Prods vs Papes in Glasgow (1982)

From the May 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1878 the City of Glasgow Bank crashed to financial ruin. In the same year the Scottish Roman Catholic Hierarchy was restored by the Pope and Charles Eyre became Archbishop of Glasgow. Protestant extremists, such as members of the Orange Lodges (who even today see almost every calamity as part of a global papist conspiracy), probably saw some connection between the two events. Whatever they thought they were certain of one thing: the restoration of Catholic Hierarchy was nothing less than "papal aggression". In response they protested in Glasgow Green. The Army was sent to prevent rioting but fortunately, for Glaswegian working-class skulls, the troops were not called into action.

The main factor leading to both the restoration of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy and the religious intolerance in Glasgow was the vast influx of Irish immigrants who, since the 1840s, had been entering the industrial areas of Britain to escape the famine. From December 1847 to March 1848 alone, about 43,000 Irish arrived in Glasgow, "a mass of broken wretches".

These immigrants were generally unskilled workers who had been forced to live in conditions even more squalid and degrading than those of the indigenous proletariat. They were able, therefore, to subsist on lower wages and consequently occupied the worst slums in the city.

It is a matter of fact that competition for employment between the Irish and the similarly unskilled Glaswegian workers led to a fall in wages for the latter. The native workers did not fail to notice this and, in their brutalised ignorance, blamed the Irish. That the majority of these unfortunate Irish workers adhered to the Roman Catholic brand of religious superstition, instead of the Protestant, was yet another focal point for hatred. The presence, too, of immigrants from the North of Ireland led to violent feuds of the Orange and Green variety among the Irish themselves. Added to this was the quarrelsome nature of the various Scottish Protestant sects who were already squabbling among themselves and were quite prepared to enter into hostilities with the adherents of the "one true church".

Nowadays, in Glasgow and the South of Scotland in general, fewer people are committed to any form of religious superstition; "of 20,000 Roman Catholics registered in Clydebank, only about a third attend church regularly" (Current Account, BBC1 Scotland, 25 February, 1982). Similarly an even greater proportion of those describing themselves as Protestants will only be seen inside a church at their funeral.

This decline in church attendance may seem encouraging, but unfortunately "religious" bigotry still flourishes among many of these non-churchgoers in the form of allegiance to certain football teams" Glasgow Rangers ("Prods") and Glasgow Celtic ("Papes"). These unfortunate and bigoted workers blame each other for all manner of social problems and it is almost incumbent upon Socialist Party of Great Britain speakers in Glasgow to criticise King Billy, the Queen, the Pope and the Catholic church in one breath lest, by reference to one alone, it is assumed by one side that we are in alliance with the other. Sellers of the Socialist Standard in Glasgow pubs must beware of the occasional IRA-supporting Catholics and UDA-supporting Protestants, neither of whom will hesitate to kick one's head in if given the chance; and there are certain pubs, particularly in the East End, into which we dare not go. Regular readers of the Standard will recall that our propaganda meeting of 29 July last year (the Day of the Nonsensical Nuptials) was disrupted by a frenzied gang of Orange thugs and it is a likely attack upon us by some papal-jerseyed hooligans which will prevent us from holding a similar meeting on June 1 (the day of the mumbo-jumbo at Bellahouston Park).

A woman from Livingston, West Lothian, told us (Current Account, BBC1 Scotland, 25 February 1982) that she has no need to think about anything she finds too complicated " . . . the priests, the bishops, the archbishops and the Pope are better equipped to deal with this kind of thing. To advise me". An old man, asked what his religion meant to him, was not quite sure except that he knew it was "great"  . . . "You must go to the chapel". When asked if he had ever rebelled against the church he replied: "No! Rebel? No! No!", as though shocked that anyone could conceive of such a thing.

A widow then informed us that her wayward husband's death-bed return to the faith convinced her of the existence of god. Although she was prepared to listen to other people's opinions, she was not prepared to change her ideas in any way: "I do respect other people's religions . . . I am willing to listen to other people, but I feel, basically, we were all Catholics at one time and . . . it's more the pity that they lapsed from our faith, for maybe good reasons, but basically we should all be Catholic and there's nothing in our religion that I want to give up." ("No Surrender!" seems to be a Catholic slogan as well as a Protestant one.)

The above examples of Catholic "thought" clearly illustrate the harmful effects of religious belief. The Catholic church and the Orange Lodge are very good at producing ignorant, docile and fervently religious wage-slaves, and so long as workers remain in these organisations so long will they neglect to deal with the cause of their poverty.

A leaflet, issued by the Orange Lodge in protest against this month's Papal visit and the Catholic Church's insistence on having its own schools, declares: "As absolute ruler of the Roman Church, Pope John Paul II bears the ultimate responsibility for this disgraceful school "apartheid" (Leaflet: Why Should We Welcome This Man?—He is no Friend of Ours). But responsibility for this lies with those workers who believe the superstitious twaddle preached by the Pope and who therefore find it necessary to obey his instructions to send their children to schools which specialise in the Catholic form of indoctrination. The Protestant variety of religious indoctrination is carried out, not only by their churches and the state schools, but by the juvenile section of the Orange Lodge.

Pastor Jack Glass (who thinks even Ian Paisley is "pro-romanist") also sees the Pope's visit as a major problem, so much so that he stood in the recent Hillhead by-election as the candidate for the Protestant Crusade Against the Papal Visit (388 votes—lost deposit). Another group of religious maniacs has been holding a series of meetings with titles such as "The Papal Visit Examined Doctrinally; the Papal Visit Examined Politically" (Glasgow Evening Times, 6 march 1982). They say: "Does not the sacrifice of our martyred forefathers suffer a grave insult by the permitting of the Pope to come . . . ". On March 24, in Bellahouston Park, about 20 Protestants tried to prevent the uprooting of some trees for the Pope's visit and one woman was arrested while trying to chain herself to a tree. It is most regrettable that so many members of the working class consider it worthwhile to waste so much of their time. It is also regrettable that so many others are eager to see the Pope and will pay £5.00 each to hear his inane incantations.

Socialists hope that the Pope's visit will fail; we hope the lapsed will stay away from the church and that believers will continue to decrease in number. There are no reasonable grounds for belief in the supernatural, or in gods, just as there are no grounds for belief in the existence of pink elephants, leprechauns, fairies or flying pigs. Socialists actively oppose all forms of religious superstition not only because such beliefs are unscientific and act as a barrier to understanding the society in which we live and its historical development, but also because of the socially divisive nature of religion. Workers who suffer from the delusions of religion are prepared to kill their fellow-workers in time of war; there are churches in America where blacks are not allowed; women are often considered subordinate to men and the Catholic Church will neither allow its women to become priests nor decide how many children they will have (although many Catholics now ignore the Pope's ruling on the latter).

The Catholic Church, with its roots in feudalism and its still feudal structure, has adapted very well to capitalism. It has shareholdings in many major companies throughout the world including those producing armaments. Nowadays the Vatican is a major financial institution and it is not surprising that the Pope is such a vehement supporter of capitalism. Only three years ago Pope John II warned his priests in South America against a too injudicious support of workers and peasants in their struggles against poverty.

