Another war for oil (1990)

Editorial from the September 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

The press have denounced Saddam Hussein of Iraq as a "mad dictator". A dictator he certainly is, and a ruthless and bloody one at that, but he is no more mad than Thatcher or Bush or Mitterand. Or, put another way, since their foreign policies are based on the same principles as his, they are as mad as him.

Iraq is capitalist and its foreign policy is based on the principle that the national capitalist interest must be pursued at all costs. To do this Saddam Hussein has built up the most powerful armed forces his country can afford and has not hesitated to use them. One of Iraqi capitalism's particular problems has been lack of an outlet under full national control to the sea by which to transit its main export, oil. To try to secure this, in 1980 Iraq attacked Iran, then temporarily weakened by the chaos that followed the overthrow of the Shah, so provoking a war which lasted eight years and in which up to a million innocent workers were slaughtered. Now Iraq has attacked and annexed Kuwait.

Would Thatcher or Bush or Mitterand have acted differently in the same circumstances? Have they never used force to defend the vital interests of their capitalists? They criticise Iraq for developing and using chemical weapons, but their countries have armed themselves with the more deadly nuclear weapons, and each of them has personally declared that they would be prepared to push the button that could destroy the world. Who is the madder? Saddam Hussein or them?

The fact is that under capitalism "Might is Right" and all countries have to base their foreign policy on this principle. The battle of competition on the world market is not just a peaceful economic struggle. The threat of armed force is always present as the competing firms have the backing of their governments. States, with their armed might, exist to promote capitalist interests. At home they do this by trying to create the best environment for profit-making. Abroad their role is to secure access for their firms to raw materials, investment outlets, markets and trade routes.

Normally this jockeying for position takes place by diplomatic means, but all governments are aware that what influences the outcome of negotiations is not the "justice" of any side's case but the amount of force each can potentially deploy to back up its demands. It is always a question of the balance of forces between the sides.

This is why all states strive to acquire the most destructive weapons they can afford. It was why Neil Kinnock's hero, the failed Labour politician Aneurin Bevan, wanted Britain to have nuclear weapons. Without them, he said, a British Foreign Secretary would be going into the Conference Chamber naked. Which he said he was not prepared to do. So Saddam Hussein isn't either, nor is any other leader of any other state.

The reason the Western powers are kicking up a fuss—and planning military action themselves—over Iraq's invasion of Kuwait has nothing to do with this being some brutal "violation of international law" (They have all done this too, when it has suited their interests). It has to do with the threat this represents to their oil supplies. In other words, they are motivated by the same naked capitalist economic interest as Iraq. Iraq wants a secure trade route for its oil exports; they want a secure source of the vital raw material oil is for them.

Capitalism is a war-prone society. The armed truce that is all "peace" can amount to under capitalism will always be broken from time to time, as on this occasion, by the destruction and slaughter of real war. To end war capitalism must be ended.

The thin red line (1988)

Book Review from the January 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Faced with a social system which creates problems faster than its politicians can make promises, responses range from the stupidly complacent, to those whose self-righteous radicalism leaves no time for actually solving the problems they shout about. Would-be "leaders" the world over, rush to defend the indefensible. Political parties compete to run a system of organised poverty and obscene contradictions, which has built weapons to destroy humanity while millions starve. Most political debate is as irrational as the system of class division and profit which, in one form or another, it seeks to defend. It is therefore very refreshing indeed when a glimmer of social sanity shows itself through this dense fog of doublethink.

Just such an encouraging and exciting event took place late last year, with the publication of a book which is of significance. Until now, those historians who claimed to deal with the "labour movement" or the opposition to capitalism have focused, almost entirely, on the opportunists who have come to power by riding on the back of social discontent and perverting the idea of social freedom, through the Labour Party, the Communist Party or the Trotskyist fringe. Those who have upheld a clear and principled socialist alternative in the face of fierce hostility have all too often been relegated to a contemptuous footnote  in small print, if they were mentioned at all.

Now the record has been set straight. Non-Market Socialism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries is a fascinating and compelling account which deals exclusively with those who have seen through the nonsense of the profit system and who have stood clearly for the abolition of capitalism in any of its forms, whether private or state controlled and its replacement by a system of production for use, with human needs being met through free access to all goods and services. Socialist ideas are explained in a historical context which makes them all the more powerful and urgent. Moreover, it is demonstrated that capitalism really does "produce its own gravediggers", as various groups at different times and places have independently reached (and continue independently to reach) the same conclusion - that since the problems of the working-class majority cannot possibly be solved through the reform of the capitalist system, therefore it must be replaced.

Following the pattern used in each of the chapters of the book, let us first set out the background and central idea put forward in this work, before summarising the content and moving on to weigh up its strengths and weaknesses as a book. Non-Market Socialism, edited by Maximillien Rubel and John Crump, published by Macmillan and available in paperback at £8.95, arose out of a conference of discussion and debate which took place in York in September 1984. The revolutionary basis on which the book develops is made clear from the formal dedication on the very first page, which states

This book is dedicated to the men and women of the thin red line of non-market socialism who have kept alive the vision of socialism as a society of personal freedom, communal solidarity, production for use and free access to goods.

Socialism defined

In Chapter Two, written by John Crump (who for some time was a member of The Socialist Party), four key features are outlined, as a definition of socialism which is to be used throughout the book. These are that:

• Production will be for use and not for sale on the market.
• Distribution will be according to need and not by means of buying and selling.
• Labour will be voluntary and not imposed on workers by means of a coercive wages system.
• A human community will exist and social divisions based on class, nationality, sex or race will have disappeared.

Crump them goes on to elaborate excellently on all the implications of such a revolution in social relationships, dealing very clearly with all the common myths of "human nature" which have sometimes been used to obstruct such discussion. He also explains the historical emergence of the "Social Democratic" and Leninist movements which distorted and confused this fundamental concept of the socialist alternative. The way in which the Russian Revolution of 1917 established a regime of state capitalism is also clearly stated, with quotations from the Socialist Standard from that period to demonstrate how socialists were able to make such an analysis even then. Also in Crump's chapter, the whole notion of a "transitional society" between capitalism and socialism is explored and rejected.

At this stage, the central thesis and claim of the book is explained. This is that there have been various movements which have stood openly for the socialist alternative as defined above, the five most significant such "tendencies" to be dealt with in detail in subsequent chapters. While agreeing on their object or aim, these movements have been in conflict over how to achieve that goal and over various other points of detail. Crump argues that such differences constitute a "periphery" which, at the present time, is less important than the "core" idea of defining socialism, introducing workers to this and encouraging them to adopt it as the only practical alternative to the exploitation of the capitalist system. We will consider this general thesis in more detail below but let us first take a look at the contents of the other chapters.

A background survey which explores the nineteenth century origins of socialist idea is provided by Maximilien Rubel, a recognised authority and scholar of Marx, based in Paris, who has been in close contact with The Socialist Party. Rubel takes as his starting point the 1848 Communist Manifesto's list of categories of "Socialism" and finds there some early progenitors of both the modern idea of "market socialism" (of course, a contradiction in terms) and of the non-market alternative. He seeks to rescue from relative obscurity and rehabilitate into their deserved place of recognition such early socialist thinkers as Wilhelm Weitling or Flora Tristan and many others. In contrast to "vulgar materialism", Rubel presents the need for socialism as an "ethical imperative": a term whose use has been debated in the columns of the Socialist Standard when Rubel has corresponded with us on that issue. Finally, and with great eloquence, he demolishes the very damaging claims of the Bolsheviks to have established "socialism" in Russia, with their perversion of "Marxism" into a distorted religious ideology.

In a chapter on "Anarcho-Communism", Alain Pengam develops further the rich heritage and background of ideas from which the modern socialist movement has developed, by focussing on those early anarchists who embraced most clearly the idea of abolishing property relationships. Déjacque, for example, wrote in 1858 that social revolution means that "Commerce . . . this scourge of the 19th century, has disappeared amongst humanity. There are no longer either sellers or sold" (p.64). Kropotkin is also extensively quoted on the need for the abolition of the wages system. Beyond this, however, Pengam struggles in vain to find any substantial threads of such a tradition extending into the twentieth century, referring for example to the military defeat during the Mexican Revolution of those anarchists who sought in vain to establish agricultural co-operative communes there.

