Editorial: Ninety nine percent of politics is crap! (1995)

Editorial from the December 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Millions of people today are angry. Angry that nobody listens as they continue their daily struggle simply to exist. Angry that the professional politicians who seek their votes once every few years seem more concerned with their own welfare, and that of those like them, than with the lives of ordinary people. Angry that while the problems that beset society get worse, nobody does anything about it. The politicians make promises, of course—but then again, they always did.

Disillusionment with the major parties is rife. Who really believes that a Labour government would be any better than a Tory one? People may hate the Conservatives and all they stand for, but they have little confidence in Labour either. They remember all too well that the last Labour government saw unemployment double, inflation take off, and real cuts in social services expenditure together with falling real wages.

The Labour Party, like the Tories and Liberal Democrats, don't really listen and certainly don't learn. They offer nothing today which they haven't offered before in some shape or form, and which only brought failure in the past. No matter which party or parties have been in office, the problems have continued—class division, unemployment, poverty, environmental destruction, war and a whole host more.

The truth is that on their past records alone none of the political parties which dominate politics today deserve the support of the majority in society who have to work for a living, or exist on benefits. They are all a standing joke. The trouble is that the joke is really on us. For as long as they rule, insecurity of life and today's social problems will continue to exist. This is because the system which puts the wealth and power of the privileged before the needs of the majority will still be intact. In the market economy—whether free market or with state regulation—profits always come first and the interests of wage and salary earners a poor second.

We think that it is time to tell the politicians that enough is enough and that they—and the system they uphold—are not needed any more. A real social democracy, where production is for use not profit and where the opportunity for real democratic participation will exist, is up for grabs if a majority of us want it. Do you want real social change badly enough to want to do something about it? The Socialist Party does—perhaps you owe it to yourself to find out a bit more about us.

Money gets in the way (1983)

From the October 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Arriving from Glasgow Central on the 6.15am train into Euston, I cursed at my second-class seat which was too uncomfortable to sleep on and too boring to sit up in. I had finally nodded off at 3.45, only to be nudged by the ticket collector who, contrary to description, does not collect tickets, like some people collect model soldiers, but walks around the train picking up all the tickets only in order to deposit them in a bin and destroy them. Clearly, the ticket is of no intrinsic value; one does not see the collector rushing to the driver to pass him the precious ticket fuel. Scraps of old paper which to me represent a passport back to London: no money, no ticket; no ticket, no travel. What was that about the freedom of movement which British workers are supposed to be grateful to possess?

Off the train and straight into a queue for a new ticket. My underground trip will last twenty minutes. In less than half an hour I could be where I want to be, but . . . secure barriers obscure my access to the trains. I fumble for the right coins to put in the ticket machines, but fail and fall victim to a twelve minute queue: it takes 60 per cent as long to buy my way on to the train as to travel on it. I mention to the man in front of me how strange it is that the public are supposed to own the railways yet we have to pay to travel on them. Imagine if you owned a bicycle and you had to pay the government every time you had a ride on it — then it would not be yours, just as the "public services" do not belong to the public. The man in front of me asks me something in Swedish (the way to Pimlico, I think), and as I search my briefcase for an SPGB Swedish introductory leaflet I notice an old man sitting on the floor playing a mouth organ to the tune of his own misery. It is usual to call such men tramps and to hope that they will not come near you. A few travellers threw pennies into his hat, but it was easy to see that money was the disease from which this man was suffering, not the cure. "There's your Victorian values for you" I muttered to the incomprehending Swede, and "Highbury and Islington" I shouted through the glass at the bored-looking London Transport coin collector.

Having exchanged metal for paper I am free to travel. The ticket office could close tomorrow and the trains would still run on time. On the platform I am confronted by an array of wallposter women who offer me everything from the chance to get rich when I'm dead (Life Insurance) to stereo systems which have a different knob for every reason why I can't afford them.

Arrive; throw the indispensable ticket on the floor. I think of my breakfast and reach to my wallet so see how big my appetite is. My stomach presents me with a comprehensive menu, but my wallet is on a diet. Given the choice between chewing into my remaining pound note or exchanging it for some food I decide to give the Queen's head a miss and opt for something tastier.

Sitting in the grubby cafe in Upper Street, Islington, I wonder where all the greedy people are — the ones who opponents of free access seem to know so well. The two Securicor men at the next table, who guard gold and eat the cheapest food, do not appear to be indulging in a banquet of gluttony. I ask the Greek proprietor whether he knew any cases of people eating ten or twenty dinners a day. He wishes that he did — such greed would be good for business. Lack of money prevents many workers from getting enough to eat, but where is the evidence that people with free access to food would eat until they were sick? And the so-called lazy people — where are they? Through the window I see hundreds of wage slaves rushing to work. Apart from the odd yawn, probably inspired by the monotony which is to come for many of them, the men and women in the street seem eager to get to work. How much more eager they would be if their incentive was the knowledge that they were running society for the sole benefit of satisfying human needs, including their own. Over the road a queue is forming outside the busiest shop in the street: the Job Centre. The wasteful scene of a queue of men and women who want to work, but are locked out of productive activity because there is no money to be made in employing them.

