Spotted Banner (1969)

Book Review from the March 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Class Nature of the Soviet State/The Workers' State and the Question of Thermidor and Bonapartism, by Leon Trotsky, New Park Publications (SLL). 4s.

Whatever Trotsky's faults he did display a modicum of intelligence and a fine literary style, neither of which could by any stretch of the imagination be attributed to the so-called Socialist Labour League, his latter-day disciples. So their members should be edified by this republication, if no one else.

The friends and the enemies of the Russian Revolution were agreed that it was Socialist. The theory of Russian State Capitalism was a weird eccentricity. Today, any other theory appears curious in the extreme. Thus do men learn from material conditions. When these tracts were written (1933 and 35) Trotsky swam in the backwash of a great social floodtide. Today history has passed him by, consigned him to those same rubbish-cans he reserved for Martov.

"The Soviet state still remains the historical instrument of the working class in so far as it assures the development of economy and culture on the basis of nationalised means of production." That is the rock bottom of Trotsky's case, reiterated again and again: nationalisation rules out capitalism. It is a foundation stone which crumbles at a glance into sand.

Marx pointed out that wage labour always entails the bourgeois social relation, capital, and that as long as power over people exists, private property exists. According to different historical circumstances, the capitalist class may own bureaucratically through the state or individually outside the state. For that matter: individually through the state (government bonds) or bureaucratically outside the state (Is the whole salary of a Chairman of the Board the price of his labour power?)

All of this is quite lost on the Trotskyists. "The ruling class, where's the ruling class?" they mutter, and settle the question to their own satisfaction with the formula: no stocks, no bonds—so no ruling class. Therefore the Russian bureaucracy is not a class but a caste (always in italics: they are necessary to give this feeble label a bogus significance), which makes all the difference when this caste slaughters workers, invades other countries, and lives in luxury on the backs of its starving underlings.

In modern Russia there is no class exploitation, but only social parasitism! Says Trotsky. After making this distinction he innocently refers to its refutation but passes blindly on: "During the middle ages the clergy constituted a class or an estate, insofar as its rule depended upon a specific system of land property and forced labour." Well, well. So a ruling class needn't own individually, needn't be recruited by inheritance, needn't in fact possess any of the characteristics Trotsky considers so essential to a ruling class when it suits him.

Bureaucratic class rule means that there is private property without private ownership, The bureaucracy owns and its members own through it—not as individuals but by virtue of their office. The Feudal Church is the classic case in Europe. The non-European world, which did not go through the stages of chattel slavery and feudalism, is littered with examples. (See K. A. Wittfogel Oriental Despotism).

An elementary doctrine of Marxism is that of Social Being. we do not assess a society by what it says about itself (in its ideology or laws) but by its actual social relations. In determining the existence of a privileged class we are concerned primarily with the actual class monopoly of the means of production, and only secondarily with legal forms (stocks, shares or state property).

Has Trotsky any stronger arguments? One of them is unanswerable. It hinges on the question how could a socialist revolution evolve gradually into capitalism? How indeed! This poser is certainly an embarrassment to those semi-Trotskyists who persist in the fallacy that there was anything socialist about the October coup. But once you realise that the Russian working-class has never held political power, the question vanishes.

As soon as the Bolsheviks got control they began the process of stamping out every vestige of political democracy. Those who criticised were shot, but also honoured with propaganda broadsides. Lenin's line was to ridicule them as advocates of "pure abstract" democracy. Using a similar trick, Trotsky, faced with the task of defending a "workers's state" which "strangles" the workers, attacks those who claim it is not a workers' state by accusing them of holding "ideal norms." He is arguing that an animal in every single respect like a fox is in some mysterious magical way really a lamb. All those who point to the foxy fangs, ears and bushy tail are derided as proponents of the "ideal norm" of lambs! Trotsky can only state his case by thus resisting any attempt to introduce the slightest discipline in the matter of definitions.

He reveals his lack of grasp of the basic goal of Socialism when he talks of "the monetary-system which will be very much needed for socialist planning." In The Revolution Betrayed he actually terms the abolition of wages an anarchist demand! Those poor old anarchists Marx and Engels!

After losing out in a power struggle for the privilege of presiding over the exploitation of millions, Trotsky, this butcher of the working-class, dares to come before the workers of the world offering them what he ludicrously terms "a clear call and an unspotted banner." Bolshevism and all its offspring are like Bakuninism, Jacobinism and Blanquism, the debris of capitalist revolutions, "revolutions of minorities in the interests of minorities."

Steele.

Gluttons for punishment (1977)

Book Review from the July 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Labour Party and the Working Class by Tom Forester. (Heinemann, £3.75.)

The "WORKING CLASS" of the title of this book are manual workers: unskilled, semi-skilled, skilled and foremen. Clerks and all the rest are "middle class", which shows that the author not only does not know Socialist basics but has never heard the words sung to the tune of The Red Flag: "The working class can watch me pass, I've got the foreman's job at last."

Though his definition won't do, what he has to say is interesting. He asks why more than half the manual workers, with the percentage highest among the poorest 8 per cent (Gallup Poll figures 1945-66), are persistent Labour voters. It is not because the Labour Party woos them assiduously. Local party organizations are small, doing little between election times and holding their membership chiefly through the "social" side. In Forester's view the Labour Party "has always had an essentially passive relationship to the working class".

The answer lies partly in its historical relationship with the trade unions, of course. Forester says, correctly, that Keir Hardie and his associates wanted to create a union-backed Labour party because "socialist activity and propaganda in the 1880s and 1890s . . . had seemingly failed to make any headway": thus they set out consciously to win the support of non-Socialists. The existence of a "left wing" wanting Labour success on the same conditions then squalling against the results also dates from that time. (In 1912 the British Socialist Party, angry over the Liberal-Labour alliance in Parliament, urged workers to vote Conservative.)

Given the opportunity to participate in government by the first World War, in 1918 the Labour Party adopted a constitution including the famous Clause IV.  This represented not any turning towards Socialism — which had been rejected at the outset in 1900, and was in any case not stated in Clause IV — but, as Forester puts it, the realization that "it would need to clearly differentiate itself from the other major political parties if it wanted to achieve similar prominence as an alternative government party".

What follows is that the legend of the "de-radicalization" of the Labour Party, the falling away from principles once held, is untrue. Moreover, while the attractive aura of the word "socialism" is exploited, nothing can emerge from it while Labour supporters do not understand what it means. Forester gives as one reason why Labour MPs so readily act like Conservatives that they have no mandate for "a radical challenge to the system". That was the idea at the beginning. The book has some studies of Labour voters and their reasons: which are not markedly different from what Tory or Liberal voters would say.  But the writer does not explain why he is in the Labour Party.

Robert Barltrop 

Black Country blues (1983)

From 'The Place Where I Live' series from the October 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Until the 1960s, West Bromwich buses returning from a foray into Birmingham stopped at "the boundary" outside the Albion football ground and charged a new set of fares. Having climbed all up the long slope through Handsworth to the city limits, they paused for a few minutes at the cast iron pedestal clock on the edge of the pavement. The driver turned  his key in the clock, and they entered a different territory.

On the map, West Bromwich is almost in the middle of the industrial urban sprawl of the West Midlands hemmed in by Dudley, Wolverhampton and Walsall to the north and the great bloated carcass of Birmingham all round the south. But in working-class thinking West Bromwich is still the beginning of the Black Country. The local government areas have been reorganised and West Midland Passenger Transport Board has subsumed all the old local services but when you cross the boundary, not only accents but also attitudes are slightly different.