World Socialist Movement

This brings us to Chapter Four, on "Impossibilism", which is written by Stephen Coleman and focuses on The Socialist Party itself. In a postscript to the book it is pointed out that the Socialist Party of Great Britain, "with a record of over eighty years' unbroken commitment to non-market socialism" is an exception to the general rule, whereby other groups proclaiming allegiance to the ideas of non-market socialism have tended to be rather more fleeting in their organisational existence. Coleman makes it quite clear in his chapter how and why that consistency of both organisation and principle has been achieved by The Socialist Party.

The formation of The Socialist Party in 1904 is described, as is the formation of its similar predecessor, the Socialist League in 1884, both as breakaway groups from the Social Democratic Federation. From the League, William Morris is quoted on the need to "put an end for ever to the wage-system" so that everyone could have "free access to the means of production of wealth" (p. 85). There is also a brief description of the ideas of Daniel De Leon and of the Socialist Labour Party, with their notion of the need for "labour vouchers" in a socialist society clearly dealt with.

Coleman then goes on to produce an excellent, sweeping survey of the history and ideas of The Socialist Party and its companion parties in other countries, referred to as the World Socialist Movement. This is of great historical significance in itself, since until now we have been faced with an overwhelming silence from labour historians in relation to the unique and inspiring record of The Socialist Party, in putting forward a consistent case for socialism in a way which is now properly documented and described in this chapter. In fact, the only other book previously published dealing with The Socialist Party was produced in 1975 under the title of The Monument, and consisted of a series of (often inaccurate) anecdotes, failing to deal at all seriously with the development of socialist ideas.

The work in question, on the other hand, sets this record straight. Using a wide assortment of examples, ranging from India to Canada, Britain and elsewhere we see how socialism was positively put and reformist compromise consistently opposed throughout the upheavals of these years. We read how both world wars were actively opposed, and how the Socialist Standard has been published every month without fail, despite the difficulties that have been involved.

A careful reading of Coleman's chapter also shows that there are two false assumptions which emerge elsewhere in the book. First, in his introductory chapter Crump claims that The Socialist Party is separate from the other traditions referred to because it has a "parliamentary strategy" which is "anathema to the other currents of non-market socialists". In fact, it would be more accurate to state the emphasis of Socialist Party material has been democratic, concerning on the need for socialism to be established by a conscious majority, since means must harmonise with ends. Coleman contrasts the "parliamentarianism" of the reformists, which involves sending representatives to Parliament to run capitalism, with the socialist policy in which a socialist majority mandates recallable delegates in order to dismantle the state machine, from a position of control. Coleman tells the story of the socialist speaker who referred to socialism coming not just through the ballot box, but through the "brain box" and points out that

it is clearly those who insist that ballot boxes and parliaments can play no part in the establishment of socialism and assert that socialism can only be established via industrial organisation alone, who are being dogmatic and historically fetishised in their thinking about the revolution. (p.94)

Second, one might think from reading the introductory sections of the book that the various tendencies considered differ fro one another only in their ideas about how socialism is to be achieved. It is clear however, from looking at the closing section of Chapter Four in comparison with other chapters, that there is another important difference which distinguishes The Socialist Party in particular from those other tendencies. This is that The Socialist Party is alone in remaining organised on a significant scale and politically active in Britain today.

Possible exceptions to this, it might be argued, would be found under the heading of "Council Communism", which is dealt with in Chapter Five by Mark Shipway. It is, however, stated in the Postscript that "it is doubtful whether any 'orthodox' council communist groups exist today". Of the organisations which are then listed, the International Communist Current has been found in debate with The Socialist Party to adhere to a fundamentally Leninist position and the group Wildcat, of which Shipway is a member and which is reviewed critically in the December 1987 Socialist Standard, state that "we struggle in favour of strikes, riots and all other acts of rebellion against capitalism", which hardly suggests credibility in terms of democratic organisation.

Council Communism
Shipway presents an historical account of the emergence of the Council Communist movement in the wake of the First World War, quoting extensively from Anton Pannekoek. Unlike other tendencies dealt with, the Council Communists were generally more preoccupied with a detailed discussion of how the revolution would take place -  as far as they were concerned, through the setting up of workers' councils to rival the capitalist state - rather than focusing, in any detail, on what end result was to be achieved through this process. In the course of his analysis, Shipway accepts the somewhat suicidal notion of workers forming their own militias to rival the capitalist armed forces (p.117), refers somewhat confusingly to "periods of revolutionary turmoil" (p.108) and quotes approvingly the need for a party to "win the trust of the masses" (p.124). He states, rather hopefully, that Council Communist intervention in working class struggles "should" be based on nothing less that the final goal of communism, while recognising that this has not generally been the case. (p.124). Further, support is given to Pannekoek's emphasis on theories of economic breakdown (p.120) and to his rather obscure and vanguardist references to building up the "spiritual power" of workers (p. 122).

Bordiga
In Chapter Six, Adam Buick presents a detailed view of "Bordigism", the movement named after the Italian marxist Amadeo Bordiga, who died in 1970 after a great literary and political output. After an historical explanation of the succession of parties influenced by Bordiga's thinking, culminating in the International Communist Party, among others, Buick goes on to show how Bordiga's concept of socialism was explicitly based on the abolition of the market system and of all property relationships, including those of state capitalism.

By quoting extensively from Bordiga himself, Buick methodically and clearly demonstrates just how emphatically capitalism in all its manifestations was understood and rejected by Bordiga. Many good examples of this are given, perhaps one of the simplest being that "where there is money, there is neither socialism nor communism, as there isn't, and by a long way, in Russia" (Bordiga, 1959, quoted on p.139).

Buick also explains the paradox, that alongside this very clear revolutionary concept of the socialist alternative, the Bordigists have remained élitist in terms of political strategy, believing that socialist understanding on the part of the working class majority could be developed after, rather than before, socialism is brought about.This, again, relates to the underlying thesis of the book, because whereas Bordigist means of obtaining their goal can be seen in this chapter to stand at odds in many ways with their goal, it is argued by Crump in Chapter Two that this is "peripheral", since workers who are educated by Bordigism into revolutionary ends can themselves prove the Bordigists wrong in practice about the means required to bring this about. It is perhaps worth noting, however, that means often determine ends rather than the other way round and that of course ultimately the two cannot be separated. Buick implicitly recognises this fact by showing how the Bordigist conception of socialism itself is "non-democratic" and "technocratic", involving not full participation in the control of production but the appointment of experts to make decisions in the best interests of others - an angle which would perhaps be regarded with more cynicism by many workers in the 1980s than in former decades. Also, despite these reservations, there is clearly validity in Crump's point that Bordigism, together with the other movements considered, has definitely played a positive part in introducing workers to the idea of the abolition of the wages system and its replacement with a system of production for use.

Situationists
Finally, the movement of "Situationism" is dealt with in Chapter Seven, again by Mark Shipway. The Situationist International was a small group based in France which produced a substantial amount of literature between 1957 and 1973 and which became widely known, out of all proportion to its numbers, as a result of the May 1968 "Events" in Paris. They were explicit in their opposition to modern capitalism, which they called the society of the "Spectacle", because of the passivity and alienation it produced and in their support for socialist revolution. Shipway clearly explains their theories of consumerism, with key texts by Guy Debord and Raoul Vaneigem, finding roots in Marx's theory of alienation and weaknesses in that Situationist was based rather narrowly on conditions in the post-war boom in France. What also emerges, however, is that they developed some very important cultural and psychological insights into capitalism which complement much of the more traditionally political and economic analysis focused on in the rest of the book. Finally, Shipway ends the book with a comment on reformism which appears rather at odds with the rest of the book:

Of course it would be ideal if every time workers went on strike it was for the abolition of the wages system. But while this is not the situation in which revolutionaries presently find themselves, neither is it a reason for ignoring or abstaining from any struggle which starts out on the basis of ostensibly reformist demands. (p.169)

It is worth pointing out in relation to this that each author was separately responsible for his own chapter and clearly some have been more clear on such issues than others. A good reason, for example, why revolutionaries must abstain from struggles which start out "on the basis of ostensibly reformist demands" is suggested in a very clear passage by Crump in Chapter Two, in which he explains that there can be no halfway house between the two "all-or-nothing" options of world capitalism and world socialism:

the means of production must either function as capital throughout the world (in which case wage labour and capitalism persist internationally) or they must be commonly owned and democratically controlled at a global level (in which case they would be used to produce wealth fro free, worldwide distribution) . . . the changeover from world capitalism to world socialism will have to take the form of a short, sharp rupture (a revolution), rather than an extended process of cumulative transformation. (pp.54,55)

In conclusion then, the detailed chapters on the five main tendencies which have supported the idea of "non-market socialism" suggest that the original thesis was to some extent a victory of hope over reason. In terms of practical and active organisation in 1988, and particularly in Britain, the organised movement for socialism is somewhat more unitary than this volume might suggest. Also in terms of developing a practical strategy for establishing socialism which takes due account of the importance of both majority consciousness and democracy and which recognises the need to relate means to ends, then again the "thin red line" is perhaps thinner than we might wish it.