I turn to the taller of the Securicor men and mention how much saner it would be to live in a world without money. Spitting small lumps of tea-covered bacon into my face as he speaks, Brother Securicor explains the facts of life:

"We've always had money".

"No, we haven't". Now, this throws him. I point out that money is a relatively new invention, arising out of property society.

"Look mate, money makes the world go round. How would you get things without money?"

"But people starve and go homeless and are refused medical attention in a world of potential abundance simply because they lack money". By now I detect that look in my listener's eye which indicates that he thinks I'm mad or — as I like to think — his imagination is being aroused by the idea of a world of common ownership and democratic control. The questions pour out as if they have been waiting to be asked for years, and the answers are responded to with a nod which represents a uniquely human recognition of rationality. I am definitely getting through to this one. After a while Securicor Two, who has been listening and reading the Sun at the same time, begins to become restless: how dare some loud-mouthed crank, without so much as a degree in economics to his name, sit in a cafe and re-organise the world over breakfast. His mate refuses to desist: his brain has shifted from automatic to self-drive and now there is no stopping him. We discuss all the useless jobs which the money system creates: insurance salesmen, cashiers, ticket collectors, bank staff, moneylenders, accountants, security guards. Then we go on to the problems caused by money: no money and starve; can't pay the rent and you're homeless; nearly every worker on earth suffers in one way or another because what he or she needs is beyond his or her monetary reach. During the course of the conversation Comrade Securicor cursed as he recalled his old friend who had been made an invalid while defending diamonds for some idle parasite. Money is dangerous: one only has to think of the victims of muggings whose faces are slashed for five quid and the victims of legalised mass muggings called wars who die for the patriotic plunder of their masters.

In a society where the earth's resources were owned commonly and controlled democratically — socialism — wealth will not be bought and sold. Envisage a moneyless world community where production is for use and access to the common wealth is the equal right of every human being. My friend in the cafe ponders in this thought and, convinced, for the moment at least, that socialism is worth aiming for, he takes a copy of the Socialist Standard and promises to read every word of it. Then he goes off to waste his day risking his life to secure someone else's money.

So satisfied am I with my success at socialist persuasion that I decide to visit the library until it is time to enjoy and early drink in the Cock Tavern. Standing before the bar my thirst grows as I survey the variety of drinks on offer. "What'll it be?" asks the barman. "Nothing" I reply, suddenly remembering that my wallet had taken the pledge. Money makes the world go round? Well, it's about time we let it go round in the other direction.

Steve Coleman

Letter: 'Socialists and War' (2015)

Letter to the Editors from the February 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors

Recently my daughter brought me from England a copy of the August edition of  the Socialist Standard' with the excellent, moving and very informative articles on 'The Old Lie' –  the First World War. (She got it at the Anarchist Book Fair on 18 October)

I was brought up in an English Communist family in the 40s and 50s'. My parents, like thousands of other outraged party members, left the CP over the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956.

I come from Dartford in Kent but have lived in Colombia since the mid 80s and before that was over a decade on an Irish island off Donegal. I have been militantly active politically all my life since childhood, especially in the Direct Action branches of CND/Committee of 100 (I worked as secretary to Bertrand Russell as a young woman) and the anti-Vietnam war movement.

Are you a specifically pacifist organization? I don't have access to internet out here as I live in a remote mountain region, but once a week am able to send my computer out on the one-and-only 'bus' to our nearest market town (a village) to send and receive post. So unfortunately I can't look you up on a website to find out more about you.

Congratulations to Richard Headicar, Steve Clayton, and 'Ivan' for their shocking and important articles. Disturbing and necessary reading.

JENNY JAMES, Colombia.

REPLY:  

We are not actually a specifically pacifist organisation. We are opposed to war on socialist grounds in that wars today are fought over rival capitalist interests concerning sources of raw materials, trade routes, markets and investment outlets and strategic points and areas to protect these. This is why we say that members of the majority class of those obliged to work for a wage or a salary for a living have no interests at stake in them and so should refuse to take part in the killing and maiming of their fellow workers from some other country.

 We also consider that a socialist majority that has won control of political power democratically should reserve the right to use armed force, if necessary, to deal with any armed resistance to the establishment of socialism by some recalcitrant pro-capitalist minority should this occur. – Editors 

Haringey teach-in (1966)

Party News from the July 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our comrade Grant represented the Haringey (formerly Wood Green and Hornsey) Branch of the Socialist Party of Great Britain at a controversial teach-in on Vietnam, sponsored by Haringey Council, on May 21. The local Tories had refused to take part. "We are not interested in the goings-on of a lot of long haired cranks and loonies", declared one councillor.

