Government or Democracy? (2001)

From the May 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Should we vote in a new government? Or should we link up with the struggle to usher in a democratic society?

We are being asked to elect a new government through what is said to be a democratic process. It is true that the vote, together with other hard-won rights such as the rights of assembly, political organisation and free expression, are most important. But can the act of electing a government result in a democratic society?

To govern is to direct, control and to rule with authority. Operating as the state this is what governments do. But to say that democracy is merely the act of electing a government to rule over us cannot be right because democracy should include all people in deciding how we live and what we do as a community. Democracy means the absence of privilege, making our decisions from a position of equality. Democracy means that we should live in a completely open society with unrestricted access to the information relevant to social issues. It means that we should have the powers to act on our decisions, because without such powers decisions are useless. So, be it Labour, Liberal, Tory or rule by any other kind of government, how does the operation of the state measure up to what socialists argue should be a democratic society?

For socialists the rule of government can never be democratic. Though it may include some incidental functions arising from the needs of people the main work of the state is the running of class-divided society; a system of economic exploitation. In the main governments work for a privileged section of society. They make the laws which protect the property rights of a minority who own and control natural resources, industry, manufacture and transport. These are the means of life on which we all depend but most of us have no say in how they are used. Behind Parliament governments operate in secret. They are part of the division of the world into rival capitalist states. With the back-up of their armed forces they pursue national capitalist interests. Though the politicians who run it may be elected, the state is the opposite of democracy

Production is owned and controlled by companies, some of them multinational corporations with massive economic power making the decisions on what should be produced for the markets for sale at a profit. Through corporate authority they decide how goods should be produced and the conditions in which work is done. Again, this is the opposite of democracy

Real democracy

So, how would democracy be fulfilled in socialism? This requires the abolition of the state and its replacement by a system of democratic administration. This can only work from a basis of common ownership and production solely for use. Common ownership means that all people throughout the world will stand in equal relationship with each other. This will be an association of all men and women making the decisions and co-operating to produce goods and organise communities in their mutual interests.

The democratic organisation of all people as citizens of the world would need to operate through different scales of social co-operation. Locally, in town or country, we would be involved with our parish or neighbourhood. Even now, there are many thousands of men and women throughout the country who work voluntarily on parish and district councils and in town neighbourhoods for the benefit of their communities. But these efforts would be greatly enhanced by the freedoms of a society run entirely through voluntary co-operation.

Such local organisation would be in the context of regional co-operation which could operate by adapting the structures of present national governments. Whilst some departments such as Inland Revenue and the Treasury, which are essential to the state would be abolished, others like Agriculture and the Environment could have an important job to do, especially in the early days of socialism. Such structures - adapted to the needs of socialist society - could be part of regional councils and would assist in the work of implementing the decisions of regional populations.

During the early days of socialism it is likely that the organisation of world co-operation would need to take place through a world council. Because the things we need now are produced and distributed through a world structure of production, and because its present capitalist nature has brought about immense problems, action to solve them would be required on a world scale, For example, it would be a priority to set up an ecologically benign world energy system as soon as possible. Similarly, the countless millions of people suffering from hunger and desperate poverty would need a considerable increase in food production. For this work the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the UN would at last be able to use its expertise and knowledge of world conditions to help with solving the problems of malnutrition. Again, to begin with, people in socialism would face a huge task in providing every person with secure and comfortable housing. This would call upon the efforts of communities throughout the world, especially in those regions where means of production were well developed. Such world projects could be co-ordinated through appropriate departments of a world council.

When we propose different scales of social co-operation such as local, regional and world scales, this is not a question of there being a hierarchy with power located at any central point. What we anticipate is both an integrated and flexible system of democratic organisation which could be adapted for action to solve any problem in any of these scales. This simply takes into account that some problems and the action to solve them arise from local issues and this also extends to the regional and world spheres.

Carrying out decisions

Crucial to the question of democracy is not just the ability to make decisions about what to do but also the powers of action to carry out those decisions. For many years, capitalist politicians seeking office have promised to solve the housing problem together with the problems of poverty, unemployment, pollution, crime, the health service and many more. They have failed because in fact they seek to run a system driven by profit, which imposes severe economic limitations on what can be done and which as a result cannot be rationally controlled. This makes a mockery of the idea of democracy. But with the abolition of the market system, communities in socialism will not only be able to make free and democratic decisions about what needs to be done they will also be free to use their resources to achieve those aims.

The apologies that we hear almost every day from capitalist politicians that they lack the money resources to solve problems indicates how completely the fetishism of money has distorted their thinking. In fact problems are not solved with money resources. They are solved by people using their labour, skills and the necessary materials and there is in fact an abundance of these material resources. But it will take the relations of common ownership to release them for the needs of communities and this will also mean that communities will be free to decide democratically how best to use those resources.

The corporate authorities or managerial systems which now dictate how production units such as factories or services should be run would be replaced. Small units could be run by regular meetings of all the workers. In the cases of large organisations these could be run by elected committees accountable to the people working in them. In this way, democratic practice would apply not just to the important policy decisions that would steer the main direction of development, it would extend to the day-to-day activities of the work place.

But democracy would not be confined to the serious work of production and the running of the work place. People in socialism will be free to create sporting and other cultural festivals. The entertainment of visitors from other parts of the world would bring diversity and richness to local life. The possibilities for decision making and the planning and enjoyment of such events are endless.

Socialism opens up a great range of new possibilities. With the populations of all countries co-operating as one people, working together in their common interests whilst celebrating their cultural differences and joining in democratically deciding a new future, the prospects can only be seen as exciting. What a contrast with the dreary prospects of electing yet another capitalist government and giving a further lease of life for an out-dated capitalist state.

Pieter Lawrence

Trotskyism (1985)

Book Review from the February 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Stalinist Legacy, edited by Tariq Ali, Penguin, £4.95

My heart sank on seeing over five hundred closely-printed pages on such a well-worn topic as Stalinism. Having persevered to the end of all twenty chapters, I can only say that my misgivings were well-founded: the view that the horrors of recent Russian history have been essentially due to the shortcomings of one man is developed here at great length and in a depressingly turgid style.

Things start badly, with Tariq Ali's introduction claiming that the book provides "a Marxist critique of Stalinism", when in fact it adopts a purely Trotskyist perspective. Ali's dismissal of the Marxist thesis that Russia is state capitalist is utterly dishonest. He claims that virtually everyone who sought to categorise Russia as neither socialist nor post-capitalist (as state capitalism or bureaucratic collectivism) "ultimately ended up as an apologist for capitalism". The fact that this is true of people like James Burnham apparently gives Ali an excuse to ignore the only consistent analysis of Russia as state capitalist—that put forward by the Socialist Party for the last sixty-five years.

One of the chapters is an essay by Trotsky in which he also attempts to counter the view that Russia is state capitalist. Again, the argument is mere sleight of hand: since the Russian system us supposedly progressive, and the kind of capitalist state'ism found in Fascist Italy and Germany is reactionary, therefore Russia cannot be state capitalist. This blithely ignores the existence there of wage labour, commodity production and class struggle.

Perhaps the worst contribution is Marcel Liebman's "Was Lenin a Stalinist?" This aims to justify the Bolsheviks' dissolution of the Constituent Assembly in January 1918, in which they formed a minority. Liebman sees all electoral procedures as paralysing social progress: "The revolutionary is a bad voter, and the voter a poor revolutionary". This just reflects Leninists' belief in their own ability to lead and manipulate ordinary working people.

The book is not completely worthless. It contains in full Khrushchev's Secret Speech to the 1956 Russian Party Congress, the one which launched "de-Stalinisation", and there are interesting selections on Albania and Czechoslovakia. There is even a bit of light relief: leading left-wing economist Ernest Mandel proclaims, presumably in all seriousness, that "it is difficult to define closely what socialism is"! Don't worry, we'll be sending him a copy of the Socialist Standard.