Despite such reservations, those who have collaborated in the production of this book have effectively broken a silence of decades. We hope this will also generate further discussion and debate among that growing number of individuals and groups who have come to reject capitalism, in all its forms, and seek to develop a non-market alternative. It is a strong vindication of Marx's Materialist Conception of History that from a variety of times, places and backgrounds within capitalism workers have reached similar conclusions about the need to establish a new social system capable of meeting the needs of all. The fact that workers now continue to seek such answers shows that non-market socialism is both practical and urgent. Those who wish, then, to further their understanding of the movement for socialism are recommended to get hold of this book. In continuing such discussions, we are helping to ensure that the "thin red line" does not remain so thin in the immediate future.

Clifford Slapper 

Pathfinders: Back from the brink (2014)

The Pathfinders Column from the June 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

A fact about infectious diseases which deserves to be better known is that the closer you come to eradicating them, the more potentially dangerous they become. A case in point is polio, which the world came to within an ace of wiping out only to see it resurge to the point where last month the World Health Organisation declared a public health emergency (New Scientist, 10 May). The approach of spring rains in the northern hemisphere prompted the WHO to call for immediate vaccination drives after outbreaks in Syria, where such programmes have been interrupted by war and poor sanitation conditions in rebel-held areas, but also in Cameroon and Pakistan, where Muslim imams have notoriously claimed that vaccination was a western plot to sterilise their children. Vaccination is also strongly opposed in Nigeria by the guerrilla group Boko Haram, whose other recent contributions to civilisation have included abducting 200 schoolgirls to sell as sex-slaves and blowing up a hospital. Boko Haram (No to Western Education) is by the way a fine example of militant ignorance gone mad and a sobering reminder to socialists that if liberal capitalism were ever to collapse as some on the left delight in prophesying, there are groups out there who would love nothing better than to push the world back into the Stone Age.

To get an idea how pervasive polio was only a generation or so ago, consider what connects the following famous people: Alan Alda, Neil Young, Arthur C Clarke, Jack Nicklaus, Francis Ford Coppola, Lord Snowdon, Mia Farrow, Ida Lupino, Donald Sutherland, David Starkey and Johnny Weissmuller. No prizes given, and we didn’t even mention more famous polio victims like Franklin D Roosevelt, Frida Kahlo or Ian Dury.

The 1952 polio epidemic was the worst outbreak in US history, with 58,000 cases. In 2013 there were just 417 cases worldwide. This year so far there have been 68 confirmed cases. This may not sound like a lot, and it isn’t, so one might wonder why the WHO is ringing alarm bells so quickly. It’s because vaccination programmes don’t aim to vaccinate everyone, owing to the practical difficulties and expense, they generally aim for ‘herd immunity’. If a sufficient percentage of individuals are vaccinated in a group, those at risk of infection do not come into contact with each other and the virus is blocked by natural buffers. But if the percentage drops below the threshold level herd immunity breaks down, at which point an epidemic becomes sustainable. Consider this on a global scale, with modern air transport, and you begin to see why the WHO is worried. Syria, Cameroon and Pakistan are all known to be exporting the disease.

One doctor working in Dier ez-Zor, the province of Syriawhich first saw the outbreak, was quoted in December as saying “This is a disease. This is not politics” (npr.org/health, 2 December 2013). If only that were true. There would not have been an outbreak in the first place had it not been for the political situation. But diseases can be instruments of war as well as symptoms. In May 2010 this column discussed the eradication of smallpox, one of the towering achievements of modern science. Yet stockpiles of the virus continue to be held at the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, USA and at the State Research Centre for Virology and Biotechnology in Koltsovo, Russia. Why? As Gareth Williams, professor of medicine at Bristol University, points out, these stockpiles have not been instrumental in any significant research into virology which might justify their continued existence. Meanwhile, because no virus exists in the wild there is effectively zero immunity among populations, and only derisory stocks of vaccine available in the case of accidental or deliberate release. The consequences would be truly biblical, which is why Professor Williams insists the stockpiles should be destroyed immediately (New Scientist, 17 May). Politically speaking, though, the stockpiles can be seen as an Ace of Spades in a pack of potential war cards, which may be why the WHO has been unable to enforce destruction despite five previous attempts, and why the US and Russia both oppose destruction.

Priorities turned upside down

The verdict is partially in concerning the sinking of the Korean ferry Sewol in April with the confirmed loss of 276 people – mostly high school students – and 23 still unaccounted for (BBC News Online, 16 May). It is still not clear why the ferry made a sudden sharp turn off the coast of Jindo island, but the cause of the resulting list and eventual capsize has become clear – it was overloaded and top-heavy. The ferry owners had redesigned the upper decks to create additional passenger space, and it had passed a Korean safety inspection only under the proviso that it would need to carry more ballast and cut down its cargo capacity in order to offset this extra weight. It seems that the owners chose to ignore this proviso and that the ferry was routinely overloaded despite a warning by an off-duty captain that this was making the ferry unstable. The cargo allowance was set at 987 tonnes while ballast load was set at 1,568 tonnes. When the ship sank it was carrying 3,608 tonnes of cargo, three and a half times the permitted amount, with ballast of just 580 tonnes, around a third of the requirement. Since ballast is held at the bottom of the hull while cargo and passengers are both above the water-line, it’s clear that the ferry was not only overloaded but top-heavy. The sudden turn, for whatever reason, resulted in a Mary Rose-type disaster. Very likely, vehicles and cargo broke their ties and slid across the decks, tipping the listing ship completely over.

All the media fuss, the Prime Minister’s resignation and the President’s apology, has been to do with how the disaster was handled, including the captain’s supposedly bad advice to stay put and not risk the water until rescue boats were on hand, and the slowness of the recovery of bodies, even though one diver died in the treacherous conditions. Socialists won’t be astonished that the surviving crew were the first to get the blame for the disaster itself, although one crewmember died trying to save passengers. This is the usual scenario, with corporate bosses and shareholders doing everything they can to distance themselves from blame. Ultimately you don’t need to be a socialist to see what was going on here – profits from carriage, shortcuts on safety, and blame the workers when the enterprise keels over and sinks like a stone.

PJS

Material World: The World Cup for Whom? (2014)

The Material World column from the June 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

The upcoming mega sporting events and multi-billion dollar businesses, this year’s World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games, are drawing many rural migrants from Brazil’s poorest regions, as well as neighbouring countries, to the cities in search of work. Slave labour remained largely a rural phenomenon in Brazil, where it occurs on cattle ranches and the sugar cane plantations but now many new victims have become trapped into forced labour. There are widespread abusive labour recruitment practices in Brazil which lead to debt bondage and deprivation of liberty. There are an estimated 18 million victims of forced labour worldwide, including 25,000 to 40,000 in Brazil.

Luiz Machado, national coordinator of the International Labour Organisation’s Special Action Programme to Combat Forced Labour said the United Nations is worried about a sharp increase in slave labour ahead of and during the World Cup and the Olympic Games. ‘These major events draw workers from around the country, and immigrants, for the construction of stadiums,’ he explained. ‘Major infrastructure works also have a social impact, in terms of sexual exploitation and even child labour...’

Of more concern to others is the mobilisation of the military, with checkpoints at the entrances to the favelas and patrols on foot and in armoured personnel carriers to maintain ‘law and order’ and ensure a ‘safe and peaceful’ festival of football. A new so-called pacification police unit, the UPP, has been created and has already been in action with prolonged gun battles with the many powerful criminal gangs, such as Comando Vermelho (Red Command), who often took on the role of legislative, executive and judiciary lawgivers in the areas where the state has been absent during previous decades. According to a Financial Times report (27 March) common crimes such as robberies have risen in ‘pacified’ slums as the police are largely less feared than the former drug gang leaders.

