So Near and Yet So Far. (1913)

From the December 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

On Saturday, November 29th, Capt. G. V. W. Lushington took Winston Churchill up in an aeroplane: on the following Wednesday he was killed. The accident might have happened at a much more opportune moment.

Greasy Pole: Fables And Fabians (2015)

The Greasy Pole Column from the March 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Not much longer now. One of the priorities of the Coalition government was to legislate to introduce fixed term five year parliaments so that the next election would be in May this year. At the time the discussion was about the need for some stability in government to ensure that any presented remedies for the recession would be able to run their course until the country emerged into blissful prosperity. There were of course other reasons – for example to discourage any prospective dissident Lib Dems from causing trouble when their seat on the Front Bench, with its treasured place at the upper reaches of the Greasy Pole and the right to pontificate on the chaotic futility of the efforts to control the vagaries of British capitalism, no longer depended on a particular government being in power.

Miliband

It has not turned out to be like that and the prospects now are for a ‘balanced’ House of Commons where political leaders are under pressure to reveal their present plans to establish a benignly humane society for us to flourish in. Capitalism continues on its vandalistic way while we are subjected to a series of insidious evasions by the party leaders. Ed Miliband, becoming more desperate each day to ward off those in his party who are haplessly impressed by the images recorded by sneak photo sleuths which expose his problems with eating a sandwich or dropping a coin or two to a street beggar, has been spouting the usual style of re-assurances on issues such as British capitalism's financial crisis, immigration and the like. Labour's back room strategists have worked hard to establish the delusion that these matters should be of serious concern to the voters. Which means that Miliband must pose as a leader who has the power and talent to deal with them.

National Health

And then, of similar anxiety, there is the National Health Service which is daily revealed as inadequate for anyone who is unable to afford treatment in some lavishly costly clinic. Miliband has seen the reports of problems in Accident and Emergency departments and on the wards and in GP surgeries. So he has promised that a Labour government will flood the service with doctors and nurses and GPs all of which, he says, will be driven by '...care, compassion and co-operation, not competition, fragmentation and privatisation'. Such alliteration may disguise the fact that a former Labour government began restricting the NHS on the grounds that it was being misused by hordes of hypochondriac cheats. On similarly shaky ground is David Cameron who has been promoting the false notion that the level of tax should be of concern to those who depend for their living on selling their labour power for a wage. There is, he assures us, an '...economic, moral and practical case' for lower taxes which a Tory government will be sure to apply, because '...it is people's money not government's money and we should leave them with as much to spend as we can rather than frittering it away on wasteful government projects'. But, like Miliband, Cameron is ignoring a vital reality; his government has worked devotedly to hold down 'peoples' money' as wages and to dis-empower any organisation such as a trade union which resists that policy.

Fabian Opinion

Emerging from the background, the Fabian Society recently offered a paper – In It Together – designed to provide some constructive advice to the Labour leadership: 'A Labour government is going to need all the help it can get to achieve its social mission and so needs business as an ally, not an enemy. Rather than seeing markets as needing regulation to prevent them being socially destructive, the left needs a greater focus on how they can be helped to create social good . . . What matters most is for Labour to engage business in a dialogue and then 'co-produce' a set of solutions that can achieve its vision of a more responsible capitalism . . . (but) Simply put, business doesn't trust Labour.’ This argument, apart from anything else, does not fit in with the behaviour of the last Labour government under Tony Blair (who has since shown us how advantageous a 'dialogue' with 'business' can be) and its attacks on our standards of survival as a discipline favoured by ex-ministers like Alan Milburn – now approved by the Fabians as one of the 'New Labour ultras'. In opposition to this, the Guardian on 5 February listed some of the more powerful chiefs in industry who support the return of a Labour government. Like Lord Allen of Global Radio; Graham Cole of the helicopter firm Agusta Westland; Lord Noon the 'leafy meal' millionaire; Martin Littler of Inclusive Technology.

Socialist Candidates

The Fabian Society was formed in January 1884, named after the Roman general Fabius Maximus – 'The Delayer'. It has been associated with a variety of objectives, from its earliest pamphlet which urged '. . .you must wait, as Fabius did most patiently . . . but when the time comes you must strike hard' to the present when its stated aims are rather less military: 'To promote greater equality of power, wealth and opportunities, the value of collective action and public service.' Its reformist objectives have included a national minimum wage, health service and education system, a welfare state. Among its members have been Ramsay MacDonald, Harold Wilson, Tony Benn – and er – Tony Blair who saw Fabians as '...often born relatively wealthy but who were indignant about inequality...They were like the Georges Duhamel character who says “I love humanity; it's just human beings I can't stand”'.

During the coming weeks we shall be subjected to a barrage of propaganda from the parties contesting the general election. We shall hear promises which will never be kept. Excuses for those given in the past which are now forgotten. Already there has been a contribution to this from the Fabian Society – an organisation claiming to be above such campaigning. We will have witnessed it all before, and been angry and frustrated before. The vital exception to this will be the ten candidates of the Socialist Party who will make no promises or attempts to re-write history. Their campaign will be on the single issue of the need to replace the inhuman system of capitalism with a world of freedom.

Ivan

What To Do With Your Vote. (1929)

From the April 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a few short weeks you will again be invited to attend at various schoolrooms and public buildings labelled: "Polling Booth," and there inscribe against the name of some individual or other a little cross. Quite a simple little process, and one which, in our dull world, becomes every now and then invested with an air of excitement and festivity. Some of you will be voting for the first time in your lives, most will have voted at several previous elections. The great majority will feel that the occasion is such a rare one, and the excitement so general, they must, if only from a sense of duty, affix their little cross upon the ballot paper. There will be no lack of advisers. The hoardings will groan beneath ten-feet posters calling your attention to the enormous achievements of the party whose power is expiring, and, in contrast, to the millennium about to dawn if you vote for the other side this time. Each side—so called—will call your attention to the shocking lies now being disseminated by the other. Each will tell you that a vote for the other is a vote for catastrophe. Little windows in shabby streets will break out in a rash of cards, begging the passer-by to "Vote for Spoofem," or some other. Halls and schoolrooms will be hired, street corners and market places annexed, whereat hoarse and fervent orators will pour forth tales of their opponents' rascality and the stained-glass, saintly purity of themselves. The newspapers and the Press generally will join in the national fever, and if report be true, the ether will be exploited by means of the radio. Leather-lunged loud-speakers are to squawk their message from touring vans, and altogether we are in for a hell of a time.

In the face of all this racket and excitement, to ask you to make no use of your vote seems rather feeble, doesn't it? In point of fact, we do not ASK you to do anything. When you try and quietly figure it all out, the feebleness lies in a rather different direction.

