any other group, determine their existence but allow themselves to be determined by the dynamics of capital accumulation; in other words, by things of their own making, as if they had a separate power over them. Those, however, who own or control capital, constitute a privileged ruling class just because of this sad state of affairs. And in the interest of their exploitative class position they try to perpetuate this attitude by means of force, fraud, and ideological manipulations.

The fetishistic relationship between men and their production embraces social consciousness and dominates general behavior. With labor-power a commodity like any other, men are dealt with as if they were things, and are compared to things; the materials of production include the “human material.” With exploitation based on the possession of things, i.e. capital, survival in capitalist competition implies the increasing appropriation of capital. Social relations are thus not relations between men but relations between things; commodity-relations, at once hiding and enabling the exploitation of men by men.

II

Fromm’s “revision” of Freud with the help of Marx retains the terminology of Freudian psychology, which pretends to concern itself with biological man and his frustration in society per se. Though the concept of commodity fetishism is applied to the culture as a whole, the emphasis rests on its ideological and psychological aspects. This enables Fromm to speak of society as “we.” However, although the ruling ideology and characterology are those of the ruling classes and their retainers, responsibility for the capitalist barbarism cannot be that widely distributed. After all, there are controllers and controlled, manipulators and manipulated, which forbids the “we” when speaking of society. Precisely by being a severe criticism of “society,” of “us,” Fromm’s book turns out a rather lame criticism of capitalism.

Although a bad habit, this not too serious an error, for despite all the “we” in literature, people generally refer to “society” as “they,” to opposing interests and different modes of existence, which give society its class character. But with Fromm’s society as “we” goes the individual as “man”; not as capitalist, worker, or something else, but as “man,” whose “nature” and “history” comprises both “creation and destruction; love and hate.” And although the class-determined man remains man even if approached as a commodity, or if not approached at all as untouchable, the “common humanity” of all men tells us little as regards their attitudes and behavior under varying social and historical circumstances in a class-divided society.

III

According to Fromm, only “faith in man” allows for a sane society. He explains Lenin’s “failure,” for example, by the latter’s lacking faith in man. Lenin, however, had very much faith in some men, himself included; in people dedicated to the seizure of power for his party. He had no faith, it is true, in the Czarist ruling class, nor in the middle-class hoping for liberal capitalism, nor in the peasants striving for land and private property, nor in the mass of workers destined to work harder without living better, so as to accumulate the necessary capital for Russia’s industrialization and national existence. Though Lenin had no faith in man, he excelled in faith in minority rule, which constitutes the “faith in man” in class societies. To speak of Lenin’s “failure” is to speak of his “success,” when more than individual attentions or pretensions are considered; in this case, the existence of a Russian proletariat as yet unable to abolish with its own class position all social class relations.

Moreover, to refer to the individual leader, whose “failure” or “success” determines the direction of social development, is to speak from the position of minority-rule, of class relations, modified by a desire for leadership and control in the “interest” of the led and controlled. “Faith in man” includes faith in the leader. Self-determination, however, implies the absence of a leadership in the Leninist or capitalist sense, and would make Fromm’s “faith in man” superfluous. With Fromm’s “faith in man,” Lenin would not have been Lenin, and with this “faith in man” workers will never be able to escape the consequences of their leaders lacking “faith.” The abolition of exploitation can be actualized only by the exploited; the emphasis must be on class, not on man. It is not even “faith in the working class,” but just the working class itself, which may be able through its own emancipation to change class-society into society.

To be sure, Fromm distinguishes between rational and inhibiting, or irrational, leadership. He is for the first and rejects the second form of authority, that is, prefers the authoritative relationship between “teacher and pupil” to that between “slave-owner” and “slave,” even though both are based on the superiority of the one over the other. In Fromm’s view, the teacher’s authority is altruistic and serves the student who welcomes it, as against the antagonistic irrational authority over the slave. Rational authoritative relationships, furthermore, tend to dissolve themselves with the pupils becoming as smart as the teachers. Each of these authority situations creates a different psychological situation; one assuring sanity, the other tending towards insanity. However, neither of these situations has anything to do with the authority problem in capitalism of either the liberal, the mixed, or the bolshevik brand. Fromm’s idealized teacher-pupil relationship does not exist; what does exist is an educational market coupled to force, where the relationships between teacher and student — though possibly in subtler fashion — are as antagonistic as the social relations in general. Moreover, capitalism employs all forms of authoritative relationships, the “irrational” and the “rational,” which are intertwined in such a way that none of them can be fostered, or eliminated short of the abolition of capitalism itself.

IV

However, in Fromm’s view, capitalism abolishes itself and in so doing creates the conditions wherein it becomes possible to choose between one or another form of authoritative relationships on ethical grounds. In order to escape destruction and achieve happiness, people must be made aware of what makes for sanity and what makes for insanity. Fromm’s consistent use of the “we” with respect to society is also based on the illusion that the class-society underlying Marx’s theories has largely ceased to exist. His description of Western capitalism, for instance, repeats all the current clichés of the most ardent apologists of the “American way of life”; from the “miracle of production” to the “miracle of consumption.” Fromm asserts that the workers’ “social and economic power” has increased to a fantastic degree, “not only with regard to salary and social benefits, but also to his human and social role in the factory.”

This is sheer nonsense, of course, and does not even apply to that small minority of privileged workers whose exceptional position pre-supposes the most ruthless exploitation of the vast majority. The “American way of life,” which is not that of Western capitalism but the result of America’s domination of Western capitalism, finds its counterpart in the growing misery of the bulk of the world’s population, suffering under both the imperialist-capitalist controls and their own attempts to escape these controls. This situation, which transforms civil strife into international war, and international competition into civil war, may indicate the decline of capitalism but not its self-transformation through the disappearance of class frictions and class differentiations in the wake of an achieved general abundance. To be sure, Fromm recognizes the existence of under-privileged areas and under-developed countries and advocates reforms and foreign aid to alleviate this misery, as if this misery and the co-existing well-being of other areas and social layers were not the two sides of the same coin. The state of relative abundance does not make for general well-being and “sanity” but leads production into destructive channels, so as to maintain the social class structure and control over the means of production.

V

In Fromm’s society of abundance, the workers’ problems are no longer related to the control of capital but merely to its co-determination. He sees them hunger for a voice in the production process. Not, however, to improve their social and economic position still further but to secure their “sanity.” Fromm assumes that the workers (of all descriptions) are unhappy not so much because they are exploited and in want, but because they cannot “relate themselves to the concrete product as a whole.” They suffer on account of the specialization and abstraction of their functions. It is true that Marx, among other things, also mentioned the dehumanization of labor in capitalist production through its specialization, as against former modes of production with a less-developed division of labor. Yet, socialization of production implies the division of labor, which, by itself, need not be a dehumanizing factor. It is such under the exploitative capital-labor relationship. In a socialist society it becomes possible to choose between a further extension of the social division of labor, or its reduction by means such as interchangeability of functions. And it may turn out that interchangeability is more productive than specialization; but, then, the principle of productivity may itself give way to some manner of organizing social production which might make it more attractive.