Our comrade spoke in opposition to Baron Brockway, Richard Gott, a local CND man, Labour M.P. Norman Atkinson and academics Sean Gervasi and Malcolm Caldwell.

The Socialist speaker was the only dissenting voice as he didn't support the Vietcong. After pointing out that many of those who clamoured for "Peace in Vietnam" in fact wanted a victory for the Vietcong, our speaker went on to say that in the 19th century when capitalism had not yet established itself against feudalism as the dominant world system, Marx had taken sides in wars because he held that the triumph of capitalism over feudalism was necessary for social progress. For over half a century now capitalism had dominated the world and the idea that Socialists should take sides in wars was obsolete. What was going on in Latin America, Asia and Africa was the transition from feudal society to capitalism. Movements like the Vietcong, when victorious, led not to the establishment of a classless society but to the rise of a new ruling class. This had happened in Russia and China where state capitalism existed. Socialists did not support such movements nor did they take sides in the Vietnam war. As far as they were concerned wars would last as long as capitalism and there was no solution to the Vietnam war. The task of Socialists could only be to make more Socialists.

How Not To Do It (1969)

Book Review from the February 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Coup d'État: A Practical Handbook by Edward Luttwak. (Allen Lane, 35s.)

Edward Luttwak is deliberately deadpan about this book. His aim, he says, is to produce something along the same lines as a cookery book which will enable "any layman equipped with enthusiasm—and the right ingredients—to carry out his own coup . . . if, as a result of this book, a greater number of people learn how to carry them out this is merely a step towards democratization of the coup—a fact that all persons of liberal sentiments should applaud."

In fact, the work is a good deal better than his introduction suggests. Although the second half is largely given to a study of the actual mechanics of the coup and the military strategy needed to make it a success, the earlier sections are an absorbing study of the factors which make a coup d'état possible. Much of this is of indirect interest to socialists.

Fortunately, Luttwak does not ruin his analysis by confusing the coup with social revolution. He goes out of his way to stress that the coup is "a seizure of power within the present system". He also recognises that the essential pre-condition for the coup d'état is economic backwardness and the mass political indifference which results from it. Thus, while the December coup in Brazil succeeded because of the lack of political involvement of the mass of peasants and workers, in an advanced industrial country such a seizure of power could only be permanent if it were accepted by the working class. To illustrate this, Luttwak refers to the Gaullist coup of May 1958 in France, which was successful for this reason, and to the parallel attempt by Generals Challe, Salan and others in April 1961. The latter was aborted by the massive resistance of the workers in France.

In the world today every country is to a greater or lesser extent capitalist, having to trim its economy to the world markets—but only in the advanced areas is this achieved thanks to the working class. In the bulk of what is called the "third world" capitalist economies are being developed without any involvement by the mass of the people; except, of course, as beasts of burden—as producers of surplus product. Luttwak has noticed one symptom of this—the fact that, since almost any form of political awareness is confined to a small fraction of the population, the coup d'état comes into its own. On the other hand, in industrialised areas capitalism is maintained precisely because the working class accepts it as the only possible way of running society and uses its votes to express this conviction.

The implication of this for working class intent on capturing political power go deeper than merely exposing the irrelevance of the coup d'état as a strategy for socialists. It means that before socialism can be established the majority of workers must be committed to setting up a new form of society and must have a clear idea of what this involves.

John Crump

Cooking the Books: What is Capitalism Like? (2015)

The Cooking the Books column from the February 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Whatever people think of Russell Brand – and you either like him or you loathe him – he has at least put apologists for capitalism on the defensive. One of these is the owner of a medium-sized business called Ian Baxter who wrote an open letter to Brand in the Times (8 December) under the headline ‘Capitalism is to prosperity what breathing is to life’.

Introducing himself,  he said he was a capitalist: ‘I  invest capital in my business expecting a return. The bigger the better.’ Yes, that is what capitalism is about – investing capital with a view to profit. And a capitalist is someone who lives off profits.

According to Baxter, ‘capitalism is a force for good’. It puts money into the bank accounts of employees. ‘It puts the food on our tables.’  It ‘enabled the world to meet the millennium development goal of halving global poverty by 2015 five years early.’

Capitalist firms do put money into their employees’ bank accounts. But this is not charity. It is payment for something the employees have sold them, namely, their mental and physical energies, their labour-power. It’s not philanthropy either. As Baxter said, firms invest capital ‘expecting a return’. Without the work of employees there would be no returns. In fact, since the only way wealth can be produced is by humans applying their mental and physical energies to materials that originally came from nature, workers create the whole of a firm’s added value, including the return on capital. Their work is the source of profit and that’s why they are employed.

So, you could say that capitalism is to exploitation what breathing is to life.