Had not the Catholic Church an appalling record as a force against social progress, were not the Pope a pedlar of reactionary views and religious nonsense, socialists would still not welcome him. Like his opponents in the Orange Lodge, he is no friend of ours.

Johnny Cadillac

The Enemy on the Left! - Jean-Paul Sartre (1973)

The Enemy on the Left Column from the April 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Apart from the conventional left, the Labourite and Communist elements, the pseudo-socialist political scene is also cluttered up with a plethora of fringe-leftists who call themselves Trotskyists, Maoists, International Socialists etc. and who (insofar as one can follow their varying lines) claim to be lefter-than-left or more socialist than thou. (Alice's answer to the Mad Hatter is perhaps relevant. She could not have more tea because she hadn't had any yet. Similarly, these proliferating groups cannot be more socialist than the Labour Party which is not socialist at all. Though it is true they could not be less, either.)

It is difficult to keep up with these endlessly splintering groups and practically impossible to gather what they really stand for but perhaps one can begin by mentioning an interview in the Guardian recently with Jean-Paul Sartre "widely acknowledged as the greatest living philosopher". (Not so long ago, the title of world champ was claimed for Bertrand Russell whose most philosophical moment had occurred when he mooted the dropping of an atom bomb on Moscow. Not bad for a life-long pacifist. If only Marx was still around to re-write The Poverty of Philosophy.) This French genius, hero of the would-be revolutionary students, now, it seems, calls himself a Maoist. What he was doing all his leftist life, before Maoism was thought of as a creed, the interview does not make clear. One recalls that at various times he has quarrelled with the French Communist Party and at other times he has supported them — including times when the Stalin terror has been at its most ferocious; but you can't really expect leftist philosophers to bother themselves with such trivia as the fact that 200 million Russian workers were held in a tyrant's grasp and untold numbers were being frozen and worked to death in forced-labour camps. One also recalls his association with Russell in the so-called Tribunal to try America for war crimes in Vietnam (of which there was no shortage, of course) which really boiled down to support for the victory of that kindly, freedom-loving "communist", Uncle Ho.

The interview, though it occupies four columns, never gets round to asking the Great Man why he is a Maoist or indeed what kind of an alleged socialist that animal is supposed to be. So one can only fall back on the assumption that the Maoists stand for the sort of régime that exists in China today: where Mao makes it clear, both in word and in deed, that he is himself a Stalinist. So we have the farcical position that the revolting students of 1968 who called the French Communist Party "Stalinist shit" are now personified by a philosopher who stands for Chinese Stalinist shit. A rose by another name indeed. But of course that sort of muddle is the inevitable fate of those who lurch from one fashionable nostrum to another without ever giving themselves the time to work out the real lesson of the present jungle world, in Russia, or China, or the West — that capitalism is the enemy and only an understanding proletariat can do anything about it.

Clearly, the workers will never learn that lesson from a Professor of Maoism. Instead of getting knowledge in their heads, their heads will be broken by the brutal arm of the state. For our Maoist makes it clear he does not hold with the "legal action" of voting and although he does not spell out what means the workers should adopt, it is clear that our Maoists are enemies on the left indeed.

L. E. Weidberg 

What’s wrong with capitalism? (2004)

From the April 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

We could fill several issues of the Socialist Standard with details about the problems caused by capitalism, but let’s see how much we can say within the confines of a single article.

One pervasive aspect of capitalism is poverty. By this we do not mean destitution, as when people literally cannot afford food or clothing or a place to live. There are certainly plenty of homeless people in Britain, but poverty is far more pervasive than this. It involves people not having access to what they want or need, and having to make do with second- or third-best. Shopping at a cheap supermarket,  waiting for the sales to buy what you want, telling the kids they can’t have what they’ve set their hearts on - all these are examples of poverty. So is living in a house that’s too small for your family, or booking the cheapest holiday you can find. And so is working after your anticipated retirement age because your pension will not be big enough. Another illustration is the amount of debt with which people get landed, an average of £16,000 for each man, woman and child in the UK, and therefore much more than that for many individuals. Every day around a hundred people become bankrupt - the ultimate expression of how poverty causes people to live beyond their means.

It’s not just that the vast majority are forced to go without; it’s also that a relatively small number of people live in the lap of luxury. This inequality is not a matter of your neighbour having a bigger car than you or being able to afford two yearly holidays abroad. Instead we are referring to the millionaires and billionaires who own land, companies or shares, and don’t have to worry about two-for-the-price-of-one offers or whether they can afford a night out on Saturday. These people live in grand mansions, probably have a holiday home or two as well, own their own private jets, and employ armies of servants to look after them. Moreover, it’s not they who do the useful work in society: those who drive the buses, teach the children or work in factories or offices are the ones who suffer poverty. Socialists argue that there are two classes under capitalism: the working class (who work for wages and always struggle to make ends meet) and the capitalist class (who receive their income from rent or profit and get the lion’s share of wealth). Belonging to the working class is what makes you poor.

It also means you are likely to suffer from stress of one kind or another. This is partly the result of the daily fight with poverty, but there are many other sources of stress for workers. Many jobs are boring or dangerous, and many more offer little satisfaction to those who do them. Worrying about deadlines or targets, or feeling at the whim of your boss’s moods - all these increase the stress due to employment. And the farther you climb up the “career ladder”, the chances are the more responsibility you will bear and hence the more stress you will encounter. Add to this the insecurity of many jobs and the consequent fear of unemployment. Then there’s the stress of the daily journey to work, whether by car or public transport. Life under capitalism means worries and more worries.

A term sometimes used for people’s general feeling of unhappiness and rejection is alienation, a notion intended to cover the idea of rootlessness, of not belonging to a community, of being isolated, of seeing no real goal in life, of being powerless under the wheels of the capitalist juggernaut. Capitalism views people not as human beings with feelings and desires but as economic units, only useful if you can create profits. So people far too often relate to each other by means of money or comparable considerations (what’s in it for me?), rather than by cooperating with other humans. We are essentially viewed as individuals, not as part of a society. Many social ills can be attributed to alienation, from casual violence to suicide. The pressures of capitalism are not just financial but permeate all aspects of a dog-eat-dog social system.

One reason why people feel stressed and alienated is the lack of democracy which obtains under capitalism. It is true that in Britain there is more or less free speech and the opportunity to elect councillors and MPs. But there is no real democracy in the sense of people having control over their lives. Rather, we are subject to the decisions of others, both within and outside our workplaces. Decisions about shutting factories or moving an office to another part of the country are taken by a small group of bosses rather than the people most closely affected. Often it is the impersonal force of the market which determines what happens. Companies may be closed down or merged because they do not make “enough” profit, not because they do not produce anything useful. All political and economic decisions, whether about the siting of houses or quarries or new roads or whatever, are made within the context of a social system that puts profit above human need, and in such a system there can be no proper democracy, however many democratic institutions exist.

We mentioned above that many jobs are unhealthy and even dangerous. The violence inherent in capitalism is yet another problem thrown up by it. Industrial accidents and the violence perpetrated by many of those on the receiving end of capitalism’s oppression are vivid illustrations of the system’s shortcomings. There is also the ever-present danger of full-scale war. In the course of the twentieth century the nature of warfare changed, from a situation where victims were primarily combatants to one where it is now overwhelmingly civilians that are killed or maimed. Consider too that wars are fought in the interest of the capitalist class, as in the quest for sources of raw materials - oil wars are just a particularly clear case of this. Workers therefore kill and are killed on behalf of a bunch of wealthy parasites.