People are enraged that their lives were being sacrificed for the sake of sport which will enrich the lives of speculators seeking the gentrification of the favelas. 500 families live in Vila Autodromo, once a fishing village now turned favela, and they are now threatened by eviction because of government plans to build the Olympic Park nearby, and documents reveal a plan to build a 1 million square meters luxury condominium in its place. ‘Why is that the rich people can live here, but the poor ones who already live can't stay?’ asked Altair Guimarães, of the resident's association. This is the third time he has been forcibly removed from a home. This time, he says, he and his neighbours will fight. And stay put.

People are angered at the billions of reals being borrowed and spent on the World Cup and Olympic Games infrastructures, knowing it will be they, the Brazilian working people, who will have to suffer the consequences. The government is investing huge amounts of money in stadiums while women give birth in hospital corridors and waiting rooms. In January, police opened fire on residents of the Morro São João Mill neighbourhood, in New North Zone of Rio de Janeiro, who were protesting a lack of electricity for weeks in their community. The World Cup still remains the priority. The poor are paying a heavy price for money-making international sporting events.

While Brazil was playing a warm-up friendly against Spain, police were firing tear gas at demonstrators not far away. Brazilians are football fanatics so why are they so anti-World Cup? Is it the price tag for the six-week tournament which is expected to be $11 billion (a very conservative estimate)? Or because at least nine people died in the construction of the country's 12 stadiums, where observers have said corruption and incompetence permitted the contractors to line their pockets? Perhaps it is because the government has relocated more than 15,000 families from favelas across the country. By the time the Olympics arrive, that number could rise to more than 100,000.

Or might it be the fact that police in Rio de Janeiro killed one suspect for every 229 they arrested last year. In the United States, police killed one suspect for every 31,575 they arrested, or that in 2008, police in Rio killed 1,137 people, whereas in the entire United States police killed 371 people. In fact, the murder rate in Rio de Janeiro has declined. But it appears to be offset by the dramatic increase in missing persons. Last year nearly 5,000 people went missing. Many people blame the police.

Enjoy the games, those sporting spectacles that are supposed to appease and placate the masses.

ALJO

Editorial: In the Recovery Position? (2014)

Editorial from the June 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

The newspapers that have been full of talk about the economic crisis since 2008 have all of a sudden decided that an economic recovery is under way. Government statistics show that after falling sharply, GDP in the UK is just about back to where it was before the slump began. Average wage increases have now almost caught up with inflation, after lagging prices for years.  And on an almost daily basis newspapers like the Express and Mail trumpet the recent rises in house prices, rather like a child excitedly waving about a toy they’ve found in the lucky dip.

We’ve been here before of course. This is how all economic recoveries happen. The big fish that dominate things eat the little fish and get even bigger and stronger as a result. Their growing confidence is such they may even try to gobble up other big fish too – we can see this by the recent attempt from US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer to buy AstraZeneca. Both profits and wages start to rise again and so demand for goods and services starts to pick up. And the politicians that had been so obviously impotent to tackle all the pressing issues during the slump claim that it is their unique foresight and mastery of the economy that has brought about the feel-good factor.

In truth, it is very rare for slumps to be caused by politicians and even rarer for them to have any real, discernible impact on a recovery. Ever since its development in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the market economy has always suffered periodic crises and slumps, whether under Tory, Liberal, Labour or Coalition governments. Slumps are part of the market’s internal renewal and survival mechanism, right across the world. Far from governments running the market economy, it is – for all intents and purposes – the ups and downs of the economy that fundamentally influences what governments can really do.

George Osborne hasn’t yet been quite as foolish as Gordon Brown was when he claimed Labour had ‘abolished boom and bust’. But he is still foolish enough not to realise that the economic recovery – such as it currently is – will yet again lay the foundations for profit-hungry over-investment during boom times, and an over-expansion of key industries and services in relation to paying demand for them. And linked with this, of course, more unsustainable financial bubbles too as the ‘innovators’, ‘entrepreneurs’ and speculators move in. These classic market forces will all serve to trigger the next slump – and no doubt the rise of yet another gang of political tricksters claiming, against all the evidence of history, that they can fix it.

What about the workers? (1990)

From the October 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

With his Goodbye to the Working Class André Gorz achieved a shock effect which probably owed more to the arresting title than to the content of the book. Not that it was without merit, for example his ruthless analysis of the relations of production in capitalism—that lines of control are from the top down, military style, which makes the idea of taking them over and converting them to production for use, with voluntary labour, completely ludicrous.

He went on to fall into traps he had dug himself. There will always be jobs needing some element of compulsion, he argued (old class-warriors will recognise this as the Who Will Do The Dirty Work question); these jobs will be shared out so that everybody gets some free time, while technological developments have made it possible for it to happen without a fall in production. But as we have pointed out (see "New Economics, Old Errors", World Socialist No 6), it is difficult to imagine compelling anybody to work if they access to everything they need for free. So that Gorz's proposal for extra monetary rewards as encouragement adds another bizarre contradiction.

But his main theme, which gave the title to the book, was that changes in the character of the market economy due to automation had rendered traditional Marxist thinking and practice totally irrelevant. The masses of workers who had trooped into the steelworks, the shipyards, the mines and the factories, were a vanishing race. Strikes had been broken, men sacked and a select few re-engaged and put to work with labour-saving equipment to do the jobs that had previously taken many. The remainder of the workforce, generally speaking the less skilled and qualified, had been hived off to do menial or casual or part-time work, and had been rendered marginal in their work and their social life.

Thus working class solidarity had been destroyed, loyalties replaced with a new ethos of competition to get on the gravy train of well-paid guaranteed jobs, and consumerism was providing the spectacle to keep those so privileged in a zombie-like trance of soap-opera following and gadget-buying.

Changing patterns of work

Gorz returns to this theme in a new book, Metamorphoses du travail (Paris, 1988), a translation of which is about to be made available over here. It is unfortunate that he spends a certain amount of time disposing of the Soviet system. The final collapse of state capitalism has rendered this excursion totally superfluous. This comes of keeping bad company. He had been in the group of Stalinist fellow-travellers around Sartre and Les Temps Modernes which had taken an unreasonably long time to discover the irrelevance of Russia after 1917 to libertarian socialist thinking. Eventually for him however:

The Soviet system represented a gross caricature of capitalism pursuing accumulation and growth as main objects.

Once that matter is out of the way, his dissection of contemporary society is thorough and frequently illuminating. He draws freely on those 20th century thinkers who have attempted to bring Marxist analysis up to date—Max Weber, Karl Polanyi, Hannah Arendt, the Frankfurt School, Habermas, Baudrillard, etc. There are many provocative images:

Social disintegration extends to politicians, who increasingly resemble salesmen.

And:

The Welfare State replaces services which people provided for themselves . . . this leads to a continual extension of public administration and state power while parliament becomes a shadow theatre presided over by a charismatic leader. This is the end but arrived at by different means, predicted in the nightmare of Orwell and the "führer mit maschine" of Weber. 

Gorz identifies stages in the evolution of production beginning with the simple division of labour as in Adam Smith, which he argues was introduced to facilitate control rather than production. He claims that the difficulty experienced by early factory owners in getting former peasants to work all day and every day led to the search for child labour, usually obtained in plentiful supply from the orphanages. The new proletariat had, virtually, to be bred.

Then at the turn of the century came Fordism and the assembly line. This was followed in the 1950s by what the French call Taylorism, i.e. time and motion study. But this created new problems: the extra compensation demanded by workers, accompanied by bad quality, bad timekeeping, absenteeism, even arson.

The new tack is to restore some independence, with small groups completing each process and determining the rhythm of their work. Work is "subbed out", a privileged 25 percent are kept on. Line workers are replaced by robots supervised by a highly adaptable elite. The subcontractors absorb the business cycle. There is flexibility of function for the elite, and flexibility of numbers for the subcontracting workers.