Capitalism ‘puts the food on our tables’. Presumably he means that, in pursuit of profit, capitalist firms arrange for food to be grown, transported, stored, and sold to us. This is indeed how capitalism works. Food is produced for sale with a view to profit but only to that extent. Capitalism will only put food on your table to the extent that you can pay for it. The more you can afford to pay the more and better the food you will get, and vice versa, the less income you have the less and poorer quality food you will get. And if you’ve no money at all, tough luck. Capitalism will not put any food on your table and you’ll have to starve or rely on charity.

Which brings us to global poverty. We all know that millions of people in the world are starving. After all, we saw all the appeals over Christmas. Less well known is that the world already now produces enough food, if distributed differently, to end starvation, and that the capacity exists to produce much more so that starvation could be ended without needing to take from some to give to others. So, why, if capitalism is so good, are there millions of people who are starving?

The millennium goal of halving world poverty may have been met but if capitalism did this, why did it stop half-way and not end global poverty entirely? We already know the answer:  it is not profitable to grow food, build houses, provide health care or clean water for people who cannot pay for them.

Baxter can’t have it both ways, attributing to capitalism all the good (or non-bad) things that happen under it while ignoring the bad things. In the 20th century capitalism caused two world wars in which millions died, not to mention the lesser wars and slumps.  So, why not ‘capitalism is to war what breathing is to life’? Why not ‘capitalism is to economic crises what breathing is to life’? Why not indeed.

Confessions of a Dorking housewife (1985)

From the October 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

I was born and brought up in the South of England, in an area where the wealth and privilege of the minority of people are fairly easy to see. Like the majority in the area, however, my background was working-class. Unusually, my father was an avid Labour Party supporter and, as a child, I heard many of the arguments against the capitalist system. I was led to believe that the only answer to the basic injuries of capitalism lay in the hands of a Labour government.

In the years of the Wilson governments in the 1960s it became clear to me that Labour was basically no different from the Conservatives, but I had no idea where to find a real alternative to obviously bankrupt ideas. Then I went to Tower Hill one weekday lunchtime in 1967 to listen to the speakers. There, beside Lord Soper and at a greater distance from a man who swallowed fire and swung a long cain around his head at great speed, stood a speaker from the SPGB. It could hardly be called the still small voice as he was highly voluble, attacking fiercely the hecklers who shouted at him.

I found his arguments cogent and the party case was, in my view, based on sound commonsense. His words were particularly interesting to someone who had been waiting in vain for the Labour Party to tackle the multifarious problems thrown up by capitalist society: poverty, war, racism, famine, industrial relations, unemployment, drug-taking, disease — the list is endless. It is a widely held view that young people are often "left wing" but as they grow older (and by implication, more sensible) they move inevitably towards the "centre" then often on to the "right wing" of the political spectrum. However, if you understand the arguments of the SPGB you are unlikely to move anywhere else.

My experience of work and motherhood has taught me more about a woman's place in capitalism and its intrinsic conflicts and difficulties. So as my life goes on I want to work just as urgently for a socialist world where we can all share the better life. Why don't you join the struggle with us?

Juliet Jeffreys 

Marx and the Sunday Times (1963)

From the November 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some readers of the George Schwartz column in the Sunday Times of September 15th will have been surprised to see a headline “But Marx didn’t say so” and still more surprised at the opening paragraph:

“The process of enlightenment goes on apace, and at such a pace that one is apt to be bedazzled. I say this somewhat ruefully because an article in the current number of the Economica on “Marxian Value Reconsidered” almost persuades me to become a Marxian.”

Schwartz quoted extensively from the article in question to show, among other things, that Marx never believed capitalism would collapse through breakdown in a crisis; on the contrary, as Marx himself put it: “There are no permanent crises,” and that Marx did not accept a theory of general over-production.

“The trouble arises,” says Schwartz, in his paraphrase of Marx, “because the economy does not progress evenly. The very dynamism of capitalist enterprise brings about miscalculations and disproportionalities. The respective equilibriums of the various lines of production are constantly being disturbed and the conflict periodically leads to a crises which necessitates a transformation of the system.”

At this point Mr. Schwartz draws back from his passing feeling of affinity with Marx and offers to discuss amicably with the ghost of Karl the problem of seeking corrective action for capitalism’s maladjustments.

The article from which Schwartz quotes is by Thomas Sowell of Rutgers University USA, and in the August issue of Economica (London School of Economics, 10s) Sowell sets out to explain (with numerous quotations and references to sources) the meaning of Marx’s law of value and its place in the general framework of his analysis of capitalism, and to show how Marx’s approach to economics differed from that of other economists. Sowell also examines Marx’s views on crises and disposes of some common misconceptions-to the surprise of Mr. Schwartz. It may surprise both Sowell and Schwartz to know that recognition of the wrongness of the “collapse” theories is not new for the SPGB. In the 1932 crisis, for example, in a short pamphlet “Why capitalism will not collapse,” earlier crises were examined and the conclusion drawn:

. . . there is no simple way out of capitalism by leaving the system to collapse of its own accord. Until a sufficient number of workers are prepared to organize politically for the conscious purpose of ending capitalism, that system will stagger on indefinitely from one crisis to another.