In the first place, why all this pother, why this hectic atmosphere, why these repeated emphatic appeals for your vote? Very briefly, it is because they want to GOVERN you. There is a tremendous emphasis on that word "govern." Familiarity has dulled appreciation of its essential meaning to most people, but it is worth pausing just there, and saying the word "govern" over and over again to yourself until it takes on a little flavour if strangeness, and you try and realise what government means. Time was when people were not asked to vote for government. They got it, hard and heavy, and they knew it. And when it hurt too much, rebellion was born, and riot, insurrection and discontent. Now, after generations of struggle, you have gained the right of being asked whom you wish to govern you. But notice, in particular, you are still to be governed. Even the Labour Party promises you a Labour Government. Now, if you still retain enough of the flavour of strangeness about that common word, government, you should ask yourself, "Who are the governors, pray, and who are the governed?" and "Why Government at all?" A critical survey of the world around you should supply you with the answer. The governors are the rich, those who hold the keys to our means of life. The governed are the poor, those who have to hire themselves for wages to the rich and powerful. The rich govern the poor, that is, they keep you in order and stamp upon any sign of revolt or discontent, and by long experience they have found that the way of retaining their power to govern you is by getting your assent to its continuance. So they arrange themselves into two or three groups, whose opinions differ upon trifling administrative details, and represent themselves to you as dire and bitter antagonists and ask you to choose or the other for master. Now, in theory, this is a dangerous proceeding, for you might see through the trick and say "A plague on all your houses." In practice, it has worked out very satisfactorily for the rich, for as they own the Press, the Pulpit, the Schools, the Broadcasting service, and your means of livelihood, any alternative opinion is heavily handicapped. But in spite of all, no monopoly can be complete, or eternal. The little sheet you are now reading is a proof of that.

The system in which a small rich class own the means whereby all live, and a large class have to hire themselves for wages in order to live, is called Capitalism. It is the system in which we are living to-day. The Socialist Party of Great Britain suggests as an alternative that the means of living should be taken away from the small parasitic class at present owning them, and commonly owned and administered by the whole people. That alternative is called Socialism. You will be asked some day to vote for the one or the other. That question will not be asked of you at the next General Election. What you will be asked is: "Do you still want to be governed; do you still believe in Capitalism? If you do, it will not matter to Capitalism whether you put your little cross against the Conservative, the Liberal, or the Labour candidate. They will have secured your voluntary assent to the continuance of Capitalism, and your willing acceptance of the fact of being governed. That is all that matters to them. If, where a Socialist candidate is not running, you write the word "Socialism" across your ballot paper, your vote is spoiled. True, but at any rate you have not signified that you are a willing supporter of Capitalism. The best thing, of course, is to join the Socialist Party and see that at the next General Election there is no need to spoil any ballot paper.

W. T. Hopley 

Cooking the Books: This ‘Anti-business’ Business (2015)

The Cooking the Books Column from the March 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

It’s quite amusing really. The Labour Party has long since given up any opposition to capitalism and its profit-making and merely offers itself as an alternative manager of the capitalist state and economy in Britain.

Yet some capitalists and their mouthpieces in the media don’t believe them – or feign not to – and accuse Labour of being ‘anti-business’. Labour politicians protest. And grovel, the worst example to date being the historian Tristram Hunt, their spokesperson on education, who wrote a rather disparaging biography of Engels. Under the headline ‘We’re furiously pro-business, Labour MP tells private sector’, the Times (9 February) reported him as saying.

‘I’m enormously enthusiastic about businessmen and women making money, delivering shareholder return, about making profit’ (Times, 9 January).

There is a certain logic in this position. If you accept capitalism and that productive activity under it is driven by the need for firms to make a profit, then you have to accept that they should, and not do anything that might discourage or endanger this. Otherwise you will provoke an economic downturn.

Writing on this issue in the Times (5 February) their financial editor, Patrick Hosking, claimed:

‘It has taken decades to establish an enterprise culture in Britain. There are now only small pockets in Britain that refuse to acknowledge that profits are a good thing.’

This may well be the case since most people, unfortunately, think there is no practicable alternative to capitalism and understand that if you have capitalism you have to have profits, otherwise the system won’t work. The opposite is true as well of course. If you are against profits you should be against capitalism. Not like some reformists who shout ‘tax the rich and their profits’ and then expect the capitalist system to function normally.

Not that anything Labour is saying or proposing to do is anti-business or anti-profit. Miliband might have been unable to disguise his boredom when meeting capitalists but the most Labour has done is to criticise and say that they will put a stop to the practices that some capitalists and capitalist firms have engaged in to boost their profits such as tax-dodging, customer-cheating, supplier-bullying and market-rigging. This is to go no further than Ted Heath, when as Tory Prime Minister in 1973 he labelled one action of the businessman Tiny Rowland as the ‘unacceptable face of capitalism’.

Which of course is not a criticism of capitalism as such but merely of the way some capitalists behave, a criticism that can be shared by other capitalists such as that of tax-dodging capitalist firms by other firms which don’t have the chance to do this and so have to pay more tax. Though Hunt, with his enthusiasm for profits not just as the driving force of the capitalist economy but also as ‘delivering shareholder return,’ can’t logically complain about this because the various sharp practices that capitalist firms engage in do increase ‘shareholder return’, at least in the short run,  and are engaged in precisely to do this.

That the Labour Party is in any way anti-capitalist, anti-business or anti-profit is a joke as the capitalists who are raising this spectre must know full well.  Labour has thoroughly absorbed enterprise culture.

Focus on Anti-Semitism (1959)

Book Review from the January 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Focus, by Arthur Miller (Ace Books, 2s. 6d.), is that brilliant playwright's first and only essay in the novel form. As with all his work, it is an impassioned tirade against a social evil—in this case, race prejudice.

Although the novel is ostensibly concerned with anti-semitism, the moral is clearly intended to apply to all forms of racial intolerance, as where the victim of anti-semitic bullying refuses to help a Puerto Rican woman who screams for help in the night. "She could take care of herself because she was used to this sort of treatment Puerto Ricans were, he knew."

Its principal character is Lawrence Newman, a less-than-ordinary middle-aged American who looks like a Jew, though he isn't one, and is ill-treated for it. Weak, conventional and wife-ridden, he has, however, a tiny spark of dignity and character; the story is of the development of this spark.

It leads from Newman's own persecution, to his talks with the victimized Jewish shopkeeper, down to the time when he finds himself side by side with Jews, fighting off thugs who are intent on beating them up. At this moment he throws off his fears and prejudices; he is able to ignore his wife's pleas to knuckle under, and at least to recognise his kinship with his fellow humans, Jew and gentile, black and white.

The story is told in a compelling and convincing manner, and although one feels the burning indignation of the Jew writing about the wrongs suffered by Jewry, the style never lapses into crudity, over-statement, or tub-thumping. The reader, too, feels indignation building up within him as Newman is subjected to one cruel indignity after another.

If this is an accurate picture of anti-semitism in American, and there is no reason to doubt that it is, then we have a long way to go before society finally eradicates the festering sores of race-hatred, along with its other problems.

Miller vividly portrays the poverty of thought and lack of understanding of those who would blame their poverty and drab lives on a racial minority, and seek to defend their "way of life" by anti-social acts. He clearly indicates that it is not they who are to blame, but rather the nature of the society which throws up these antagonisms and produces the racketeers and demagogues who foster race hatred to serve their own ends. This is not to say that Miller appreciates the revolutionary nature of the social change required to solve this problem, along with all other social problems.