This, says Gorz, has broken up the working class, who can no longer be looked to for liberation from capitalism. A new coalition is needed, based not on sectional interests but on ethical considerations. People are increasingly turning to alternative, marginal groupings as an answer to the disintegration of society and the spiritual emptiness of work. Increasing numbers are choosing quality of life before money and success at work: "The autonomy being born, unsure of itself, hesitant, menaced by industrial culture and the merchants of leisure, is where we must turn to survive".

The answer, he argues, is the reduction of the working day, week, year. With increased leisure, people can and are replacing bought-in items with home-produced ones. There is a turning away from consumerism among a significant minority. People are turning from "more is better" to "enough is enough".

As in Goodbye To The Working Class Gorz repeats his argument that replacing control-by-others (heteroregulation) by voluntary co-operation is impossible with all industrial activity; some compulsion will always be necessary, and for this, monetary rewards will have to remain. Clearly, money notions stick to these former Stalinists (and Keynesians) like shit to a blanket. Gorz gives no explanation why compulsion should be necessary.

If unpleasant and dangerous jobs were always avoided by the voluntary sector, then the argument might be plausible, but there never seems to be any lack of volunteers for the lifeboats, or cave and mountain rescue. And of the argument is that only spectacular activities call up such responses, how about the nurses who volunteer to care for AIDS victims, Legionnaires' Disease, and similar horror? Are they all crazy, Jesus Christ characters, or Superwoman? Or are they just in it for the money?

Shift to money-shuffling

While there has been an acceleration of the shift from heavy industry and agriculture in particular, and from wealth-producing activities in general toward functions peculiar to a market economy-banking, insurance and money shuffling, the sales effort, advertising, public relations, security, defence of markets—the drift is not entirely new.

It was noted as far back as the 17th century by Sir William Petty ("Political Arithmetic"). In 18th century France, Quesnay in his "Tableau Economique" calculated that the burden of the non-producing aristocracy on the peasants could reach unsustainable levels. And, in England again, in the 19th century, the redoubtable William Cobbett carried on a campaign for decades against the reduction in the numbers of the wealth-producers and the multiplication of "stockjobbers", bureaucrats, and the Civil List.

There is little evidence that those moving from productive work into "service" activities always move down the social or economic scale as Gorz argues. Some do, of course, but that is nothing new. He quotes Marx to the effect that in the middle of the 19th century, 14 percent of the labour force in England were skivvies of one kind or another. There is little evidence that the new servant class has reached that proportion.

But there has been a significant increase in banking and insurance activities. There appears to be 150,000 accountants in Britain—more than in all the other developed nations outside the US. It would be difficult to believe that these workers and bureaucrats are financially or otherwise worse off than those retained in industry, yet they outnumber and are increasing faster than the unemployed and part-time workers who are the object of Gorz's concern.

Neither are they lacking in willingness to organise themselves for the defence of salaries and conditions. There have been bank strikes; one in Ireland in the 1960s lasted six months, and there was a strike of half a million local government workers in Britain in 1989. Professional associations like the Law Society and the British Medical Association are increasingly beginning to resemble and behave like trade unions. They are not affiliated to the TUC but who knows? The announcement of the death of the working class is, to borrow an expression of Mark Twain, an exaggeration.

Ken Smith

Proper Gander: Mythtaken Identity (2014)

The Proper Gander column from the May 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

When were ‘the Olden Days’? Between 10,000BC and when your parents were children, suggests Ian Hislop in his documentary series about history. In The Olden Days: The power of the past in Britain (BBC2), he examines our need for a belief in a ‘heightened, idealised, imagined past’. ‘The Olden Days’ is history as what we want to believe happened, rather than what really happened.

The first episode describes how Dark Ages kings Arthur and Alfred have been invoked as national heroes at different times. Ninth Century cake-burner King Alfred has been portrayed as the founding father of various British legal, military and educational institutions, regardless of his actual involvement. King Arthur, who probably never existed, has been romanticised as a mighty, mystical monarch by groups as disparate as Henry VIII, the Pre-Raphaelites, Welsh industrialists and New Agers. Over the centuries, the legends of both rulers have been used by institutions to get credit. Alfred was spun into being the creator of Oxford University to gain the favour of Richard II, and a bunch of twelfth century Glastonbury monks turned their supposed discovery of Arthur’s bones into a moneyspinner for their monastery. The Arthurian myth still helps draw in the dosh, now from visitors to Glastonbury’s trinket shops and Tintagel Castle. Alfred’s popularity has declined, perhaps because the institutions he represents are trusted less these days. The future will see different interpretations of Alfred and Arthur, hopefully in the direction of stripping away the myths.

Hislop could just as easily have focused on Che Guevara, Jesus or even Father Christmas, whose personalities have also been reinvented according to changing ideologies. The malleability of historical figures demonstrates how unreliable the ‘Great Man’ theory of history is. Hislop’s examples show how economic forces help shape our views of figureheads like Arthur and Alfred, usually by invoking them to attract power and money. The programme usefully reminds us that our view of the past isn’t set in stone; it’s carved out again and again according to contemporary tastes, especially those of the ruling class.

Mike Foster

The Strike Situation (1974)

From the March 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

In every action of resistance by the workers against their exploitation the Socialist Party of Great Britain is on the side of the workers. The Miners and Railwaymen have all our sympathies in their efforts to get more pay - but we as Socialists have a lot more to say than that. We hold, with Karl Marx:-

At the same time, and quite apart from the general servitude involved in the wages system, the working class ought not to exaggerate to themselves the ultimate working of these everyday struggles. They ought not to forget that they are fighting with effects; that they are retarding the downward movement, but not changing the direction; that they are applying palliatives, not curing the malady. They ought therefore not to be exclusively absorbed in those unavoidable guerilla fights incessantly springing up from the never ceasing encroachments of capital or changes of the market.

It is a tragedy of the present situation that the two strikes are not at all part of a carefully planned and organized working-class movement to defend or to raise the standard of living of the working class as a whole, but predominantly sectional efforts; by the miners to get a pay level above that of the workers in other countries, and by ASLEF to widen the margin between their wages and those of railway workers in other unions. In this the two unions on strike reflect the sectional outlook of the 450 unions into which trade unionists are divided.

And what of the TUC, supposedly a co-ordinating body for trade-union struggles? Representing as it does the political leanings of its affiliated big unions, and working hand in glove with the Labour Party leaders, its preoccupations has not been seriously to organize working-class industrial action but to manoeuvre to secure the return of a Labour government at the next election.

For their part the Heath government has likewise been using the strikes as a platform for the election campaign. "Standing up to the unions" helped them to win the election in 1970, and they hoped to do it agin this time.

The background to the strikes is that British capitalism is in difficulties, partly because of the monopoly squeeze organized by the oil producers, but mainly because of the thirty-year rise of prices, now approaching six times the pre-war level. That inflation has been the direct and inevitable outcome of a policy shared by the Tory and Labour Parties and solidly backed by the NUM and ASLEF and other unions - the fallacious Keynesian belief that it is possible to humanize and regulate capitalism on a course of steady expansion, rising living standards and full employment. Average earnings of men in manufacturing industry have risen since 1938 from about £3.50 to £40 a week, but all except a very small fraction of the rise has been lost running faster and faster on the cost-of-living treadmill.

Whatever the strikers may get out of the dispute to offset the loss of pay and hardship caused to themselves and other workers is being eroded all the time by rising prices.

The National Union of Mineworkers has in its programme "abolition of capitalism", and other unions have paid lip-service to the same slogan. It does not mean a thing, and neither the NUM nor any other union has ever done anything to promote it. Instead, they worked for half a century to get industries nationalized, and have now had a quarter of a century seeing its utter futility. Nationalization is state capitalism and solves no problem whatever for the working class.

In our generation the unions have been fighting over and over again the same battles they were fighting in the nineteenth century, without ever achieving their aim of "fair wages" and security. They have ignored the advice given to them by Marx: -

Instead of the conservative motto 'a fair day's wages for a fair day's work!' they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword 'Abolition of the wages system'.

This is of course not an aim that has application inside capitalism: it means working for the replacement of capitalism with Socialism. Socialism cannot be achieved or even brought nearer by following the traditional trade-union policy of supporting the Labour Party. From the working-class standpoint it makes no material difference whether they are exploited under a Labour government or a Tory one - both are committed to the continuance of capitalism.

Nor is Socialism advanced by strikes to unseat governments, still less by the dangerous folly advocated by so-called left-wingers of engaging in violence against the police and armed forces.