Paul Bennett

Letter: CND and SPGB (1963)

Letter to the Editors from the June 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

You claim in your April issue that CND's main fault lies in the fact that its members "are concerned with removing evils in isolation". I am pleased to tell you that the rank and file of the Campaign, unlike the "respectable" CND bureaucracy, seems to be in the process of realising more and more that nuclear weapons cannot be separated from politics and the fight for socialism. The folly of viewing the H-bomb as an isolated issue will, I am sure, be demonstrated finally in the overwhelming defeat of INDEC's candidate at Twickenham. The identity of war with capitalism has long been clear to those who are both CND supporters and members of the Socialist wing of the Labour Party. I know that the SPGB has little time for the Labour Party, and I imagine that you will consider it against your interests to publish a letter from somebody who favours membership of that organisation, but the fact remains that there are socialists in the Labour Party whose ideals are precisely the same as your own. Personally I think that this country will become socialist by the Labour Party becoming socialist, which seems far more likely than the SPGB forming the Government.

Although the reforms of a Labour Government will not, of course, bring socialism, nor will grinding the workers down, or starving them, one can fight for alleviation of the most immediate and harmful social problems, such as unemployment or the threat of nuclear war, yet still have socialism as one's long term goal. I hope you will not deny that the working class will be better off under a Labour Government even though capitalist society remains, and in the particular fight against nuclear weapons, which are the greatest danger to the human race, socialists in the Labour Party are able to enlist the help of many left-reformists, I fear that if we must wait for the SPGB to come to power and for Britain to become socialist before we can disarm, then there is every likelihood of our destruction. If you print this letter I shall be interested to read your answer.

 Richard D. Condon
Exeter College, Oxford.

REPLY.

This is not the first—nor will it be the last—time we have heard the complaint that an organisation's rank and file are sincere, convinced socialists who are being frustrated by reactionary, "respectable" leaders (although it is interesting to hear this from a member of CND, which was once supposed to the non-respectable organisation!) But if there are so many socialists in CND, why are their convictions never reflected by their leadership? Why, indeed, do they have leaders at att? It is one of the hallmarks of a socialist that he rejects leadership.

Mr. Condon can make what he likes of the big defeat which seems to be the prospect of the INDEC candidate at Twickenham. In fact any such candidate will fail simply because the working class continue to oppose the policies of CND; they still want British capitalism to have the most powerful armaments it can get. CND's lack of electoral appeal is most clearly acknowledged by the many Labour MPs who, although they support the Campaign, do not risk losing their seats by standing as pure unilateralist candidates.

If there are members of the Labour Party whose "ideals are precisely the same" as ours, why are they not members of the SPGB? Why do they remain in a party which is committed to running British capitalism? Mr. Condon does not think that the Labour Party will get socialism by reforms; but they have nothing else to offer apart from reforms, all of which leave capitalism intact and viable.

It is true that starving people are no more likely to be interested in Socialism than are the well fed. Mr. Condon uses this as a justification for a policy of reforms. Yet the facts say that reforms do nothing to alleviate the problems of capitalism. Despite all the reformers' efforts, problems like poverty, unemployment and war are still clouds over our lives. World Refugee Year, for example, was an attempt to reform the refugee problem. But at the end of that year there were more refugees in the world than there had been at the beginning. It will be interesting to see what effect the current Freedom from Hunger Campaign has on the level of malnutrition and starvation in the world.

In fact, the only effective reform would be to abolish capitalism altogether. To compromise on this—to support reforms while professing Socialism as a "long term goal"—is to support capitalism and therefore to cease to be a Socialist.

Will the working class be better off under a Labour Government? The last Labour administration persistently fought the working class on the issue of wages and did their best to hold wages down. They ruthlessly crushed strikes. They unhesitatingly went into the Korean War. They started making the nuclear armaments which Mr. Condon now wants to ban.

Perhaps Socialism is a long way off. What is certain is they it will not be helped by people like Mr. Condon, who support capitalist organisations like CND and the Labour Party. These organisations have spread an enormous load of confusion about Socialism among the working class. Mr. Condon is himself confused; he talks about "the SPGB forming the government" and about waiting for "the SPGB to come to power" and "for Britain to become Socialist". Socialism will not happen just in Britain or any other one part of the world; it will be an international social system. And it will not have governments and state machines and all the other coercive organs of capitalism. Thus the SPGB will never come to power, never form a government. When Socialism is established we shall cease to exist as a political party.

One final point. We are pleased to receive, and to publish, Mr. Condon's letter. We welcome criticism and discussion of the case of Socialism from all our opponents. We hope that many more of them will write to us.

EDITORIAL COMMITTEE. 

The War in Gaza (2015)

From the January 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

The concluding part of our series on capitalism’s ongoing wars

The Israeli-Palestine war in Gaza last year was yet another round of fighting in a conflict that began in 1948 when the state of Israel was established. The Palestinians have no chance whatsoever of militarily overcoming Israel. Israel's economic might with its GDP of around $110 billion overshadows the Palestinian GDP of $4.2 billion.

In the 50-day military operation by Israel against the Palestinian people in Gaza in July to September 2014, 2,199 Gazans were killed, 70 percent of them civilians, 10,895 were wounded and 65,000 people left homeless. A third of hospitals were destroyed or damaged. Mufeed al-Hasayneh, Minister of Public Works, said Israel's offensive on Gaza has caused over $5 billion of damage to homes and infrastructure. Some 10,000 homes have been completely destroyed, and 30,000 homes partially destroyed. In Shujaiyya, where some 110,000 people live, 60 percent of the homes were completely destroyed (Ma'an News Agency, 5 August 2014). The tunnels between Gaza and Egypt which were bringing $700 million into Gaza's economy through goods or services were destroyed by bombing.

Israel destroyed 134 Gazan factories, and bombed Gaza's main power station. Without power to run treatment plants, untreated sewage was dumped directly into the Mediterranean Sea contaminating fish and sickening fishermen. The Food and Agriculture Organization reported that extensive damage to Gaza's agricultural sector had 'forced farmers and herders to abandon their lands and has paralysed fishing activities, bringing local food production to a halt and severely affecting livelihoods.' Losses among Gaza's fishing sector were estimated at 234.6 tons, or about 9.3 percent of the yearly catch. Farming gives a livelihood to 19,000 Gazans, while 6,000 people work in livestock raising and 3,600 in the fishing industry. The Israeli military also killed cows and camels. The FAO report went on to say 'The recent fighting has resulted in substantial direct damage to Gaza's 17,000 hectares of crop lands as well as much of its agricultural infrastructure, including greenhouses, irrigation systems, animal farms, fodder stocks and fishing boats' (Ma'an News Agency, 16 August 2014). Gaza factory owner Mohammad al-Telbani said 'This is a war on our economy' (Guardian, 22 August 2014).

Capitalist development

Palestinian capitalist development in Gaza is fettered by the Israeli state. The Gaza Strip was occupied by Israel from 1967 until 2005 but has been under siege by Israel since then. Gaza has a population of 1.8 million Palestinians, and over half of these are children who live in one of the most densely populated areas in the world. The Israeli blockade means the borders and airspace are controlled by Israel so that foodstuffs, building materials, fuel and medical supplies have to be brought in via tunnels between Gaza and Egypt. Even livestock is transported through these tunnels. The fishing industry is restricted to within 3 km of land and thus 85 percent of its fishing waters are inaccessible due to Israeli imposed restrictions. As for farmland 35 percent of Gaza's farmland is inaccessible, and farmers are unable to get pesticides, fertilizers needed for their crops or permits from the Israeli government to export what they manage to produce.