Nevertheless, it is refreshing to find, among the flood of paper-backed detective stories, travelogues and war adventures, a book of this kind which deals in a serious way with a serious problem, and at the same time provides an absorbing story of real people in a situation which we can recognise as being true.

Albert Ivimey

Let Us End It. (1917)

From the August 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

As I write we enter the fourth year of the war. Arm-chair warriors of every nationality, who support the rigors of the struggle with such remarkable courage and endurance, are exchanging greetings and reaffirming their will and determination to stick it as long as they can find men to fight for them - or women for that matter when the supply of men no longer meets the military needs. Politicians are made and broken in the service of Mars; millions are piled on millions in the tale of the cost of it in treasure; the country bristles with hospitals crowded and overcrowded with the poor wreckage that testifies to the cost of it in blood and suffering; no family in the land is there but sorrows for cruel losses, and goes about its daily business in the gloom of catastrophies to come, but the war drags on.

With each succeeding season the strife is waged on a lower plane. One after another more brutal methods of slaughter are adopted, by both sides alike. One by one the scruples which have survived all other wars between civilised peoples are found to be impediments, and are abandoned. The British "gas" which was not going to be of a poisonous nature, is now found to accomplish awful things, and not the "huns" only go into battle under orders to take no prisoners. Indeed, we have advanced beyond this, and if persistent tales are to be believed, on one side at least which shall be nameless, prisoners of war—men whose surrender has actually been accepted—are driven into dug-outs and bombed to death!

The war seems now to have settled down to a definite policy of "manning" on the actual fronts—a policy of man for man, with the hope of a favourable balance in the long run. It is openly and repeatedly stated by people of importance that the business of the war from the allied point of view is to kill Germans, and no doubt corresponding views obtain on the other side. The logical result of this must be that the collapse must come from that source of all armies, the civil population. Much as has been said about the Russian crumple having robbed the Allies of victory this year, there is not the slightest indication that this is the fact. The evidence all points to the limits of any push being the effective range of its artillery mass, even in the face of comparatively weak numbers. If so, then attrition is the only process on the battlefield, a process which must become slower as the cost mounts up, and the only result of the entry of America into the conflict can be to prolong this agonising progress to the long-predicted stalemate.

With such a gloomy prospect facing them, it is full time the people of the world rose to the occasion. The international authors of the war, unable to reach a settlement through their usual instrument, militarism, find themselves ever more helpless in the toils of the child of their own loins. The more they have spent in this bid for supremacy in the world markets, the greater is the force compelling them to persist in their efforts to retrieve their fortunes by victory or stall off ruin by averting defeat. These cannot stop so long as they can find the men to fight for them, and keep their civil populations at work for them and acquiescent in their sordid and awful aims.

Are we, then, to drift on through further years of torture? Are we to go on losing our loved ones—our sons, our brothers, our comrades, our friends—in order that statesmen may splutter about teaching the Germans to say "reparation"? What is reparation to the toiling masses? What reparation can there be for the dead? Can they be made good by sacrificing still other lives to the fetich "reparation"? No! There is only reparation for property, and what concern is that of the propertyless?

Along the road our masters are driving us lies ruin. It is for the working class of the world to save civilisation from the threatening destruction. Let us, then, make ourselves heard ere it is too late. There is plenty of room in the world for all workers: it is the parasites that crowd us. Let us have done with them.

A. E. Jacomb

Pathfinders: Capitalism in its Element (2015)

The Pathfinders Column from the March 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Remember how boring chemistry lessons were at school? To most kids there is something deeply unsexy about learning the properties of the elements, especially if, as is not uncommon in school, the deeper logic of it all has somehow passed them by. This is a shame, because elements are very curious things, with quite unique ‘personalities’. Some are snooty and aloof, never deigning to notice anyone else. Some are content, rarely getting worked up over anything, little interested in being a team player or going out on dates. Some are looking for that special someone while others can’t stand being alone and will run off with just about anybody. Some of these will fizz and pop in your sink. Some will take out your sink. One or two could take out your kitchen.

Still, you could easily get through the rest of your life successfully without knowing much about the Periodic Table, even after watching Breaking Bad. You probably know that iron is the only metal that rusts, that copper is the best conductor (actually silver is better), that lead and mercury are bad for you, that helium makes your voice squeak, that aluminium is used for saucepans (and might be associated with Alzheimer's Disease). You probably don’t know that arsenic was once known as ‘inheritance powder’ because it was untraceable and therefore the poison of choice for ruthless heirs in a hurry to collect. Or that chemistry students like playing ‘disappearing coffee spoon’ jokes on each other using spoons made of gallium, which melts instantly in your hand or in your coffee. It’s not toxic, but just for laughs it turns your skin brown (The Periodic Table, Paul Parsons & Gail Dixon, Quercus, 2013).

Elements are able to change into other elements, often by natural processes, a fact which fascinated alchemists. When you combine some elements, you don’t just get the sum of their properties added together, you often get completely new and different properties not present in the originals. This oddity lay behind the prehistoric technological revolution of the Bronze Age. Copper and tin are both soft metals. Neither is any good for making edged weapons. But someone must have discovered, by accident presumably, that melting them together creates an alloy – bronze – which is much harder than either, and makes a good sword. It becomes harder still if you throw in some ‘inheritance powder’.

The dull subject of chemistry is of course behind most of the technological revolutions of the past century, as more properties and combinations have been discovered. It’s also behind a lot of the politics of capitalism. Think gold. Think carbon. Think  cobalt, a ‘conflict element’ used in gas turbines and jet engines, and mined in the ‘Democratic’ Republic of Congo. Think phosphorus, used globally in fertilisers, which aside from causing run-off resulting in dead fish and huge and revolting algal blooms, is virtually monopolised by Morocco, which invaded Western Sahara for more of the stuff, causing a war (BBC Online, 8 November 2013).

Not so long ago we were just using the basic, well-known elements, though even these came with interesting properties that are still being developed. Aluminium oxide produces sapphire crystals, industrially grown to the size of buckets and now made into bullet-proof glass for VIP limousines. And that’s nothing compared to the cornucopia of elements that goes into a smart phone. As Andy Ridgway eloquently puts it, ‘like Michelin-starred chefs, we are combining this material menu in increasingly exotic ways’ (New Scientist, 14 February).

The problem is getting reliable supplies in a world of competing economic blocs hell-bent on screwing each other over. In 2011 there was a global panic when China, producer of around 90 percent of rare-earth metals, decided to cut exports by forty percent. Prices, predictably, went through the roof, and doom-merchants everywhere bewailed the imminent collapse of civilisation.

What actually happened was that the crisis went away by itself – solved by capitalism’s adaptive way of working. Rare-earth elements are only rare in relation to abundant elements, but not in absolute terms. China held a monopoly only because they were the cheapest producers and other countries had shut down their mining operations. Once China cut the supply, new mines, or old ones recommissioned, magically opened up in places like California and Greenland as investors saw a profit to be made. In fact over 200 mining companies got in on the act with the result that rare-earth elements are not only not rare anymore, the price is in danger of collapsing just like it did with oil, and the mining companies are now struggling to extract a decent return.