The trade unions in their long history have, as Marx said, been fighting with effects; they and the rest of the working class need to change course and start dealing with the basic problem of the class ownership of the means of production and distribution. The only road to Socialism, a world-wide social system based on common ownership and democratic control, is through dislodging the capitalists and their agents from power -  that is, from their control of the machinery of government including the armed forces.

This is the road of political action. When the working class grasp that Socialism alone is in their interest the road to emancipation is open to them. In this country they command nearly ninety per cent. of the votes but so far, while doggedly fighting the defensive struggle on the industrial field, they have never got round to using their votes in their own class interest.

Edgar Hardcastle

News from Nowhere (1990)

Book Review from the October 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

William Morris and News From Nowhere: A Vision Four Our Time. Edited by Stephen Coleman and Paddy O'Sullivan. Green Books, 1990, 8.95

As 1990 is the centenary year of the publication of the utopian novel News From Nowhere, this book is a timely assessment of one of William Morris's most inspiring works. Nine writers have contributed chapters on topics as diverse as architecture, socialism, love, and ecology, each demonstrating how much William Morris had to offer a world that was, to him, getting drabber and more divided as the capitalist system subordinated everything of worth to the dictates of profit.

The first chapter, written by Christopher Hampton, sets News From Nowhere in the context of the wider utopian literary tradition, whilst recognising some of the features that set it apart from earlier utopian works, not least of all Morris's commitment to socialist change:

It was the shock of his reaction to the material conditions determined by a rapacious economic system at work and the devastating consequences for the people of his world that drove him towards commitment and from that to the writing of News From Nowhere.

In providing a vision of a socialist society of common ownership and democratic control without class division, money or the state, News From Nowhere is without doubt a literary milestone as far as the socialist movement is concerned, but the conception of socialist revolution outlined in it by Morris is not without its faults, emphasising as it does the role of insurrection and civil war. John Crump, in Chapter Two, makes much of the fact that the socialist revolution described by Morris involved the use of organisations akin to "workers' councils", set up so that the "irrelevant" Parliament could be by-passed. However, it is also worth mentioning that this is a view which later in his life Morris rejected in favour of capturing control of political power and the state machine through Parliament. In truth, Morris had a tendency to simply associate Parliament with reformism and was wary that activity geared towards Parliament could lead a genuine socialist party off course.

As John Crump states, "News From Nowhere derives its reputation more from its wonderfully attractive description of communist society than from its account of how communism is achieved". In Chapter Three, Stephen Coleman investigates one of its most attractive features, namely the contrast between the inhabitants of the socialist society envisaged by Morris and the inhabitants of our own, present-day capitalist society. Coleman describes how News From Nowhere challenges the traditional Judeo-Christian ideology which states that human nature must always act as a barrier to lasting harmony and freedom. In doing so he shows how Morris can not only depict a changed social organisation, but a changed people with different outlooks and behaviour to our own:

Morris was too imaginative a materialist to presume to have discovered a single, finalized, human nature; he understood that human behaviour—relationships, culture, feelings of self-identity—are fundamentally historical. Stripped of capitalist education, capitalist work routines, capitalist legislation and morality, Morris allowed himself to depict humans freed to behave beyond the limiting confines of the money-wages-profit system.

Ray Watkinson develops this theme further in Chapter Four, arguing that Morris saw creative work, liberated from the confines of the wages system, as an essential feature of "living society". He persuasively argues against the idea that Morris was completely opposed to the use of machinery, stating that "what Morris is against is not the machines, but the alienation, that under capitalism, they produce." In socialism, humans were no longer to be appendages of machines, but machines were to be subordinated to the real needs of labour.

The fifth chapter concerns itself with how Morris views women and sexuality, with Jan Marsh arguing that in this sense News From Nowhere tends to reflect some of the attitudes of the period in which it was written. With some justification, Jan Marsh labels News From Nowhere "a masculine vision of paradise", but comments that:

It is all very well for there to be no jobs in Nowhere for lawyers or army commanders, for example—and we can all agree that in an ideal state these are unnecessary—when women have never had the opportunity to select or reject such work. 

This comment would suggest that this particular author's commitment to a truly socialist society is rather token. After all, the choice between a system of common ownership and peace on the one hand and a competitive war-oriented society with a few women generals on the other is hardly a difficult one for those with a real commitment to equality.

The next two chapters, written by Colin Ward and Mark Pearson, discuss Morris's vision of housing, design and architecture—the "mother of the arts"—while Chapter Eight reverts to discussing the specific type of socialist society envisaged in News From Nowhere, this time from the standpoint of how the inhabitants of this society organised to satisfy their needs. In this chapter, Adam Buick argues that implicit in News From Nowhere is the idea of common ownership rather than government ownership. For in the society of News From Nowhere there is no state machine with its police and prisons and consequently no government to oversee its affairs. And, of course, along with common ownership goes direct democratic decision-making without recourse to government or leaders, free access to wealth without monetary payment, and voluntary co-operative work free from the coercion and exploitation of the wages system. In a particularly important section of this chapter Buick considers whether such an economic arrangement is feasible, concluding that contrary to the myths propagated by economists, human needs are not limitless and that a potential abundance of wealth exists in the world with which to satisfy those needs.

The final chapter by Paddy O'Sullivan deals with Morris's vision from an ecological perspective, arguing that his commitment to ecology was more than just an aesthetic reaction to the disfiguration of the environment, but involved a consideration of how the implementation of his political ideas would affect nature. This chapter, however, is a little disappointing as O'Sullivan confuses what some environmentalists term "surplus production" (the socially useless production of cheap "throw-way" commodities) with the Marxian concept of surplus value (the unpaid labour of the working class) and this tends to cloud the analysis of the chapter.

William Morris And News From Nowhere: A Vision For Our Time is an interesting and important book which contains arguments which can inspire new generations of workers to look beyond the confines of the profit system, a hundred years after Morris's original work did the same.

DAP

Here and there. (1916)

From the January 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

Arnold Bennett has been touring munition factories with the object of discovering why the workers do not invest in the war loan. He discovered that, the workers there, living from hand to mouth as they do elsewhere, prefer to keep the few shillings they are able to save in the house, They dare not risk lending them to the Government, because they may be wanted before 1935.

"After I had done visiting works" says the same writer, "an employer said to me: 'Some of the union leaders are splendid. I have one. He always does everything he can to make things run smooth and increase the output. And about 50 per cent of the men are the same—quite in earnest'". Good, old labour leaders. The employer in question knows that something of an oily nature is required to make things run smoothly. But what a simple Simon Arnold must be to give the show away. The function of the labour leader—to make things run smoothly—must be kept dark or "the things" get suspicious and the oil-can is ineffective.

*    *   *

Mr. Ford, of peace fame, has visions of a practical utopia in the very near future, to be reared on "The manufacture of a new farm tractor, which is to make it possible for farmers to have a six-hour day. for it is claimed that the machine will do the ploughing, threshing, pumping, churning, washing, stacking, harvesting, mowing and transportation of produce, and then will carry the family to church on Sunday. The active member of the firm is to be Mr. Ford's son, Edsel, who says that both workmen and buyers will share in the profits, and the workmen will spend only four months in the factory, the other eight being spent on the farm, where they will be able to study possible improvements."

The instalment of this mechanical wonder will necessarily reduce the number of hands required, and if these make the best use of their time during the eight months on the farm, the machine, when not carrying some of them to church, will be busy carrying fresh batches to the workhouse. That is the beauty of profit-sharing: the more you study the harder you have to work to keep your job.

*    *   *

"I should like to go toward those they call our enemies and say to them: 'Brothers, let us fight together: the enemy is behind us. Yes, since I have been wearing this uniform I do not feel any hatred toward those who are in front; but my hatred has grown against those who have power in their hands."

The above is from a letter found on a German prisoner and quoted by the "Daily Chronicle" (17.12.15) We send him greetings, and do not mind in the least anonymous letters or attacks by the "Globe" or any other capitalist rag. Our German comrade, though inclined to be sentimental in the rest of his letter, at least recognises that the workers, after they have fought their master's war, have yet to fight their own against the masters - the Class War.

F. Foan

Obituary: Frank Dawe (1958)

Obituary from the October 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

Comrade Frank Dawe died in hospital after a short illness in which time I was only able to visit him once. He was 59 years of age.