It is true that capitalism has had a tremendous transforming impact on the world, and that workers nowadays live longer and more rewarding lives than those in the days before the development of industry. However, comparisons should be made not with the distant past but with the present and future potential of Socialism. Judged by this yardstick, and on its own terms, there is so much wrong with capitalism that it is more than high time it was done away with.

Paul Bennett

Small Talk (2000)

A Short Story from the September 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is not language and communication something we most of us take for granted? Not until now have I found cause to dwell on how precious an asset is this tool we have to bring us closer to our understanding of one another.

For example communication is indispensable to rage. Rage without the right words to communicate it with is hollow, redundant, rather like the ranting of a small child who has not yet acquired the ability to speak coherently. It is small wonder that toddlers stamp their feet, wail and lie down on the floor and scream until they are blue in the face. It is because the necessary tool, words, has for the time-being eluded them. The tantrums usually grow less as the child develops speech. A few times lately I have yearned to lie down on the floor and scream when the words I had hoped I was using came over as though I had downed a bottle of Scotch beforehand. But in so many ways is speech abused, used sometimes for the egoistic pleasure of hearing the sound of one's own voice, or to dominate whatever situation one finds oneself in. How often do we actually listen to what another person is saying, concentrating without interruption on what they are telling us? I am bound to admit that I haven't—always. Now that I have to listen through no choice of my own I find that a lot of people talk a lot of drivel, and that those who talk the most drivel are the least likely to listen to anybody else.

We all know that small talk is useful to warming up the proceedings when we first meet new people. The expectation is that small talk will lead to big talk and we will shortly be having marvellous conversations about the important things of life. Have you noticed that this sometimes doesn't happen and the small talk becomes even smaller talk the next time you meet and the time after that too? Then it dawns on you that they really do regard The Weather, their holiday in Greece last year and their new make of car as vital topics of conversation. But by this time they have begun to count you as among their best friends. Your silence has been misinterpreted. You are a good listener because you are stunned by their eloquence.

People come to visit me. For most of the time my speech defect precludes me from joining in on the chat. If it is just one person visiting they have to persevere with me. He or she will often sit embarrassed but brave, straining to comprehend what I am getting at. If there are several visitors then they will throw caution to the wind and talk to each other. Often a nod or a wink in my direction is to show that they know I am still there. So I have little alternative but to listen and it is then that I grieve for my absent power of speech.

People not only talk drivel but they talk repetitive drivel. There is a tendency to repeat the uninspiring, unoriginal, mind-deadening rubbish they were verbalising a few seconds before; I guess in case it wasn't received the first time.

It's not asking for much. There must be some social aspect of the world that has struck someone at some time or another. It needn't be Existentialism or Einstein's Theory of Relativity. I would merely like to hear some opinions expressed about the world, the country, our lives and how they're run. Questions are there to be asked, but, no, apart from a mention of a child abduction (how many children are slaughtered on the roads every year is not so interesting) our interaction stays dreary—even The Weather is dragged out for a re-assessment.

Not a very long time elapses before I cease to attend. It is excusable in a sick woman that she should suddenly close her eyes and shudder. Only those who know me very well will know why I shudder. It is the acceptance of the status quo. No matter how much exploitation, hunger, injustice and war exist in the world and no matter how little power the working class has over its management, the wretchedness continues and so few of us have made any effort to analyse why. Now that the fact of the impermanence of living is staring me in the face I have become impatient with the foolishness of human existence.

Heather Ball

How to join the fight for Socialism (1993)

From the October 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Not sure whether you are a Socialist or not? Perhaps you're interested but worried about joining a bunch of raving lefties who will tell you what to think and do? The Socialist Party wants only free thinking, committed members who understand what Socialism will mean for them.

Many of you are socialists already. But some of you aren't, or are not sure of you are. This article is addressed to the last tow groups. If you're in the first group then you might consider whether what follows could help you to convince others to become socialists.

There is a very simple answer to the question "How can I become a socialist?" Answer: give up supporting capitalism. "But I don't support capitalism". Yes, you do. You vote for parties that stand for keeping or reforming the present system, not abolishing it. 'Well, I like the idea of socialism, but it'll never work (not in my lifetime anyway, because it's against human nature, you won't get people to work without money, they'll grab everything if it's free, etc, etc)".

Of course it won't work if people continue to think like that - if you continue to think like that. The case for socialism is that capitalism - the present world, social, economic and political system - has failed and will continue to fail to deliver what it promises. It is a class system that divides people into owners and non-owners of the means of wealth production and distribution. It produces extremes of poverty and riches, starvation in a world with enough food to feed all its peoples, environmental destruction and degradation in pursuit of profit, wars that benefit no-one except power-seeking leaders and arms manufacturers and sellers.

Yes, it does look easier to change things bit-by-bit than to hold out for a completely different system. But it only looks easier. Change Party A's administration of capitalism for Party B's and you may notice a few differences. But the basic problems remain. The new broom comes in to sweep clean, but it soon makes the same mess as the old one.

A better world
If you are a socialist you will have to put up with being called an idealist, an eccentric, or worse. So what? Idealists are people who have a vision of a better world: socialists are practical idealists who act to achieve that world. Eccentrics are people who deviate from normal forms of behaviour. Do you want to conform with normal forms of behavior such as going to a job that no sane society would require people to do (financial disservices, armed forces, and so on), voting for parties that deal in bribes and threats, believing that hospitals have to stop doing business because they've run out of money?

The Socialist Party of consists of men and women who have got together for a common purpose: the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of socialism. There were socialists in the world before the Socialist Party was formed in 1904, and there are people who are socialists today outside the Socialist Party (we'd like them in). We don't have leaders who tells us what to do and think -  we have our own fully democratic doers and thinkers. We are not a narrow sect who demand faithful allegiance to every dot and comma of our "doctrine". We don't have a doctrine, although we do have a set of principles, originally formulated in the language of 1904, to support the achievement of our sole object of socialism.

Understanding vital
We don't seek to sign up as members everyone who comes to our meetings or who we pass in the street. If you show some interest in socialism we'll talk with you, offer you our literature and invite you to our meetings. When you want to take part in helping to achieve socialism, we'll invite you to discuss membership with us.

Although we need a lot of money to do the things we want to do - especially for the costly but very worthwhile Euro-election socialist literature distribution campaign next year - we won't pressure you to give the Socialist Party money: your work for socialism is more important. The Party is organized in branches and groups around the country, and if there is one reasonably nearby you'll find support from mixing with people (call them comrades if you like - it's not compulsory) who share your views.

Finally, as socialists we don't agree with each other about everything. Come to our twice-yearly conferences and you'll hear some (hopefully) good discussions. But you will run the risk of being invited to take part in those discussions.

Stan Parker

Pathfinders: The Biggest Question? Don’t Ask... (2015)

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

Science is good at asking the big questions, the ones that make even Earth's tumultuous politics look trivial. Science journalists are also good at asking big questions, but usually during slow news weeks and usually without any kind of decent answers attached.