One of the factors which helped to maintain the sharp division of the Black Country from Birmingham was coal. The coal seams start at West Bromwich and at one time the town had sixty working mines. Now it has none. A large boating lake occupies the site of the last coal mine to survive, the Jubilee pit and the huge pile of grey slag was used as foundations for the M5 and M6 motorways which now link up here. The workings run for miles around, under what was once the Earl of Dartmouth's estate. All that remains of that is its arched gateway stranded in the middle of the motorway island. But two working farms still struggle to survive in the gap that the estate caused between West Bromwich and Birmingham. The new county borough council has tried to make a virtue out of what was an accident in the anarchic spread of industry and housing. They have christened the gap Sandwell Valley and begun to treat the area as a leisure park, but brick ends and twisted iron poke up through the sparse grass in places, and the boats from the lake are housed in some of the old pit-head buildings.

The other industries which gave West Bromwich its character and a degree of independence as it grew from a collection of small villages round a broom-covered moor have also declined or disappeared completely. There used to be marl pits and small brickworks which produced the blue bricks known as engineering bricks. They have all gone. There was a large glass factory which supplied many parts of the world with precision lighthouse lenses. Gone. There were dozens of iron foundries, large and small, casting an enormous variety of unremarkable components and products. The sites of the large firms are now flat, derelict wastes and only a few of the small specialist companies survive. There is still some steel spring production but steel rolling and steel tube production is finished. The Black Country is becoming cleaner every week.

West Bromwich — like Smethwick, Oldbury, Tipton, Darlaston, Wednesbury and Bilston which lie around it — gained its grimy individuality and cohesion from working with the dirty, basic materials of the industrial revolution. Now that these industries are dying, the reason for the existence of these towns has gone. Even bundled together in the new metropolitan boroughs, their economies are in a precarious state. In a rather pathetic attempt to resist economic pressures, the local council is at present trying to prevent disused industrial sites being taken over for house building in the hope that employing, rate-paying industry will one day return.

As in many other industrial areas of Europe, the decline in the economy has been accompanied by a rise in the level of racial prejudice. West Bromwich has attracted workers  from most parts of the Indian subcontinent as well as from the West Indies and a very high proportion of them are now unemployed. This fact gives scope for a whole range of permutations of false reasoning about the relationship between immigrants and housing, jobs and the willingness to work. What happened in fact was that, towards the peak of the economic boom, immigrants came into the area — and in some cases were recruited in large numbers — to take those dirty, monotonous jobs that local workers were finding themselves able to move out of — jobs in just those industries which have now disappeared, leaving only scars on the landscape. Towards the end of its functional life, the factory of vast corrugated iron sheds that cast car engine cylinder blocks were manned almost entirely by ex-Bengalis and Sikhs. Now only they—and the concrete floor slabs—remain. In the Seventies, the only faces behind the steering wheels of WMPTB buses were black—West Indian. Now it is a comparative rarity to see a black driver on a bus.

West Bromwich is not as derelict and deserted as some of the towns in Britain which were formed round single industries like shipbuilding, steel-making or coal mining; but the same basic pattern has been traced out. Capital moved in and exploited the area's geography, natural resources and labour for as long as acceptable profits could be made. Now that this is no longer so, capital has moved out. Redundant workers in the town accept what has happened stoically, as though it were as inevitable as the weather. By and large, they do not question the tyranny of capital, nor ask who is behind it. Least of all, at present, do they feel that they have the power and the skills to run things differently.

Ron Cook

Greasy Pole: Labour Pains (2015)

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

Emerging from the dust of defeat ... 'We are an army bruised, beaten, bewildered... Ed Miliband's leadership reinvigorated long-term activists and inspired a new generation of campaigners alike, restoring a sense of hope that Labour could be a party to not only change governments but also change lives...' But then... 'We cannot pretend we won the popular vote, more people chose the Conservatives over us'. But a month later, in less incendiary mood, a piece in The Guardian cast doubt on the effectiveness of the six million doorstep 'conversations' so valued by Miliband as evidence of the party's superior ground view: 'Five and a half million of them could have been ”can you go away please, I've got the washing on?” '. So why the change of emphasis? Stella Creasy – who was of interest to The Greasy Pole a couple of years ago - has announced herself, after only five years on the Back Benches, as a candidate for Deputy Leader of the beaten and bewildered party. She is up against some serious, hardened opposition – for example Ben Bradshaw, Angela Eagle, Caroline Flint, all of them carrying bruises from similar defeat and confusion in the past.

Red Socks

Creasy came into Parliament in the 2010 election, the MP for Walthamstow. In a pretty tough London constituency like that it must have helped that her parents are stolidly Labour but not that she has an aristocratic background – on her mother's side the Earl of Carlisle, the Cayzers and the Viscount Gort. In her education she had to overcome a less than promising start; at a posh all-girl grammar school she failed her Eleven Plus and, perhaps to demonstrate her blossoming reputation as a rebel, was ejected from an assembly when, in defiance of the school's navy blue uniform, she flaunted red socks. When her family moved to another area she began to demonstrate her abilities and after Cambridge took a PhD at the London School of Economics on Understanding the Lifeworld of Social Exclusion - an intriguing title in contrast with her subsequent career in justifying and tolerating the social exclusion and pressures typical of capitalism's class divide. Before she made it as an MP she worked among other things writing speeches for some tediously disciplined Blair ministers such as Charles Clarke and Douglas Alexander - one of Labour's casualties in Scotland who recently assessed Creasy as '...clearly reimagining the work of an MP... I see her as a genuine pioneer of a new way of doing politics'. Which might have been more impressive as a compliment if Alexander had himself shown so novel a tendency.

Threats

Meanwhile Creasy displayed a persistent talent for reaching into the limelight. At first disappointed at being overlooked for a place as a Shadow Minister she filled the gaps in her publicity by taking the lead in a number of media-alluring campaigns. There was the matter of demanding, with the journalist Caroline Criado-Perez, that in the name of equal rights an issue of new bank notes should display the portrait of a woman – which was settled when the Bank of England agreed to use the image of Jane Austen. But a side effect of this was to reveal the existence of some equally passionate people on the other side of the question; Creasy and Criado-Perez were subjected to a virulent stream of abuse and threats of rape and other violence, for which a man was recently sent to prison for four months. Creasy has also turned her attention to the scandal of Pay Day Loans, which have often been the last resort of people driven to desperation by the extremities of impoverishment through unemployment, zero-hour jobs and the like. This is indeed a fertile field of profit; in some cases borrowers have had to repay loans at an interest rate of 272 percent APR and, in the absence of competition, as much as 4000 percent. A leading light in this pitiless application of the profit motive is Wonga and their noxiously provocative TV promotion. Under pressure, Wonga tried to navigate themselves through a climb-down which involved nothing better than a promise to ease the plight of some of the worst affected of their victims.

Estate Agents

Up – or rather down – there with Wonga and the like are the estate agents, who are also revelling in the stress suffered by the victims of the recession. In Walthamstow Creasy organised a local survey of the estate agents and their treatment of borrowers. The result was striking: one firm came out high on approval rating while another was at the very lowest end of the scale. Creasy's response was to visit the office of this last firm and publicly berate them for their relentless pressure on local people who were struggling to afford to buy a property. The firm concerned could only plead that they are the largest in the area, on the assumption that this was a sound argument for their ruthless policy and that the most favoured agent was just a beginner who will soon fall into the same practices as the rest – because that is what making profit is all about. This campaign has met with the approval of the Walthamstow voters, who at the last election increased Creasy's majority to 23,195. But meanwhile the chaos and despair in the Labour Party acts as a fertiliser for ambitions to inherit what historically remains after Miliband, Gordon Brown, Blair, Callaghan and their failure to modify the inexorable brutalities of the capitalist system. But Creasy is not ready to give up even though she has to endure life towards the lower end of the Greasy Pole. In this she has not always been as popular as she might have planned. 'Now she's a public figure and there's a party line she has to toe' was the opinion of a friend. 'She cares about her constituents but she cares about herself more' said a party member, and 'Since when has Stella been interested in the fucking Post Office?' asked a Tory Member after listening to one of her verbal barrages on that subject. Other opinions were: 'pushing too hard...haranguing...too big for her boots'. Within the Commons she has earned two nicknames: there is St Ella to match her adopted pious style and, noting how futile it has been among all those others so desperate to somehow slither upwards, Stella Greasy.