For socialists this is interesting because it demonstrates something we are always pointing out, that capitalism is not likely to collapse of its own accord, because it has a knack of working around problems. It’s not just supply that adapts. Manufacturers needing rare elements and facing high prices for them soon figured out solutions that designed out those particular elements.

A peculiar aspect of the recycling industry, pointed out by Ridgway, is that as recycling increases, these same rare elements may become rare again. Many elements are found together in the same ores, meaning that when demand for the cost-bearing element declines through recycling, the other ‘freebie’ elements don’t get extracted. Worse, they often can’t be recycled because they are used in such tiny amounts that they are not economic to reclaim. Worse still, they are often blended together in alloys like a baked cake from which the ingredients cannot feasibly be re-extracted.

What is more worrying is that rare elements tend to involve more pollution both at the extraction end and the disposal end than other elements. In the West, most electronic devices are not recycled but left to gather dust as new models come out, or they’re dumped. Even when electronic waste is collected as per regulation, that’s not the end of the story. As New Scientist’s editorial points out, ‘Interpol estimates that one in three shipping containers leaving Europe is packed with e-waste destined for illegal dumping in the developing world. This results in major health hazards to people doing the dirty work of recycling’ (14 February).

It’s easy for anti-capitalists, and socialists too, to get into the habit of seeing the worst in every single thing that goes wrong, forgetting that capitalism is quite good at getting itself out of a lot of scrapes. But at what cost to humans, in the long run? Four million people died in Congo’s civil war, which was largely about control of valuable rare elements destined for use in our must-have gadgets. In wider terms, capitalism’s exploitation of the Periodic Table involves a level of human exploitation that leaves nearly all of us impoverished and enslaved, while making just a handful of ‘Nobles’ the only winners. That’s a problem that capitalism, by its very nature, has no solution for. Whatever short-term supply crises it might adapt its way out of, it can’t transform its own nature and magically, in the way elements are able to do, change itself into a different system. For that you need not natural processes but large-scale human intervention.

PJS

Proper Gander: Bitter Pill (2015)

The Proper Gander Column from the March 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the 1972 science fiction film Solaris, a group of cosmonauts discover an unusual planet, but are unable to comprehend its alien nature or its psychological effects on themselves. Adam Curtis, in his latest documentary, Bitter Lake, argues that this is analogous to American, British and Soviet involvement in Afghanistan since the Second World War.

The programme’s title comes from the venue on the Suez Canal for a meeting between President Roosevelt and Saudi Arabian King Abdulaziz in 1945. Curtis says that this was a starting point for the ongoing complicated power struggles in the Middle East. His focus is on Afghanistan, where both the Soviets and the West optimistically and naively tried to implement their brands of capitalism without understanding how the local culture and political economy reacted. The result was not only upheaval and bloodshed, but also growing doubts about the efficacy of both variants of capitalism.

Recent official accounts have repackaged events in Afghanistan as a conflict between ‘good’ and ‘evil’. Terrorists have provided a convenient archetype of ‘evil’, which draws attention away from how actions by western forces helped create the current situation. Western influences brought violence and instability to the people of Afghanistan, who in some cases turned to an ideology ostensibly opposed to western values: fundamentalist interpretations of Islam. American and European military and economic involvement fuelled jihadism, which in turn fuelled more western involvement, creating a feedback loop. When politicians simplify all this as a battle between ‘good’ and ‘evil’, they are disguising the real messy conflict between ideological, political and economic forces. None of this has benefited the majority, as grim footage of bombed-out cities proves.

Curtis explains in his blog that producing the documentary for BBC iPlayer means that he ‘isn’t restrained by the rigid formats and schedules of network television’. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine his 136-minute polemic fitting in with the BBC’s other output. Between the brief packets of narration and captions are scenes of army patrols, shootings and explosions, alongside clips from sources as diverse as Carry On Up The Khyber and Blue Peter, as well as Solaris. This unconventional style suits the imaginative, perceptive arguments Curtis makes.

Mike Foster

Why I Wouldn’t Make a Good MP (2015)

From the March 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

On 8 February Mike Foster, the Socialist Party candidate for Oxford West & Abingdon was invited to address a group of electors in Oxford. Here is what he said.

Thank you all for taking the time to come along this evening to hear why I wouldn’t make a very good MP. Definitely don’t put a cross in the box for the Socialist Party of Great Britain if you somehow come to the conclusion that I would play the Westminster game for the benefit of everyone. Because I couldn’t, even if I tried. No-one can. The state, and the very way that our society is put together, can’t be made to work in the interests of the vast majority of people. MPs who start out with good intentions about reforms and representing their constituents soon get stifled by the cumbersome bureaucracy and made to follow vested interests or the dictates of the elite. MPs who don’t start out with good intentions probably have an easier job.

If you vote for the Socialist Party, you wouldn’t be voting to put me in that position, thankfully. Instead, you’d be making the point that the whole system which we live under has to be replaced.

Capitalism

We would say that to aim for a better world, we first have to understand how our present society is arranged. For the last few hundred years, society has been divided into just two main groups, or classes. There’s the overwhelming majority of us –well over 90 percent – who don’t own much in the big scheme of things and can only get what we can afford through our wages, savings or state subsidies. If we’re able to find employment, we get our money by selling our time and our abilities to companies and organisations. These same companies and organisations then sell the services we run and the products we make back to us. But collectively, we don’t get back all that we put in. It’s a lop-sided arrangement. All the economic clout is with the corporations and landowners, owned by a tiny minority of people, possibly around 5 percent. Owning the means of production allows them to cream off a profit or a surplus for themselves, and they do this by exploiting the rest of us. Their economic power is backed up by political power. The state is there to try and manage the status quo, and protect the interests of those with all the wealth. This doesn’t mean that they have control over the economy, though. Market forces fluctuate between growth and slump regardless of what politicians and corporate strategists want. Instead, they’re more likely to be playing catch-up and trying to keep things financially viable in a shaky economy. It’s like being on a fishing boat on a choppy sea, struggling to stay afloat while the boat’s owner, Captain Birdseye, relaxes on a desert island.

This arrangement leads to massive inequalities in wealth, not just within this country, but across the globe. Goods and services only go to those who can afford them, not to those who need them. Those who can’t afford the basics risk falling into a lifestyle of poverty it’s hard to escape from. Living in an unequal world where everything is rationed creates divisions between us, leading to prejudice and discrimination. Even those of us with a reasonable standard of living never have enough real involvement or sense of ownership in where we work and live. Although we’ve all got our own role in making society tick along, we’re never really satisfied with it. We often feel powerless to influence what really matters to us. We end up stuck in unfulfilling jobs, stressed about whether we can afford to pay the bills, or frustrated by our lack of independence.

Reform or Revolution

Other political parties support the basic way society is structured, or just assume it’s the only way things can be. They would say that it can be improved from within, by changes to the law, or finding more funding for public services. Reforms or increased public spending may help some people in the short-term. But they only last as long as they’re financially viable or politically acceptable. A reform has to fit in with the economy and the political climate, which run in the interests of the elite. The needs and wishes of the vast majority of people aren’t as important.