New Scientist recently led with a cover article entitled 'Ten discoveries that would transform what it means to be human', featuring ten speculations which would supposedly revolutionise human life on Earth (8 August).

They proceeded as follows. What if we can't know everything (worst case: we're no worse off). What if we could talk sheep, dog or dolphin (worst case: we'd be vegetarians). What if aliens exist (if they're smart they'd avoid us). What if we could upload our brains (a digital copy of you is not you though, is it?). We have no free will (yawn, not that again). We came from outer space (panspermia merely adds a step to the existing origins debate). We could prove God exists (yawn, again) etc etc.

These aren't revolutions, they're fillers dressed up as thrillers. They would not involve any sea-change in social behaviour. At most a few religions would be mildly upset or excited, until they adapted like the oily amorphous creatures they are. For socialists, this is toenail gazing. Meanwhile in the middle of the room, farting gently and wagging its trunk and big ears, a very large question stands quietly waiting to be noticed.

What if we could end conflict and deprivation on planet Earth?

If science is so good at asking the big questions, why doesn't it ask this? Is it perhaps because it's not a scientific question, in some sense? But change the terms to refer to cancer, or wildfires, or global warming, and it's obvious that scientists ask questions like this all the time.

But perhaps it's a different kind of question nonetheless, because unlike cancer, wildfires or global warming, everybody knows that conflict and deprivation are so intrinsic to our global economic system, and to all known preceding systems, that their abolition would clearly imply a set of political changes so radical and so huge that 'revolution' is an entirely appropriate word to use. The very idea is so potent that it makes many people nervous, not just scientists.

So the too-easy answer would be that scientists don't care or dare to ask questions that might annoy their bosses and funding organisations, or that might make them look like loony lefties (although such concerns didn't bother Einstein). This is slightly odd, given that statistically most are liberal or left-of-centre in their thinking, but apparently keeping very quiet about it. Another too-easy answer is that scientists suffer (as all humans do) from group-think, a compulsion to conform to orthodoxy, or fixation error, a tendency not to see the big picture, and of course good old confirmation bias, the tendency to believe what you already think (New Scientist, 15 August). But any argument that puts all the blame on them can't be the whole story.

Why don't scientists ask politically explosive questions? Because, from their point of view, the answers appear to lie outside the domain of science, in the realms of politics or religion, where nothing can be demonstrated with a pie-chart or a meter reading and rhetoric and moral posturing take precedence over empirical fact. In short, political viewpoints including ours are unfalsifiable, i.e. there's no way to prove that they're wrong.

To be falsifiable is, in the Popperian school of thought, to be scientifically valid and thus worthy of scientific attention. To attract that attention, we would have to show by what criteria, and in what circumstances, our case for non-market common ownership and democratic control could be disproven. Which is not as easy as it might sound. It's no good suggesting some giant and unfeasibly expensive study, like running socialism for fifty years inside a sealed bubble in Argentina, and it's no good stipulating vague 'proofs' without saying how they are to be found (eg. 'prove to me socialism can't work and I'll abandon it').

And what would we call 'proof' anyway? Suppose that scientists discovered, say, a gene for aggression. Would we accept that as proof, and abandon our ideas about peaceful coexistence, or would we create a theoretical work-around to accommodate it, as religious people commonly do, or blithely disregard it as Steven Pinker does in The Blank Slate? Suppose that a computer simulation of socialism showed that it always broke down and devolved back into capitalism. Would we accept that as proof, or would we suggest instead that the computer model wasn't sophisticated enough, or possibly that the researchers (no doubt funded by capitalist corporations) had rigged the test? Is there a failure condition which is so comprehensive and unequivocal that, were it met, we could have no possible riposte, no get-out clause, no 'ah, but…'?

Gravity is falsifiable. Just allow yourself to float spontaneously into the air, and the job's done. Evolution is falsifiable. As the biologist JBS Haldane once famously retorted, just dig me up a dinosaur with a fossilised rabbit in its gut. The Periodic Table, electromagnetism, E=MC², all falsifiable, therefore all valid theory. Could socialist theory match that? No it couldn't.

But neither can capitalism, of course, which generates an abundance of evidence of its own failings every minute of every hour of every day, evidence which people are remarkably adept at ignoring or explaining away. So no proposed social system is falsifiable. You can't test socialism in a lab, under randomised double-blind conditions. But does that mean it's unscientific, and that scientists and science journalists are therefore right to avoid consideration of it?

No it doesn't, and here's why. Science can be said to proceed via the dislodging of unsatisfactory theories and their replacement by theories which better account for the observed phenomena and are better able to predict outcomes. In this sense socialism is a valid scientific theory. It is evidence-based, it explains events in capitalism consistently better than capitalist theoreticians can manage, and it predicts long-term outcomes better (eg predicting that Government A will not solve unemployment and Government B will not abolish booms and slumps). It's an effective tool of analysis, but also a compelling tool of change, offering a simple and utilitarian set of knowable and predictable parameters instead of the myriad, volatile and unpredictable parameters which produce chaos, suffering and destruction in money economies. For scientists to ignore such a tool is worse than negligent, it flies in the face of the very principles of scientific enquiry.

Paddy Shannon

About Books (1953)

From the November 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some old-timers in the Trade Unions together with a few in the rebel fringe of the Labour Party, even a few of the older members of the S.P.G.B. have been heard to claim that certain novels read in their younger days were the means of guiding their steps in the direction of Socialism.

Foremost amongst the books which are accorded this honour is Robert Tressall's 'The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists." We have been asked a number of times to draw this book to the attention of younger readers of the SOCIALIST STANDARD, although, if a person is already a reader of the SOCIALIST STANDARD he will not glean much education from Tressall's book. But he will get a world of fun and a clear insight into conditions in the building and house decorating trades during the first decade of this century.

The book was first printed in 1914 and has been continuously reprinted ever since. It is a story written round the life and work of an imaginary Frank Owen, a house painter and a Socialist (if we excuse a little confusion in his theory) and the small band of his workmates. Owen takes every opportunity in arguments with his mates to expound his Socialist ideas, doing so very simply and effectively for the reader, but hopelessly for his mates.

Certain chapters in the book are more than humorous, they are uproariously funny and there is deep tragedy, too. It is argued by some that this is the story of Robert Tressall's own life. Certainly Tressall was a house painter and, from what little we know of his life there are grounds for the claim. If you are one of the very few who have not read this book, do so. It is still in print and in plentiful supply. If you are one of the old ones who read it years ago, read it again. We have just re-read it before writing about it and we had great fun.

Another book that gets commended for similar reasons is Jack London's "Iron Heel." This is an altogether different book from Tressall's. It has been published in many editions since it first appeared nearly fifty years ago and the latest is still to be seen on bookstalls.

Jack London tells his story through the mouth of the wife of a man called Ernest Everhard who was a "Socialist" who would fit very nicely into the present day Communist Party. It is a story of the development of Capitalism in America projected into the years ahead of the time of telling. It tells of the ever increasing exploitation and subjugation of the workers by a capitalist oligarchy called "The Iron Heel," of the hardening and sharpening of the class struggle and of two bloody insurrections that result in the defeat and massacre of the workers.