At that time leaders of the ILP and the Communist Party were hysterically proclaiming the imminent collapse of capitalism.

Edgar Hardcastle

Party News (1981)

Party News from the September 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

To relieve the awful boredom of the day of the Great Yawn, Wednesday 29 July, members of Glasgow branch of the SPGB arranged an outdoor meeting at our regular venue, Royal Exchange Square, under the title, "The Royal Wedding—Who Cares?—We Don't!"

While the majority of the audience were sane people seeking escape from the dose of undiluted royal nuptials poured out by press, radio and TV, unfortunately there was also present a sick but sizeable minority of "loyalists". The members of this latter group, although obviously present as an organised gang, were either too shy or ashamed to say which organisation they belonged to or, to judge by their behaviour, which institution they had escaped from. However, their insistence on accompanying our speaker's opening remarks with a tuneless rendition of God Save the Queen, their ignorant assertion that we were catholics, associates of the IRA and "baby-murderers", all provided fairly obvious clues to their provenance; there is surely only one organisation whose members assume that all its opponents are catholics. This undemocratic mob of protestant hooligans, literally howling with rage, spent the next half hour demonstrating their declared intention to break up the meeting.

The most articulate statement expressed was, "What this country really needs is a strong right-wing government that will clear out all the papes and darkies and leave it for the protestants". This of course from one of their intellectual heavyweights who unfortunately must have skipped Sunday- school on the day they were told about the missionaries; otherwise he would have known that just like sone "whiteys", some "darkies" are a bit unclear in unclear in the head and have the misfortune to be protestants too.

During all the chorus of abuse and physical threats the SPGB speaker presented the socialist case firmly but reasonably. His patience was exhausted, however, when the ravers in the audience came down again with another serious attack of the god savers' blues and, in the interest of both good order and musical good taste, he brought the meeting to a close.

This may seem to have been simply another victory for ignorance over reason, but we derive some cheer from the knowledge that the majority of the forty or so people in the audience, having read our poster, wished to know more about our views and had deliberately chosen to attend the meeting rather than waste time at home or in the pub watching the nonsense of the wedding. Most of them remained till the end despite the undemocratic behaviour of the loyalists, whose noise in fact attracted people who might otherwise have passed us by. So, if victory at all, it was not a very famous one, even tinier than that historical non-event that the Orangemen celebrate so noisily when the British summer overheats their brains.

There is a tragedy in the above episode; not the fact that our meeting was briefer than intended, but that ordinary working men, in every other way just like ourselves, sharing our poverty and hardships, should be so blinded by irrational prejudices that they fail to see that it is capitalism, not the pape/protestant/darky/whitey next door, which is the source of their problems and that the only sane solution is socialism, not shooting, assaulting or deporting fellow workers.

There are of course many established institutions in capitalism—the press, radio, TV, schools, universities, churches—part of whose resources are dedicated to reinforcing those prejudices that divide workers. It may seem then that the SPGB is a puny weapon with which to oppose such powerful and manipulative instruments; but what we have going for us is a force much more potent than either our own little organisation or the head-fixing apparatus of the establishment. That is the power of ideas generated by capitalism itself. For no matter how its PR men and women try to dress it up, the system is beyond the control even of the owning class in whose interest it operates and it is in the long run impossible to conceal the anti-social nature of capitalism from the working class, at whose expense and by whose acquiescence alone its continuance is possible.

Campbell McEwen

Editorial: Cost-effective Schooling (1987)

Editorial from the November 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

The "new realism of the enterprise culture", that fashionable phrase from capitalism's shabby intellectual boutique, has been fairly slow to catch on among the nation's professional educators, who are presently suffering a collective hangover from the excessively optimistic and surreal Sixties, when comprehensive schooling, egalitarianism and "letting it all hang out" were in vogue. The incompatibility of these ideals with the needs of modern capitalism has ensured that it has all been stuffed firmly back in again with a vengeance. Not content with cutting educational budgets to the bone, or amputating whole limbs infected with pink irritants like sociology, the government is now adroitly laying at the teacher's door some of society's uglier manifestations, from glue sniffing to granny bashing. And since the natural remedy for such ills is an injection of healthy competition, that nice Mr Baker stayed behind after school one day and wrote a curriculum designed to produce an endless chain of midget entrepreneurs, all constantly tested for quality and equally at hone with isosceles triangles, mating habits of sticklebacks, Shakespeare's sonnets . . . For good measure, parental "choice" is to be extended by fostering greater competition between schools that no self-respecting member of the ruling class would let his char ladies near, let alone any offspring.