People have been campaigning for higher wages or increased funding for the NHS for decades, without long-lasting, satisfactory resolutions ever being found. It’s the same with campaigns to protect the environment. Concerns about reducing pollution or preserving wildlife tend to be over-ruled when there’s money to be made. Our society treats the environment as a commodity, as something to be exploited to make a profit. Whereas surely the environment should be treated as a precious resource which shouldn’t be squandered? The same problems keep resurfacing again and again: funding shortages, low pay, climate change, terrorism, war, famine. This shows that they haven’t been addressed at their cause.

Socialism

We would say that to solve the problems in society, we have to change the way society is structured. This means going from our world where the means to produce and distribute wealth are owned by a minority, to one where those resources and facilities are owned by everyone in common. Then, goods would be produced and services would be run directly for anyone who wants them, without the dictates of the economic market. Industries and services would be run just to satisfy people’s needs and wants. This doesn’t mean that resources would be squandered. Our present society is much more wasteful, not only in its exploitation of the environment, but also in the effort and energy used up by the bureaucracy of pushing money around. The new world we advocate would be able to manage our natural resources in a sustainable way, as the waste and short-term profitability which lead to environmental damage wouldn’t be there.

All this could only be achieved by fundamentally changing the way society is organised, a revolution. The kind of revolution we want is one which involves the vast majority of people across the world. Every country now is part of an integrated global economy and class structure. So, people across the world would have to want to change society. The only legitimate and practical way this could be achieved is by organising equally and democratically. This means voluntary, creative work, with decisions and responsibilities agreed through everyone having an equal say. This would mean a much broader and more inclusive use of democracy than we’re used to today. Different democratic organisations or procedures would apply in different circumstances. This doesn’t mean having leaders or groups with more authority than others.

The kind of society we aim for is reflected in the way the Socialist Party is organised. We don’t have leaders or hierarchies, all work is voluntary, and our principles are decided on democratically. This approach has worked for us for over a hundred years. We publish literature and audio-visual materials, hold discussion groups and talks, and we also stand candidates in elections, hence me being here. We do this to use what limited democracy we have in our current society to advocate a better world for everyone.

The Socialist Party will be standing ten candidates in the coming general election, more than we have ever put up before. Half a million leaflets will be distributed in total in the chosen constituencies, which are:

Brighton Kemptown: Jacqueline Shodeke

Brighton Pavilion: Howard Pilott

Canterbury: Robert Cox

Easington: Steve Colborn

Folkestone & Hythe: Andy Thomas

Islington North: Bill Martin

Oxford East: Kevin Parkin

Oxford West & Abingdon: Mike Foster

Swansea West: Brian Johnson

Vauxhall: Danny Lambert

If you wish to help out in the campaign email us at spgb@worldsocialism.org or phone 02076223811 or text (only) 07732831192. We will put you in touch with the local branch election committee.

If you wish to help financially please make any cheque out to “The Socialist Party of Great Britain” and send to 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN. Alternatively, you can use paypal.  Electoral law compels us to check and record any donations of over £50 but not for those of £50 or less.

In the front line (1940)

From the November 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

Tucked securely into the valleys that cut a deep line between the range of mountains lying in ----, somewhere in England, are a number of small towns and villages once included among the distressed or "special" areas.

Until three years ago, industrial activity around this neighbourhood was practically at a standstill and it was the exception rather than the rule to find a working-class household whose adult males were not on the dole.

The standard of living, poor at the best of times, had sunk to an incredibly low level. Tuberculosis and kindred ailments, directly due to malnutrition, were accepted as an inevitable scourge alongside all the other evils commonly associated with extreme poverty.

But about three years ago the stillness of the surrounding countryside was broken by the clanging sound of hammer upon steel, the staccato of the mechanical drill - builders at work.

The men idling at the street corners sniffed the air like dogs picking up a fresh scent - they smelled work.

And they were right. Far-seeing industrialists, certain of the war to come, were looking for places to build factories to accommodate the needs of capitalism at war, districts comparatively safe from air attacks - not to forget a plentiful supply of cheap labour close at hand. And here they believed they had found both.

Happy mortals, to be able to look the landlord straight in the eye when the grim individual calls for rent on Monday morning, not to slouch into the grocery shop with that hang-dog look in your face, because last week's account was still unpaid; no wonder the people's misgivings at the unmistakable signs of coming war - the coat of camouflage paint upon the factory roofs and walls - were stilled and forgotten in the growing realisation that at last work had come again to the idle valley.

The factories have now been in full swing for a considerable time. Textiles, aircraft, paint, sweets - an odd and varying assortment of commodities are being turned out in huge quantities every day. The idlers have gone from the streets, a solitary clerk does duty at the once crowded local labour exchange.

True, the men are not getting the wages they hoped for, but they do not grumble much, for spells of unemployment lasting for ten years or more are not conducive to working-class militancy.

Besides, the women-folk, particularly the younger section, are all working and contributing to the household exchequer.

On Saturdays the shopping centres are literally mobbed with working people. They are charged high prices for shoddy goods, the shops always getting a fat picking out of an industrial boom.

After that there is very little left in the wage packet when the rent and other weekly payments are put by.

The working-class table is still short of many of the vital necessities of life. Fresh milk is rare, instead, tins of condensed milk, which are cheaper and save the use of sugar, expensive at present, do duty.

The price of good fruit is prohibitive for the same reason meat and eggs make only rare appearances.

Because of the terrific strain and worry of work under war conditions, both men and women are heavy smokers, and the outlay on the now so expensive cigarettes makes another deep hole in working-class pockets. Still - there's work again on Monday and another wage packet at the end of the week.

Let me take you into one of these factories so that you can see for yourself how working-class brawn and brains are swelling Britain's war efforts and the profits of the British capitalist class.

This one is engaged on the manufacture of textiles, and the first thing that amazes you is the overwhelming preponderance of young persons, mostly girls. Large numbers of them are between the ages of fourteen and sixteen and they look what they are - children. They work a forty-eight hour week for mere pittances, sums as low as eight and sixpence per week.

Inevitably, with so much unskilled labour, much of the finished material is faulty and then the stern-faced supervisors, all of them elderly and unprepossessing spinsters who stand most of the day with folded arms watching the youngsters like hawks, rate the unfortunate miscreant soundly.

The construction and machinery are of the most modern type, and it seems anomalous for such frail, young bodies to be pitted against the giant structure and faultless precision of the machine tool they operate. Accidents occur and young fingers and hands are badly smashed or ripped, but for the most part young and flexible hands and brains quickly gain control over the intricate mechanism.

The walls are liberally adorned with posters bearing slogans such as "Go To It", "Keep At It", and so on, ad nauseam; even the lavatories are not immune from these harrying catch-cries.

Evidently the owners are deeply patriotic, and so they should be, for is not their whole existence bound up with the preservation of the British Empire? In this particular instance the factory is engaged on Government contracts, and the young sons of the proprietor have been excused from military service on the grounds that they are "directors" of work of National importance. What their directing consists of is not quite clear; they live some hundreds of miles away and are only seen when they arrive by car to make a brief tour of inspection.