Frank joined the Party in February, 1936, although he had "seen the light" four or five years previously. During that time he was with the Party not only in the spirit, but in the flesh. He came to the local branch, attended outdoor meetings, and sold literature. When he at length signed on the dotted line it was but the formality of the fait accompli. During that time he was often economically in the red, yet he was sensitive, over-sensitive perhaps, in the payment of dues. He would have hated to ask them to be waived and so his actual membership hung fire for that reason.

Frank Dawe was a stormy petrel, blazing a path wherever he went. In adolescence he was fiercely anti-war and although liable for call up at the end of the first world war he succeeded in not being roped in.

As a young man he took an active part in an engineers' strike at his father's works. It was to cost him not only his job, but the business. Later, he cracked that he at least escaped the fate of becoming a Capitalist.

Frank Dawe had grim experiences of the two slumps after the first world war. In the 1921 slump he became caught up in the activities of the National Unemployed Workers' Committee Movement. They were days of mass meetings outside the local Labour Exchange and often their dispersal by the Cossacks (mounted police). Of the besieging of the local relief station by hordes of unemployed; of forced entries into it in futile attempts to demand from the then Board of Guardians a little extra on outdoor relief. The arrival of the "flatties" and the ejection of the demonstrators; of derelict buildings taken over to serve as the headquarters of local unemployed organisations and centres of social activity, each ironically proclaiming itself as Poverty Hall; of unemployed marches in efforts to reach Parliament via Westminster Bridge and baton charges and broken heads. All of this Frank could recount mordantly. For the Communists who exploited unemployed organisations for political ends he used his most trenchant invective. For the unfortunate, but misguided, rank and file he never lost his sympathy.

We first met at the local Labour Exchange in 1928. Many future S.P.G.B.ers first met there. For many of us it became a social, political and cultural centre. A university where admittance could be gained by possession of yellow signing-on card, and where Marxism might be learned the hard way.

We began as opponents and ended as friends. Into my youthful hot-air idealism he at least breathed an icy realism. After that we went places together. I joined the N.U.W.M. and became its London organiser. We also joined the Communist Party together and left together. We passed through its amorphous body and appendages like a dose of salts. Just over 18 months saw us out at the right end. For Frank the Communist Party, Russia and all that was never "the God that Failed." Rather it soon became a graven image to be mocked at. He learned to mercilessly satirise the C.P.'s pseudo-revolutionism, their histrionics and crude political melodrama.

Then we tangled with the S.P.G.B., but got so badly mauled in the clinches that we at length decided that it might be better to fight for the Party than against it. I joined the Southwark branch and Frank gave it his moral support. To that branch we brought many converts, all unemployed. From the S.P.G.B. being a political expression in S.E. London we made it a political force to be reckoned with. Only a book could do justice to its political epics and varied personalities among them was Frank Dawe. Shortly after we brought about the formation of the Lewisham branch in which Frank took an active part. It was that branch he subsequently joined.

He also largely initiated the reforming of the Camberwell branch of which he was a consistently active member, playing as he said, the role of the elder statesman.

Frank Dawe cut his Socialist teeth in a whirling vortex of activity; on the streets at the Labour Exchange, public libraries and elsewhere; a formidable and rumbustious protagonist for Socialism. It was the hectic crisis days when, vide the C.P., Capitalism was collapsing and they thought if they did not hurry they would not be in time to take it over. It was into this seething frothy excitement, always turbulent, sometimes violent, that Frank Dawe flung himself, a number nine pamphlet in one pocket and a copy of Engel's "The Revolutionary Act" in another.

It was a time when the reading room of the local library was taken over by us and the CPers as a political forum without, of the course the conventional procedure. And where librarians vainly exhorted us to keep politics out of literature.

It was also a time when the Labour Exchange was jam-packed with signers-on. Somewhere in the seething maelstrom was invariably Frank, close pressed by a small crowd inside a big one. Above the din and tumult could be heard snatches such as—the dictatorship of the proletariat, the class struggle, the Gotha Programme—and counter-revolutionaries. This often resulted in the complete disorganisation of Labour Exchange procedure and incensed officials sending for the police to eject us, that is, if in the confused mass we could be found.

Frank had a wide and sure grasp of the essentials of Marxism coupled with a considerable cultural background. He had a deep appreciation of both classic and modern French literature which he read in the original. He was a mine of information on classical music to which he introduced me. He often suppressed his many sided cultural attainments, believing that it might imply on his part, pretensions and snob values and thus provoke unfavourable reactions among those he came in contact with.

Frank spoke and at times wrote for the party. He was a good outdoor speaker with a facility for illustrating various aspects of the party's case. He could be a veritable cartoonist in words, imaginatively delineating a situation with a few bold strokes.

The comic muse must have presided at his birth. He had a sublime sense of the ridiculous and a rich seam of riotous humour. He not only told a good story—what Frank told an American professor and an English bishop would not pass the censor—but the best ones he told against himself.

Yet under his bluff and at times boisterous exterior lay a shy and sensitive person often apologetic and deprecatory of his work for the Party. He was something of a perfectionist, underestimating what he to give to the Party. It was a pity for he had much to give.

His attachment to the Party was deep and abiding, his class loyalties, passionate and sincere. He will certainly be remembered. For me, his death will not only be a Party loss, but a personal loss as well.

To his wife and family we express our sympathy in their misfortune.

E.W.

Confusion in Scotland (1925)

From the October 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent sends us the Manifesto of the Scottish Workers' Republican Party, and asks for our opinion of it.

The object of the Party, founded by the late John Maclean is a Workers' Republic for Scotland.

The Manifesto sets out the slave position of the working class, and urges that the workers must carry through the Social Revolution.

The chief fallacy of their position is their insistence upon a Scottish Workers' Republic. This demand is both reactionary and Utopian. The struggle of the workers of the United Kingdom must be a united one. The workers are under the domination of a class who rule by the use of a political machine, which is the chief governing instrument for England, Scotland, Wales, etc. To appeal to the workers of Scotland for a Scottish Workers' Republic is to arouse and foster the narrow spirit of Nationalism, so well used by our masters. Economically the demand is Utopian, as the development of capitalism has made countries more and more dependent on each other, both through the specialisation of industry or agriculture, and also by the force controlled by the Great Powers to suppress or control the smaller nations.

The history of "independent" Hungary, Poland, and the Balkan States shows that the realisation of "political independence" by a country leaves the workers' conditions untouched and actually worsens them in many cases.

The appeal to the worker in this Manifesto to "rally to the cause of a Workers' Republic for Scotland" is made "so that we might win you away from the service of the imperialist gang who direct their activities from London." If the worker is to be won for Socialism, it is by getting him to understand the principles of Socialism, and not by appealing to him to concentrate on Scottish affairs. Socialism is international.

The uselessness of the Manifesto is shown by their anarchist attitude towards Parliament :-

"We claim that no useful working-class purpose can be served by sending men to Parliament."

They advance no arguments to support their claim. They offer no other method. They ignore the fact that the political machine is the instrument whereby capitalists wield power.

Their simple statement is that the workers can exercise "governmental power" because they are the only necessary class in society.

It is very simple. But what are the obstacles to this necessary class exercising the power of government?

The first obstacle is working-class ignorance, which is used to vote capitalists and their agents into political supremacy.

The second obstacle is the force which is used by the capitalists in control of Parliament to keep the workers in subjection.

The stupidity of preaching that because the workers are necessary to Scotland they can exercise governmental control is to invite the butchery of the workers.

Socialist education demands that besides advocating the establishment of Socialism, the obstacles that stand in its path must be pointed out, in order that the workers can march along the road to their supremacy. This Manifesto does not explain how the workers are kept in slavery, and it offers no road out of it. The meaning of the class struggle has yet to be learned by the Scottish Workers' Republican Party, The Manifesto closes with this gem: "Scotland for the Scottish Workers; the World for the World's Workers"!

A. Kohn 

The Rise of Capitalism (2011)

From the August 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

The capitalist system is the most productive mode of production in the history of humankind. In the space of a few centuries the world has been transformed beyond all recognition. Average life expectancies have more than doubled. Technological developments occur at a rate that would have been previously unimaginable. More food, clothing and shelter can be produced using less labour than ever before. It would seem that the material problems of survival have finally been solved.