Fromm’s emphasis on this rather minor aspect of alienation at the expense of the real problem, i.e. the class-control of the means of production, turns his “social criticism” into a media of capitalist manipulation. For what he suggests in the line of social security and co-determination is now in process of being actualized by capitalist reforms, supposed to stabilize the system. His proposed “roads to sanity” are already travelled, and even some of the by-roads he likes to see populated such as various small communal enterprises producing for (and being at the mercy of) the capitalist market, do not endanger the capitalist system but merely support the illusion of its growing humanization. If Fromm is against “bigness” and for “decentralization,” so are all those capitalists who face still bigger and more centralized competitors. And if Fromm likes to see the “instinct of workmanship” more fully satisfied, so do the capitalists now engaged in eliminating simple labor processes by way of automatization.

Fromm’s “roads to sanity” in the sphere of production are not supported in the sphere of consumption, where the growing abundance leads to cultural decay. For “man,” Fromm says, is “fascinated by the possibility of buying more, better, and especially, new things. He is consumption hungry. The act of buying and consuming has become a compulsive, irrational aim, because it is an end itself, with little relation to the use of, or pleasure in the things bought and consumed.” And it is this alienated attitude toward consumption which determines the employment of leisure time and the character of the industries devoted to it. A large part of Fromm’s book describes the emptiness and shallowness of popular culture at the expense of real art and human sensitivity — a popular culture which finds its reflection in the desire for conformity and the denial of real human relationships.

VI

Here Fromm is in his element, bewailing the “lonely crowd” of the sociology of consumption, for which leisure, not work, is the great problem. With the ending of the problem of production ends that of exploitation, of course; yet, there is still, says Fromm, so much to do for the sociologists, and religious leaders to make life meaningful despite the absence of compelling social problems. Fromm’s particular suggestion is to consume less and to work more, if only for therapeutic reasons. Idle hands and idle minds are dangerous and even to do nothing must become a kind of work, of meditation, and recreation. The mentally healthy person, in his view, “is the productive and unalienated person . . . who relates to the world lovingly, and who uses his reason to grasp reality objectively; who expresses himself as a unique individual entity, and at the same time feels one with his fellow man” — etc., etc. — as one can hear from any pulpit Sunday mornings. As the striving for mental health is “inherent in every human being . . . Not born a moral idiot,” society must be such as to offer him a chance to assert his moral nature. The chance, as seen before, is offered by “socialism,” i.e. the mixed, co-determined and politically democratic welfare economy; provided, of course, it sheds itself of such qualities as “greed, competitiveness, possessiveness, narcissism,” and lets conscience rule. As “no change must be brought about by force,” and as it must be “simultaneous change in the economic, political and cultural spheres,” it must be brought about by moral education of the inherent morality, and is thus clearly the function of “humanistic psychoanalysis,” which, then, takes its place besides the great ethical and religious systems, asserting the supremacy of the spiritual over material values, and devoted to the dignity of men, so that we may — some day — sing, walk, and dance together.

Paul Mattick

Voice from the Back: Plus ça change . . . (1999)

The Voice From The Back column in the September 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Plus ça change . . . 

". . . we are no less communists, but modern communists, who change with society." Robert Hue in l' Humanité, 18 March. Hue's statement on page 2 of the new l' Humanité does not bode well. To be modern is not of itself a virtue, especially not when one speaks of changing with society. It was once thought that the communists were there to change society. Now they accompany those who simply ride along. If true hitherto in their actions anyway, this is now also their objective." Claud Sicre, La Linha Imaginôt, May.

Whose treasure?

IF YOU CAN TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GOLD AND PAPER, TELL GORDON BROWN BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE. On 6 July the Chancellor of the Exchequer starts selling off your gold. More than two billion pounds worth. He plans to auction the UK's gold reserves and, in return buy lots of paper. Dollars, Yen, and Euros. Do you want him to sell our nation's treasure, which it has taken over three hundred years to accumulate? And do you want this most precious metal replaced by piles of other people's bank notes? If not, now is the time to make your voice heard . . . Advert "sponsored by the World Gold Council".

It's the way I tell 'em 

Coal and other novel sources of heat encouraged people to rise from their beds—and work. Even plentiful food, once so scarce, proved a mixed blessing, for the better fed are capable of more sustained labour. As the opportunities for work accelerated, so we embraced them. Not only have we lost most of the 150 holidays but even Sunday has gone the way of the secular six. We do not have to work every available hour—we choose to. In his Mighty Micro Evans supposed that people could be satisfied through wealth, but people never are. They always want more. Terence Kealey, New Scientist, 10 July.

Wielding the inflation stick 

City analysts said Britain's unusual combination of low earnings growth and falling unemployment could be symptomatic of a new era in which low inflation expectations had disciplined wage bargainers into accepting less generous pay settlements, creating a cycle of falling prices and unemployment . . . David Walton, of US investment bank Goldman Sachs, said the key question was: can wage growth continue to ease in the face of a tightening labour market? "With headline inflation at 1.3 percent, there is a reasonable prospect that it can, which in turn will help to keep inflation below the government's 2.5 percent target. But the labour market will need to be monitored carefully for any signs of renewed upward pressure on pay." Guardian, 15 July.

Deflated 

More than a third of British families cannot afford a week's annual holiday away from home, according to a EU survey on European lifestyles which also reveals that Britain's poverty is "relatively high" at 24 percent. Evening Mail, 25 June.

Power play 

I have just been sent a review copy of Shakespeare on Management by Paul Corrigan, to be published by Kogan Page later this year. And it's as riveting a read as I had hoped. For Richard III, Shakespeare's grisliest villain, is held up as a key example to managers. "This is the most straightforward lesson Shakespeare teaches," writes Mr Corrigan, a former management consultant. "You know that if you have lied and cheated your way to the top, others can lie and cheat their way to the top and there is nothing you can do or say about it." An ideal stocking filler for your more successful friends. John Willcock, Independent, 21 July.

Boomtime (1) 

More than four million children in Britain are living in poverty, according to new research that highlights the task the Prime Minister has set himself with his pledge to end such poverty within a generation. The number of children in households with incomes below half the national average climbed from 1.4 million, or one in ten children, in 1968 to 4.3 million, or one in three in 1995-96, research published by the Institute of Fiscal Studies reports today. Half of today's poor children live in households where nobody works, and the UK has the highest level of joblessness among families with children on an international comparison. The research, by Paul Gregg, a Treasury adviser, Susan Harkness and Stephen Machin, also shows that poor households with children have enjoyed no improvement in their living standards since the late 1970s, falling further and further behind the average.Independent, 20 July.