This takes place once a month and then they are shown around the place by the manager in a manner reminiscent of royalty.

In conformity with the truly enlightened outlook of the modern capitalist, the welfare side of the employees has not been forgotten. There is a canteen which serves badly cooked and microscopic mid-day meals for sixpence, and there is also a radio, for which all workers are docked a penny a week from their pay.

This instrument is in constant competition with the deafening roar of machinery, but somehow manages to make itself heard above the din now and again.

Modern tunes set everyone singing lustily in accompaniment, but at present everyone is earnestly concentrating on their particular task, whilst a deep, baritone voice is booming out a song about "Ye Yeomen of England", or words to that effect.

Air raid warnings are a frequent occurrence, but no one takes any notice of them, certainly not the management, who would not dream of stopping work for the duration of the "Alerts".

Indeed, it would be interesting to know why air raid warnings are sounded at all, since no provision for shelter has been made in the whole neighbourhood.

Nothing much has happened during the warnings - yet. If something did happen, well that would be "hard lines", bound up with the risk of being in the front line - at the age of fifteen at eight and sixpence per week.

Then you would be informed in the usual BBC sing-song that "there were a few casualties, some of which were fatal".

Overtime is compulsory for all the older employees, and the discipline that prevails is that of the barrack room.

If you show any independence of spirit at all and "answer back" to the humiliating bark of the supervisors or managers you are discharged forthwith.

No concern in the district will entertain direct application for employment - these must be made through the local labour exchange, which transmits particulars of your last employment and reasons for leaving to your prospective employer should the latter require them. This should be sufficient to discourage any sort of defiance in a people already cowed by many years of hunger, and besides, there are always the schools, disgorging hundreds of boys and girls from time to time who can quickly be trained to perform all but the key operations essential to the smooth running of these highly rationalised productive machines.

There is constant pinching of precious minutes from the workers' meal-times; these are already finely cut: three-quarters of an hour for dinner, and a quarter of an hour for tea in the afternoon. There is no break during the morning, when the workers, including the very youngest, have to slave four hours without a break. The manager and the forewomen, of course, are not included among the "rabble" - they must have a "snack" as a relief from their arduous task of watching others work.

Do not make the mistake of thinking that what I am describing are exceptional conditions laid down and carried out contrary to regulations imposed by law or frowned on by Trade Unions.

In fact, all the female employees at least are members of a Trade Union, although the men, to the best of my knowledge, are not allowed by the management to be organised in the same way. In any case, there is no shop steward, and the local Union official, who lives many miles away, is never seen.

And are not the signatures of our big Trade Union bosses on the Government posters, exhorting us to work faster, not to make any trouble, and, above all, DON'T STRIKE! So there is no help to be expected from that quarter.

Some of the older people who remember the last war and the terrific slump that followed are apprehensive. Sometimes, they cannot make up their minds whether they would like the war to end or not. They do not seem to believe the promises of "a new world", "a better heritage", and the rest. They are afraid that when the "piping times of peace" return these factories will be dismantled and the human fodder cast adrift upon the streets and the dole.

And they may be right, unless--!

Perhaps this war will end as neither side has planned. Perhaps even workers as meek and humble as those about which I have been writing will assert themselves as HUMAN BEINGS and, joining hands with their fellows all over the globe, will put an end to this nightmare existence of poverty, tyranny and despair which the rule of capitalism has imposed upon the masses of workers.

Does that day seem far away to you? Then you do not realise the growing force for social change gathering within the present world catastrophe.

Sid Rubin

"Trial" and "Desperate Hours" (1956)

Film Reviews from the March 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

These two films are both thrillers, both are technically excellent, and in both the acting is first-class. They part company, however, in that Desperate Hours sets out merely to entertain, whereas Trial moralises about American law and justice, and about the corruptness of the Communist party. The moralising is rather tortuous, for apparently the film-makers have tried to demonstrate that although the American legal system is harmful and corrupt, the corruptness and ruthlessness of the Communist party is even worse, and that American democracy and freedom always triumph on the end, anyway.

The story is set in a small township in Idaho, where there is a Mexican minority. A young white girl dies of heart-failure while with a Mexican boy on a beach, and the boy is charged with murder on the legal principle that if someone causes a death while committing a felony, then he or she is guilty of murder (the alleged felony in this case being indecent assault).

The hero of the story is an idealistic law lecturer (Glenn Ford) who, threatened with expulsion from the University unless he obtains some first-hand legal experience, is taken under the wing of an unscrupulous Communist lawyer (Arthur Kennedy). The boy's trial becomes a matter of political capital for both the prosecutors and the Communist party, both of whom decide that the boy must die, the first because public opinion demands it, and the other because they need a martyr for their political ends. The tension of the film is admirably built up and the trial scenes are extremely effective, but unfortunately, the ideological inconsistencies of the film make it almost implausible. The film tries to lead one to the conclusion that there is always someone to protect American justice and democracy (although why it should be necessary to protect it is not made clear) and in this case it is left entirely to the young idealist to find a legal loophole after the boy has been found guilty. Apparently this vindicates the crooked politicians and lawyers and American justice generally and, to point the moral of the story, the Communist lawyer gets 30 days in jail for contempt. However, this isn't really good enough for it requires only a moment's thought to appreciate that this situation can rarely arise, of at all, so far as the Communist party is concerned, whereas the occasions when politicians and policemen need a conviction to safeguard their office, must be very common.

The picture that is given of American legal methods is both convincing and disturbing, and the account of how money is raised for "fighting funds" and the like is almost horrifying. In this kind of detail the film is extremely good, but when it ventures out into the realms of politics and morals, it becomes bogged down. The Communist party, of course, gets scathing treatment, and to a certain extent this is justified by their "tactics" but I do not think that this film does give an accurate picture of the way in which the American Communists behave. In particular, the speech of the girl (Dorothy McGuire) in which she recounts how she became caught up in the Communist party, and her subsequent disillusionment, is quite unconvincing and almost laughable.

It may well be that the makers of this film considered that their implied criticisms of American law and justice would be made more acceptable to the film-going public by the addition of the anti-Communist propaganda and the melodramatic ending, but if so, they have defeated their object, because the film gives the satisfying impression that justice has been done, and all is well with America, after all. What the film does not do, of course, is to show the cause of the corruption and the basis of the laws that are enforced, i.e. the protection of private property. But that is rather too much to expect from Hollywood.

Desperate Hours is also a thriller, but this time in the more conventional sense. It has no political axe to grind or moral in the way that Trial has, although it also gives a disturbing insight into American police methods. It is a straightforward story of three escaped convicts who find an ideal hideout by terrorising a household and holding the wife and young son hostage while the other members of the family are forced to carry on their normal lives. Here again the tension is well built up, and the principals (Humphrey Bogart as the leader of the three convicts and Fredric March as the father of the family) give splendid performances.