Even the historical symbol of the Levant, the olive tree, has come under attack from the Israeli state. Thousands of olive trees have been cut down, devastating the Palestinian economy, and some of the ancient trees are dug up and transported to Israel and abroad for sale. The Palestinian Independent Commission for Human Rights reports that 'since 1967 Israeli authorities have uprooted or destroyed more than one and a half million trees, 70 percent of which were olive trees, the staple crop of Palestinian rural communities' (Middle East Monitor, 2010). Olives are the lifeblood of Palestinian agriculture, almost the only crop which grows on the stony hillsides of the West Bank without irrigation. Palestinian agriculture and people have always depended on the water of lakes and springs in the fertile hills of the West Bank as well as the Jordan river. Since 1967, these water sources have been taken into the control of Israel, which has drained lakes near Tiberias and rerouted the Jordan river to take the water to Israel. One of the results is the drying up of the Dead Sea. Palestinians are now having to buy back their water from settlements and Israeli companies.

The founders of the Israeli state in 1948 forced into exile about 800,000 Palestinian people in what is known as the 'Al-Naqba' or 'catastrophe' which was compounded in 1967 when a further 325,000 Palestinians became refugees. The 1948 UN Resolution 194 states Palestinians have the right to return to their homes. Today over 6 million Palestinians live as refugees, hundreds of thousands of whom still live in overcrowded refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza, and in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.

Zionism

Emma Goldman in her 1938 work On Zionism identified 'Zionism as the dream of capitalist Jewry the world over for a Jewish State with all its trimmings, such as Government, laws, police, militarism and the rest. In other words, a Jewish State machinery to protect the privileges of the few against the many.' The founders of Israel sought to expel as much of the Arab majority as they could and make their profits by creating an almost all-Jewish working class in the mistaken belief 'it is better to be exploited by one's fellow countrymen' (Marx 1848). Israel is the most economically and socially developed capitalist nation state in the Middle East with a large working class. It is a bourgeois democracy but also a sectarian state. Israeli capitalism not only exploits the Jewish working class but also a Palestinian working class and migrant labour. Palestinians in the state of Israel comprise 20 percent of the population and face discrimination, and are considered to be second class citizens because the very definition of a Jewish state excludes them.

According to the OECD '21 percent of Israelis live in poverty, the highest among developed countries that are part of the OECD' (Haaretz, 15 May 2013). At the bottom of the economic pyramid are the African migrants from Eritrea and the Sudan who cannot legally work but are used as cheap labour in hotel, restaurant and cleaning companies, and when arrested are put in detention centres such as the one in the Negev desert. Next there are the Bedouin Arabs who live in unrecognized villages unconnected to water and electricity systems. The 2005 National Insurance Institute reported that 52 percent of Palestinians in Israel lived below the poverty line as opposed to 16 percent of Jewish Israelis, and unemployment averages more than 50 percent for Palestinians (Sawt el-Amel: The Laborer's Voice, 2006). In 2011, the average monthly salary of Ashkenazi Jews was 33 percent above the average, whereas the monthly salary for urban Palestinian citizens was the exact opposite: 33 percent below the average (Oligarchy in the Holy Land, 3 December 2013).

The Palestinian struggle for their own capitalist state was controlled for decades by Fatah and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) which are bourgeois, secular, 'leftist' Pan-Arab nationalists but they came to a dead end after years of conflict with the Israeli state. In the 1990s Fatah collaborated with the Israeli government which would lead to the rise of Hamas in Gaza. Essentially the Palestinian Authority controlled by Fatah could not meet the basic economic needs of the Palestinian people, and this led to the success of Hamas in the Gazan elections of 2006.

Hamas

Hamas, also a bourgeois nationalist organization, was established in 1987, and proposes an Islamist capitalist Palestinian state based on a 1947 Palestine. Hamas is an abbreviation for 'Islamic resistance movement' but also means 'force and bravery' and has its origins in the Muslim Brotherhood movement. Hamas are not only anti-Zionist but also anti-Semitic, and are trying to bridge the divide that separated Palestinian nationalism and Islamism, a twin track policy of a national liberation struggle and a jihad which aims 'to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine' (Covenant of the Hamas, 1988). Hamas are wealthy because they have rich backers from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states such as Qatar.

The Palestinian working class are organized in the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU) which is a Fatah organization that has not had any elections since 1981. The rise of the

Federation of Independent and Democratic Trade Unions & Workers' Committees in Palestine, representing workers in independent, democratically-elected unions and workers' committees across the West Bank and Gaza has threatened the Fatah PGFTU. After a protest outside the Palestinian Legislative Council in Gaza in 2005, the PGFTU asked the Palestinian security services to investigate the Independent Workers' Committees Federation and the Democracy and Workers' Rights Center.

The split in the Palestinian bourgeoisie between Fatah and Hamas suits the Israeli state but in April 2014 Israel became very angry at the reconciliation deal agreed between Fatah and Hamas, and threatened to withhold tax revenues it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority. Was the offensive against Gaza last year an Israeli attempt to sabotage the deal between Hamas and Fatah, to isolate Hamas and punish Fatah for the rapprochement? But even Fatah entered the conflict in July 2014 with missiles launched against Israel by Fatah in the West Bank. Amin Maqboul, Secretary-General of Fatah's Revolutionary Council said Palestinians were united against the Israeli assault: 'We all know that the main Israeli goal has been to break up the national unity reconciliation. We will respond by strengthening our unity and reconciliation' (Palestine Pulse, 10 July 2014). Israel's anger was evident when it said 'The moderate Palestinian leadership has shown its true colours. It sides with the terrorists, not with Israel' (Arutz Sheva, 16 July 2014).

After the war last summer, in September 2014 Fatah and Hamas reached an agreement that would turn over the civil administration of Gaza immediately to officials of a Palestinian unity government which would attempt to ease the long blockade of Gaza by Israel and Egypt and open the way to reconstruction of Gaza. Jibril Rajoub, a senior official in Fatah announced 'Fatah and Hamas have reached a comprehensive agreement for the unity government to return to the Gaza Strip' (Al-Arabiya, 25 September 2014).

Nationalism divides

Both Zionism and Palestinian nationalism hold back the growth of class consciousness among the working class in Israel and Palestine but something extraordinary occurred in the summer of 2011 during the social justice protests in Israel inspired by the 'Arab Spring.' In Israel there was an increasing public awareness of the minority ownership of the economy developing. For instance,  in 2009 Israel’s central bank stated in its annual report that 'some twenty business groups, nearly all of family nature and structured in a pronounced pyramid form, continue to control a large proportion of public firms (some 25 per cent of firms listed for trading) and about half of market share' (Renewal: A journal of social democracy, January 2012).

The summer 2011 social justice protests that erupted helped unite the Jewish and Palestinian working class in Israel.  Jewish working class activists signed a covenant of cooperation with the Palestinian activists and they chanted mixed Hebrew and Arabic renditions of slogans from Tahrir Square. Arab writer Odeh Bisharat addressed a meeting of 300,000 people and announced that the struggle for social justice has always been the struggle of the Arab community, and the people shouted 'Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies' (The New Significance, 17 August 2011). For a brief time that summer the Israeli and Palestinian working class saw itself as a class.

Emma Goldman claimed the origin of the Arab-Israeli war stemmed from the fact that 'the Arab feudal lords had sold the land to the Jews without the knowledge of the Arab people.'

Goldman concluded that 'the land should belong to those who till the soil', in other words, the Jewish and Palestinian working class regardless of religion and national identity in a socialist society of common ownership and democratic control.

Steve Clayton

Peterloo: a Class Skirmish (1969)

From the May 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

At its May Day rally in Manchester this year the Labour party commemorates the 150th anniversary of the massacre of Peterloo. The Socialist Party of Great Britain denounces this as blatant hypocrisy. Labour has always been opposed to Socialism and the interests of the working people but this miserable attempt to present themselves as the champions of the underdog — at the same time that they are viciously attacking workers and their living conditions — is dishonest even by their unprincipled standards.