Boomtime (2) 

In 1995, about 49 million [American] people about 1 in 5 lived in a household whose members had difficulty satisfying basic needs, according to a report released today by the Commerce Department's Census Bureau. The report, Extended Measures of Well-Being: Meeting Basic Needs, 1995, takes a look at households who didn't make mortgage or rent payments, failed to pay utility bills and/or had service shut off, didn't get enough to eat, needed to see a doctor or dentist but didn't or otherwise could not meet essential expenses. Public Information Office [USA], 9 July.

Ukraine: Between Oranges and Blues (2014)

From the March 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

The basic pattern of political confrontation in Ukraine has remained the same ever since the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991. The two camps in Ukrainian politics are labelled Oranges and Blues – a usage that has its origin in the “Orange Revolution” of late 2004 and early 2005 that brought Viktor Yushchenko to power. The main features of the Orange and Blue camps are shown in the Table.

The regional division

The underlying division is basically regional in nature. Most people in the western and central parts of Ukraine, including the capital Kiev, support the Oranges, while most people in the country’s eastern and southern regions support the Blues. The regional division shows itself not only in politics but also in differences of language, historical background, economic structure and attitudes toward other countries.

Mostly agricultural West Ukraine, also known as Galicia, belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire before World War One and to Poland between the wars. It is overwhelmingly Ukrainian-speaking (except for some border areas) and the most fervently nationalist and anti-Russian part of the country.

East Ukraine, especially the Don coal basin (Donbas), formed an integral part of the late tsarist and Soviet industrial complexes and therefore depends on close ties with Russia. Many of its inhabitants speak Russian or a mixed Russian-Ukrainian dialect called surzhyk. This does not mean that they do not regard themselves as Ukrainians, but they view Russian and Ukrainian identities as closely related rather than opposed to one another.

The southern and central regions of Ukraine are in some ways intermediate between East and West Ukraine, with the south more like the east and the centre somewhat more like the west.

The oligarchs

Despite the regional division, all parts of Ukraine are similar in important respects. The dominant social group in all regions now consists of ‘oligarchs’ – individuals who made fortunes by exploiting their close connections in government and acquiring state-owned assets on the cheap. It is estimated that just fifty oligarchs control 85 percent of the country’s GDP. Many of them have backgrounds in organized crime.

Oligarchs own the mass media and football clubs as well as banks and means of production. Most if not all of Ukraine’s numerous political parties are funded, controlled or even directly led by an oligarch or by a small group of oligarchs. This includes political parties with names that suggest a leftist or environmentalist orientation, such as the United Social Democratic Party of Ukraine and the Party of Greens of Ukraine.

The oligarchs are themselves divided along geographical, political and other lines. There are said to be rival oligarchic ‘clans’ based in different cities – Kiev, Donetsk, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, etc. This is probably an oversimplified picture. In any case, the oligarchs have shared class interests vis-à-vis the rest of the population. If they ever do face a serious challenge from below, they can be expected to form a united front. We shall then also see how much they really care about human rights.

Choice of external orientation

Maintaining political stability in Ukraine depends, among other things, on reconciling the essential interests of its various regions. In some policy areas this has been achieved. One example is the working compromise on the language issue. While Russian is not recognized as a second state language alongside Ukrainian, no serious attempt has been made to restrict the use of Russian in places where Russian speakers are in the majority. Another is Ukraine’s status as a buffer zone outside both NATO and the Russian-led military alliance of post-Soviet states (the Collective Security Treaty Organization).

On some issues, however, such a compromise is not feasible. One such issue is the choice of an external orientation for Ukraine’s economy. Should Ukraine go ahead with the Association Agreement it has negotiated with the EU? Or should it join the Eurasian Economic Community (EAEC) – the post-Soviet customs union that now includes Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and (since last September) Armenia?

In November Blue President Viktor Yanukovych, faced with the alarming prospect of the severance of East Ukraine’s economic ties with Russia, announced that he would not sign the agreement with the EU after all. Thereby he set off the Orange protests and the current crisis.

This time, it seems, Ukraine has to make a definite choice. It cannot move toward membership in both the EU and the EAEC. That is unacceptable to both organizations. Ukraine would become the gap through which Russian or Kazakh goods (say) could enter the EU or German or Polish goods enter the EAEC, effectively turning Europe and the post-Soviet region into a single customs union. In fact, Ukraine will not even get observer status at the EAEC if it enters into an Association Agreement with the EU (Interfax-Ukraine, June 14, 2013).

Who are the Blues?

Western capitalist propaganda associates the Blues with the Soviet legacy of corrupt authoritarian rule, inefficient protectionism and opposition to thoroughgoing ‘market reform’. Conversely, some Western leftists react to the pro-Orange slant of that propaganda by viewing the Blues as ‘anti-imperialist’ allies, in accordance with the dubious logic that ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’.

The linkage of the Blues to the Soviet past had some basis in the first few years after the collapse of the Soviet system. At that time the dominant parties in East Ukraine were the Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU) and/or the Socialist Party of Ukraine (SPU) (which served as a substitute for the CPU at the period when the CPU was illegal). These parties represented old Soviet officials and managers of state industry who stood to lose their status and privileges in the transition from state to private capitalism.

However, these are now spent forces. Although some new Blue groups have arisen that appeal to nostalgia for the Soviet period – in particular, Natalya Vitrenko’s Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine – since 2006 the dominant party in the east has been the Party of Regions.

It is hard to understand how anyone could see anything ‘left-wing’ in the Party of Regions. Its funders and parliamentarians include several of the country’s most prominent ‘oligarchs’, including Rinat Akhmetov (the wealthiest person in Ukraine whose diverse assets have been valued at up to $28.4 billion) and Dmytro Firtash (whose main interests are in gas and titanium). The president’s son Alexander Yanukovych has also made quite a pile for himself, no doubt with assistance from his father, although with assets worth only $510 million he is hardly in the same league as the leading players.

Who are the Oranges?

Western propaganda portrays the Oranges as freedom-loving citizens struggling to establish the ideal Western model of clean government, competitive market capitalism, democracy and human rights. This picture completely ignores two important facts.

First, the Orange and Blue parties are equally dependent on the financial support of oligarchs (possibly with a few minor exceptions on both sides). The leading Orange oligarch is Igor (‘Benya’) Kolomoisky, whose assets are worth $6.2 billion, making him the second or third richest person in Ukraine. Whatever the programmes of Orange parties may say about ‘fighting corruption’ or ‘level playing fields’, their oligarchic backers are wedded to the business model of ‘crony capitalism’ and most unlikely to tolerate any serious attempt to disentangle business from politics.

Second, there are good reasons to doubt the ‘democratic’ credentials of the Orange camp. Quite apart from the question of the compatibility of genuine democracy with any form of capitalism, the current Orange coalition includes the Svoboda (Freedom) party of Oleh Tiahnybok.

This party, which until 2004 was called the Social-National Party of Ukraine, adheres to the semi-fascist ideology of ‘organic’ Ukrainian nationalism invented by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists in interwar Galicia under Polish rule. Although the main base of Svoboda is in West Ukraine, in the 2012 elections it achieved a breakthrough from regional to national politics, winning over 10 percent of votes and 38 out of 450 seats in parliament.