Surprisingly enough, it is the very fact that there is no social moral to the story that gives this film its biggest advantage over Trial. There is no sermonising and the film sets out merely to entertain, and it certainly fulfils this object as well as any thriller can. The finale of the story is both inevitable and expected, but nevertheless one's interest is held until the end. This film is an adequate demonstration of the way in which thrillers can be made without either the story being trite or the characters unconvincing, and is certainly well worth your shilling or two.

Albert Ivimey 

Material World: Xenophobia in South Africa (2015)

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

As the largest economy on the continent, South Africa has attracted Africans from as far afield as Nigeria and Ethiopia. They come as political refugees or economic migrants, with one goal: a better life. Following the end of apartheid, thousands of Chinese and South Asian foreign nationals have also been living and conducting business across the country. As spokesman for the International Organization for Migration (IOM), Joel Millman has explained it this way:

‘It has been a big haven for gay, lesbian, transgender, intersex migrants who do not feel safe in their own communities. They are often much more open in South Africa than in other places and that also sometimes triggers a backlash. There are quite a lot of migrants who use South Africa as a conduit to get to South America and then on to North America. So –it is quite a mix. There are also a lot of people who just choose to start businesses there because it is a much more vibrant economy than in a place like Ethiopia or Uganda let us say’ (gbcghana.com/1.1977268).

Migrants offer an invitation to rethink the concepts, foundations and boundaries of nation states and national identity. Instead of South Africans thriving on its much-vaunted multicultural identity, foreigners are being depicted as criminals, job snatchers, and parasites. The public perception of being swamped by foreigners is easily mobilised and fuels ‘fears’ that migrants increase employment competition, challenge religious, cultural or ethnic homogeneity and increase crime.  In 2008, more than 60 people were killed in a series of attacks on foreign nationals. In 2011, around 120 were killed. In 2012, 140 foreigners were killed. In the latter half of January 2015 IOM reported nine people have been killed with hundreds of cases of looting from shops mostly owned by Somalis and Bangladeshi.

The IOM has condemned this growing violence against migrants which has now spread beyond Soweto. Violence has erupted in the Northern Cape, Western Cape, and Kwazulu Natal. Cape Town is said to be one of the most unequal in the country with foreigners facing increasing discrimination. Xenophobia is firmly embedded across all strata of South African society but incidents of violence are more likely in impoverished areas where a riot can sometimes be the only way to draw government attention to their deprivation. A tinder-box combination of cramped living conditions and competition for jobs in poverty-stricken districts can create a conflagration of ethnic violence.

Asylum seekers are now being asked to supply pay slips, details of property owned and to reveal how much money they have. It is still not known what this information will be used for, since governments are only supposed to assess applications for asylum based on the level of persecution faced in the home country – not the amount of money in the applicants' bank accounts. In 2013, only two out of 12,000 applicants were granted asylum and the new process for applying for political asylum is very likely part of government's quest to rid South Africa completely of genuine asylum seekers and allow in only those with money.

The biggest problem facing the South African black working class is not foreign-owned ‘spaza’ shops but the fact that profits from industry flow to a tiny elite. Migrant workers are not to blame for the high levels of unemployment. Deporting ‘illegal’ African migrants and asylum seekers and encouraging xenophobia against Asian migrants will not uplift the black working class whose lives seem set to continue to deteriorate unless there is a fundamental change.

The capitalist system is the real enemy in South Africa – so said COSATU trade union general secretary Vavi – and problems such as xenophobia, corruption, gender-based violence, and substance abuse were rooted in economic misery. ‘All of these are rooted in another set of three even bigger demons: unemployment, poverty, and inequality, which provide a fertile breeding ground for all the others,’ he said. So it is even more tragic when he tweeted ‘We condemn xenophobia but the current displacement of Africans even in spaza shops mainly by guys from the East is not politically sustainable’. Vavi knows only too well the solution is not to blame other victims but to understand the cause of poverty and change the system which permits it.

ALJO

Obituary: Albert Grant (1955)

Obituary from the June 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

On Friday morning of April 15th a small number of Party members met at the Marylebone Crematorium to witness the passing of the late Comrade Albert Grant, who died at the age of 55.

Many comrades who knew him for years will be shocked at the sad news.

By coincidence it just happens that I knew him many years ago. We were boys together in Lansbury's old Herald League at the Manor House, Finsbury Park, in the days of the first world war.

Several young people flocked to Lansbury's pacifist banner during 1915-17, and a vigorous and growing propaganda was carried on. With the end of the war the Herald League virtually broke up. The discordant elements, which had sunk differences, gravitated towards the Labour Party, Communist Party, and branches of the I.L.P.

I think I am correct in saying that, out of over 600 members on the books of the North London Herald League in 1918, two joined the S.P.G.B. One was Albert Grant who remained, until the day he died, a staunch, loyal, unwavering revolutionary Socialist.

Well do I remember how much moral courage it required to stand out alone amongst the horde of supporters of reformism of various kinds, whether the romantic variety of the C.P., or the pale pink I.L.P. Comrade Grant, though still a boy, philosophically accepted all the good-natured banter, and a great deal of ill-humoured gibing and epithets ("Impossibilist!" "Small Party of Good Boys") and "jokes" which still pass for wit in similar circles to-day.

Calm, genial, and urbane, he invariably gave as good as he got from those disagreeing with him, without ever losing composure. He was always sure of respect, if not support.

Shortly after the first war, he went to South Africa and was a first-hand witness of the bitter struggles occurring on the Rand before returning home. During the Second World War he was frequently to be found, when circumstances permitted, supporting the Party platform in Hyde Park.

In the Second World War, as the First, he had no doubts whatever about the strength and validity of the Party's attitude.

A clear logical thinker, he could be relied on for sound advice in changing situations. Members of Hampstead were accustomed to seeing him regularly at the Whitestone Road on Sunday mornings in recent years, where his acid comments on the absurdities from opponent's platforms frequently enlivened the scene.

The Party has lost a loyal and dependable member; many members a dear and respected friend.

To his wife and children we extend the hand of sympathy in time of trouble.

Though many may step forward to fill the gap he leaves vacant, to those who knew and loved him, it will never be filled.

Harry Young

Editorial: A Free Lunch, Anyone? (2015)

Editorial from the March 2015 Socialist Standard

‘It’s a free country, isn’t it?’ So we sometimes say, and sometimes believe.  And it is true that the British state permits a relatively high degree of freedom of action and of thought.  To some, such relative freedoms are a source of patriotic pride; to socialists, they are a cynical reminder of the freedoms we do not have.  It depends on what we think freedom is, what we believe we are entitled to as human beings, and how we want to live.

One particular freedom is denied us everywhere within our capitalist world, and that is the freedom to obtain the things we need if we do not have the money to pay for them. ‘Things don’t grow on trees’ we are told as children, unschooled as yet in the rules of our society.  Very quickly we come to understand that ‘free offers’ are not really free, that someone is paying for them, and it is probably us.  And by the time we are worldly-wise we know that ‘there is no such thing as a free lunch’, and when someone offers us something for nothing, we turn suspicious, and wonder what they want in return.