Ivan

Is Marxism a Class Ethic? (1959)

From the September 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

THE ETHICS OF MARXISM (4) (See Parts 1, 2 & 3)

Marx never denied that an order was to be found in history. He did deny that the order was a non-human or teleological one. He did not deny determinism in history. He denied pre-determinism or fatalism. The ends in history he thought are not realised merely because they are willed by men, but he insisted that the process of social development has no ends to realise which are not willed by men. He states: —

History does nothing—it possesses no colossal riches; it fights no fight; it is rather man—real living man who acts, possesses and fights in everything. It is by no means "History" which uses men as a means to carry out its ends as if it were a person apart; rather History is nothing but the activity of man in pursuit of his ends.

Marx sought an explanation for men's historical activity. His own historical insight discovered it was not in what men think about themselves—not in the Slogans and battle cries of "contending interests"—not in their abstract ideas or in the ideals they proclaim, but in concrete human needs and the social situation out of which these needs arise. It is these needs—albeit they have taken on the character of class needs since the passing of primitive society—which constitute the dynamic of historic activity. It is these needs which set men their problems and which give them the impulse and will to overcome them.

Class Needs and Ethics
Along with the development of the material forces of Society, goes the development of human needs, quantitatively and qualitatively. It is these human needs which lie at the base of the objective possibilities of social development and which men through concerted social action seek to realise. In a class society such action is class action. Social need are not subjective or personal. They are objective and as integral a part of the social situation as the social relations of production themselves. From these social needs—in class society they take the form of class needs—arise the theories and ideals which constitute theoretical responses to concrete social demands. Marx never denied the influence of men's beliefs on their social activity. What he made explicit was the historical impact which made "ruling" ideas projections of class interests and under what conditions these ideas grew, flourished and declined. For Marx no study of social behaviour had any serious claims to objectivity which failed to take into account the refracting nature of class interests.

It should be clear then that one cannot understand the ethical values of an epoch without reference to concrete social needs. Marx opposed the classless morality of Kant with its categorical imperatives and "private guilts" for that reason: just as he opposed the morality of Feuerbach and Hess, who having got rid of the divine attributes of God, then transferred these attributes to men and instead of worshipping an abstract deity, worshipped an abstract humanity. While ethics and human needs are inseparable in class society, they take on the character of class needs. A genuine ethic is never then a question of negative moral injunctions but basically a series of positive demands and in a class society they are class demands. From this standpoint, Marxism is frankly a class ethic. Moreover, in the light of its own assumptions about extant society it is a revolutionary ethic. It rejects a timeless, placeless morality with no specific application to concrete circumstances because it hides from men the real nature of the conditions which give rise to their social problems.

Humanism and Class Needs
Marx's criticism of the current humanism, too, is the refusal to relate humanistic assumptions with the objective tendencies of social development and hence the failure to see that existing social relations of production determine the social existence and the conditions of life for the vast majority and that the inhuman consequences of present day society are bound up with a form of social organisation—Capitalism.

Marx never grounded his theories in the belief of a pre-established harmony of human nature based in alleged pre-established natural or divine laws. He saw men as they actually were in the work-a-day world—a world which itself had been the outcome of an actual historic process. The fact that since the advent of private property, history had been class history and individuals, class individuals was not something to be deplored, but something to be understood. Only in that way was it possible for the real nature of the social problems to be grasped and surmounted.

One cannot even begin to talk of the essential unity of men from a so-called classless ethic, in a class world which cuts them in half and where the ties between men take the alienated form of exchange relations. It is no answer to say as some humanists do that Socialism would be of ultimate benefit to the exploiting capitalists as well as the exploited worker. Such humanists see the working class in the vague category of the underdog. But the needs of the working class are not merely the alleviation of distress or poverty but the outcome of its economic function as a class, unshared by the privileged group. It is the capitalist division of labour which mutilates the worker, not the capitalist, and leaves at least the latter as an unproductive whole and not as in the case of the former a fragmentised productive appendage. It is Capitalist Society which has stripped its producers of their productive and most basic human capacities. "Denied the growth of the powers that slumber them" and impoverished their individuality. The most urgent class need of the wealth producers is not a social and moral reevaluation within the framework of existing society or a mere quantitative addition to current class-conditioned existence. What their working class human nature must demand if it is to attain to a truly human level is the abolition of the inhuman consequences of the present state of affairs and the integration of the human personality into a collective social whole.

Marx refused to disassociate ethics and ideals from economic development and the function of social classes. A long historical development had transferred all productive processes to the numerically largest section of the capitalist community: yet this section as a class is unfree so long as a private property system with its appropriate division of labour separates the produce of their labour from them and places it in other hands as a means of class domination, and as a corollary to this confines their human powers within the narrow and nihilistic orbit of capitalist production. But as the sole productive class they alone have the active and hence dynamic function capable of transforming the existing social situation. Nevertheless, they can only emerge from class unfreedom to classless liberty by becoming conscious of the path they must follow.

It should be clear then that for Marx the "what ought to be" must be functionally related to the "what is"; that is why any genuine ethic must be a demand for something capable of realisation. By this criterion the Marxist Ethic is richer in human content than any other set of contemporary values.

Class Ideals and Social Reality
Marx refused to accept some absolute scale of values which claimed an above the struggle neutrality. In this way, are we to understand his refusal to talk in the name of "Humanity," "Justice," "Freedom." For Marx, the abstract character of these categories could be shown by asking, Whose humanity? Justice for Whom? and Freedom for What? and in a class society, the answers will always reveal a class standpoint. In a changing world, men's needs cannot remain static: nor for that reason can their ethical values. As the social environment develops, so do men's needs, and with them their concrete ethical demands.

Marx has been ignorantly accused of denying that ideals are a valid part of social reality. On the contrary, he held that morality was as old as man himself. There have been no human societies without ideals and moral values of some kind. What Marx went on to investigate was the social source of these ideals. On whose behalf were they fought; what expectations did they seek to justify?His answer was that this could be most fruitfully found in the study of class relations. Ruling ideas—Social ideals—are, said Marx, only historically effective when they express material (class) interests. This explains why some ideas triumph and others fail. It explains why ruling ideas are modified. Why sometimes these "material interests" demand more liberty, more democracy, more equality and sometimes a restriction of these things. Ideas play an important role in history. Their significance can, however, only be evaluated by seeing the integral connection of ideas with human needs and interests. But Marx went further by investigating what specific class interests are crucial. What is the theoretical and ideal formulation of these class demands? How do they establish themselves as ideologies? In this way did Marx formulate one of the prime canons of Historical Materialism.

Need for Class Assertion
Marx did not glorify selfishness or unselfishness. He never treated them as abstract qualities, but as concrete expressions of social behaviour in a given social context. To the accepted morality, working class demands, strikes, etc., often appear as selfish forms of class assertion, but it is only through class assertion that some decent existence can be won for its members. Without class assertion, the workers would forfeit their own human claims; to give up their struggle for maintaining or improving their living standards would lead to social and material deterioration as well as moral abasement. That is why Marx was consistently bitter against those who sought to nullify working class action by pleas and brotherly love, and praying for the "Soul" of the "Enemy." In present society, self-assertion not self-denial must be the watershed of working class morality.