Members of Svoboda are active participants in the current protests. They have been especially active in making practical arrangements for the protests, such as the provision of food, toilets and first aid. (Extreme nationalists – Russian nationalists in this case – seized a similar role in the anti-Putin protests in Moscow.) Svoboda has also claimed the credit for toppling the Lenin monument in Kiev, although it is not clear who actually performed this feat.

The nature of the protests

The Orange-Blue confrontation in Ukraine is basically a conflict between two groups of oligarchs and politicians over the choice of an external orientation of the country – toward Europe and the West or toward Russia and the post-Soviet region.

A Marxian analyst might expect that the interests and connections of the Blue oligarchs would be mainly confined to the post-Soviet region while those of the Orange oligarchs would extend to Europe or even further afield. This hypothesis has yet to be properly verified, but there are certain indications of at least a tendency in this direction.

Thus, according to his Forbes profile, Kolomoisky (Orange) ‘is a prominent international businessman with diversified business interests, including ownership of significant industrial assets worldwide and particularly in CIS countries... [He has] extensive business experience in Eastern Europe’. The corresponding profile for Akhmetov (Blue) focuses solely on his holdings in Ukraine. However, Firtash (Blue) does seem to have significant interests in Europe.

This does not mean that the protestors themselves view their cause in such grubby terms. There is no reason to doubt that the great majority of them sincerely believe that they are fighting for democracy, clean government, the rule of law and European civilization. In fact, many do not support any party or politician. One observer reported from Kiev in late November that two separate rallies were taking place on different squares – one organised by the Orange political parties, the other by ‘young non-partisan activists inspired by the Occupy movement’ (louisproyect.org/2013/12/26/whats-going-on-in-the-ukraine).

Protests have also been held in the cities of East Ukraine, although in the east the Orange parties are not able to muster many supporters – at least by comparison with the big counter-rallies being held in support of the government. Here again, news reports suggest that some protests have been simply in support of democratic rights and against corruption, without signs of allegiance to either the Blue or the Orange camp. So there is some potential at the grassroots for overcoming the regional division and developing a genuinely democratic and eventually socialist politics.

Stefan

Labyrinth of lies and propaganda (1995)

Book Review from the November 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the Failure of the West by David Rieff (Vintage £8.99)

Written by a journalist who has worked almost continuously in Bosnia since the war began this recently published book gives penetrating insights into a number of aspects of the Bosnian conflict, focusing primarily on the role of the West.

One of the most persistent myths about the Yugoslav wars, especially that in Bosnia, is that they were caused by "ancient hatreds", with Serbs, Croats and Muslims straining to get at each others throats for decades, but only able to do so when the collapse of Tito's federalism allowed them to slip the leash. In actual fact the violence that occurred in Bosnia's ethnically mixed towns and villages was deliberately stirred up by Serbian Nationalists, often by means of the most extreme terror. Rieff describes the common method of placing a gun or knife in the hands of a Serb villager and ordering him to kill a Muslim neighbour in front of other villagers. If he refused (and apparently many did) he was shot on the spot and the process was repeated, A young Cetnik interviewed by Rieff in Bosanka Krupa boasted that: "By the third house, they're shitting themselves and asking you where you want the Muslim shot, and how many times." And yet this same youth goes on to tell Rieff that before the war he had many Muslim friends, attempting to explain this by saying: "But I didn't understand many things at that time." Apart from the young man's naïveté this shows clearly that Bosnia was not torn apart by "ancient hatreds", but by a very modern nationalist poison that has left thousands dead and thousands more traumatised and brutalised.

Anyone who wants to find their way out of the labyrinth of myths, lies, distortions and propaganda peddled by western politicians and their lackeys in the media about what is happening in Bosnia; and who wants a graphic illustration of just how hypocritical, duplicitous and cynical the capitalist great powers are, even with regard to the international laws they themselves have made, would be well advised to read this book. For those who wish to remain blind to the facts and dismiss this as just another war between mutually aggressive neighbours with heroic western peacekeepers caught in the middle, keep taking the tabloids.

Ian Simpson 

The unsung centenary (1988)

From the September 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

In July we were asked to celebrate two anniversaries: 400 years ago the Spanish fleet did not land in Britain and 300 years ago William of Orange did. The Protestant Orange Order of Northern Ireland used the latter opportunity to parade their bigotry, but neither occasion made much difference to workers. Certainly the claim that William was responsible for parliamentary democracy today is risible when a 40 per cent vote produces a 100 majority in the House of Commons and Members of Parliament behave like unruly children.

The BBC celebrated the centenary of the birth of the crime writer Raymond Chandler, but it fell to my local primary school, in their end of term play, to remind us of a centenary which marked a much more important milestone in working-class, and especially women workers' history. The Match Girls dealt with the co-ordinated action by unskilled workers which led to the formation of the first non-craft union.

On 7 July 1888 Annie Beasant printed an article "White Slavery in London" in Link, the Fabian paper of which she was co-editor, describing conditions of work in the Bryant & May match factory in Bromley by Bow in London's East End:

The hour for commencing work is 6.30 in summer and 8 in winter, work concludes at 8pm. Half an hour is allowed for breakfast and an hour for dinner. This long day is performed by young girls, who have to stand the whole time. A typical case is that of a girl of 16, a piece worker, she earns 4s a week . . . The splendid salary of 4s is subject to deductions in the shape of fines: if the feet are dirty, or the ground under the bench is left untidy, a fine of 3d is inflicted; for putting "brunts"—matches that have caught fire during the work—on the bench 1s has been forfeited . . . If a girl leaves 4 or 5 matches on her bench when she goes for a fresh "frame" she is fined 3d, and in some departments a fine of 3d is inflicted for talking. If a girl is late she is shut out for "half a day", that is, for the morning of six hours, and 5d is deducted out of her day's 8d.

There was also a one shilling compulsory "contribution" towards a statue of Gladstone being put up by Bryant, and employees had to take a day's unpaid leave for the unveiling. Ay that time shareholders in the company received a 20 per cent dividend.

When the article appeared Bryant & May tried to get the girls to write and deny its content and the three who had talked to Annie Besant were sacked. When the company dismissed another girl they considered the ringleader, the women in her department, followed by the other 1,400 employed by the company, walked out. A deputation sent to the London Trades Council for support were given £20, offered mediation with the employers and help with drawing up the list of  grievances. When the meeting took place, Bryant & May conceded almost all the girls' demands.

The first meeting of the Union of Women Matchmakers was held on 27 July 1888. Later re-named The Matchmakers Union, it only survived until 1902, but the action taken by the matchgirls in 1888 had considerable immediate and long-term effects on the trade union movement. The formation of other non-craft unions soon followed.

How much has the lot of unskilled workers improved since the Victorian values of Messrs. Bryant & May were challenged a hundred years ago? The clothing sweatshop and other low paid workers of 1988 would tell us: not much. They still try to make ends meet on their meagre wages while employers make heavy profits. Although deductions to erect a statue to the present Prime Minister are not yet compulsory, no doubt "invisible" deductions, reflected in poverty wages, still go to swell the funds of capitalism's parties.