Exchange is so ubiquitous within our world of capitalism that it has come to seem an inevitable and indispensable thing, a part of human nature. Adam Smith thought so in 1776 when he wrote of man’s natural propensity to ‘truck, barter and exchange’.  Yet even within capitalism, exchange is not universal.  We share within our families, giving without expectation of return.  Online communities increasingly share software and information, while sites like ‘Freecycle’ facilitate the free circulation of goods.  We give freely to charities.  We give because we like giving.   And our giving, though it is constrained by capitalism, is perfectly normal for us. In communities of homeless people, such as ‘cardboard city’ that grew up in London’s Southbank in the 1980s, it has been noted that goods obtained by individuals are often freely shared - not bartered or exchanged as we might suppose. When natural disasters strike and we are liberated from the social rules that bind us, people invariably and spontaneously resort to sharing, giving and receiving freely, making sure that goods go to those most in need of them.  Sharing is not only a workable system of relating to one another, but a far more efficient and liberating way to meet the needs of the community.

Giving and getting for free may seem strange or unusual to us with our ingrained habits of thought, and may provoke all kind of anxieties about our ability to meet our needs.  It shouldn’t.  Our systems of property, ownership and exchange are of very recent origin.  Our earliest societies were all sharing communities, not only giving and receiving for free, but ensuring everyone had what they needed.

The huge inequalities of wealth in our capitalist societies, the curtailment of our freedoms and the vast conflicts of competing interests all have their origins in those uniquely human inventions: private property and exchange.  We do not need them.  It’s time to offer ourselves a free lunch.

Where Leadership Leads (2015)

From the February 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Well-known for its stunts, street stalls and student activism, the SWP suffered a setback a couple of years ago which led to an exodus of members. One of them was Ian Birchall, the biographer of the group's founder Tony Cliff and himself a one-time member of the party's leadership. He had been a member of the SWP and its predecessor, the International Socialism group, for over 50 years. Last December he offered some views on his blog as to what went wrong (http://grimanddim.org/political-writings/2014-so-sad/)

When it was formed in the 1950s as a Trotskyist group which recognised that the so-called USSR was state capitalist (as we'd known all along) it was organised on the same lines as many other left-wing groups in this country. Its members were in the Labour Party and portrayed themselves as left-wing Labourites. Then in the 1960s things began to change, they moved out of the Labour Party and in 1968 Cliff decided that it was time to re-organise the group on stricter Leninist lines.

What prompted this was the general strike in France earlier that year. Typically, as a good Trotskyist, Cliff attributed its failure to result in a socialist revolution to the absence of a revolutionary party to lead the striking workers (not that socialist revolution was the real aim of the strike though it was in fact a success from a trade unionist point of view). He concluded that what 'revolutionaries' should do in the light of this was to openly organise themselves along the same lines as Lenin's Bolshevik party which, according to him and Trotskyist legend, had led to a successful socialist revolution (even if in his view it later degenerated into state capitalism).

Lenin had set out his view on how a revolutionary party should be organised in his notorious 1903 pamphlet What is to be Done? In it he proposed a party of full-time professional revolutionaries which should seek to lead the workers and peasants by formulating populist slogans reflecting the level of understanding that 'the masses' were considered capable of reaching.

This might have made some sense as a strategy for overthrowing a backward, autocratic regime like Tsarism. As it happened, the Tsarist regime collapsed of its own accord under the pressures of the First World War but Lenin's organisational form did help the Bolsheviks seize political control once Tsarism had collapsed. This success led Lenin to proclaim that this was the way revolutionaries should organise too in developed capitalist countries, even those where political democracy existed.

So, in 1968 the members of IS changed the name of their paper from Labour Worker to Socialist Worker and, more importantly, abandoned its previous organisational structure under which policy was decided by a conference of branch delegates voting on motions proposed by branches and where the members of the executive committee were elected as individuals. This was all swept aside and the 'slate' system that the Bolshevik party had used was adopted and which had also been inherited by the CPSU in Russia (yes, Leninism did lead to Stalinism too).

Under this system the 'leadership' (politburo, central committee or whatever it is called) is elected en bloc at the party's conference. Delegates don't vote for individual candidates, but for a list, or slate, containing as many names as there are vacancies. In theory there can be more than one list but in practice there never is or has been. In the SWP (as in the USSR), there was just one – proposed by the outgoing leadership. Rather than trying to put forward a rival list, the leadership's opponents preferred to leave and form another group organised on the same lines (one explanation for the proliferation of Trotskyist groups).

It can easily be seen that this is a recipe for the emergence of a self-perpetuating leadership. Which is precisely what happened, as Birchall noted:

'recent events have shown the limitations of the slate system. It has become a means whereby the CC can indefinitely propose itself for re-election, co-opting approved individuals as it goes.'

There was another consequence in the SWP too:

'Moreover, a career path has now clearly emerged – comrades, generally former students, become full-timers, and if they are successful, they rise in the apparatus and become CC members. Thus we get a CC almost entirely composed of people who have spent most of their political life as full-timers and have very limited experience of work or trade unionism.'

The slate system was also applied to elect the branch delegates to conference:

'Back in the eighties, when strong branch committees existed, the branch committee would nominate a slate of conference delegates. While it was obviously possible for members to nominate an alternative slate, this was frowned on, and in practice was relatively rare. I recall a chairperson telling us the agenda for a branch meeting and saying “and then the conference delegates will be announced”. In practice he was right – this was what usually happened.'

So the SWP ended up a top-down organisation run by a self-perpetuating clique.

Perhaps surprisingly, Birchall does not draw the conclusion that this is where the slate system, a central tenet of the Leninist vanguard party concept, was bound to lead. He still thinks in terms of a vanguard party of professional revolutionaries organised on Leninist lines. His beef is not with the theory but with the way it was applied in the SWP – bureaucratically rather than democratically. But for him 'democracy' is not a decision-making procedure but merely a means of providing information to the leadership so that it can formulate the best policy to pursue and the best slogans to put before workers for them to follow:

'... a revolutionary leadership needs to know what is going on in the working class. It cannot do this by reading the Financial Times, it has to listen to comrades who have roots in different sections of the class and who can report on what is happening on the ground. As Cliff argued: “… they have to learn from their fellow workers as much as – or more than – they have to teach. To repeat, the job is to lead, and to lead you have to thoroughly understand those you are leading.”'

This is not democracy in any meaningful sense. It's still saying that the wage and salary working class is incapable of freeing itself on its own but needs to be led by a self-appointed vanguard. It is still rejecting the view that socialism, as a fully democratic society, can only be established democratically, both in the sense of being what a majority want and in the sense of employing democratic methods.

To establish socialism the wage and salary working class does need to organise itself to win political control, i.e. as a political party, but in a democratic party, not to follow a vanguard party or any other would-be leaders.

There is, however, one thing that Birchall seems to have learnt after more than 50 years as a Trotskyist/Leninist:

'The important thing at present is the battle of ideas; as William Morris put it, “it should be our special aim to make Socialists”.'

This is a quote from the Statement of Principles of the Hammersmith Socialist Society, drawn up in 1890. It's what we've been saying for over 100 years.

Adam Buick