The liberal intelligentsia has responded to these measures with indignant shouts of "philistine". Backs against the wall and hands on heads, they argue that the disinterested pursuit of knowledge has long-term economic as well as social benefits for capitalism, that the withdrawal of funds from non-vocational courses is a short-sighted policy and an attack on the traditional values for which higher education, in particular, has always stood. It is a variant on the defence employed by what is called the "arts community", who complain vehemently about cuts in their funding and maintain that investment in "culture" is good for Britain and a boon to the Exchequer, as well as the stamp of a civilised society. Pleading their case in capitalism's terms is unlikely to move those who hold the purse-strings, however, since adjectives such as lean, utilitarian and cheap represent the quintessence of realism in what we are daily reminded is a fiercely competitive world.

In one sense, then, logic is on the side of those who now wield the knife. The main and self-evident function of schooling ("education" is a blatant misnomer) is the sorting out of the young into the social slots they will occupy in adult life. The schooling system is required to become more and more a super-streaming system, constantly shifting its students into channels where their past performance suggests they belong, treating people and knowledge in the way capitalism's technological world treats everything: as if it could be processed. The big lie is that opportunities are equal, that everyone gets on by dependence on their own abilities and will to succeed. If the products of public schools brush shoulders in the City with sons of East End lorry drivers, it is still likely to be as one opens a car door for the other. The best that's wanted for little Johnny or Tracy is a world and class away from the privileged life of the elite who, when they hear the word "culture", simply reach for their cheque books.

What we are not suggesting is that changes in the organisation of schooling in a class society can bring no benefits for the majority, or that the dominant ideology is consciously imposed from above on all social institutions. The ethos and values of capitalism permeate all aspects of our waking lives and a complex network of factors determine whether they are digested whole, chewed over or rejected altogether. An individual teacher may well be concerned with what children learn, but he or she is one face in a world of "right-thinking" people and school systems record only the marks children get. Individuals will differ in their ability, talent and determination in any society, but it is equally obvious that social background and schooling determine whether and how much they will be paid for the sale of their physical or intellectual powers, which in turn will largely determine where they can live, with whom they associate, and the rest of their life style. Exceptions merely confirm the rule.

The selective function of schools implies losers as well as winners and, increasingly, selection is for life; attempts to disguise this reality are destined to failure (comprehensive schools did their poor best and need not try harder). What employers are demanding are precisely the qualities that today's public schools are inculcating - a more technically qualified and disciplined workforce; which is why we are seeing attempts to force state schools to follow in their footsteps, to remove the distinction between education and training, and accept that schooling needs to operate on a more cost-effective basis. All this may not be new, but the difference this time is that the government appears willing to give them more of what they want.

What is not new and cannot change is the essential nature of capitalism. Schools take into compulsory custody millions of innocent children, dull their imaginations as best they can, force them to suck up quantities of secondhand information, qualify some for entry into other institutions, and commit the rest to a lifetime of servitude and hard labour. In a conveyor belt world dominated by competition  they can operate in no other way.

Material World: Greenland - To Modernize or Not? (2015)

The Material World Column from the February 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

For much of human history, capitalism was not humanity's economic system. For 95 percent of human history, primitive communism was the economic system, hunter-gatherer communities without classes, sharing wealth communally. Various pockets of primitive communism still live on around the world and one example is the traditional Inuit communalism. We should, however, think twice about using such a pejorative term as ‘primitive’. How could people last for thousands of years in the most inhospitable climate on Earth if they aren’t geniuses? The Inuit figured out how to turn bones into tools, how to turn skin into warm clothing, how to feed their families for generations. They have learned to adapt to nature which has allowed them to thrive for centuries.

In American Nations, Colin Woodard describes the Inuit culture and lifestyle. Most tribal land in the far north is owned in common under a form of title that prevents it from ever being sold to an individual or exploited in such a way that diminishes its value to future generations. There is no private property, although an individual family has three personal possessions: a tent, coverings and a sled. Everyone is allowed to responsibly use the people’s shared land, but it is thought the height of absurdity that any one person should ‘own’ it. Inuits still hunt, fish and gather and the food plus the implements associated with them are generally regarded as common property. If a hunter kills a seal, it’s handed over to whoever needs it. Villages have communal larders that anyone can access — free of charge or accounting — because food cannot belong to one person. It is the Inuit custom that you should never thank someone for food ‘Up in our country we are human!’ said the hunter. ‘And since we are human we help each other. We don't like to hear anybody say thanks for that. What I get today you may get tomorrow.’

Alliances between non-relatives are formed and maintained through gift giving and the showing of respect. An example of this is the often repeated but rarely understood offering of a man’s wife. It is a form of gift giving where a head of household offers the opportunity of sex with the most valued adult woman of his household. The woman has the power to refuse, in which case respect will be through a different gift. Community ties are strengthened during the winter months, because individuals would not be able to survive the long harsh winter without the help of others. Throughout the winter, there is a continuous series of communal feasts. After large animals are caught, such as whales and walrus, the entire district is invited to the feast. In Labrador, Greenland and throughout the central regions, when the resources of a house have surpassed the ‘normal’ living standards, this wealth must be re-distributed to poorer individuals. If the tribe engages in a commercial enterprise, the proceeds belong to everyone.