Eva Goodman 

Obituary: Gilbert McClatchie (1976)

Obituary from the June 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Gilbert McClatchie (GILMAC) died on 20th April at the age of 86 after a lifetime of activity in the SPGB. Only a few days earlier, on the Friday he had been present at the Annual Conference and had said now pleased he was to be there and how encouraging he found it. In recent years failing health and accidents had resulted in long periods in hospital and in his being largely confined to his home, but his interest in the Party and in companion parties abroad did not flag and he kept up continuous correspondence with members here and in USA and Canada.

He joined the Party in 1910 and was soon fully involved in a range of activities which was to include writing, speaking, conducting study classes and long years of service on the Editorial Committee and the EC. He was already writing articles for the Socialist Standard before the first world war. After the 1939-45 war he was Party candidate in a Parliamentary election.

His father was a farmer in Ireland. Getting into financial difficulties, the family came to England when Gilmac was six years of age. Returning to Ireland in the war Gilmac did a variety of jobs including a long spell at timber felling. He got to know many of the men active in the Irish trade unions and Labour Party and the Republican movement, with all of whom he argued the SPGB case. Some of his articles (on occasion written jointly with Mick Cullen) dealt with the "Irish Problem". He wrote valuable articles on the Russian Revolution.

His association with the Party was an outstanding example of mutual benefit. He brought his wide knowledge of history, economics and the working-class movement to the service of Socialism, but, as he explained, it was the stimulus of his membership that led him to study Marx and many other economists, to read Greek and Roman history and to tackle Hegel and other philosophers and the works of anthropologists. His first acquaintance with Marx's Capital was seeing it in a bookshop and buying it under the impression that it would help him with his job as a book-keeper.

Gilmac married Hilda Kohn (sister of Adolph) and for many years they worked together in Party activities. Between the wars he was happily able to combine his love of books with travelling round the country buying and selling rare works on history, economics, etc. His bookshop, which gave him welcome opportunities to meet writers and collectors, was put out of action by the second world war.

His great knowledge served the Socialist movement well in the formulation over the years of the Party's contribution to political and economic thought. He wrote a full-length book for the centenary of The Communist Manifesto in 1948, covering developments of organization and theory in a century of working-class history. Unfortunately no publisher could be found. He wrote the introduction to the Party's edition of The Communist Manifesto and in 1975 had the pleasure of seeing in print the pamphlet on the Materialist Conception of History.

Late in life Gilmac obtained great satisfaction from several extended visits to USA and Canada where he renewed contacts with his many friends and gave radio and television talks on Socialism. The London Times published an obituary notice in its issue of 23rd April.

His many friends will miss him and remember his work for Socialism. Whatever upsets he had in life and with his health he never ceased to be optimistic for the Socialist future.

We offer sympathies to his daughter Jenny and brother Norman, and their families.

H.

Cooking the Books: Owen Jones’s Hopeless Agenda (2014)

The Cooking the Books column from the March 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Writing in the Independent on Sunday (26 January), ubiquitous Labour left-winger Owen Jones proposed a nine-point ‘Agenda for Hope’.  It is essentially a wish-list of reforms to capitalism, as illustrated by the first of the points:

‘A statutory living wage, with immediate effect, for large businesses and the  public sector, and phased  in for small and medium  businesses over a five-year Parliament. This would save billions spent on social security each year by reducing subsidies to low-paying bosses, as well as stimulating the economy, creating jobs because of higher demand, stopping pay being undercut by cheap labour, and tackling the scandal of most of Britain’s poor being in work. An honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work would finally be enshrined in law.’

The ‘finally’ is a nice touch since the campaign for a ‘living wage’ was started by the old ILP, then still part of the Labour Party, over 80 years ago in the 1920s. Since Jones has demonstrated in the past that he has some knowledge of Marx’s ideas, he must have chosen the phrase ‘an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work’ deliberately. It is of course a modern version of the demand for ‘a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work’ which Marx, in a talk to British trade union leaders in 1865, described as a ‘conservative motto’ as opposed to the ‘revolutionary watchword’ of ‘abolition of the wages system.’

Jones does not give a figure for what he considers to be a living wage. At the moment the so-called living wage which some employers and especially local councils have agreed to pay no one less than is £8.80 an hour in London and £7.65 in the rest of the country, compared with the legal minimum wage of £6.31 an hour. This ‘living wage’ is only about £15,000 for a year of full-time employment outside London. Although this would be an improvement on what many workers are getting now it is hardly a living wage in any reasonable sense of the word ‘living’.

What Jones is advocating is a legally-decreed wage increase for millions of workers. This is unlikely to have the effect he intends. It could well ‘save billions spent on social security each year by reducing subsidies to low-paying bosses’. The Tories are on to this too and favour an increase in the minimum wage for precisely this reason. On the other hand, it could lead to employers laying off workers or even going out of business, so augmenting the ranks of the unemployed and social security payments to them. Not that the cost of social security should be of concern to workers. It’s only a problem for the capitalist class since they pay for it.

One thing it won’t do is stimulate ‘the economy, creating jobs because of higher demand.’ Since the extra wages will have to be paid by employers this will not result in any ‘higher demand’; the increase in demand resulting from higher wages (to the extent that it happens) would be offset by a fall in demand derived from employers’ profits. It’s a zero-sum game. So it won’t stimulate the economy or create extra jobs. In fact, since it is profits not wages that drive the economy, the reduced profits could have the opposite effect.

Owen Jones has failed to grasp that capitalism is not a collection of random bad things that can be tackled piecemeal. It’s an economic system with its own mode of functioning that cannot be reformed by legislation to work other than as a system that gives priority to profits not wages and which has to be done away with altogether in one revolutionary change.

Rock bottom (1986)

From the March 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Red Wedge is a campaign by rock musicians aimed at conning young workers that voting Labour is in their interest. It is a cynical tactic employed by a party which, despite the idealistic intentions of some of its supporters, is in the business of forming a government to run the capitalist system of inequality, exploitation and insecurity.

The campaign strategy is simple: concerts are sponsored by the Labour Party and young workers are sold tickets promising a good night out. Then comes the propaganda. Billy Bragg or Paul Weller sing a few songs and then pass some comments on the need to get Kinnock into Number Ten. They might just as well advise people to try disco dancing on the M1. Waiting in the wings at all Red Wedge concerts are a few Labour MPs—carefully selected ones who don't use long words or talk about the need to recognise the realities of the world market. Their job is to make big promises, like drunks in pubs who tell you that if you  come back tomorrow night they'll be drinking with Samantha Fox. Recipients of these giant-sized whoppers are supposed to leave the concert with a burning desire to vote Labour. 