Mr. Taylor (Is Marxism a Humanism*) sees the Social Revolution as an explosive force. That may well be so in that it blows up the base and superstructure of the old society. It will not be, as he seems to imagine, a blind explosive force whose parts will be picked up and pieced together by an elite of "Social Engineers" into a new social design. Whatever explosive impact the Social Revolution produces, it will first take place in the consciousness of men and will include their skills. techniques and Social experiences. A new Society can only be built by "new men." The Social Revolution will mark their emergence.

It is amazing that Marx's critics should have so misunderstood his conception of men. That the line of historical development leads to man's conscious control of all social agencies was central to his humanistic assumptions. For him the abolition of classes would see the emergence of the classless individual freely associating with others of his kind. What he demanded above all else was the abolition of a state of affairs whose productive agencies crippled, even annihilated the essential human elements of personality. An alleged Social Revolution which subjugated and physically destroyed members of another class as well as workers would have filled him with abhorrence.

A man is known by what he fights for. Mars all his life fought for the removal of oppression and inequality. His goal was Socialised Humanity. His concern for the individual was evidenced as early as his doctor's dissertation, and later his attacks on censorship and the filching of peasants' wood rights. To suggest as Mr. Taylor does that his political doctrines and the ethical values associated with them have given in any way theoretical support for Soviet Society and unfree Soviet man, is either gross misrepresentation or misunderstanding.

In any case both are indefensible.

In the next issue we shall conclude the series on Marxist Ethics by discussing the concept—NECESSITY AND FREEDOM.

Ted Wilmott

* See June, July and August Socialist Standard 

God's Own Copper (1987)

From the March 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

God works in mysterious ways. Given my love of God and my belief in God and in Jesus Christ, I have to accept that I may well be used by God in this way. (James Anderton, Chief Constable of Greater Manchester, 18 January 1987)

It has been quite a while since God has chosen a human prophet to inform us mortals what is going on in his supernatural mind. A couple of thousand years ago he chose a popular illusionist (virgin birth, turning water into wine, making the blind able to see: the usual tricks) who told the oppressed to submit to their masters and wait for eternal happiness in a paradise beyond the grave. The meek shall inherit the earth, said Jesus. The meek are still waiting for the inheritance to occur. The wise have more sense than to accept a morality of meekness. According to his evidence in the dock at The Old Bailey, Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper (mass murderer of women) heard a voice from God telling him to commit the murders. The Judge was unimpressed and tried to decide whether the defendant was insane. Odd really, when you consider the Judges accept evidence in courts as being more likely to be truthful because it is sworn on oath to this invisible Big Man called God. The latest recipient of God's message is Chief Constable Anderton, who by his own account was on his way to a seminar on AIDS when God forced his words into his mind, leaving the poor copper no alternative but to make a fool of himself repeating them in public, Said the divinely-inspired officer,

Why do these people freely engage in sodomy and other obnoxious sexual practices knowing the dangers involved? As the years go by I see ever increasing numbers of them swirling around in a human cesspit of their own making. I worry intensely about the real possibility of whole generations being wiped out and nations decimated.

He may worry intensely about this curious vision of increasing numbers of human beings creating their own cesspits with a view to wiping out future generations. He would however do better to worry intensely about the whole generations who stand in immense risk of being blown to pieces by capitalism's bombs and the chemical and biological weapons which are sick and murderous, but which have received no condemnation to date either from God or his specially picked, uniformed messengers. Needless to say, the moral totalitarians who are ready and waiting to tighten the chains on the recently too-permissive wage slaves were quick to bow down to the newly-discovered prophet, The Sun, the paper printed by scabs and read by dummies, quoted Anderson's words and declared that

All these words were exactly right. Mr Anderton was merely giving voice to what every reasonable man and woman feels. (Editorial, Top Cop's Words of Wisdom, 22 January 1987).

So you either agree with God's top cop or you are by definition unreasonable. According to the Gospels (a confused assortment of unhistorical stories and reported hallucinations), Christ said that those who did not agree with his every word would be eternally damned — left to burn in Hellfire forever. It seems as if Jesus had a conception of compassion and tolerance similar to that of the Sun. Indeed, the paper which is so crazy that it has to be printed behind barbed wire was not slow to point out the similarity between Christ and Anderton:

There are suggestions that James Anderton is mad. The same charge could just as easily have been brought against Jesus Christ when He came to Earth.

Indeed, it could. Let us for a moment entertain this religious fantasy that the world and all of us who inhabit it are the children of a Holy Father — never seen, but ever feared — who rules over us and must be obeyed to the letter of his commandments. Now, it tells us something about the condition of millions of workers if they can be persuaded that they are little children in need of an invisible Father, but let us examine the Christian-Anderton conception of fatherhood. God, The Father (he also works as a Son and a Holy Ghost) tells us that certain forms of behaviour are wrong. Some of his children disobey the God-Father and do what is "wrong". His fatherly response is to invent a fearful, painful disease which will wipe out vast numbers of his children, thus teaching them to obey him in future. In recent years we have read in newspapers like the Sun about fathers who have acted in this way: they have beaten their children, put out cigarettes on their bodies, locked them in drawers. These constitute a small minority of fathers but we all know of these cases and our response is that of horror and outrage. How can a parent, however frustrated they might be at the behaviour of their children, be so cruel and vicious and crazy? But according to the Christians like Anderton, this is precisely what we should expect a father to do: the only way to teach workers the right way to behave is to kill off a few of them for behaving the wrong way. If God was a father he would need to be given help by others less deranged than himself; his children would need to be taken into care. That is what those who think they are God's children need: to be taken into care — not the care of another phoney god-image or of the state or of offensive and fascistic police chiefs but of themselves. Transcending religious folly means learning that we are not little children destined to obey a Master, but that we are capable of controlling our own lives. As a devout Christian prophet and as a leader of uniformed state coercion, James Anderton will not like the sound of that: people making their own decisions — no gods, no cops, no bosses? That will give him something to worry intensely about.

In the USA, where the God Squad make plenty of dollars out of screwing up workers' minds, there is no shortage of Anderton-style fanaticism. Last October seven Christian families won a case against the State of Tennessee on the grounds that books used to teach children to read were "heathen". They argued that letting children read Goldilocks and the Three Bears encourages breaking and entering. Other objections — upheld by the court — were to a picture of a boy cooking and a story of a wife challenging her husband's authority, both of which were held to be contrary to God-made Nature. The State of Louisiana has a law, passed in 1981, forcing schools to teach the theory of creation to the exclusion of other, scientifically based,  theories. It seems that the current moral backlash in the USA is leading to a number of cases being brought to court by Christians aiming to censor ideas from state education. According to a report in the People (22 November 1986)

Thirty-nine per cent of the (legal) attacks occurring in the last year have led to the actual removal or restriction of the "offending" material.
Curricula dealing with subjects like nuclear war and the Nazi holocaust have been attacked. Literature from Homer to Hemingway has been attacked and sometimes removed from library shelves. Texts mentioning evolution have been vetoed by school boards. Some science text publishers are already practising "self-censorship". One study found that half of all biology texts today don't cover evolution adequately and one-sixth don't cover it at all.

So much for The Land of the Free.

Religion and morality have always been about forcing people to conform in their ideas. The conformity required is that which meets the needs of the profit-stealing ruling class. From James Anderton to the anti-scientific Christian bigots of the USA "God's word" is the sermon of ignorance and unconsciousness. No self-respecting worker will fall for it for long. Let us banish the Gods from our minds and the capitalists from the earth. Without such impostors on our freedom to live as brothers and sisters, humankind will discard our bosses' stinking morals as we learn to live together as a human family of equals.