Modernisation

Today global warming is unlocking potentially lucrative revenues from natural resources under Greenland's seabed and icecap, which according to international experts is home to large oil and gas deposits as well as other minerals. Do you go on trying to preserve what is left of the old Arctic hunting and fishing culture, although it’s already so damaged and discouraged that it has contributed to the highest suicide rate on the planet (one in five Greenlanders tries to commit suicide at some point in their lives)? Or do you seek salvation in modernisation and economic growth (while keeping your language and what you can of your culture)?

One of the party founders of Inuit Ataqatigiit (Community of the People) has opted for the former. ‘If you want to become rich, it comes at a price,’ says Aqqaluk Lynge who didn't want to pay that price, and under the Inuit Ataqatigiit administration (2009-2013) all mining was banned in Greenland. Apart from the environmental costs of large-scale mining operations, Lynge said, the many thousands of foreign workers they would bring in would have a devastating impact on what is already a very fragile Greenlandic culture.

The Prime Minister who took over in April 2013, Aleqa Hammond of the Siumut (Forward) party, chooses the latter. She thinks modernisation has gone too far to turn back and it is better to gamble on solving the current social problems (like suicide) by enabling everybody to live modern, prosperous lives. The Siumut government has issued more than 120 licences for mining and petro-chemical projects including a huge $2.5 billion open-cast iron-ore mine that would produce 15 million tonnes a year.

Few Greenlandic Inuit have the skills or inclination to acquire senior jobs in all these enterprises, and most will not want the hard, dirty, dangerous jobs of the workers in the mines and on the rigs. The rampant alcoholism and drug use, and the suicides that plague the Greenlanders are unlikely to be cured by throwing money at them as compensation for a life without meaning and the eventual extinction of their communal traditions.

ALJO

Action Replay: The ‘Absurd’ Goalkeeper (2015)

The Action Replay Column from the February 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

In his youth the French writer Albert Camus (1913-1960) played in goal for Racing Universitaire d'Alger (RUA) junior team from 1928 to 1930 (he was born and brought up in Algeria which was then part of France). They won both the North African Champions Cup and the North African Cup twice each in the 1930s. It was the sense of team spirit, fraternity, and common purpose that appealed to him but any aspirations to a career in football disappeared when he contracted tuberculosis when he was seventeen.

During the Second World War Camus joined the French Resistance cell Combat, which published an underground newspaper of the same name. He became the paper's editor in 1943 and continued to edit it after the war until 1947. It was a leftwing paper but critical of the Communist Party. He began to frequent the cafés in the Boulevard Saint-Germain in Paris where Sartre and other French intellectuals used to gather but his criticism of the Communist Party did not win him friends there.

His rejection of the Communist Party's doctrine was strongly expressed in the Rebel published in 1951, a philosophical analysis of rebellion and revolution. This brought about a final split with Sartre. Despite this, Camus has continued to be categorised as an 'existentialist' but he rejected this description and felt that because we lived in an absurd world, he would be better described as an ‘absurdist’

When he was asked in the 1950s by a sports magazine for a few words regarding his time with the RUA, his said that 'what I know most surely about morality and the duty of man I owe to sport and learned it in the RUA'. he was referring to the sort of simplistic morality he wrote about in his early essays, the principle of sticking up for your friends, of valuing bravery and fair-play which still survives in the amateur game.

Kevin

Mutineers (2015)

Book Review from the February 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

'Mutinous Swine'. Past Tense, 2014

This adapted reprint from John Taylor Caldwell’s biography of Guy Aldred Come Dungeons Dark records the story of the resistance of the conscientious objectors in Wandsworth Prison towards the end of the First World War. Thankfully, it is largely devoid of Caldwell’s obsessive hero worship of the disputatious and divisive Aldred, focusing instead on the industrial unionist and ex-SPGBer RM Fox. It is, however, still marred in places by Caldwell’s Strange Misuse of Capital Letters. If the point of the pamphlet is to demonstrate the efficacy of direct action, the prisoners seeking by means such as hunger strikes and refusal to obey prison regulations to obtain concessions, it fails signally. Although direct action can be of use in achieving limited objectives, the results here were minor to say the least, redress being only obtained by the post-war amnesty. Nonetheless, the pamphlet is a good read, as indeed are most publications of the group, and provides a valuable antidote to the 1914-18 blood-and-mud remix currently peddled elsewhere.

Kaz

A conceited Fabian (1990)

Book Review from the June 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialism of Bernard Shaw by Harry Morrison, McFarland, Box 611, Jefferson, NC, USA, 1989.

Some readers may be surprised by the title, particularly if they realise that at no time in his long life did Shaw seem to have grasped the concept of socialism as a classless, moneyless society which has been the object of the Socialist Party throughout its existence. In this work the author, although a lifelong socialist himself, has used the word socialism in a wider sense to include individuals and ideas popularly believed to be socialist.