This all comes as music to the ears of Labour leaders like arch-opportunist, Robin Cook, who has observed that

At the next election there will be four million first-time voters who were too young to vote in 1983. Norman Tebbit might ponder with profit on how they will vote on the day of reckoning, and his campaign advisers could usefully remind him that it was a majority among young people that secured the election of a Labour government in 1964 and in 1974. (Guardian, 7 February)

So, the Labourites are again hoping for electoral success on the basis of anti-Tory feeling by workers too young or too forgetful to know that Labour-run capitalism is just as bad for the working class. Indeed, one of the hallmarks of Labour's strategy is its negative appeal: in general, workers are not told that Labour will do anything great—rather, Kinnock has been at pains to stress how little he would try to change—but are urged to rally under the pink flag because "anything must be better than Thatcher". In short, the Labour Party is depending on a rejection of the present, rather than plans for the future.

Paul Bower, Labourite co-ordinator of the Red Wedge con-trick, has a pessimistic view of the mental capacity of young workers. Indeed, he is condescending in the extreme:

Leaflets convince nobody. Meetings convince nobody . . . Why push a leaflet through somebody's door? They're probably so depressed they don't want to read it. A woman's come home from doing a cleaning job. She's too tired to read bloody boring leaflets. Also, people aren't literate in the same way that they were twenty years ago . . . they don't sit down and read books in the same quantities that they used to. I read books all the time. I love books. But I'm the product of a very different society than Britain between 1979 and 1985. (LAM, 28 January) 

What patronising nonsense! If Labour leaflets and meetings "convince nobody"—and we are glad to hear this from one of the party's promoters—perhaps it is because workers are sensible enough to reject the message they are being fed. Are we also to believe that women who go out to work are too mindless at the end of the day to examine "bloody boring leaflets"? What Bower must understand is that bloody boring parties inevitably produce them and workers will rightly throw them away. How often have socialists been told "Don't bother putting any of that socialist stuff through my door; I've seen it before and I can't be bothered reading all them promises". The propaganda of the Labour Party is a big turn-off, but that is no reason to suggest that workers are unable or unwilling to read anything.

In the USA, that land of bogus freedom and democracy, moderate actors can become President. In the recent election in the Philippines, Marcos and his wife toured the night clubs doing a double-act song and dance routine to whip up votes for their particularly vicious brand of capitalism. Perhaps all this is the necessary direction of capitalist politics, as reformist promises become hollower the emphasis must be on pure showmanship. Maybe we have yet to see the Iranian Ayatollahs doing a barber shop quartet and Gorbachev playing the spoons on network Georgian TV. We have already experienced the sickly picture of Kinnock dancing around in a pop video with Tracey Ullman.

Red Wedge is just another descent on that familiar journey of political opportunism. Of course, music can and always has been used by those who want to express themselves politically. But there is a mighty difference between the passion of the singer who has something to say and the hollow sound of this new gang of party-political mindbenders.

Steve Coleman 

Editorial: Double Standards (2014)

Editorial from the March 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Thirty years ago this month began the Miners’ Strike which ended in defeat.  But the class struggle continues. On both sides. The recent strike by workers on London Underground led to calls by capitalist politicians for fresh attacks on the organised working class movement. They want new restrictions on strike action, proposals for a minimum service to be provided by London Underground workers like the current legislation around the fire service, new thresholds to make sure a majority of union members vote for strikes rather than just a majority of those who cast their ballots.

A Tory source said 'It's right that we look at issues like ballot thresholds and minimum service agreements in order to protect passengers on vital public transport networks.' Boris Johnson told BBC Radio 4's Today programme he supported new voting thresholds on industrial action ballots: 'I think minimum thresholds would be reasonable for vital public transport functions such as the London Underground which has to keep the greatest city on earth moving, on which millions of people depend on for their livelihoods, and people say: 'Oh, well, you only got elected on 40 percent and so on', well I quite understand that point. I just think that there's a difference between a local election or a political election and the operation of a vital public service.'

The Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers Union (RMT) and the Transport Salaried Staffs Association (TSSA) had walked out for 48 hours from 9.30 GMT on 4 February in a row over 953 job losses stemming from the closure of ticket offices. The RMT ballot had a 76 percent yes vote on a 40 percent turnout while the TSSA ballot had a 59 percent yes vote on a 52 percent turnout.

Turnout statistics are very illuminating and demonstrate that 'our political leaders' shouldn't have any political power going by the yardstick they want to introduce. The 2012 London Mayoral election turnout was 38 percent of which Johnson got 44 percent of votes in the first round which is 17 percent of all London's electorate. Since 1979 the Euro-elections have had an average 33 percent turnout with an all-time low in 1999 of 24 percent. A real all-time low is the 2012 turnout of 15 percent for Police and Crime Commissioners while a parliamentary by-election in Manchester South in 2012 had an 18 percent turnout. All these capitalist elections are null and void if we apply some turnout threshold on trade union ballots or are the organised working class a special case and in need of legislative sanctions?

Trade Unions are essentially defensive organisations of the working class to protect wages and working conditions, and the strike weapon is a necessary tool to prevent the working class being driven into the ground by the capitalist class’s never-satisfied demands for profit, what Marx called 'the never-ceasing encroachments of capital'. As socialists we stand with our fellow working class in their necessary battles to defend themselves, but point out at all times that the real victory to be achieved is the abolition of the wages system.

Retrospect - the Socialist Standard 1904 (1979)

From the September 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Seventy-five years ago, the first issue of the Socialist Standard was published—a clear statement of the unique socialist case, of uncompromising opposition to the expediencies of reformism:

The greatest problem awaiting solution in the world to-day is the existence in every commercial country of extreme poverty side by side with extreme wealth . . . It is the producer of wealth who is poor, the non-producer who is rich. How comes it that the men and women who till the soil, who dig the mine, who manipulate the machine, who build the factory and the home, and, in a word, who create the whole of the wealth, receive only sufficient to maintain themselves and their families on the border line of bare physical efficiency, while those who do not aid in production – the employing class – obtain more than is enough to supply their every necessity, comfort, and luxury?

All the attempted improvements and reforms of governments since then—be they Tory, Labour, Liberal or coalition—have not made any difference. Society is still divided into classes, the haves and the have-nots:

. . .  the life condition of the workers is one of penury and of misery. The only saleable commodity they possess  – their power of working – they are compelled to take to the labour market and sell for a bare subsistence wage. The food they eat, the clothing they wear, the houses in which they live are of the shoddiest kind, and these together with the mockery of an education which their children receive, primarily determine the purchasing price of their labour-power.

Today, three-quarters of a century later, these observations are still true. Now we eat soya-bean substitutes in place of meat; we accept that new clothes will fall to bits rapidly or need mending soon after purchase. Some even rely on jumble sales and thrift shops to clothe their children in second-hand reach-me-downs; working-class housing is built on the cheap and nasty principle, heedless of comfort and of a most unappealing ugliness; while the schools our children are compelled by law to attend are no more able to educate them than a battery farm can be said to educate its hens.

That first article went on to demonstrate how profit, interest and rent derive from "the unpaid labour of the working-class".