For all that, Peterloo is an incident which deserves to remembered — especially by those who claim that the British working class has no 'revolutionary' tradition. In the first half of the 19th century, working-class unrest tended to reflect the state of the harvest. So 1817, with a heavy grain crop and the price of wheat falling from 111s. 6d. per quarter to 75s. found the Home Secretary writing

Our situation and prosperity at home are improving. The materials of disaffection to work upon are less abundant and less susceptible than at the corresponding period last year.

To which Lord Exmouth replied that this was not only the factor in keeping the workers in their place:

We owe our present peaceful and happy prospects to your firmness and prompt exertions in keeping down the democrats.

The wheat harvest for 1818 was much poorer, however, and by July 20,000 workers were on strike in Manchester (out of a population which in 1801 had been estimated at something over 70,000). For the most part the workers' demands were entirely economic, for improved wages and working conditions, but groups of radicals tried to point out that any solution to their hardships would need to be far more fundamental than this.

Universal suffrage, annual parliaments, and repeal of the Corn Laws were the reforms which these elements campaigned for, but for a long time their ideas found a hostile reception. For example, John Bagguley — an agitator who was active in the Manchester area — was beaten up in August 1818 by a crowd of strikers in Manchester and was also shouted down when he tried to speak at a meeting of weavers in nearby Stockport.

But gradually, partly as a result of their experiences in the struggle to improve their conditions and partly in response to the arguments of the reformers, political ideas started to spread among the working class. As the stipendary magistrate for Manchester wrote:

I do not by any means think that the system of turning out in the different trades is connected with this idea [parliamentary reform], or that the sentiment itself has taken root in the minds of the mass of the population, yet I am disposed to think that this idea gains ground  . . . 

This, then, was the background to the huge gathering, 50,000 to 60,000 strong, which assembled in St Peter's Fields in Manchester on August 16, 1819 to listen to Henry Hunt, a leading radical. The banners they carried called for 'Parliaments Annual', 'Suffrage Universal' and harked back to the French Revolution ('Liberty and Fraternity'). But the general lack of political clarity was also well illustrated when a band played God Save the King before the meeting started.

Although the crowd was well-behaved and unarmed the magistrates decided to arrest Hunt and sent the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry to do this. This bunch of scared and incompetent territorials came charging onto the field, knocking down a woman and killing her baby on the way, but — after arresting Hunt — they found themselves stranded among the densely packed throng. Seeing this, the magistrates claimed that the workers were "attacking the Yeomanry" (a complete lie) and gave the order for the troops of Hussars who were being held in reserve to disperse the crowd with their sabres. Eleven people died, either cut down or trampled to death, and over 400 were wounded. As the Prince Regent put it, the magistrates and the army were to be thanked for their "prompt, decisive, and efficient measures for the preservation of public tranquillity."

But it was The Times, writing four days after Peterloo, which made the most penetrating comment on the massacre:

The more attentively we have considered the relations subsisting between the upper and labouring classes throughout some of the manufacturing districts, the more painful and unfavourable is the construction which we are forced to put upon the events of last Monday  . . . The two great divisions of society there, are — the masters, who have reduced the rate of wages; and the workmen, who complain of their masters having done so. Turn the subject as we please, 'to this complexion it must come at last'.

In other words, Peterloo was just one particularly brutal battle in the class war of capitalism — which still persists today. And there should be few workers in Manchester or anywhere else with illusions as to which side of the barricades the Labour party is fighting on.

Manchester Branch,

Socialist Party of Gt. Britain

Are Socialists Sadists? (2015)

From the January 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is two hundred years since the Marquis de Sade died – we examine his political ideas.

On 2 December 2nd, 1814 Donatien Alphonse François de Sade, the Marquis de Sade, died in an insane asylum. The words ‘sadism’ and ‘sadist’ are derived from his name. De Sade was incarcerated for about 32 years of his life (including ten years in the Bastille), often without access to the courts. During the French Revolution he was an elected delegate to the National Convention. He was given the task of reviewing sanitation in the hospitals. These were terrible places but thanks to de Sade, individual beds were given to each and every patient, whereas formerly one was obliged to share, sleeping alongside the dying and the dead in one bed. De Sade forced the hospital authorities to transform the clinics and hospitals into places fit for patients. He was also given the task of overseeing the renaming of the streets of Paris, abolishing the Christian names, renaming them after republican heroes, for example, Rue Spartacus.

He began to challenge the efforts by the new masters of France to sabotage democratic measures. But democracy was to be overtaken swiftly by The Terror. Unlike the English Jacobins (of the London Corresponding Society etc), the French Jacobins were not the representatives of the still weak and relatively new working class. They represented the petite-bourgeoisie. Only 6 percent of those passing beneath the guillotine during the Jacobin regime were aristocrats. The rest were minor clergy and workers, 80 percent of victims being manual labourers. The nascent workers’ movement was silenced by Robespierre, and not later.

As regards prison and the death penalty, de Sade was opposed to every form of punishment: ‘It is far simpler to hang men than to find out why we condemn them.’ Again and again he spoke for the release of those brought before the tribunal, and never once would he allow himself to vote for the death penalty. Finally, having stormed out of the tribunal, he wrote to his friend Gaufridy: ‘They wanted me to put through a bestial and bloody resolution, which I couldn't do.’ Then toward the end of the year 1793 they came for Citizen de Sade himself. He was pencilled in to be guillotined but avoided that fate by the good fortune of having been transferred to another prison. When Napoleon Bonaparte became military dictator de Sade’s temporary liberty ended and without any trial he was thrown into political prison once more, before being sent to an asylum.

De Sade held no illusions about the natural goodness of man, but he believed that with complete economic and sexual equality human conditions could be greatly bettered. He went far beyond the ‘advanced’ social thinkers of his time and even of the present day. One of his earlier biographers Geoffrey Gorer, who wrote The Revolutionary Ideas of the Marquis De Sade, pointed out that Sade was in complete opposition to contemporary philosophers for both his ‘complete and continual denial of the right to property,’ and for viewing the struggle in late 18th century French society as being not between ‘the Crown, the bourgeoisie, the aristocracy or the clergy, or sectional interests of any of these against one another’, but rather all of these ‘more or less united against the proletariat.’ Gorer argued, ‘he can with some justice be called the first reasoned socialist.’

Socialists say that society is divided into two antagonistic classes, the haves and the have-nots. This point is so fundamental for de Sade that he stresses it in every book. His definition of class can hardly be improved: ‘Don't think that I mean by the people the caste called the tiers-etat [bourgeoisie in the limited sense]; no, I mean by the people ... those who can only get a living by their labour and sweat ’. In his Aline et Valcour the good king Zamé begins his description of his visit to Europe by saying:

‘Everywhere I could reduce men into two classes both equally pitiable; in the one the rich who was the slave of his pleasures; in the other the unhappy victims of fortune; and I never found in the former the desire to be better or in the latter the possibility of becoming so, as though both classes were working for their common misery..; I saw the rich continually increasing the chains of the poor, while doubling his own luxury, while the poor, insulted and despised by the other, did not even receive the encouragement necessary to bear his burden. I demanded equality and was told it was utopian; but I soon saw those who denied its possibility were those who would lose by it...’

This is the beginning of a treatise on the class-war by the extremely savage Bishop of Grenoble who declaims ‘That is the [lower] class that I would abandon to perpetual chains and humiliation ... all others ought to join together against this abject class ... to fasten chains upon them, since they in their turn will be enchained if they relax.’

On theft, de Sade wrote that the oath taken by the nation with respect to the law of property is ridiculous: ‘How can you expect the man who has nothing to honour a law which protects the man who has everything? It is his duty, surely, to attempt to redress the balance!’ Property is itself theft, he says. The thief proposes a law to punish theft against himself, the original thief, and expects those with no other recourse than theft to respect such a law! Laws against theft are therefore absurd.’

Gorer, in his book, explains: ‘This distinction of classes is founded on property; and with unaccustomed epigrammatic terseness De Sade defined property as 'a crime committed by the rich against the poor ... theft is only punished because it attacks the right of property; but that right is in itself a theft, so that the law punishes theft because it attacks theft.’