Recalling that Shaw's involvement in politics began over a hundred years ago, to talk of his "socialism" has a justification which would be absent in the case of those putting forward similar views today. Despite his lack of consistency, and what the author calls "extreme volubility to the point of literary diarrhoea", Shaw was often, through his plays and other works, an effective propagandist against the cruelties and absurdities of the capitalist system. Also, at least in Shaw's earlier years, the panaceas of the left, such as nationalisation, could not be answered convincingly by contrary example, unlike today. Thus most of those who advocated short cuts to socialism were perfectly sincere, had a good understanding of the nature of capitalism, and were often effective propagandists against it. Even Engels, though realising that state capitalism remained capitalism, wrote in Socialism, Utopian and Scientific of the state becoming "the national capitalist", following which the capitalist relationship would "topple over." 

What comes out clearly from this book is Shaw's own conceit, his total inability to accept that the so-called "common working man" could play a constructive part in the establishment and operation of the future society. This inevitably led him to take up a similar position to Lenin who, as is well known to our regular readers, believed that the working class could not rise above a trade union level of consciousness. This trait was shared by many of Shaw's associates in the early days of the Fabian Society, including Sidney and Beatrice Webb. Shaw's elitism led him in due course to support, with some enthusiasm, dictatorships in Russia (after initial doubts, he and the Webbs were "converted" on a visit in 1931), Italy and Germany. This concurrent admiration for both Fascist and "Communist" tyranny in fact showed perfect consistency. This point is emphasised by the details given of Mussolini's years in the so-called Socialist Party of Italy. Shaw's own elitism led him to admire the operation of dictatorships in which the chosen few organise the many and heaven help those foolish enough to kick against the pricks. Shaw did not go so far as to support the Holocaust, but he did support the practice by dictatorships of liquidating active political opponents, as for instance in the preface to his play On the Rocks.

The author tries to determine how much Shaw absorbed of Marx's writings from his personal reading of them. Clearly something stuck, but Shaw was always a hedger of bets. He also appears to have lacked the degree of application required to master Marxist theory. However the main obstacle was again Shaw's conceit, which made it impossible for him to accept the democratic concept that all able-bodied citizens can and must take hold of society and shape it in their own interests.

The last chapters of this readable book deal with Shaw's views on religion, Darwinism and patriotism, followed by the relationship between Marxism, Fabianism and Shaw's views. The question is posed as to whether Shaw was an echo or caricature of Marx. We won't spoil the game by giving the answer, but can offer no prizes for a successful guess.

In an Appendix two articles are reprinted from the pen of Socialist Party member Clifford Allen, these having appeared in the Western Socialist in 1943. The first replies to a review by Shaw of a new edition of Marx's selected works, this review having been published in the Daily Herald that year. The second answers a letter written by Shaw to the Western Socialist in reply to Allen. In this letter, reprinted on pp. 70-71 of this book, Shaw unwittingly summed up the political futility of his long life.

E. C. Edge

World Socialism (2003)

From the December 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are two main reasons why socialism has now to be thought of, and in the future will be organised, on a world scale. First, capitalism is a world system, so the system that will replace it will have to be on a similar scale. Second, any attempt to set up socialism in one country only is doomed to failure.

To elaborate a bit on those reasons, it is clear that capitalism is increasingly a world society. Although it began some five or six centuries ago in a few west European countries, it had already spread in Marx's time around a large part of the globe. Today there is hardly anywhere in the world that is untouched by the profit system. There are vestiges of feudalism, slavery and even tribal society in some places – these may survive (at least in their touristic aspects) for a while. But they are insignificant in terms of power relationships and dominant ideas.

The idea of socialism in one country has been put forward as a more achievable aim than the admittedly more ambitious project of socialism on a world scale. With such a small number of socialists up against the dominant structures and ideas of capitalism, why not concentrate them in one area and give them a better chance of success in at least that area? If capitalism were not such a well-integrated world system, with its ruling-class beneficiaries determined to defend it and its working-class supporters as yet unwilling to consider any alternative, then something could be said for “socialism in one country”. But that slogan is really no more than a call for reform – attack the tiger one claw at a time and perhaps it will succumb.

Given this, socialists around the world need to communicate with each other and exchange information and ideas about how best to develop the socialist project.

Since the first Socialist Party was established in Britain a hundred years ago, the development of communications technology has proceeded apace. This development has been primarily in the interests of capital – for war and business purposes. But it also enables socialists around the world to be in better touch with each other. A century ago airmail was unknown and international telephones a primitive and expensive luxury. Today socialists are starting to use new communications technology for exchanging ideas.

But the kind of world socialist movement that is needed in the short term is very different from what will be evolved in the longer term. In the longer term it will no longer be just a question of communicating ideas but of an international political organisation linking large-scale socialist parties from all parts of the world, a revival, on a socialist basis (and with a more suitable title), of the International Working Men's Association of Marx's day.

Stan Parker