So long as this lasts – and it will last as long as the capitalist system of society – it will not be possible for the workers by any Trades Union organisation to more than slightly modify their condition, and their power in this direction is becoming every day more limited by the combinations among employers to defeat the aims of the working class.

The socialists of 1904 would find their description of the capitalist system in British applies just as aptly to 1979 as when that sentence first appeared in print. Now the trade unions are opposed by the Confederation of British Industry, Aims of Industry and the Institute of Directors, as well as by combinations of employers within various branches of industry. During these seventy-five years, we have seen and learnt from many bitter experiences just how limited is the power of trade union action. In 1926, all the efforts of the coalminers solidly united in their union and supported by other trade unionists could not prevent a reduction in their wages. In recent years, currency inflation combined with rising levels of unemployment have brought about similar falls in the real purchasing power of workers' wages. Even in 1904, the Socialist Standard reported that "the real wage of the worker as measured by its purchasing power has, since 1900, been reduced by ten per cent." Experience tells us that we cannot expect lasting improvements from trade union action, only temporary gains which are wiped out when market conditions alter.

What, then, can we do? The answer given by the Socialist Party in 1904 is the same as we would give today, not because we are blinkered slaves to tradition but because the conditions and problems we are dealing with are essentially the same. Our task is

. . .  to show the workers that while their organisation in trades will  prove an invaluable aid in the transformation of society by facilitating industrial reorganisation, yet at present they can best help to emancipate themselves from the thraldom of wage-slavery by recognising that in their class struggle with their exploiters they can be most certain of success in the political sphere of action.

Then, as now, socialists had to expose the non-revolutionary parties—whether allegedly labour or avowedly capitalist—as opposed to socialism. That first article proceeds to sum up the Conservatives and the Liberals as parties "interested in maintaining the present class society", which "cannot, therefore, be expected to help in its transformation from capitalism to Socialism."

The Labour Representative Committee, which later spawned the Labour Party, was described as 

" also to be avoided . . . [It] has no programme whatsoever, and its members possess no principles in common save the name “Labour." . . . Unity is only possible among those who possess common principles. Unity can not, therefore, be secured for any length of time by the members of the Labour Representation Committee, but even if it could, the body is not based upon Socialist principles and should not receive the adhesion of working men."

History has shown that unity can be achieved in the absence of common principles, but only by those prepared to elevate vote-catching and expediency. The Labour Party today, perpetually threatened with splits, develops its politics mainly with a view to the popularity polls when out of power, and when in government never fails to disappoint its faithful rank and file by its concern for capitalist class interests, under the cover name of the 'national interest'.

What was needed, we said in 1904, was a socialist party. There was then the Independent Labour Party but, being a 'halfway house to socialism', founded on compromise, was doomed: 

Having neither the courage to proclaim themselves Socialists nor to disavow Socialism, they are to-day coquetting with that working-class wing of the Liberal Party – the Labour Representation Committee.

As we have so often seen with the Labour Party, the LRC's reaction to the question of socialism was that "that was neither the time nor the place for such discussion". It is doubtful if the question of socialism—the abolition of the wages system—has ever been thought proper for discussion or been on the agenda at any Labour, ILP or LRC meeting.

The other party claiming to be socialist in 1904 was the Social Democratic Federation, from which the founder members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain had seceded earlier that year. It was following a 'compromising policy' like that of the ILP, so much so that it was "surely developing into a mere reform party, seeking to obtain the provision of Free Maintenance for school children". Like the ILP, the SDF was drawn into the orbit of the Labour Party and is long since defunct. The SPGB, scoffed at as 'Impossibilists', has however survived, and has developed its case in response to historical change. Since 1904 we have stated the socialist attitude on war, on the Russian Revolution, the General Strike, the theory mooted in the Depression that capitalism was about to collapse, and many other issues.

As in 1904, the SPGB is "a party determined to use its every effort in the furtherance of Socialist ideas and Socialist principles". We continue to work "gain the confidence and support of the working-class . . . by consistently advocating . . . a clearly defined body of principles". Then, as now, we assert that "the first duty of The Socialist Party is the teaching of its principles and the organisation of a political party on a Socialist basis". The first message of the first socialist political party to the working class, with an optimism now embarrassing, concluded:

Men and women of the working-class, it is to you we appeal! To-day we are a small party, strong only in the truth of our principles, the sincerity of our motives, and the determination and enthusiasm of our members. To-morrow we shall be strong in our numbers, for the economic development of capitalist society fights for us, and as, through the merging of free competition in monopoly and the simplification of industry, the personal capitalist gives place to the impersonal trust as your employer, you will be forced to see that the welfare of the people can best be guaranteed by the holding of all material wealth in common. 

We ask you, therefore, to study the principles upon which our party is based, to find out for yourselves what Socialism is and how Socialism and Socialism alone can abolish class society and establish in its stead a society based upon social equality. When you have done this we know that you will come with us and, by enrolling yourself a member of The Socialist Party of Great Britain, help to speed the time when we shall herald in for ourselves and for our children, a brighter, a happier and a nobler society than any the world has yet witnessed.

Charmian Skelton

Noam Chomsky - Rights and Lefties (1995)

From the August 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists aren't the only people pointing out that it is useless pleading with governments to end the problems which are endemic to capitalism. Noam Chomsky reiterated this during a recent talk - pity his audience didn't appreciate his point!

There was something vaguely comical about the atmosphere in the Central Hall, Westminster on the bright June evening when Prof Noam Chomsky was to deliver his talk on the theme "HUman Rights in the New World Order". All the fashionable stewards wore black T-shirts with the following imperative in small white lower-case letters: "defend diversity". There were scores of people dressed in this uniform.

Chomsky's address was part of a Human Rights convention which had been sponsored by the Observer and the legal campaign group Liberty. This event was attended by a wide range of left-wing lawyers, radical journalists, professional campaigners, and post-post-modern pundits. Most of the famous names were there to lead seminars or workshops.

Noam Chomsky, often dubbed as the world's greatest philosopher, is a man who is steadfastly opposed to icons of any description, to human sheep following political shepherds. He even opposed the superb documentary about the book he c-wrote with Edward S. Herman (Manufacturing Consent) on the grounds that it personalised grand political issues. It was therefore incredible to witness the degree of personal adulation bestowed on this man by many of the people there. The man in front of me kept taking photographs of Chomsky during the talk. At the end of the talk hundreds of people tried to get the philosopher's autograph.

We do not underestimate the immeasurable contribution that Noam Chomsky has made, and is making, to radically change the world, but to treat him as a saviour is to misunderstand his arguments. Chomsky was on his feet for two hours. He gave a coruscatingly good analysis of modern capitalism. and showed how the origins of sustained human rights violations can all be traced back to struggles over property rights, land rights, rights of trade and so forth. It was, therefore, utterly dispiriting for socialists in the audience (and probably for Chomsky himself) when his blisteringly articulate condemnation of capitalism drew nothing but fairly dull questions from the audience. Each of the few questions seemed to come from various left-wing, reformist activists, and betrayed an apparent incomprehension of what had been said in the talk.