On leadership, de Sade had this to say: ‘you can only govern men by deceiving them; one must be hypocritical to deceive them; the enlightened man will never let himself be led, therefore it is necessary to deprive him of enlightenment to lead him as we want ...’ Elsewhere, he says ‘Politics, which teach men to deceive their equals without being deceived themselves, that science born of falseness and ambition, which the statesman calls a virtue, the social man a duty, and the honest man a vice ...’

Religion is summed up by his view 'When the strong wished to enslave the weak he persuaded him that a god had sanctified the chains with which he loaded him, and the latter, stupefied by misery, believed all he was told.' Blasphemy can only exist if God exists. If there is no God, then blasphemy and all other ‘religious crimes’ are likewise non-existent. So how can you have laws against them? If one, on the other hand, believes in a God, can he really believe his God to be so petty as to take offence at being calumnied? Such a God isn't worthy of honour’.

De Sade also condemned war, which he said sent the wrong message to those abroad whom we would wish likewise to follow our example and liberate themselves. It is not our job to make war on them, but to show them through our peaceful example what a free republic can and ought to be. He claimed war is simply public and authorised murder, in which hired men slaughter one another in the interests of tyrants: 'The sword is the weapon of him who is in the wrong, the commonest resource of ignorance and stupidity.'

As mentioned, de Sade was no supporter of capital punishment. He wrote: ‘The state publicly honours those proficient in murder and encourages them. Yet it punishes the man who disposes of his enemy for a personal reason!’ As for the death penalty, he writes: ‘Either murder is a crime, or it is not. If it is not, why punish it? If it is, then by what perverse logic do you punish it by the same crime?’ It also is tantamount to bad arithmetic, since ‘now two people are dead instead of one!’

De Sade thought the greatest causes of misery were four things; private property, class distinctions, religion and family life. In the future societies he wrote of these institutions being abolished or transformed. In one section of Aline and Valcour, a brutal African kingdom is contrasted with the Pacific island utopian paradise of Tarnoé. He describes an imaginary island where all priests were banished, there were no temples and no vested interest in religion. There were also no professional lawyers and discussion of theology or law was punished as one of the gravest anti-social crimes. There was also no money.

Wherever you look in the world today you will find a parasitical minority suffering an embarrassment of riches while the toiling masses endure real and unnecessary pain as very much part of their everyday lives. The Marquis de Sade would find many examples of this obscenity in today’s class divided society. De Sade may not have been a socialist as we would now define one, but a man of his times, though he perhaps ought be remembered far more for raising important social questions than raising erections through his masturbatory sexual fantasies.

ALJO

Non-reformist reformist (1996)

Book Review from the December 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Economics of the Madhouse by Chris Harman (Bookmarks, £3.50).

This is a well-rounded and generally well-written criticism of the modern capitalist economy and the economists who are paid to defend it. It deals with exploitation, economic crises, globalisation and many other issues of interest in a manner socialists are likely to generally agree with. As might be expected from the leading economic theoretician of the SWP, there are the usual nods in the direction of the Permanent Arms Economy as an explanation for the post-war boom and towards the allegedly socialist nature of the Russian Bolshevik coup d'etat, but these are only fleeting references and therefore only appear as minor irritants.

Harman's criticism of contemporary reformism echoes much of ours, in particular his claim that today's Labour Party does not offer unlimited beneficent reforms of the system so much as "reformism without reforms". Above all, Harman makes plain that far from the Labour Party having changed the market economy, it is the market economy that has changed Labour. Now Labour doesn't even pretend to be the party of the working class and offers little if anything distinct from the Conservatives.

Given Harman's eloquent description of the failure of capitalism across the planet, readers could be forgiven for thinking he is an advocate of common ownership and production solely for use as the solution to the problems created by the market. Far from it, Harman is actually more graphic than most SWP'ers in his claim that the answer to the "economics of the madhouse" is, er . . .  more economics of the madhouse. Viz:

"The day after the socialist revolution, as the day before, the great mass of people would go to work in factories and offices, and would be paid in money for what they did . . . It will in fact take many decades for people to learn to control consciously very many of the mass of productive processes that take place in a modern society, and in the interim they will have little choice but to put up with the old market mechanisms" (pp.103-4).

This serves to blow Harman's criticisms of the Labour reformists out of the water because the SWP is here shown to be reconciled to the insanity of the market just as much as they are. The explanation offered for this—that the working class would not know how to operate and organise production without the capitalist class and their system to guide them—is simply bizarre, un-Marxist nonsense. The working class already operates capitalism from top to bottom and long ago, as Engels pointed out, capitalism reduced the bulk of the owning class to the status of economic parasites, tearing off their share coupons and gambling on the stock exchange without taking any real part in the processes of production and distribution. If Harman claims that the introduction of production for use must be held back for "decades" because of the inability of the mass of the population to operate society, he is duty bound to tell us which functions the capitalists are able to perform that the rest of us can't. He is duty bound to, but, given the SWP's reticence to debate with socialists and their evident confusion on this topic, we somehow imagine that he wont.

DAP

Rosa Luxemburg's Writings (1973)

Book Review from the January 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Rosa Luxemburg. Selected Political Writings ed. and introduced by Robert Looker. Cape. £1.50.

Rosa Luxemburg was born in 1870 in Russian Poland but later moved to Germany. Very early on she made a name for herself in the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) as an opponent of Bernstein's Revisionism. Her pamphlet Social Reform or Revolution was an attack on the view that capitalism could be gradually transformed into Socialism by social reforms, trade-union pressure, co-ops, etc.

But she never argued that a socialist party should not advocate reforms at all. In fact she agreed with the SPD's tactic on reforms: that the working class should be encouraged to struggle for them or against specific capitalist measures in order to prepare itself for the eventual capture of political power for Socialism (see some of the articles published here in the section "Defending the Tactic"). When, in the decade or so up to 1914, she came to realise how reformism in the SPD was not confined just to Bernstein and the Revisionists but also permeated the thinking of the whole leadership, she blamed its concentrating on getting reforms through Parliament. She did not blame advocating reforms as such and in fact her answer to the danger of reformism was to involve the mass of the workers themselves instead of just a few MP's in the reform struggle by means of the "mass strike". This was a tactic she had picked up from the Russian revolution of 1905 (which she had participated in to a certain extent, most of Poland then being part of Russia).

The final bankruptcy of the SPD was exposed in Luxemburg's eyes by its notorious vote for war credits for the German government on 4 August 1914. Luxemburg began to call for a new Socialist International and eventually helped to form a new party, the Spartacus League. She herself was a determined opponent of the War and went to jail for her anti-war activities. Some of her best writings date from this period, especially the classic socialist statement against the First World War, The Junius Pamphlet (also called The Crisis of Social Democracy). Some of the articles selected here, especially "Rebuilding the International" and "Either Or", could have come from any of the SOCIALIST STANDARD  of 1915 and 1916. Indeed the first one could quite literally have done since most of it was reprinted, with a slight reservation, in our issue of September 1915.

In November 1918 the Kaiser and his government were overthrown and political power passed into the hands of pro-war Social Democrats. They pursued the policy of establishing a bourgeois, democratic state in Germany, establishing stable capitalist rule through Parliament. The Spartacus League, including Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, urged the workers to oppose this and to set up rival workers' and soldiers' councils as the first step on the long road to the capture of political power for Socialism. For the Spartacus League (unlike the Bolsheviks) did not believe in a minority seizure of power. As its 1918 pamphlet What Does The Spartakusbund Want? put it:

The Spartacus League will never assume government in any way other than through the clear unambiguous will of the great majority of the proletarian mass in all Germany, never in any other way than on the strength of the masses' conscious agreement with the views, aims and methods of the struggle of the Spartacus League.

Or, as Rosa Luxemburg herself put it:

Without the conscious will and action of the majority of the proletariat, there can be no Socialism.