Despite the quite good lectures and arguments of Ernest Everhard and some of his associates, this book would never, on its own, convert anyone to Socialism. Its main appeal is emotional and by that means it might urge a man to study class society seriously. But a worker whose approach to social problems is purely emotional is ready prey for political parties which rely on the emotional upsurge of their supporters and not on a clear understanding of working class interests.

A third book in this category is Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle," also still in print after forty-seven years. This book was mentioned in these columns in May, 1953. It os a story of the American stock yards and, although it is a remarkably fine story, the same criticism applies as to Jack London's book.

Whether these books are useful to put in the hands of a non-socialist worker with the hope of leading him, by their guidance, along the path to an understanding of Socialism, once he is on that path he will enjoy reading them and we have little doubt but that most convinced Socialists have read them. If they haven't, then we can recommend them to an honourable place on the book shelf.

W. Waters 

Halo Halo!: Catholics and Aliens (2015)

The Halo Halo! Column from the September 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

A question in the Guardian G2’s ‘Notes and Queries’ column (where Guardian readers respond to each other’s queries on anything that happens to be puzzling them) recently asked ‘If  there is intelligent life out there, what are the chances that it might believe in God?’

Following the recent news that exoplanet Kepler 452b appears to be remarkably Earth-like, the Vatican appears to have the answer. The Pope, it seems, is way ahead of the rest of us on this and has been prepared for the possibility for some time. In addition to the squad of exorcists the Vatican keeps on the payroll to deal with earth-bound satanic beings, they apparently also have their own astronomers to keep an eye out for aliens who presumably, if not already Catholics, could be converted.

‘If there was intelligent life (on another planet) I don’t see that as a contradiction with the Christian faith’, said one Vatican astronomer. ‘If God created aliens somewhere out there, then the Vatican is in no position to say Jesus wasn’t for them too’. (Independent 2 August). And another, back in 2010, informed us that ‘aliens who seek baptism should receive it from the church, because any entity – no matter how many tentacles it has – has a soul.’

And according to another 2008 Independent article, Fr Jose Gabriel Funes, the Vatican priest in charge of the stargazing department announced that ‘Alien life would be part of God’s creation’ and aliens would be ‘our brothers’. So in partial answer the Guardian’squestion of whether they are believers, any aliens planning to visit us can rest assured that they are already being eyed up for baptism into the Catholic Church. No doubt a few can be recruited into the priesthood too. They’ll fit in well.

How the aliens will react to this news though, if it turns out they are already devout Martian Mormons, Moonies or Moslems for example, Saturnalian Salvationists or Jews and Jehovah’s Witnesses from Jupiter we’ll have to wait to find out.

To clarify the situation then, let’s visit www.ufointernationalproject.com/latest-news/5th-june-2015. They sound as if they’ve got their finger on the pulse of the latest alien/ufo facts.

‘The Catholic church has been pondering over whether there indeed is a far more technologically and intellectually advanced sentient species elsewhere in the galaxy’. They tell us, ‘Pope Francis, apparently, believes so and according to rumour he will not only announce his intentions to prepare the human race for ET contact, BUT he will (according to many rumours) denounce the international corporate capitalist system, that is currently contaminating the planet with toxic consciousness and greed and making us all slaves to the dollar’.

Well, that sounds interesting. These ‘far more technologically and intellectually advanced’ aliens probably won’t need any lessons from the Pope about capitalism, but once their conversion to Catholicism starts, what will they make of the bible account of creation? Fr Funes, the chief stargazer, doesn’t think that will be a problem though. ‘The bible should not be held to account for its lack of scientific accuracy’. He says.

They’re obviously counting on the aliens being as gullible as they think the rest of us are.

NW

Trotsky and Stalin: rival leaders (2003)

From the March 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Despite presenting themselves as mortal enemies, the camp followers of Leon Trotsky and Josef Stalin were competing government management teams operating under the same basic philosophy – that the workers could not, as a whole, come to socialist consciousness and bring socialism about for themselves.

Trotsky himself can be seen as being one of the main causes of Stalin's ascendancy. As Trotsky's hagiographer Isaac Deutscher points out in his The Prophet Armed, Stalin began his dominance of the Soviet government as part of “a special faction the sole purpose of which was to prevent Trotsky having a majority which would enable him to take Lenin's place.”

This faction was aided by the fear that Trotsky as commander of the Red Army (with a predilection for being seen in public in dashing military uniforms) could assume the role of a military dictator. Such fears would have been stoked by his support, in 1921, for the militarisation of labour (in effect placing the workers under his personal direct command).

Leadership worship

Trotsky was comprehensively out-manoeuvred by Stalin, and eventually driven out of Russia, whereupon he tried to position himself as head of the loyal opposition to the Bolshevik regime. His writings from 1929 onwards are full of criticisms of the leadership of the Comintern and their policies, especially regarding his own faction. Typically, he wrote: “Under the treacherous blows of the Stalinist bureaucracy, the Left Opposition [i.e. him and his followers] maintained its fidelity to the official party to the very end” (Trotsky, 'The Tragedy of the German Proletariat: The German Workers will Rise Again – Stalinism, Never', March 1933). The debates between Trotskyists and Stalinists always revolved around such questions of leadership – if only the leaders had acted in such-and-such a way, things would have turned out better.

Tactics, said Trotsky, should have been framed so as to win workers over from their Social Democratic leaders, under the command of the Communist Party: “We must understand how to tear the workers away from their leaders”. According to Trotsky, the official Communist leaders would not follow his policies because they were constituted of “not a few cowardly careerists and fakers whose little posts, whose incomes, and more than that, whose hides, are dear to them” (Trotsky, 'For a Workers United Front Against Fascism', December 1931) .

Two years later the Stalinist leadership did adopt Trotsky's tactics – specifically of the “United Front” of labour organisations against fascism – but only by surrendering leadership of the movement to the leaders of Social Democracy. The issue remained one of leadership, backed up by a notion that the workers were incapable of developing broad socialist consciousness in anything like a majority, and so that the “Communists” would have to work with reformists in order to influence them, and draw off the active workers into their own ranks.

“Could the Communist Party succeed, during the preparatory epoch, in pushing all other parties out of the ranks of the workers by uniting under its banner the overwhelming majority of workers, then there would be no need whatever for soviets. But historical experience bears witness to the fact that there is no basis whatever for the expectation that...the Communist Party can succeed in occupying such an undisputed and absolutely commanding position in the workers' ranks, prior to the proletarian overturn” (Trotsky cited by John Rees in 'The broad party, the revolutionary party and the united front', International Socialist Journal, Winter 2002).

It is, John Rees claims in the article this quotation comes from, the “uneven consciousness” among workers that necessitates the need for leaders, and for an organisation that can bring it together with non-socialist workers in the name of immediate given ends, be those organisations trade unions, or – as above – workers' councils. Thus, the Soviets beloved of Leninists, and trade unions too, become locations for 'united front' work. This admirably demonstrates that Julius Martov's accusation in his State and Socialist Revolution that Bolsheviks supported soviets in order to help seize power as a minority was acknowledged by the very leaders of the Russian coup d'état.

Reformists

For almost all of their existence, both Trotskyist and Stalinist organizations – thoroughly convinced that the workers could not come to understand and want socialism – have orientated themselves towards working with official reformist organisations. Instead of standing clearly and forthrightly for socialism, they ape the manoeuvres and sounds of official Labourism, seeking to influence non-socialist workers through tactical manipulation, rather than convince them to change their minds.