Chomsky's arguments

Chomsky began by pointing out that in capitalism "politics takes place in the shadow cast by big business". He concentrated on American foreign policy showing how, for example, such policy in Haiti was formed and reformed in accordance with the interests of the super-rich both there and in America. The ordinary population of Haiti was treated as a dispensable element in the process of making a few people very rich. The American government like countries with which it does business to be "stable". The stricter the government, the better. A strong military government is fine, a fascist regime will do nicely. No trade unions to interrupt the wealth-creating process, and a large armed police presence all the time will produce just the sort of disciplined order and reliable "economic miracle" that American investors would be prepared to rely upon.

With fastidious detail, and supporting his every proposition with demonstrably accurate data (often adducing facts and figures released by the American government itself), Chomsky showed how "liberals" like Jack Kennedy and Bill Clinton had condoned mass murder, torture, and savagery by the deals they did, in Brazil and Colombia respectively. "If the Nuremberg laws were applied," as Chomsky commented on another occasion, "then every post-war American president would have been hanged."

He then gave a frighteningly grim picture of life today for many Americans. The recession has produced armies of politicians and "experts" who favour social policies of "tough love". This means being cruel to be kind. Taking away the nanny state in order to teach people the virtues of self-dependence. No free school, no free medicine. Win in the rat race or curl up and die. "Tough love is what they call it for a good reason," said Chomsky, "because the rich love it and it's tough on everybody else." The irony is, as he pointed out, that these policies were put forward in the name of "family values" and yet their direct and clearly predictable result has been to assist in the destruction of that institution in America. Fathers who have been conditioned to see themselves as breadwinners have no employment, mothers work long, part-time sessions, and children are supervised by television sets. Fathers get drunk and depressed, wives work themselves into a torpor, and the kids end up as unsocialised, illiterate delinquents. And all this in the cause of promoting God and the family.

Why should workers be afforded the luxury of employment contracts and their associated legal rights? Ask the new economists. We should all become part of a more "flexible economy". Chomsky explained the rationale for this: "the bosses want you anxious as hell when your head touches the pillow each night, worrying whether you'll be at work the day after tomorrow, as there's nothing quite like that worry to get you worrying like mad".

Chomsky's opposition to the wages-system is always clearly put: "I don't think that many people ought to be forced to rent themselves in order to survive", as he once put it. Many of his ideas appear succinctly in a book which is a commentary on the documentary Manufacturing Consent. The book is Noam Chomsky and the Media edited by Mark Achbar (Black Rose Books, Montreal/London) and the "rent" quotation is on page 215. Again, consider his views on the need for government:

"presupposing that there have to be states is like saying, what kind of feudal system should we have that would be the best one? What kind of slavery would be the best kind?" (p. 208)

At the meeting Chomsky revealed two telling figures from a recent opinion poll in the United States. He noted that 82 per cent of the respondents thought that most politicians were in politics for their own gain, and that 83 per cent of respondents thought that "the current economic system is inherently unfair". It could hardly have been plainer that Chomsky's identification of the reasons for human rights violations was the essential nature of capitalism. It was not an unacceptable face of capitalism, something that needs adjusting with a legal instrument, it was the system itself.

Yet, after two hours of quietly, cogently, and often hilariously, showing that the social system was necessarily slanted against human rights, campaigners stood up at the end of the talk and asked for Chomsky's blessing for a variety of foredoomed crusades. Chomsky had argued that the problem of human rights abuse was just a necessary consequence of having a system run by bankers not by philanthropists or moral philosophers, yet the reformers wanted him to approve of huge human efforts to plead with governments to act more kindly.

To his great credit, Chomsky seemed to treat legal interference with capitalism as an unreliable solution to the problems of human rights violations. Although he spoke for two hours he only came to the matter of law in the final sixty seconds of his talk. He picked up a piece of card and referred to some specific questions involving legal strategies which he had been invited to address by the organisers, said, in effect, that they weren't very important in the context of capitalism, and concluded his opening remarks. Those lawyers who had been manning the expensively-decorated recruiting stall of the Law Society (the solicitors' trade union) in the foyer before the talk must have felt rather let down.

The first questioner, from the audience of 2,000,  introduced himself as a spokesperson for the "Luton Peoples' Collective". He said that some people in Britain had been victimised by the police for illegal drug use. Was this branch of human rights designed to intimidate all deviants from conventional behaviour into conforming to capitalism? Having travelled 3,000 miles to talk about human rights in a world suffering from such enormous problems as starvation somewhere in the world), carnage, ethnic cleansing, forced female circumcision, and the catalogue of crimes exposed by Amnesty International, Chomsky was visibly disappointed with the first question. But the questions did not improve.

The second questioner asked whether Chomsky favoured the London-based campaign to stop the Cuban government buying certain sorts of missiles? A possibly rather gutted Chomsky patiently explained to Private Eye's Dave Spart that, as had been pointed out in the talk, there was no convincing evidence that governments could be persuaded by moralists to run capitalism in accordance with anything but the principles of accounting. And so the questions continued. I wanted to ask Chomsky to comment on the sort of society he wanted to see at the end of the "long road" he had said we would have to travel before becoming civilised; and how we should travel there. Alas, despite 20 minutes of impersonating a flagless semaphorist, I was still not chosen by the steward to ask a question. Perhaps I should been wearing a T-shirt bearing a single demand from capitalism as its slogan.

Many people on the left in politics have an unwarrantedly optimistic view of what can be achieved by using the law to tame and control commerce. The law cannot do that. As a socialist I do not support the campaign for human rights, for two reasons.

First, the whole idea of getting down on your knees and asking someone or something for your "rights" is undiginified. It presupposes that the giver or rights (he, she, they, or it) is superior to the supplicant. I am a human being and I don't want a society where I have to depend upon John Major, the Lord Chancellor, Bill Clinton or the chief judge in Strasbourg to finish a plate of lobster and then tell me whether I have the right to breathe, work, be free, protest, or anything else. Rights are for the meek.

They are also for the unrealistic. The second objection to rights is that history has shown them to be nothing but instantly disposable guarantees. The American constitution in 1776 declared that "all men are born free", yet slavery was still an institution for almost another century, swiftly followed by universal wage-slavery. The left's hapless "right to work" campaign fizzled out in the 1980s when it became apparent to even the most bigoted SWP member that capitalism does not and can never guarantee such rights. Go to any country in the world which boasts a constitution guaranteeing the right to life and you will find the bodies or the statistics to debunk the paper right.

Jeremy Bentham, the nineteenth-century reformer, and the man who wrote that "property and law are born together and die together", had a clear understanding of legal rights. He said that they were "nonsense" and that the idea of basic human rights was "nonsense upon stilts". There's no point in calling them rights if getting them enforced is only a pious hope. A call for rights is a plea to a recognised superior. Let's forget "rights", and get up off our knees.

Gary Jay