Even so, some of the members of the Spartacus League were over-enthusiastic and—despite warnings from Luxemburg—were provoked in January 1919 into an armed uprising in Berlin. Loyally she went along with them. It cost her her life. On 15 January soldiers responsible to the Social Democratic Minister Noske smashed her head in.

This book selects some of her previously untranslated articles, though it omits any of those where she discusses nationalism and exposes "the right to self-determination" as a fraud. Could this be because the translator is associated with "International Socialism" and would therefore find her views on this embarrassing?

Adam Buick

My Father (1997)

A Short Story from the May 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

My parents were always poor. My father was ostracised by his family for becoming a "Bolshevik" (as they chose to call it), and marrying a "common shop girl"  . . . as they chose to describe my mother. It was a "never-darken-my-doors-again" situation. In fact he did try to "darken their doors" again when he hit upon very hard times but they would not lend him any money. They would have none of him and he was to remember this with bitterness for the rest of his life. It also meant that I was never to meet my paternal grandparents or my aunt and uncle.

I suppose to some people Dad would have been an embarrassment. He was the kind of man whose main object in going to the cinema, or so it seemed, was to watch the Pathé News, make loud, caustic comments about whatever was happening on the screen, and then try to inveigle the audience into a discussion. And then again, just as soon as the film was ended and the strains of God Save The King became audible he would leap from his seat and with great ostentation usher us along the row and out of the cinema. On one or two occasions he remained seated (when most other people were standing to attention) in order to explain the rôle of the Royal Family under capitalism in a very loud voice to the people in the row behind. Dad firmly believed that all he had to do was to expound his political allegiances and most people would come round to his way of thinking. And it is true to sat that most people did tend to keep quiet whilst he bestowed on them all the benefits of this knowledge and wisdom, but I think now that this was due more to weariness than any agreement on their part.

Visitors to the house, young and old alike, he attempted to engage in political debate, a debate he invariably won hands down because he had done masses of reading on the subject, but also because few people ever wanted to argue with him in the first place, when he naturally assumed that they did. In other words he never missed an opportunity to inform, and he did this lengthily and with patience and humour. But as he had behaved in this way for as long as I could remember he was an embarrassment to me. But for my mother it was different. Mum would ask "Must you bring politics into everything? Could we just go for one day in this house without a lecture on the evils of capitalism?" In this I thought she was unreasonable. I thought him wonderful, eccentric and handsome as the only little girl in the family would.

During the time that my father was a road-sweeper he was responsible for one of the more leafy, posher areas of south-east London. I lived in this area for a time and was to meet some of the residents who as soon as they heard my name would enquire if I was Jock's daughter, and then I would soon learn of Dad's attempts to convert whoever-it-was to socialism. From what they said he spent as much time preaching as he did sweeping. I have no evidence that he ever fully converted anyone but I have no doubt that he made a lasting impression.

Yet as I grew up a coolness developed between us. My politics changed. I no longer saw the Russian revolution in the same way and the Hungarian uprising of 1956 put a completely different complexion on the way I thought of socialism. My father could never accept the revelations about Stalin; he was ageing, becoming too ill to analyse events. He felt let down, betrayed. Now instead of hanging on to his every word I berated him. I chided him with feeding me the wrong information for so many years. I made it clear that I considered his lifetime principles to be a sham. His punishment was twofold, my behavoiur was unforgivable, and when he died the rift between us had not been healed. He must certainly have felt that he had been betrayed not only by his parents and his politics but by his only daughter too! And yet this dear man inspired me to read, to question and to be a socialist. What more could he have taught me?

Heather Ball

Editorial: The Case Against Censorship (2006)

Editorial from the March 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

The fuss over the Danish cartoons of Mohammed has not been the only recent event that has raised the issue of free speech. There was also the government’s failed attempt to make it more difficult to criticise religion. There were the trials of the BNP leaders and of the Muslim cleric Abu Hamza. The elected mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, was required to appear before an unelected body with the power to eject him from office for a remark made to a journalist from the gutter press. David Irving was arrested in Austria for holocaust-denial. All these were attempts – either by law or by direct action – to punish people for expressing an opinion.

We in the Socialist Party have always insisted on the advantages, for the advancement of the cause of socialism, of the fullest possible freedom of expression of political and social ideas, including when these take the form of religion (since all religions hold views on how society should be organised and are in this sense political). No view should be prevented from being expressed. And no view (not even religion) should be exempt from being criticised.

We have always practised what we preach. We opposed the banning of the Daily Worker in 1941. We have criticised the policy of “no platform for fascists” as censorship by direct action. We have debated against fascists and Islamists, exposing their views before their followers to the withering criticism of the socialist case.

The main case against censorship is that it considers that people are too ignorant to decide for themselves and so must be protected from hearing certain views. All censors, actual or would-be, consider themselves a cut above the rest. They are not corrupted by reading Lady Chatterly’s Lover but their servants would be.They are not affected by reading anti-Christian or anti-Muslim writings (as the case may be) but their followers would be. They are not affected by a BNP rant but other, less enlightened people would be.

Since ideas are thrown up by social conditions censorship never works to suppress them anyway. The Catholic Church was not able to prevent the rise in Europe of the secular, practical materialism generated by capitalism and has been forced to accommodate itself to this. The same fate awaits Islam, which seems to want to rival Catholicism for the title of the world’s most intolerant religion. At the moment its clerics are desperately trying to hold back the spread of capitalist secularism – and still have the power to mobilise fanatical mobs to rage against a few harmless cartoons – but, as capitalism progresses more and more in the areas where they now dominate they too will lose influence, painfully slow as this is turning out to be.

In any event, Socialists are opposed to the attempts made by Muslim clerics to prevent and punish criticism of their religion. We are under no obligation to respect the religious dogma of these obscurantists that places the so-called prophet Mohammed beyond criticism, not that he has anything relevant or sensible to say for 21st century conditions.

The last refuge of those who favour censorship is the proposition that people should be legally banned from insulting each other. It is true that if you want to persuade someone to change their views insulting them is not the best way to begin. But you can’t legislate for good manners or good persuasive techniques. To allow one side in an argument to cry “you’ve offended me” and appeal to the law to silence the other side would mean an end to free speech.

Our answer to all censors is to reaffirm that workers are quite capable of judging for themselves, quite capable of sorting out the wheat from the chaff and working out which ideas accord with their interests –and which do not. The best condition for the emergence of socialist understanding remains free and frank discussion.

Backwaters of History - 6 (1954)

From the March 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

English Naval Mutinies 1797

There are two old, historic and important roads leading out of London, known now-a-days as the A2 and A3 and leading to Dover and Portsmouth respectively. In the late 18th century these were loose surfaced highways, infested by highwaymen and toll gate keepers.

During April, May and June of the year 1797 there was much thundering of horses hooves, rumbling of carriage wheels and creaking of wide flung turnpike gates on these two roads. There was a dashing hither and thither between Whitehall and Portsmouth and Sheerness. Steaming horses were urged on by whip and spur to break speed records. Terrific consternation—the British navy was on strike—right bang in the middle of a war.

Napoleon was threatening to invade England. Part of the fleet were at anchor at Plymouth, at Spithead, at Yarmouth and at The Nore, all in readiness to attack the French fleet if it emerged from Brest.

In March and April the seamen of the Spithead fleet sent a number of petitions to the Admiralty, to Admiral Lord Howe, to Parliament, to Charles James Fox and to the king. The sailors had many grievances.

The main grievance was pay. Rates of pay that were set during the reign of Charles II still prevailed in the reign of George III, about 130 years after, despite great increases in prices. From a sailor's meagre pay there were many stoppages and most men's pay was months and months in arrears. Now they asked for a rise and regular pay. 

They also wanted an increase in the quantity and even more important, an improvement in the quality of their food. The food they received was maggotty, rotten and mostly inedible. Any little extra they requested was charged to them at extortionate rates and supplies of the sick was embezzled by officers. They wanted proper care for the sick and pay when wounded.