While Rees argues that “united front” work provides an opportunity for “revolutionaries” to discuss and convert reformists, he also states that “the immediate aim of the united front is to provide the most effective fighting organisation for both reformists and revolutionaries”. That is, whatever front is going to be built must always give precedence to the struggle at hand, and its immediate success. This position stands in some contrast to the official Trotskyist doctrine of “transitional demands” – i.e. advocating reforms known not to work, in order to draw workers into “Communist” ranks through their inevitable disappointment.

Thus, we have the present example of the Stop the War coalition whereby Trotskyists are working with pacifists, CND and Submissionists (“submission”: the English translation of “islam”) to try and achieve their immediate aims. John Rees himself appears in the media as a “co-ordinator” for the coalition, his membership of the SWP never mentioned (at all other times he is generally introduced as the “editor of the International Socialist Journal”). Quite how he is supposed to bring people round to revolutionary politics by hiding his affiliation remains a mystery.

The reality is that these fronts can only attain any sort of success by hiding the disagreements between their constituent organisations, specifically about means and motives. That is, they succeed by making demands that are supported by significant numbers of workers, meaning that any “revolutionary” content will be buried into the need for immediate victory. As such, it is small-c conservative, taking political consciousness as it is found, and seeking to manipulate it, rather than change it.

Such a tactic, however, affords the Leninists an opportunity to extend their influence. As a tiny minority, they get to work with organisations which can more easily attract members, and can thus be part of campaigns and struggles that reach out well beyond the tiny numbers of political activists in any given situation.

For example, in the 50s and 60s, many trade union bureaucrats were members of the Stalinist Communist Party (just as today, a good number are former Trotskyists). Likewise, the SWP provide much of the material and personnel for organising the Stop the War Coalition. The salient fact remains, though, that despite providing all this assistance, the “revolutionaries” are incapable of taking these campaigns and trade unions further than the bulk of the membership are willing to tolerate.

Socialists have long argued that tiny minorities cannot, without force on their side, simply take control of movements and use them to their own ends. Without agreement between the parties to a project about what it is and where it is going, leaders and led will invariably walk off in different directions. That means, if the Leninists are right, and the majority of workers cannot achieve socialist consciousness, then they must be committed to using force against the recalcitrant majority in order to achieve their aims.

Nonetheless, the Leninists continue to attach themselves to larger movements in the hope of providing alternative leaderships and of being at the heart of the struggle. Hence, this is why Rees continues to argue that the official Labour Party remains “organically” linked to the working class through its individual members and the link to the unions. Only at the Labour Party conference could a revolt over PFI occur, he claims, because of the link between the unions and Labour.

We argue, however, that since we are capable, as workers, of understanding and wanting socialism, and of going beyond mere 'trade union consciousness' as Lenin called it, we cannot see any reason why our fellow workers cannot do likewise. Further, since the majority are capable of actively building socialism, there is no need for a leadership to impose it upon them – and that the job of socialists in the here and now is to openly and honestly state the case, rather than trying to wheedle and manoeuvre within bigger parties to win a supposed “influence” that is more illusory than real.

Pik Smeet

The New Era! (1929)

Editorial from the July 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Labour Government is in office, their photos are in the papers, silk hats and all. The Cabinet is composed of respectable, nice, kind men—we know that, because the papers have told us so. They have started work—we know that because the papers have exhibited photos of them in typical working attitudes—gazing at piles of papers, holding telephones to their ears, etc, etc. We admit that, from the photos, there is nothing to choose between them and their predecessors. They look just as happy and satisfied.

When they were last in power we did not notice any striking change in the general position of the workers. We can confidently prophecy that "history will repeat itself" with slight modifications. What will you, fellow-worker, do then? Will you vote Liberal or Tory next time? Or will you get down to the job of understanding just where you are?

You are poor because you are deprived of the things you produce—because you keep drones to exploit you. You will remain poor until you put an end to exploitation.

Do those smirking, self-satisfied faces that look at you out of the newspapers represent a movement that is going to lift you out of wage-slavery? The movement for Socialism is a serious business, born out of the miseries and enslavement of the multitude; it demands of its votaries hard work, political sincerity, and steadfastness of purpose. It is not a movement to provide an opportunity for brilliant oratory, "statesmanship," swell dinners or joyrides, nor is it a movement to provide a poor man, with a clever tongue, a ladder to climb out of oppressive conditions at the expense of his fellows.

You have voted into a power a Labour Government. You, who are poor, have not done this to amuse yourselves, you have done it in the expectation that your conditions will be ameliorated. Watch the progress of your new Government, see if their acts provide you with any road out of poverty. And when you are disappointed, as you surely will be, do not then sink back into apathy and dejection, but examine again your position in society. If you do this carefully you will come to the knowledge that your emancipation depends upon yourselves and can only be accomplished by yourselves.

The day that you reach this view you will turn to the party that alone has stood for Socialism throughout the whole of its history. That party is the Socialist Party of Great Britain. It is composed of working men and women who, in the course of their daily work, have gained a knowledge of Socialism and held fast to it.

Examine our position; judge us, — join with us in the work of emancipation.

Mancunian monument (1984)

The Place Where I Live Series from the February 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

The traditional music-hall vision of Manchester, as a perpetually rainy city where the skyline is dominated by cotton mill chimneys and heavy neo-gothic architecture, is becoming less true as the larger mills of Ancoats are one by one being demolished. The city centre, however, retains its nineteenth century aspect, as the buildings raised to house the financial side of the cotton trade are now occupied by banks and estate agents. One exception to this, a building which keeps to its original use, is the Town Hall in Albert Square, a huge gothic edifice constructed primarily to house the machinery of local government but also as a monument to Mancunian capitalism's wealth and power.

The source of this wealth and power was the cotton industry, which settled in South East Lancashire in the eighteenth century, in a climate ideal for processing cotton. By 1850 the industry had become centralised in Lancashire and was functionally divided between the northern weaving area and the richer southern spinning districts. Manchester's role in this was twofold, as a fine spinning town and as the major market for yarn and piece goods. Because the cotton industry at this time depended heavily on its export trade the Mancunian capitalists shed their eighteenth century mercantilist preferences in favour of laissez faire and the Anti-Corn Law League, to such effect that a famous building — the Free Trade Hall — was dedicated to their fervent economic gospel.

In 1780, Manchester's population was 40,000, a figure which increased by over 100,000 during the next fifty years (A. Briggs, Victorian Cities, 1975, Chapter 3). This development brought with it enormous squalor, which impressed even some contemporary apologists for capitalism but which the local government, feudal in style, was unable to ease, even supposing it had shown any will to do so. Fear of proletarian radicalism and a desire for local autonomy led to the local capitalists incorporating Manchester as a borough in 1838, a move supported by the Whig national government which saw municipal boroughs as a safeguard against chartism.

The new elite successfully defeated chartism but the squalor which is a natural accompaniment to capitalism festered on. A severe slump in the early 1860s (wrongly attributed to the American Civil War) exposed the local authorities' inability to cope with such typical problems of capitalism. They were successful, however, in blaming this onto a lack of office space in the then Town Hall in King Street and thus it was decided to build a new town hall, on the grounds that this would enable a more effective administration of Manchester's wedge of British capitalism.