Steve Coleman 

Sting in the Tail: The Perfect Worker (1989)

The Sting in the Tail Column from the October 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Perfect Worker

That the owning class have a very poor opinion of the working class was perfectly illustrated in a recent report in The Guardian. It informed us that Professor Eysenck, emeritus professor at the Institute of Psychiatry in London and Professor Charles Spielberger, president-elect of the American Psychological Association are the research directors of a creepy outfit that calls itself by the horror-name of Psycorp.

A psychological testing service aimed at providing companies with "clones" of their most successful employees was launched today  . . . the company aims to pre-select the personality types most likely to succeed in jobs ranging from airline pilots to cab drivers  . . . Using the Eysenck personality profile the aim is to come up with the "perfect" employee for a particular job.

Ignoring the professors' claims, let us look at what the owning class REALLY want from the working class. Here is the profile of the perfect worker.

Someone who leaves school at 16 years of age, works for 50 years, never complains about working conditions or wages; and on the first day he goes to claim his old age pension drops dead at the post office counter.

Obedience, diligence and lots of surplus value. Now that's perfection, Professor!

Breakfast With Jehovah

John Stalker, the former Assistant Chief Constable has many interesting things to say about his former boss James Anderton, Chief Constable of Greater Manchester in his book "Stalker". 

"He was aglow with excitement, like a child who was anticipating a party. He said that at breakfast that morning (11.12.86) he had been moved by the Spirit of God to speak out at the conference against modern morality, which he felt had resulted in the scourge of AIDS. I asked him how the message had manifested itself and he answered me in an almost detached manner. He said that he could describe it best by asking me to imagine an invisible finger writing out for him on the breakfast table what the Lord wished to say." (Page 228).

We learn later (Page 242) that despite this divine assistance . . . "the 1985 crime figures for Greater Manchester had shown a big increase in the crime rate and a fall in the detection rate . . . "

It appears that the invisible finger had failed to write out between Anderson's orange juice and Rice Krispies anything that would assist him with the crime figures. Truly the ways of the Lord are mysterious . . . and none too helpful.

Economics of Prejudice

A nasty development in northern Italy is the rise of the Lombardy League.

This outfit, which gained 635,000 votes and 2 MEPs at the recent European elections, wants to exclude a lot of people from Lombardy because, they claim, these people breed too much, figure prominently in crime statistics and are forever looking for government handouts.

Just another bunch of racists raving about black immigrants? No, their target is their southern Italian countrymen and women. Indeed, one of the League's MEPs stated-

I have nothing against the blacks and, in fact, I prefer them to souther Italians". (The Guardian 16 August)

The League's real complaint is that industrialised Lombardy pays more tax to central government than all the southern regions combined and that much of this tax goes to the underdeveloped south.

So whether it is gentile against jew, protestant against catholic, white against black or even white against white, what it boils down to is the economic rivalry spawned by capitalism.

Sounds Familiar

Here's another "socialist" party which has ditched its defence policy in order to catch votes.

This is the Socialist Party of Japan, an out and out reformist bunch. Until now they had adopted the strange idea that the world's second greatest economic power could be "unarmed and neutral", and its manifesto called for the abolition of the United States-Japan Security Treaty and the disbanding of Japan's armed forces.

That was until the last elections to Japan's Upper House of parliament when the SPJ made big gains. Now that it smells a share of power it is ready to maintain the treaty.

Takako Doi, the party's chairwoman, explained:

"The Socialist Party should take the road to gradual but sold reform which could be accepted not only by the Japanese people but by the world community." (Daily Telegraph 22 August)

Such cynical expediency should convince both Japanese and US capitalism that they have nothing to fear from these "socialists".

The Welsh Windbag

On the 6th September The Guardian devoted a full page to such matters as society, the state and the class structure in Britain and how it had changed in the last 10 years.

It was the usual mixture of confusion and journalistic nonsense, but one piece under the heading "Class and Power" by Seamus Milne recorded how politicians view the class structure.

Outsiders have traditionally regarded Britain as one of the most class-divided societies in Europe. But Neil Kinnock denies the existence of the working class, David Owen says that 90 per cent of us are middle class. And Mrs. Thatcher once asked "Aren't I working class? I work jolly hard, I can tell you."

Leaving aside Owen's crass stupidity, and the bizarre image of Thatcher as a member of the proletariat, the effrontery of Kinnock is truly staggering. Who does he imagine produced the food he eats, built the house he lives in or made the clothes he wears?

While the Welsh Windbag produces nothing but hot air and empty rhetoric, it is the working class that produce all the useful things in society  . . . and some of the useless things, like silly articles in The Guardian.

The sage of Merioneth (1970)

Book Review from the December 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Russell Remembered, by Rupert Crawshay-Williams, OUP. 40s.

The author was a close neighbour and friend of "Bertie" in his plushy retreat in deepest Merioneth and although he goes through the motions of noticing some of the great man's faults (his vanity, bad temper, monumental conceit, etc), he does not attempt to hide his hero-worship and clearly regards himself as supremely fortunate to have been able to cultivate the friendship of this intellectual paragon. Most of the book consists of small talk reported à la Boswell. But there is no rival to Dr. Johnson here; not a word that is worth remembering in fact. (Sample of the humour: Good, better, best, Bertie. This sort of thing, it seems, had the great Earl wiping his eyes with helpless laughter. Of such stuff is greatness made.)

The one thing that should have struck the author he clearly never even considered. The great philosopher occupied the public stage for the better part of a century. And at the end of it all, the books, the speeches, the lectures, what remained that was worth remembering Russell for? Even a cursory glance at Russell's career makes it obvious that his influence merely served to spread confusion in matters that concern human society. The contradictions are crass and speak for themselves. A pacifist in the first world war. A belligerent in the second. An advocate of a pre-emptive atomic strike by America before Russia got the Bomb (for which he was dubbed Atom-Bomb Russell by the Daily Worker). And finally a founder of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, that great mass of "sound and fury, signifying nothing". He cheerfully lent his name to organisations which backed one side against the other in Vietnam (like so many "intellectuals", he became pathologically anti-American; which of course had nothing whatever to do with anti-capitalism). And to supporting vicious dictatorships like that of Nkrumah.

The evil side of all this is rendered worse when one thinks of the good that someone like Russell could have done had he been concerned to learn what was wrong with society and using his immense influence with whole generations of idealistic young people to taking the road towards ending the evil system of capitalism. But he preferred the road of easy fame and helped to lead the students and others into the hopeless blind alleys of movements like CND. So for that he must share the blame for the disillusion that inevitably followed. And which has left capitalism as securely entrenched now as on the day he first came into the world.  

L. E. Weidberg

Britain's Political Crisis (1975)

From the October 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Text of a letter sent by a member of the World Socialist Party of the US to the American left-wing magazine "Ramparts".

Matthew Blaire's article in the August-September Ramparts titled: "Britain in Between" laments "Britain's political crisis" and states " . . . it is very hard to see the left-wingers quitting a party machine (the British Labour Party) which confers national influence on what would otherwise be a minority splinter group." And he ends his article: "We may be at the beginning of the lean years."

Question: What is the political crisis now facing the working class? (Suffice it to say that though the term "working class" does not appear in his article, its context revolves around the interests of the working class. I'm sure he does not deny the Class Struggle.) Unfortunately, he overlooks that the "national influence of the British Labour Party is not now nor ever has been involved in the revolutionary struggle to get rid of capitalism and establish a Socialist society (except for lip-service on special occasions.)

Its programmes have been supported by the votes of the British Left, radicals and liberals, who advocate measures for reforming and administering capitalism — which are no concern to revolutionary Marxist Socialists.