Seamen were kept to their ships for years without shore leave. Conditions were so vile that the Admiralty was afraid to grant shore leave knowing that the men would not return to the sea. Now the sailors petitioned for a modest measure of leave. 

The men did not protest about discipline but they did call for the removal of the disciplinary abuses that were rife. Flogging was the main disciplinary punishment and, although naval regulations laid down a maximum of twelve strokes for an offence, no officer was deterred from giving more, even to over a hundred lashes, often for the most trivial offence that was probably provoked by the officers themselves.

"To be flogged was to be tortured. The first stroke to be laid on by the brawny boatswain's mate, as hard as he could at the full length of his arm, would always jerk an involuntary 'Ugh!' out of even the most hardened unfortunate 'seized up to' the grating at the gangway; six blows tore the flesh horribly, while after a dozen the back looked like 'so much putrified liver.' After a time the bones showed through, the blood burst from the bitten tongue and lips of the victim, and expelled from his lungs, dribbled from his nostrils and ears. To make sure that the standard of hitting was maintained, the wielder of the cat would be changed every two or three dozen and the blood was wiped off the thongs between each stroke to prevent them sticking together . . . A severe flogging smashed a man, he was ill for weeks after it, and rarely recovered his self-respect if he originally had any good in him." -"Sea Life in Nelson's Time," by John Masefield.)

Ships were rotten, leaky and foul smelling; drinking water was foul; the food caused scurvy; ship doctors were drunkards and without skill; officers like the notorious Captain Bligh of the "Bounty" were brutes.

The war with France made it necessary to double and treble the size of the navy and the ships were manned by men released from debtors prisons, shanghaied from merchant ships in port and recruited by quotas from each county, a bounty being offered to volunteers. Quite a number of men, better educated than the regular seamen, were attracted into the navy by the offer of the bounty.

Secretly, carefully and with success an organisation had been built up in the separate fleets although with little contact between the fleets. A few sporadic, single ship mutinies against the vile conditions had occurred at times during the previous years. The organisation in the separate fleets in 1797 appears to have been spontaneous.

Very wordy petitions, expressing loyalty to king and country and willingness to fight the French if the invasion became imminent, but demanding redress for their grievances were despatched and replies patiently awaited. The organisation at Spithead was tightened up, each ship appointing two delegates and the battleship "Queen Charlotte" selected as unofficial headquarters. Plans for action were circulated, signals arranged and a time set for action. The delegates were mainly young men holding some non-commissioned rank.

Before the plans were complete events on the "Defence" precipitated action and the whole Spithead fleet went on strike. It was called a mutiny but it had none of the hall-marks of the usual mutiny. The men carried on with their normal duties, respected their officers but refused to put to sea. The delegates were afforded the privileges of officers, they maintained strict discipline amongst the men and issued many statements and orders for the control of the strike. Everything on the surface appeared normal but the officers had no power.

The Admiralty and the officers made threats, but the men remained unconcerned. The Admiralty made promises to redress some of the grievances, but the men rejected them. A bill to increase sailors' pay was introduced into Parliament but there was delay and procrastination and the men became impatient. The most detested officer were put ashore and a fracas broke out on the "London" resulting in the death of one man. Further bloodshed was averted by the delegates and Admiral Colpoys. The delegates court martialled the officers concerned, found them guilty but reprieved them.

When the government realised that the seamen were not to be trifled with it granted their demands. But the delegates were still suspicious. They demanded a Royal Pardon in writing and that the officers they had set ashore should not be returned to their respective ships. Lord Howe was sent to Spithead with the Royal Pardon and authority to grant the men's demands.

Having achieved their demands the sailors organised a grand gala and there was much carousal and fraternisation between Lord Howe, Portsmouth civil authorities and the seamen. The two most prominent of the delegates, 25 year old Valentine Joyce, Quarter Master's Mate of the "Royal George" and John Fleming, 25 year old A.B., were especially feted.

As the Spithead fleet celebrated its success The Nore fleet went into action to achieve similar improvements in conditions and pay. The organisation here was less complete. John Parker, a 30 year old ex-schoolmaster, rated as a supernumerary A.B. on the Depot ship "Sandwich," was quickly elevated to the position of President of the delegates.

The "Sandwich" was a 40 year old decaying corpse ship, smaller than Nelson's "Victory" with a full war complement of 750 men. When it laid at Sheerness in 1797 it had on board about 1,600 men.

"One has a vision of writhing humanity, like worms crawling over one another in the foetid pot of a boy fisherman . . . "("The Floating Republic," by Dobree and Mainwaring.)

This hotbed of fever and disease became the headquarters of The Nore fleet mutiny.

The Naval authorities took advantage of the weaker organisation of The Nore seamen and refused to talk with the delegates, making stronger threats backed with a show of military force. All the ships of the Nore fleet were not unanimous in their support of the mutiny and before long the struggle began to weaken. The "Clyde" and the "San Fiorenzo" pulled out from the mutinous fleet.

Food supplies became short and the delegates decided to hold up merchant shipping en route to and from London. This raised the ire of the London merchants and an emergency naval force were recruited to be sent against the mutineers, civilians from all walks enlisting for the job.

By June it was becoming more and more difficult for the delegates to hold The Nore fleet together. The "Repulse" and the "Leopard" attempted to escape and were fired on by the other mutineers, only the "Leopard" getting away. During the following days other ships drew out. As arguments went on in the ships the people of Sheerness saw the Red flags replaced by the blue and white, them, perhaps the red ones going up again, to be replaced yet again.

Men tried to escape. The authorities were jubilant and took steps to prevent escape. A pardon was offered to men who would give themselves up. On June 13th John Parker handed over the command of the "Sandwich" to the officers after a meeting of the men of that ship. So the Nore mutiny dissolved.

The naval authorities took revenge. Parker, with 28 others, was executed, a few others received from 40 to 380 lashes with the cat, whilst others were imprisoned.

The Plymouth fleet gave slight support to the Spithead seamen whilst the Yarmouth fleet adhered to their comrades at The Nore.

The Spithead affair achieved immediate results whilst the Nore mutiny appeared to have failed. But the fierceness of the Nore outbreak to which the Yarmouth fleet had been attached, the length of time it lasted and the threat to London was probably a greater contributory cause of the naval reforms that were introduced during the early years of the 19th century.

Books to read:
"The Naval Mutinies of 1797," by C. Gill
"The Floating Republic," by G. E. Mainwaring and B. Dobree.

W. Waters

Between the Lines: Their crisis; our lives and Our history (1986)

The Between the Lines column from the July 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Their crisis; our lives

It is now almost a cliché to state that capitalism is in a crisis. Less easily grasped is the effect of that abstract notion, "an economic crisis", on the lives of workers. Panorama (BBC1, 9 June, 9.30pm) attempted to show just how far the current economic mess is affecting the lives of workers in Cleveland in north-east England, described as being not so much of a black spot of unemployment as a black hole. In Cleveland, where ten years ago the council was making films about the industrial growth of the area, one in four workers are on the dole. Seven homes each week are repossessed because the inhabitants cannot afford to pay for them. Six thousand workers in Cleveland each year have their electricity cut off - that is one in every two hundred of the population. In the youth club, lads of twenty spoke of how they would never expect to get "decent" work - several admitted that stealing was the only course open to them. Some were prepared to take any job going, such as back-breaking potato-picking for £8 a day: even here they were often being undercut and put out of work by children who were prepared to stay off school and do the job for £4 a day. Suicides in Cleveland have increased sharply - a doctor told of a forty year-old man who had sat in his surgery and told him that he would kill himself rather than exist in dire poverty: what could the doctor do for him? The system is the disease. With all of its sickening moralising about "The Family", the capitalist system breaks up family life. The programme showed a family where the man had to travel for months to Surrey where he could earn a wage building luxury houses for the rich. His wife and children had to live without him. Another man's family lost him as he was sent to economic exile in Nigeria, to earn enough to stay out of extreme poverty. The illusion of capitalism is that, bad as the crisis is, it will be soon be over and better times are ahead. This crisis will end, but capitalism only offers more misery and new crises for the working class. The workers of Cleveland have no future to look forward to except the new social system of socialism, where human beings will give according to their abilities and take according to their needs. How urgent that social revolution is was, unintentionally, well-demonstrated by this documentary.