The second Manchester Town Hall was designed by Alfred Waterhouse, whose plan was chosen principally for the amount of office space it allowed. The original estimated cost of £250,000 was over-spent at least four-fold in the nine years that it took to construct the edifice, as the borough decided that their new administrative centre should also be a monument to themselves and to the glory of industrial capitalism which they personified. Proudly, they allowed Waterhouse to add many decorative extras.

The local dignitaries decided that it would be fitting to open so impressive a pile only with a spectacular ceremony spread over three days in September 1877. They at first hoped that Queen Victoria would perform the opening rites but she refused, either as a result of pressure from her Tory ministers at Westminster, who disliked "liberal" Manchester or because if her own antipathy towards the then mayor, Abel Heywood, who had been a chartist. (At the time the press largely favoured the first reason but it is obvious from contemporary broadsheets and recollections of the event that Victoria's non-appearance was the result of her opposition to chartism. In 1877, as today, the press were ready to suppress a story which could damage the royal figureheads of capitalism.)

A most depressing aspect of the opening ceremonies was the role of the working class. On the first two days they assumed the part of onlookers, cheering their masters who were being honoured in the ceremonies. Finally, on the third day they clamoured impatiently to be allowed to participate in a trade societies' procession, rigidly controlled by the bourgeoisie, and so were able to offer their slaves' contribution to the lauding of their masters and of the system which condemned them to squalor.

This happened in spite of a general air of industrial unrest. Mancunian joiners had been on strike for four months before the Town Hall opening and a wage cut imposed on the spinners in Bolton had precipitated a strike by 10,000 of them. Thus, many of those who gave homage to the bourgeoisie on those days were in direct and open dispute with them over their very lives.

It was also known how vastly expensive the new building was (only the police force had more spent on it during the 1870s). It was also common knowledge that deep and widespread deprivation existed in the city, especially in Ancoats and Ardwick. Yet there was little uneasiness expressed at the all-too-obvious contrast between opulence and squalor, even among the working class crowded into the slums and herded each day to their exploitation in the mills.

This—to any class-conscious person—illogical behaviour was the norm as the late nineteenth century saw a great rise in what is known as civic culture — the attempt by a local elite to smother class awareness with provincial loyalties — the success of which may be measured by the fact that the working class are often so eager to honour their exploiters.

Nowadays, provincial or civi loyalties still make good copy for the media, which exhorts to attend the Manchester Show, to cheer for City or United or to get concerned with the latest real-life drama among the cast of Coronation Street. In the same way, national loyalties are promoted through pictures of the Prince and Princess of Wales on the ski slopes or by assuming that we will all cheer our local "hero" from the Falklands. The intention of all this is to create a false identity between employers and employed, helped on with mixtures of local and national chauvinism. In Manchester, as elsewhere, the working class co-operate in their own deception, which may enable them to temporarily forget such acute social problems as poverty, nowadays often harshened by unemployment; currently 16 per cent of the population of the North West, and 20 per cent of adult males there, are out of work (Employment Gazette, 1983). It may also help blot out the dreadful housing conditions in the horrific Hulme Crescents, in the crumbling Fort Berwick or one of the many decaying and vandalised estates. The popular ignoring of such symptoms of capitalism's inability to provide properly for its people is an obstacle to workers seeing through the falsehoods of capitalist ideology to the true cause of their problems.

The process of smothering class consciousness with local or national chauvinism has been going on for a long time now. It has been very successful and has become smooth and sophisticated in its operation but can only last as long as the working class fail to question their relationship with their exploiting class local, civic, national and world wide.

John Critchfield

Nationalism - Poison for the Working Class (2002)

Editorial from the April 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Across the world nationalism has been rearing its ugly head again, most notably in the cockpit of violence that is the Middle East. As we write Palestinian and Israeli workers continue to butcher one another in a senseless round of tit-for-tat atrocities. As the shooting of Palestinian children and the suicide bombings aimed at Israeli workers in Jerusalem continue, socialists have no hesitation in stating that this violence is in no way, shape or form in the interest of the working class of wage and salary earners.

Many on the political left will argue that Palestinian nationalism is somehow progressive and different to Israeli nationalism and should therefore be supported (in a similar way to why they often think Welsh and Scottish nationalism should be encouraged in Britain and Irish Nationalism in Ulster). As socialists, we say that this is a dangerous poison that is being spread by the left and that no side engaged in such conflict can either speak for the working class as a whole or be an example to it.

History is replete with minorities in existing states using terrorist methods so that a new state may be formed or territory transferred from the “ownership” of one state to another. The working class of wage and salary earners is never in a position to benefit from this process, it is only in a position to suffer. The working class – by definition the class that does not possess any significant titles to land or private property, including capital – has quite literally nothing to gain from a situation where one group of rulers and owners is replaced by another group.

In the nineteenth century when the modern capitalist system was expanding across the globe “national liberation” struggles, typically led by a local growing capitalist class against the old autocratic empires, were part of the process which swept away the old political arrangements and opened the way forward for liberal democracy and the development of capitalist methods of production. It was often argued that it was in the interests of the working class during this time to take the side of the capitalists against the old autocracies like the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire, etc. It was said that this process would open the way up for working class organisation and for the development of an advanced industrial system which is a prerequisite for a socialist society of abundance and free access to available wealth.

Since then, the capitalist system has become a world system. The alleged justification for the working class taking sides in 'national liberation' struggles has now gone if ever it existed and today all such struggles are just deadly battles between sections of the capitalist class, even though it is the workers – imbued with nationalist poison – that naturally enough end up doing the fighting and dying.

We argue that every nation state is by its very nature anti-working class. The “nation” is a myth as there can be no community of interests between two classes in antagonism with one another, the non-owners in society and the owners (the workers and the capitalists). And the state ultimately exists only to defend the property interests of the owning class at any given point in history – which is why modern states across the world send the police and army in to break strikes and otherwise seek to protect the interests of the capitalists and “business” at every turn.

The goal of the socialist movement is not to assist in the creation of even more states but to establish a real world community without frontiers where all states as they currently exist will be destroyed. In a socialist society communities, towns and cities will have the opportunity to thrive – and people will no doubt feel an attachment to places that are real and tangible – but the 'imagined communities' that are nation states will be consigned to the history books where they belong.

Our message to the workers who call themselves Israeli and the workers who call themselves Palestinian is to cease the slaughter. As workers you have no real community of interests to gain from your present struggle. You do, however, have an “imagined community” you should lose and an entire world to win instead.

Who said the Class Struggle was Dead? (1974)

From the January 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Those who accept present-day society see strikes and industrial conflict as an avoidable mistake. Wilson and the Labour Party, for instance, accuse the Tories of "splitting the nation" as if what they call the nation has ever been united. Tory backwoodsmen, on the other hand, see all sorts of "leftwing agitators" behind strikes. Industrial psychologists blame it all on outdated attitudes. None of them face up to the fact that industrial conflict is built into present-day society and is quite unavoidable as long as it lasts.