The history and experiences of the last 75 years have amply demonstrated the futility of all the "practical" measures and immediate demands for removing or altering the deleterious effects of capitalism — which has already outlived its historic usefulness in the light of the vast strides in technology and science. (Capitalism laid the groundwork for Socialism.) And, sad to say, the dedicated attempts, energies, hard work of the leftist groups have been equally futile in solving the problems of capitalism. We are still confronted with the very same dilemmas: wars, economic crises, conflicts of interests on every level of society, not to mention housing and the host of other insoluble situations. Within the framework of capitalism it is impossible to remove these problems. It is obvious that the NEED still exists for abolishing capitalism and introducing Socialism!

More importantly, Blaire is aware of the principles and policies of the Socialist Party of Great Britain but prefers to ignore the fact that the SPGB has consistently, since its organization in 1904, stood alone on the proposition that the only objective of prime importance is:

The establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community.

Let me emphasize that the real political crisis of the British working class, and the workers of the world, as well, is the lack of class-conscious revolutionary Socialists! Socialism cannot be rammed down the throats of the workers against their wishes. We are not confronted, as Blaire thinks, with the "beginning of the lean years". Rather, we are confronted with the continuation of the lean years, until the workers wake up to their class interests and in their vast numbers win the political power to transfer the means of life from the parasites and transfer it to where it belongs, in the hands of society as a whole. And if I read the signs of the times correctly, such an event is on the horizon. I'm very optimistic about the prospects for Socialism.

Finally, I detect an inference in Blaire's comment on "minority splinter group" that he regards the SPGB as a dogmatic, sectarian party. Actually, the dogmatic sectarians are those who have not learned the lessons of experience of the futilities of attempts to reform and administer capitalism. Socialism is both possible and practical today, here and now. The great drive will be the product of NECESSITY. The alternative now is Socialism is chaos. The insanity of capitalism must be replaced by the sanity of Socialism, if mankind is to survive.

Isaac Rab

Action Replay: Money Corrupts the Beautiful Game (2015)

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

On the 27 May seven current FIFA officials were arrested by the Swiss police at the luxury Hotel Baur au Lac in Zurich. They were there to attend the 65th FIFA Congress, scheduled to include the election of the President of FIFA. These executives are expected to be extradited to the United States on suspicion of receiving US$150 million in bribes.

Part of the investigation, initiated by the FBI, concerns collusion between officials of the continental football bodies for South America (CONMEBOL) and for the Caribbean, Central and North America (CONCACAF) and sports marketing executives seeking to become holders of media and marketing rights for international competitions including FIFA World Cup qualifying tournaments.

The CONCACAF President, Jeffrey Webb, who is also President of the Cayman Islands Football Association, and two sitting FIFA Executive members, Eduardo Li of the Costa Rican Football Federation, and Eugenio Figueredo, formerly of the Uruguayan FA, are amongst those arrested in connection with the investigation.

These arrests concerned alleged bribery, fraud and money laundering in connection with the awarding of media, marketing and hosting rights for FIFA games. An unnamed sports equipment company - subsequently identified as Nike - is alleged to have paid around $40 million in bribes to become the sole provider of footwear and equipment to the Brazil national team.

In the wake of this corruption case it was also reported that in 2008, the General Secretary of FIFA, Jerome Valcke, allegedly transferred $10 million given to FIFA by the South African FA to accounts controlled by Jack Warner, then head of CONCACAF. The payment is a key piece of the US prosecutors' indictment that accuses Warner of taking a bribe in exchange for helping South Africa secure rights to host the 2010 FIFA World Cup. The payment from the South African FA had been intended to support football development in the Caribbean. Warner, however, is accused of using $1.6 million of the South African payment to pay off personal loans and credit card debts.

With the amount of money to be made from televising, marketing and hosting in relation to FIFA games it is not surprising that corruption should thrive. In fact, given capitalism, it would be surprising if it hadn't. Football might be better called the Profitable Game than the Beautiful Game.

Kevin.

Utopian socialism (1999)

From the February 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Utopian socialism, properly so-called, is the name given to socialist aspiration in the era prior to the development of industrial capitalism. It refers to the yearning for an egalitarian society, but without the scientific analysis of social evolution that modern scientific socialism provides.

Before the coming of industrial capitalism, the yearning for an egalitarian society could only be a yearning, without any concrete analysis of social reality. Utopian socialism does not refer, therefore, to the vision of a William Morris, who was a scientific socialist, but to largely pre-capitalist visions of a socialist future. Under this heading come the mediaeval communists together with the Anabaptist and other religiously-motivated sects.

The decaying feudal society that produced the Hutterites and other pre-capitalist utopian socialists could only produce a vision, expressed usually in religious terms. An innumerable range of "heretical" Christian sects come under this heading, most of them expressing the yearning of peasants and the urban poor for "something better" than the world they suffered in. This is the principal reason for the Catholic Church's absolutely savage persecution of such "heresy". The Church represented the feudal ruling class, whose aim had to be to keep the serfs exploitable and in their place. Anabaptism and other communistic self-regulating communities were seen as a threat to that rule; as indeed many were, by emancipating their adherents from the ideological control of the Catholic clergy and hence of the feudal system.

The response of the pre-capitalist communists was to separate themselves from the dominant society. This was the only thing, apart from initiate or participate in widespread peasant revolt (which many did), they could do to realise their socialistic dream in an age in which the social and economic conditions were by no means ripe for converting the dominant society itself into a socialist one. The only answer was to separate oneself and set up alternative communities, in the manner of what we know as the cult, or the religious sect. Some of these sects were more or less democratic, others were authoritarian, but all challenged the existing order. (And in feudal, as in capitalist society, remember, even pacifist separation constitutes defiance.)

In continental Europe, the last great communist movement that accompanied the end of feudalism, that of militant Anabaptism, was bloodily crushed at Münster in Germany in the 16th century. Anabaptism, however, continued to play a part in the English bourgeois revolution of the 1640s, where political groupings such as the Diggers and Ranters aimed at building a communist society, expressing this aspiration in the only way they could as people of their time: in the language of the Bible and Protestant Christianity. In both central Europe and in England, the failure of these early utopian socialists to realise their hopes for an egalitarian society led inevitably to the pacifist reclusiveness and social separation which marks their descendants today: the Amish, Old Order Mennonites, Hutterites and other Anabaptist groups in America; and the pacifist, democratic English sect of the Quakers. These groups all represent utopian socialism "forced into retirement" by the social reality of feudal and early capitalist Europe.

Latter-day utopians

The descendants of pre-capitalist utopian socialism have been joined in our time, and throughout the three centuries which separate us from the militant Anabaptists, by new sects advocating intentionally communistic "alternative societies" consisting of people understandably disillusioned by the dominant society of our time—capitalism—and seeking alternative lifestyles to that of the modern wage-slave. These communities range from the genuinely democratic on the one hand, to the authoritarian and cultish on the other. Most, but not all, express their aspirations, like the pre-capitalist communist movements they emulate, in religious terms, Christian or otherwise. They are to be distinguished from scientific socialists not only in their policy of social separation (marked by greater or lesser degrees of reclusiveness), but by the fact that they emphasise the common ownership and consumption of goods, as in Anabaptist and early Christian injunctions. For scientific socialists communism (socialism) entails the common ownership of the means of production.

Scientific socialism comprehends the socialist task to be the transformation of society, now that the economic means for the establishment of a socialist society have been realised. For the past 100 years or so the means for the establishment of socialism as a society have existed. This was not the case prior to the industrial revolution, when socialism could only be utopian, as to its realisation at the time was socially and economically impossible. Likewise, the analysis of capitalist society and of the social development leading up to it provided by Marx in his book Capital could not have been made prior to the industrial revolution.

Today, utopian communities in separation from the dominant (capitalist) society which reigns in all countries court at best a deceptive bliss and, at worst, disaster. The pre-capitalist, utopian communism they espouse in all genuineness necessarily fights a losing battle everywhere against the destructive effects of world capitalism. A polluted river will carry its poison through all valleys; the hydrogen bomb respects no person's health. In a sense the true heirs of the militant Anabaptist and other pre-capitalist communists are not those who still seek to separate themselves from capitalist society but those who realise that a democratic society-wide revolution can at last achieve a society the original utopian socialists could only dream of.