Yet capitalism is a system at odds with itself. The need for constant accumulation is the driving force of society, determining where and in what way human energies will be used. Instead of humankind controlling the fulfilment of its own development, humanity is at the mercy of an economic system which it has itself created. It is the conflict between the need to accumulate capital and the need to fulfil human want that is at the heart of all social problems today.

Enough food could be produced to feed all of the world’s population, yet people go hungry. Why? Because those in need of food do not have the money to pay for it. Industry pumps pollutants into the environment yet less destructive methods of production could easily be utilised. Why? Because more profit is to be made this way. Vast wealth co-exists with abject poverty leading to an ever-widening gap between rich and poor. Why? Because capitalist accumulation is dependent on the exploitation of the wage labourer.

Transition from feudalism

The transition from feudalism to capitalism is often viewed as the result of a gradual and rising progress of technology, urbanisation, science and trade – inevitable because humans have always possessed “the propensity to truck, barter and exchange” (Adam Smith). However, as writers such as Ellen Meiksins Wood and Robert Brenner have demonstrated, the rise of capitalism depended on very specific and localised conditions and was the result of a process that was far from automatic.

The relatively recent change from a primarily agricultural society of petty producers to a society of commodity production and market dependence required a change in the social relations at the heart of society. The central relationship instead of being between landlords and un-free peasants became one between capital-owners and propertyless wage-labourers. Such a change could only be bought about by a complete rupture with the old relations of human interaction.

By the 17th century trade, mercantilism and money lending had grown and developed in Europe but these by themselves did not undermine the foundations of feudal society. The mere existence of commodity production, merchants’ capital and money lenders capital are necessary but not sufficient conditions for the full development of capitalism. “Or else ancient Rome, Byzantium etc. would have ended their history with free labour and capital” (Karl Marx).

Only in England were conditions right for the essential prerequisite to take hold, capitalist relations in agriculture. The later industrial revolution would have been extremely unlikely without an agricultural sector that was productive enough to support it.

These changes can be explained by looking for the ‘prime mover’ in society. In capitalist societies this is the need to accumulate capital. In feudalism the need to maintain class position takes this role.

In order to maintain and improve their position as members of the ruling class and to defend it against their rivals, their underlings and moneylenders, the pressure was on feudal landlords to increase rents. In capitalism surplus wealth is extracted through economic means; it is because of the market-dependency of the wage-labourer that labour-power is sold. In feudal society, as the peasants have their own means of production, surplus must be extracted via ‘extra-economic’ methods through the real or ultimate threat of force, which explains their un-free status.

By the mid 15th century through ongoing resistance and evasion the peasantry of much of western Europe including England, were able to break the shackles of serfdom and gain their freedom. This proved a problem for landlords as they could now no longer depend on arbitrary peasant labour or duties and income from rents fixed long-term by custom, the value of which tended to decrease in the face of rising costs.

In order to counter this tendency in England, more easily than in other western European countries, landlords were able to appropriate peasant holdings that had became vacant due to a falling population. These properties were able to be leased at rates in excess of customary rent.

Another option available to landlords was the imposition of fines and levies. Charges could be made whenever land changed hands or was inherited and many landlords used these as a method for removing customary peasants from their land so that competitive commercial rents could be charged. However this process did not go on unchallenged; widespread and fairly successful peasant uprisings were a recurrent theme for much of the 15th century. This trend continued into the 16th century with security of tenure and the question of fines being core to what became know as Kett’s rebellion of 1549. If successful such events may have “clipped the wings of rural capitalism” (Stanley Bindhoff), but they were not and by the end of the 17th century around 70-75 percent of cultivatable land was under the control of English landlords.

In France the property rights of peasants developed along a different line. The monarchical state had evolved into an independent collector of tax and had the power to draw revenues from the land; it had an interest in curbing the rents of landlords, so that peasants could pay more in taxes. The state was thus in competition with the lords for surplus peasant product and for this reason often intervened to secure peasant freedoms and property. French landlords had a legal difficulty in occupying vacant peasant lots and so the majority of the land remained under customary rents. The state used peasant production as a direct source of revenue and increased its power by intervening in matters between peasants and landlords to guarantee the continuity of the system.

This can be contrasted with the form of state that developed in England during the Tudor period (1485-1603). Here monarchical centralisation was dependent on the support from landlords, evident from the growth of parliamentary institutions of the period. The weakness of the English peasantry deprived the monarchical powers of a means of generating an income independently of landlords. Powerful elements of the nobility and gentry would support the monarchy’s centralising efforts in the hope of achieving the stability and order necessary for their own economic growth. It was however these same elements from the landlord class who had the strongest interest in freeing themselves from customary peasants and replacing them with commercial tenants.

The nature of the two different states can be illustrated by the content of peasant revolts in the two countries. In England, revolts were directed against the landlords in an attempt to protect peasant ownership against the encroachment of capitalistic property relations. In France the crushing taxation of an absolutist state was the source of the peasants’ grievances.

Market dependency

English landlords controlled a large proportion of the best land but didn’t have, or need, the kinds of extra-economic powers that other European feudal ruling classes depended on. Instead they largely depended on the increasing productivity of tenants and required the state only as a means of protecting their private property and enforcing contractual obligations. In England, unlike anywhere else, an increasing amount of rents took the form of economic leases being fixed not by law or tradition but variably priced according to market conditions. For tenants this meant having to respond to market imperatives and taking an interest in agricultural ‘improvement’ and increasing productivity, often involving enclosure of common lands and increased exploitation of wage labour. Both producers and landowners were becoming dependent on the market for their own self-reproduction.

Market imperatives rather than market opportunities were the driving force of the process. Tenant farmers were specialising in competitive production for the market because they needed to in order to be able to continue leasing. This can be contrasted with the peasant who may have had the opportunity to sell surplus product on the market but, as they owned their own means of subsistence, was in no way dependent on it.

Peasants who were unable to keep up with fines or tenants that failed to compete successfully were pushed into a mere subsistence existence and eventually made landless. Some became vagabonds, wandering the roads for looking food or others became wage labourers on large farms. The landless became not only labourers but also consumers as they needed to buy goods in the market which they had previously been able to produce themselves. This was one of the reasons a healthy home market was able to develop in England.

Until 1640 the state operated in the interest of the old feudal order, restricting the full development of capitalist relations in the countryside. During the turbulent events of the English civil war the commercial classes, favouring capitalist development against the traditional rights of peasants and monarchy, managed to take hold of Parliament. The rate of change now rapidly accelerated with the ‘improving’ capitalist tenant farmer becoming typical by 1660. State-sponsored enclosure of common lands increased and became commonplace, forcing more and more peasants into becoming landless wage-labourers.

The emergence of the landlord/capitalist tenant/wage-labourer triad made the agricultural revolution possible and laid the groundwork for the industrial revolution. Growing agricultural production provided rising incomes for not only the middle but the lower classes, fuelling the growth of the home market. “Industry fed on agriculture and stimulated in turn further agricultural improvement – an upward spiral that extended into the industrial revolution” (Robert Brenner)

Worldwide market

Once English capitalism reached its industrial phase the world-wide market with its competitive pressures became the means for the spreading of capitalist social relations. Economies that depended on trade would be subject to the market imperatives of competition and increasing productivity. These market imperatives transformed social property relations leading to a new wave of dispossession and commodification of labour-power, both small agricultural and independent industrial producers faced the same fate. As more and more people were brought under the sphere of market dependence the strengths of these imperatives grew. Capital was able to remake the world in its own image.

The social changes of the 17th century freed technology and science from the shackles of feudal backwardness, making possible the advances that began in the 18th century. Yet the direction of technological development is dictated by the profit motive, the need to accumulate capital for its own sake. Could the 21st century see a further period of social change, where humanity as a whole takes control of the productive powers and where human need becomes the guiding force for a new age of technological and scientific progress?

By studying capitalism we learn that human society is not the result of some eternal logic or divine laws but is created through our own actions as we produce the things we need as use every day. The historical conditions that set in motion the social changes that have transformed the world were in no way inevitable. We must fully understand the full power of market imperatives, of the need to accumulate capital and of the need to raise the productivity of labour. We must also have a clear idea of their origins. Once we can begin to answer how and why society works in the way it does we are already some way towards understanding what could be done to change it.

Darren Poynton