The purpose of production today is not the satisfaction of human needs but profit. So a car factory is not essentially a place where cars are made but a place where profits are made; and the same goes for shipyards, coal mines, railways, docks, warehouses, offices and all other workplaces, irrespective of whether they are private or State owned, The source of these profits, as of all wealth, is the labour of all those who work. Industrial psychologists and others may regard this as one of their "outdated attitudes" but, argue as they may, they cannot refute the fact that wealth can only be produced by human beings working on nature-given materials and that therefore any non-work income such as profits must come out of the labour of those who do work.

Workers are paid as wages or salaries about enough to keep them and their families in efficient working order, but can and do produce much more than this, the surplus over and above their wages being the source of profit. Workers accept these terms because, having no other source of income, they are compelled to work for wages for those who own and control the means of production.

Present-day society, capitalism, then, is based upon the exploitation of the working class. Trade unions were formed to try to mitigate this exploitation since experience showed that, if workers put up no resistance, employers take advantage of this weakness to increase profits at the expense of wages. The trade union struggle is basically a defensive struggle against such downward pressures on wages or, what amounts to the same thing, a response to money prices rising faster than money wages.

In 1972, after all, the miners only claimed to be fighting to restore their standard of living of four or five years previously. And most trade union struggles are the same: to maintain, rather than improve, their members' standard of living. Figures confirm this. According to New Society (25 February, 1971), in the period 1959 to 1970 the net real income of the average wage-earner (that is, his take home pay plus family allowances) rose only 19 per cent, or less than 2 per cent. a year. Hardly a confirmation of the claim that trade unions are responsible for rising prices, growing unemployment, etc., etc., because of the huge wage increases they are alleged to have got for their members. Rather it is a confirmation of their limited role of maintaining standards; that, in fact, despite strikes and tough bargaining, trade unions have to run fast just to stay still. Present-day society, in other words, forces workers to struggle just to maintain their standard of living, let alone improve it.

But the wages struggle is just one aspect of the class struggle. Ultimately this is a struggle by the workers for the ownership and control of the means of production, whether or not they realise this (and most of them at the moment unfortunately do not). The logic of their position in society as an exploited, wealth-producing class compels them to struggle for this, at first unconsciously and later consciously.

This working-class struggle of which the struggle over wages and working conditions is bit the industrial aspect, will go on as long as workers are the subject class in society. The logic of the workers' social position dictates this. This is why strikes are built into present-day society and cannot be abolished by psychologists or repressive laws; not even state capitalist Russia and Eastern Europe, for all their police state dictatorships, have been able to prevent the workers struggling against their exploitation.

To win, however, the workers' struggle must move beyond the spontaneous industrial level and become conscious and political. For capitalist ownership of the means of production is in the end maintained by their control of political power which the political backwardness of the working class gives them. Let there be no doubt about this. The workers, including those who from time to time have to take industrial action to maintain their living standards, vote for political parties which, in practice, always act to confirm capitalist control of the means of production: for Labour or the Tories, both of which have no desire to change the system of accumulating capital out of the profits produced by the working class.

What is needed is a conscious political movement aimed at ending capitalist class ownership and control of the means of production, thereby abolishing classes (including the working class). This done, a new society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production by and in the interests of the whole community will have been established. On this basis production for sale with a view to profit can be replaced by the planned production of wealth solely to satisfy human needs and, given modern technology, a society of abundance achieved with free access to goods and services in accordance with the old Socialist principle "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs".

Adam Buick 

Editorial: “Nasty Party” or Nasty System? (2002)

Editorial from the November 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

When Conservative Party Chairwoman Theresa May recently said at the Party conference that the Tories were perceived as being the “nasty party” the media leapt upon it as an admission of guilt. The political opponents of the Tories in the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties described it as striking confirmation that they'd been right all along: the Tories were a peculiarly sorry and vindictive lot.

That the Conservative Party has long held some rather unsavoury assumptions and has revelled in the distasteful political practices consequent on them is without dispute. From single mothers and the unemployed to Afro-Caribbeans who do not support the England cricket team, the working class in Britain has felt the wrath of the Tories (and their media friends at papers like the Daily Mail) longer than most of us care to remember. That their assumptions were tainted by rank hypocrisy from the start to finish (such as with the “back to basics” of John Major) made their political swagger all the more difficult to take – and their demise when it came all the more satisfying.

But if the Tories were the “nasty party”', what do we have now? Are New Labour the “kind and cuddly” party? Or are they at least the “lesser evil” – the “not quite so nasty” lot? Socialists have an uncompromising view on this and we can illustrate it through an analogy.

If there are two other people in a room with you and the first one of them is openly hostile, abuses you at every turn and is obviously working for interests diametrically opposed to your own, you would have to be crazy to consider them a friend. But if the other person in the room keeps telling you that they are on your side, sympathises about how awful the first person is being, and says you should trust them instead – while all the while they are pursuing interests just as opposed to yours and will proceed to stab you in the back at the first opportunity – then who is your real friend? Neither of them is the answer, of course, though we can say that you are less likely to be deceived by the openly hostile one.

The function performed by the Labour Party is always to appear as the benign friend to the workers in distinction to the “wicked” Tories. In the 1950s Labour hero Nye Bevan said the Tories were “lower than vermin” and in more recent times ex-Labour MP Frank Haynes called Margaret Thatcher “a wicked, wicked woman” to her face. But at least you could say Thatcher and her cohorts were straightforward about their support for privilege and their subsequent contempt for the workers – indeed, rather more straightforward than the Labour Party.

Already since their re-election in 1997 Labour is the Party that has hit the benefits of single mothers and the unemployed, has introduced tuition fees for students (something the Tories were unable to get away with) has set its face against so-called “wreckers” and militants in the trade union movement, has allied itself with the world's greatest superpower at every turn and is now preparing to unleash war upon tens of thousands of unsuspecting Iraqis in the name of “saving” them from military dictatorship. It is tempting to ask that “with friends like that, who needs enemies?”

But does this make the Labour Party any more “nasty” or “evil” than the Tories? The answer is irrelevant. Both organisations (just like any others wishing to take over from them like the LibDems) are “nasty” parties in effect because they are attempting to run a thoroughly nasty system which pits human being against human being in a never-ending struggle for existence. Even if the Tories and the Labour Party had the best of intentions they would be unable to operate the system in any other way than that demanded by its internal logic. And its internal logic is what leads to the wealth of the privileged few being placed before the satisfaction of the needs of the many, to a crumbling society where community is destroyed by rampant individualism and competition, and to constant warfare across the world over trade routes, spheres of influence, power and profits.

Hoping that the Labour Party will behave differently to the self-styled “nasty party” – or hoping that the “nasty party” itself will behave any differently in future should it form the government is an unrealistic – indeed utopian – expectation. Any party that tries to run capitalism gets its hands grubby, as a matter of course, in what is a very dirty business.

Socialists are revolutionaries and that means we recommend struggling against the capitalist system as a whole rather than just one or other of the various parties that support it. A democratic socialist revolution would relieve the Tories of the embarrassment of unloading their guilt and hypocrisy in public any more and Labour of having to do the same the next time they're kicked out of office. Indeed, a socialist revolution can help build a society where honesty and mutual respect are the norm rather than the headline-grabbing exception to it. And for that reason alone, it must be an option worthy of consideration.