Anthony Walker

Keeping us down (1970)

Book Review from the October 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Irrational in Politics by Solidarity. 2s.

This short pamphlet largely consists of verbatim extracts from, and summaries of, the works of Engels, Freud, Reich, Michael Cattier and others, and it would be better to read their works yourself to draw your own conclusions. For those without the time or inclination to do this, however, the pamphlet is quite useful.

It sets out to give a partial explanation of why, given the availability of revolutionary propaganda and the logic of establishing Socialism, workers in general still reject, often violently, this alternative to the insoluble mess of capitalism. The smallness of revolutionary propaganda set against the capitalist monopoly of the mass media is accepted as a major factor in the conditioning of workers , but further reasons are sought to explain the contradiction between the self-evident economic logic of abolishing capitalism and the acceptance of this system by the mass of the people.

The crude outlook of many "left-wingers", who see a working class naturally revolutionary being thwarted by incompetent and bureaucratic leaders and the physical repression of the state machine, is from the start rejected:

It is obvious that if large sections of the population were constantly questioning the principles of hierarchy, the authoritarian organisation of production, the wages system, or other fundamental aspects of the social structure, no ruling class could maintain itself in power for long. For rulers to continue ruling it is necessary for those at the bottom of the social ladder not only to accept their condition but eventually to lose even the sense of being exploited. Once this psychological process has been achieved the division of society becomes legitimised in people's minds. The exploited cease to perceive it as something imposed on them from without . . . Only at times of occasional insurrectionary outbursts do the rulers have to resort to force, as a kind of reinforcement of a conditioning stimulus.

According to Solidarity it was left to Wilhelm Reich to explain " . . . the lag between class consciousness and economic reality, and the tremendous social inertia represented by habits of deference and submission among the oppressed". The explanation lay in the sexual repression of people and in the whole authoritarian upbringing of children associated in particular with the patriarchal family. Reich expressed it this way:

As the economic basis (of the family) became less significant, its place was taken by the political function which the family now began to assume. Its cardinal function, that for which it is mostly supported by conservative science and law, is that of serving as a factory for authoritarian ideologies and conservative structures.

From this examination of family relationships Reich concludes pessimistically that revolutionary propaganda seeking to explain the social injustice and irrationality of the economic system falls on deaf ears, because if people realised they were wasting their lives in the service of an absurd system they would either go mad or commit suicide:

To avoid achieving such anxiety-laden insight they justify their existence by rationalising it. They repress anything that might disturb them and acquire a character structure adapted to the conditions under which they live.

The writer of the pamphlet is aware of the inadequate nature of this conclusion since it implies totally malleable individuals in whom total sexual repression has produced total conditioning. It does not allow for the possibility (dictated by man's sexual needs themselves)  that a fight against sexual repression may well loosen this "character-structure". We might say furthermore that the choice depicted by Reich between madness and submission to capitalism's authority would only be real to the extent that the individuals who have begun to break loose remained isolated. The socialist organisation would enable a group-identity to be formed as a force against this. There are now also healthy signs that young people in struggling to achieve free-sex life are denting the repressive ideology of capitalism. The pamphlet outlines two main reactions to this movement. One is open, outward opposition, the other is an attempt at absorption and control through commercialising sexuality. Solidarity correctly describe the process whereby this is done but appear to attribute to it the status of a conscious capitalist policy which it definitely is not. Making profits from "consumer sex"  is not done for ideological reasons.

The last part of the pamphlet is an attack on the inner conservatism of Bolshevik ideology in relation to sex and family relationships. Unfortunately Solidarity are still handicapped in their examination of this subject by their acceptance of the myth that the 1917 Russian revolution was socialist. The material provided can nevertheless be used to the greater advantage by others.

Michael Bradley

Hull Students Debate: Is Russia Capitalist? (1968)

From the March 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Can nationalisation be socialist? And should the workers put their trust in leaders? These two crucial questions were raised during a recent confrontation between a Socialist and a Trotskyist.

Over 50 students attended a debate staged by Hull University Marxist Society and titled "Is Russia Capitalist?" Yes, said A. Buick for the Socialist Party of Gt. Britain. No,  said Tom Kemp (economics lecturer at Hull) on behalf of the so-called Socialist Labour League.

Mr. Kemp opened. He said that there were those who thought Russia was socialist, those who found it an enigma, and those (including the Socialist Party) who maintained a "sectarian aloofness." He disagreed with all of these. He didn't think Russia was Socialist, and he denounced the Russian government's crimes against the working class. But, he maintained, these crimes were not caused by the nationalised economy. They were alien to it. He thought there was a number of features of capitalism which did not exist in Russia: a disproportion between production and consumption goods; a falling rate of profit; financial difficulties of the sort which led to the 1929 crash.

Referring to the recent sterling crisis and devaluation he commented: "No international speculation against the rouble could conceivably affect the Soviet government's policy in that way. That would be utterly fantastic." Mr Kemp also thought there was no expansionist tendency in Russia—at least not of the imperialist sort as in the West. The ruling bureaucracy, though it lived in high style, was not a class, as it was so limited by the political set-up.

Our comrade Buick began by defining Socialism: a world without frontiers, democratically controlled, where production would be for use, not for profit. The Bolshevik coup of 1917 was neither a Socialist revolution nor a working-class takeover. The Bolsheviks used Marxist phrases but were really descended from a long line of Russian insurrectionaries who were conspiratorial and elitist. Their ideas could be traced back to the Jacobins.

State control did not mean that there was no ruling class. There were several cases in history where state ownership had been a form of class rule. The Catholic Church in feudal times was a ruling group which was not hereditary, from which people could be easily dismissed, and which was not based on individual ownership. All the same, it was still a property system with class rule.

Buick said capital was not a thing, but a social relation. It meant there was wage labour, massive production of commodities and accumulation out of profits. All these existed in Russia, and so did the falling tendency of the profit state.

In the open discussion session, supporters of the "Communist" Party argued that the government had done all it could, considering Russia had been so backward. It was pointed out, however, that Socialists didn't say the government ought to have a change of heart. On the contrary, they couldn't introduce Socialism. Only the majority of the working class could do that, and the Russian workers still wanted capitalism, like most workers of the world.

Some economics students, apparently unused to political argument, seemed amazed that anyone should think the workers were exploited anywhere at all. Shouldn't entrepreneurs be rewarded? Buick pointed out that wealth was produced by human labour. In capitalism, profit was derived from paying workers less than what they produced. In Socialism there would not be a "fair return" to workers. On the contrary, wages would be abolished and all goods and services would be free.

One student thought Russia was an "anti-capitalist bureaucracy," because of its Leninist ideology. However it was explained that since 1917 the ideology had not determined the social structure, but had been continuously altered to suit current policies.

On the whole, the open discussion was very poor, despite the good attendance. Winding up, the speakers agreed that the argument was not just a matter of applying labels to Russia. Deeper issues were involved.

The debate showed up two of these issues very clearly. First, the Trotskyists are convinced that state ownership has something to do with Socialism. Second, they place great emphasis on the concept of an elite, the "leadership" or "vanguard," to whom the workers are supposed to turn in time of crisis, whereas Socialists say that since Socialism will be democratic it can only be established democratically—when it is the will of the majority.

As a result of the debate, there was a lot of argument among students, which is all to the good. At Hull a growing number of students realise that Russia is capitalist—though there are many other falsehoods to be fought.