Our history

It is a rare treat for TV to offer viewers a documentary about the history of our class -  the workers who produce the wealth but do not possess it. Union Maids (C4, 5 June, 11.25pm) was a fine programme about the much-neglected topic of American labour history. The women interviewed were pioneer trade unionists in the USA in the 1930s who took on themselves the task—begun by the Wobblies some years earlier—of organising black, women and unskilled wage slaves into trade unions. Their descriptions of the struggles reminded us of the tremendous resistance which workers are capable of once they have started to perceive their class interest. At least one of these women possessed an understanding of socialist ideas, pointing out that nothing which currently exists in the name of socialism is socialism. The documentary was made even better by the inclusion of some excellent Joe Hill songs (some of the greatest music to come out of the workers' struggle) and so we could sing along to such favourites as The Union Maid and Solidarity Forever, the latter containing the verse:

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

Steve Coleman

Supermarkets and Their Slogans (2013)

From the April 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Adulterating food for profit isn’t a new story. 'The Old Testament' first alerted its readers to it with the shrill warning that there is, ‘death in the pot!’ (II Kings chap.4, verse 40). At the turn of the twentieth century The New York Evening Post even penned an ode to it:

Mary had a little lamb,  

And when she saw it sicken, 

She shipped it off to Packingtown, 

And now it's labelled chicken.

David Cameron revealed his thoughts on the subject when he stated that it was a 'very shocking story, it's completely unacceptable. . . people will be very angry to find out they have been eating horse when they thought they were eating beef.’ So will those that sold it to them—the supermarkets. They’ve been caught out at their own game by their suppliers: horsemeat costs £300 per ton and beef £700 per ton.

‘Every little helps’ chirps the Tesco slogan, and your helpful cash brings in around £3+ billion in pre-tax profits per year for Tesco from a market share of 30 per cent. About £1 in every £10 spent in British shops ends up in Tescos’ tills. Asda, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons share a further 47 per cent of the total market. With the UK grocery market worth more than £163 billion, the big four are engaged in a constant battle to out manoeuvre each other for a juicier helping of the profit pie.

Sainsbury’s ask you to ‘try something new today’. That’s not too difficult giventhat almost 80 per cent of the food sold in supermarkets today didn’t exist 15 years ago. The majority of these new items are packaged junk food distinguished by their significant lack of nutrients thanks to the pioneering work of the food processors. Like many modern technologies, food processing was developed over the past two centuries to serve military needs: junk food is the lucrative spin-off. People didn’t suddenly demand spicy burgers or chicken nibbles. The market was created because cheap raw materials could be converted into much more expensive, and thus extremely profitable, items to be sold through supermarkets and other retail outlets. Fresh food has its pecuniary advantages too. Researcher Tania Hurt-Newton revealed that the income derived from pineappleswas shared out in these ratios: 4 per cent was earned by the workers; the plantation owners pocketed 17 per cent; 38 per cent went to the multi-national traders; and the supermarkets scalped 41 per cent. A survey conducted by the NFU in 2002 discovered that abasket of food (eggs, milk, bread, tomatoes, beef, and apples) costing £37 in the supermarket returned just £11 to the farmers. Today it is less.

Morrison’s slogan, ‘More of what matters’, will obviously include what in America is called ‘pink slime’, and in the UK the food industry calls ‘filler’. Pink slime is the scraps left after butchering that has been cleaned with ammonia. In 2012, ABC News claimed that of the ground beef sold in American supermarkets around 70 per cent was composed of pink slime. Filler is fat and collagen; derived from the ligaments and tendons of butchered carcasses. This is what bulks out mince meat. New EU rules want to limit this to 19 per cent fat and collagen. But The Telegraph (3 February) revealed that, ‘Supermarkets will be able to sell minced meat containing more than 50 per cent “filler” under Government plans to avoid EU limits’. Similarly, the pressure by supermarkets to force down suppliers’ prices has driven manufacturers to concoct ever cheaper ingredients. Thus the BBC (28 February) can report that European meat suppliers are: ‘using a loophole in the law to sell a banned low quality material to UK sausage makers. Called desinewed meat . . . it’s retrieved from animal bones using low pressure water. Visually it is said to be similar to a fine mince, and closer to meat than the more liquid ‘mechanically separated meat’ (MSM) ‘slurry.’

US poultry meat and cattle exports reached almost $10 billion in 2011, and a total of 33.5 million head of cattle were slaughtered. A few novel ingredients were added to boost profits: around 80 per cent of all antibiotics sold in the U.S. are gobbled up by factory farming. Cows, poultry, fish and pigs are routinely dosed up by U.S producers. In 1946 the food industry discovered that using antibiotics in livestock feed increased their growth by as much as 3 per cent. It also allowed livestock to be incarcerated in overcrowded and filthy conditions that under other circumstances would have spawned rates of disease and death that would have made it entirely unprofitable. The US Food and Drug Administration has finally acknowledged it as a, ‘mounting public health problem of global significance’ (inthesetimes.com). And a New England Journal of Medicine study found that ‘20 per cent of ground meat obtained in supermarkets contained salmonella. Of that 20 per cent contaminated with salmonella, 84 per cent was resistant to at least one form of antibiotic’ (pbs.org/).

Asda’s slogan asks: ‘Why pay more?’ And why should they?The National Beef Association recently accused supermarkets of ‘short-sighted, price-led, purchasing tactics and a bullying culture.’ When you control around 86 per cent of the market you can use that buying power to put tremendous pressures on suppliers to deliver goods to you at extremely low prices under terms and agreements dictated by your monopoly of the market. Unsurprisingly, those pressures are then exerted downwards on those that actually grow, pick, pack and deliver the food through low wages, long hours, and piss-poor conditions of work.

The Telegraph(27 April 2008) disclosed one of the many tactics used by supermarkets, coined The Flaming Lamborghini. ‘Supermarkets ship in young, hungry graduates in their mid-20s. They send them to be trained to learn a particular buying strategy and then send them out to do battle with the suppliers. Pay is linked to performance. Squeeze another half penny out of the supplier and the buyer's pay will rise. . . Buyers' lives are often short-lived and they are shuttled from pet food to beer to toiletries. The goal is to ensure they never build up close relationships which might tempt them to treat suppliers more kindly.

The Co-operative Group stands at number five in food retailing controlling 9 per cent of the UK market. Its slogan is: ‘Good with food’. The question is: good for whom? Beginning with inputs like seeds, to fertilisers and agricultural machinery, to the processing, transportation, and finally the retailing of food, each area is now dominated by a handful of extremely powerful multinational corporations. Over the past 20 years, through a series of deals and corporate takeovers, names like Monsanto, Syngenta, Unilever, Diageo, Nestle, Kellogg’s, through to Sainsbury’s, Asda and Tesco have gained control of their respective market sectors, thereby escalating their profits to once unthought-of levels. This process is the embodiment of capitalism. Dynamic—fully tuned and optimised—generating a brimming pot for division amongst a faceless class of parasites.

David Cameron considered that the horsemeat saga was a 'very shocking story’. A so-called ‘fraud’ in a global system built and maintained on fraud. Here’s another story: UNESCO acknowledges that there is ‘Abundant supplies of food for 100 per cent of humanity’. But over 16 million people are dying from starvation and 800 million are seriously malnourished, whilst billions live a hand to mouth existence - and all too often very little making it to the mouth. This ‘other’ story will continue to run until a majority of us adopt the slogan: One World—One People. Only then will we gain control of what we produce.

Andy Matthews