People often point to the rather slow growth of the Socialist movement so far. But, although the Socialist case in its entirety hasn't a very big following, certain parts of it are gaining ground fast. The blaze of publicity in celebration of 50 years' state tyranny in Russia has given added impetus to the view that Russia is not Socialist, nor a "workers' state", nor bureaucratic collectivist—but state capitalist. To encourage clear thinking about Russia is to help the spread of this truth.

Steele.

The Underwhelming Theory of Underconsumption (2015)

From the July 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Reformists are calling on workers to fight against ‘austerity’ (not capitalism), based on the flimsy old theory of underconsumption.

An economic theory can—and very often does—live on even after it has been debunked. Over a century and a half ago Marx exposed the fallacies underlying the theory of underconsumption, but the brains of living Leftists—as in a zombie film run backwards—continue to feed off that ‘undead’ theory. The most recent example of the doctrine’s continued influence can be seen in the views of the ‘anti-austerity movement’ on how to overcome the current economic crisis.

The theory of underconsumption posits that a root cause of crisis is the inability of workers to ‘buy back’ what they have produced. The spending power of workers, as represented in their wages, is far below the value of the commodities created.

So an obvious remedy, from this perspective, would be to boost consumer demand through government spending and wage increases. This would bring consumption and production back into a sort of equilibrium. Conversely, austerity policies are doomed to fail because they put downward pressure on consumer demand at the very moment it needs to be stimulated.

This viewpoint seems almost commonsensical. During a crisis, we can see examples of unsold commodities. And workers are well aware of their own limited spending power. The theory also appeals to anyone disgusted by the sight of the rich telling us to tighten our belts as they continue to live in luxury. No wonder that the theory of underconsumption is so compelling.

So what’s the problem with it?

That there is a problem with the theory might occur to anyone who considers why capitalists would not eagerly embrace a simple remedy for crisis that would have the added benefit of easing workers’ discontent. Are capitalists too greedy? Or just stupid?

All hail the consumer

As commodity sellers, capitalists obviously appreciate the merits of increased consumer spending. Producers of everyday consumer goods, in particular, would be able to sell more commodities if workers had higher wages. Any capitalist firm, in fact, would welcome wage increases that result in greater sales of its own commodities.

But the wages that a capitalist would like to see rise are those paid by other capitalists. Marx explains that capitalists would of course ‘like the workers of other capitalists to be the greatest possible consumers of his own commodity’ (Grundrisse). Higher wages for those workers is all fine and good. But no capitalist is eager to raise workers’ wages to benefit other capitalists. Whenever wages are raised it usually is the result of pressure from workers or the labour market.

The hypocrisy of capitalists only wanting higher wages for workers other than their own probably does not even cross their minds because those other workers are grouped under the reassuring mental category of 'consumer'. Apart from the capitalist’s own workers, Marx explains, ‘the whole remaining working class confronts him as consumer and participant in exchange, as money-spender, not as worker’.

Reformists might be encouraged when capitalists express approval for boosting consumer spending, spotting potential allies in their anti-austerity crusade. But capitalists are simply daydreaming about having more customers for their products, not fretting about the state of the working class.

The contrast between the capitalists’ deep and abiding love for the consumer, and their attitude toward their own workers, is stark. There is no room for illusions when it comes to the production process they oversee. ‘Every capitalist knows this about his worker,’ Marx wrote, ‘that he does not relate to him as producer to consumer and [he therefore] wishes to restrict his consumption, i.e. his ability to exchange, his wage, as much as possible’.

In the end, that attitude of capitalists toward their own workers is decisive—because capitalists are not in a position to influence the wages of other workers, whereas they are quite capable of limiting the consumption of their own workers.

For this reason alone, the ‘simple remedy’ peddled by advocates of the underconsumption theory is going to remain on the shelf like an unsold commodity.

The premise of profit

The basic reason capitalists aren’t going to buy the wage-raise remedy is that capitalism itself is premised, in an important sense, on workers’ ‘underconsumption’. That is, profit depends on the value of wages paid to workers being less than the value of the labour workers expend in production. If workers were paid enough to ‘buy back’ all the commodities they produced, the source of profit would dry up.

That doesn’t mean that capitalists are incapable of paying workers a ‘fair wage’. All that the term really means, when used in a precise way, is that workers have been paid a wage more or less equivalent to the value of their ‘labour-power’, a term Marx defined as the mental or physical capabilities that a worker possesses.

The value of labour-power, as in the case of commodities in general, is determined by the labour-time necessary to produce it. More specifically, labour-power’s value is determined by the value of the commodities (or ‘means of subsistence’) consumed by the worker to reproduce the capacity to work: such as food, clothing, and housing, as well as more intangible things like education. 

But the value of a workers’ labour-power and the actual labour the worker expends in the production process are two separate quantities (comparable when reduced to ‘socially necessary labour time’). Profit stems from the value of the labour expended in production being greater than the value of the worker’s labour-power. This exploitation of the worker’s labour is concealed by the wage form, where workers are paid ‘fairly’ (sometimes, at least) according to the value of their labour-power.

This brief excursion into Marx’s theory of surplus-value was necessary to refute the basic assumptions of the theory of underconsumption. Understanding the source of profit reveals that ‘underconsumption’ is hardwired to the capitalist system. Capitalism is a system of production for profit, and profit is only possible through the extraction of what is essentially ‘unpaid labour’. If this relative underconsumption is a problem, the only solution is to do away with capitalism.

Consumer demand is important in capitalism, certainly, but profit is the system’s lifeblood. No commodity—however useful to society—will be produced unless that production is a potential means to profit. An increase in wages is tolerated up to a point—but there is a limit beyond which capitalism will not go because relative underconsumption is integral to the profit system.

A cure for crises that would effectively drain the system of profit would be as useful to capitalism as the ancient practice of bloodletting was once to the sick.

Useful idiocy

Capitalists are not going to introduce policies concocted on the basis of the theory of underconsumption. But the theory is still useful to them ideologically.

In presenting underconsumption as a cause of crisis, rather than a precondition for profit, reformists suggest to workers that capitalism can be improved to the point where the system adequately meets their needs. They also blur the reality of class conflict by saying that capitalists, too, would benefit from the increased demand that wage raises would bring.

Capitalists shouldn’t mind too much that they are ridiculed by reformists for resisting this simple solution. Far better for workers to imagine that their problems stem from a few boneheaded billionaires, than from a profit system that can never meet their needs. The irony, of course, is that the reformists themselves are the system’s useful idiots.

Reformist ideologues also can be trusted to misinterpret the criticism that socialists make of their theory of underconsumption. If a socialist points out the real limits under capitalism to expanding workers’ consumption, as we have here, it sounds ‘defeatist’ to their ears—or even like an argument in favour of austerity.

So let’s make the following point quite clear: Socialists recognize the importance for workers to continually struggle for better wages and working conditions. As wageworkers, we know only too well how capitalists are exerting the utmost pressure in the opposite direction. To abstain from that struggle—the class struggle that continues and will continue as long as capitalism exists—would be suicidal.

But socialists aspire to more than just winning the fairest possible wage under an unfair system. We think that workers should not only resist the efforts by capitalists to drive down our standard of living but also organize ourselves politically to end capitalism. The reformists dismiss this standpoint as ‘unrealistic’.

But they are the ones who have lost touch with reality. They ignore the limits of capitalism. The basic problem with their standpoint is not that they call for higher wages or reject austerity, but that they pursue those aims while treating capitalism as if it were just a mechanism for producing social wealth, rather than a system powered by profit. They spread illusions about the nature of capitalism in offering the enticing idea that there’s a ‘win-win’ solution out there for workers and capitalists alike—a simple way to expand consumption while surmounting crisis.

The theory falls flat—squashed by the reality of capitalism. And the sooner workers recognize just how thin and lifeless this theory is, the better for the socialist movement.

Michael Schauerte