John Berger (1964)

Book Review from the June 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

Corker's Freedom by John Berger. Methuen 21/-

In the post-war world we have become accustomed to the oft-repeated story of working class prosperity. The term "the Affluent Society" has now become an overworked joke, but not so very long ago it was taken most seriously. Cosy articles in newspapers and magazines, and cynical adverts on the television screen, have painted a picture of workers leading lives of unparalleled richness and variety.

Even the outbursts of brutish stupidity and violence which have hit the headlines from time to time, far from destroying this image, are presented as offshoots of this same prosperity. Pleasant indeed us the lot of the fortunate worker in this charming dream world. It is therefore refreshing in the extreme to read descriptions of life as it is really lived by the vast mass of the people. Description that we know, only too well, to be true.

John Berger, who is well known as an art critic with the New Statesman, and for his excellent book of essays Permanent Red, is a writer with the ability to sum of the contemporary scene with a crisp economy of words. Berger claims to be a Marxist, although nothing very much appears in his works to justify such a claim. He is also described on the dustjacket of one of his books as a Revolutionary Moralist, whatever that may mean. There is however no doubt about his ability to put a mirror up to the world in which he lives.

His latest novel, Corker's Freedom, describes a day on the lives of two people who run a dingy employment bureau in South London. They are the elderly proprietor—the Corker of the title—and his youthful assistant, and linked with their story are the people who come to see them.

The novel is a short one, and many of the scenes are amusing, but the overall picture is one of drabness and futility. Even the crooks are small-time and poor, like so many of the lesser criminals. The stakes for which they play seem hardly worth the trouble. But it is in its description that the book really comes to life, as in the description of Clapham seen through the eyes of a man fresh from the country.

Outside the window it is the acres of roofs that interest him. The hundreds of chimneys, serving old fireplaces with black grates and rook for only three lumps of coal, are like stumps of trees in a forest long since cut down. He is able to see end to it. He is in London.

The final scene, of a speaker in Hyde Park subjected to moronic interruptions, is one which will appeal to anyone with a knowledge of Speaker's Corner.

Les Dale

Pathfinders: Robots of the World - You Have Nothing to Lose But Your Blockchains (2015)

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

The bosses own the means of production – that's what makes them bosses. So what will happen when the means of production own themselves? Er, come again? Yes, we are talking about automated intelligent production and distribution systems, managing themselves, recycling their income back into their own maintenance programmes, entirely without human agency. You call a cab, the cab turns up and it takes you (yes, it's driverless) where you want to go, debits your online account, and uses that income to buy its next 10 gallons of fuel and pay its automated garage cleaning and servicing subscription.

This is the world of the blockchain, an automated self-management security system which has been crucial so far to the success of Bitcoins (New Scientist, 12 September). By keeping track of every single transaction within the Bitcoin economy, the blockchain is able to prevent anyone conjuring up new 'money' out of nothing (as banks are alleged to do by currency cranks), thus avoiding financial melt-down. Cynics would point to the very large thefts of Bitcoins which have in the past almost sunk the system, but blaming the blockchain for what criminals do would be like blaming the bank for sponsoring bank robbers. Now new applications are being developed to apply blockchains to other fields of endeavour, with the utopian idea that ultimately the bosses will be abolished and the world will run itself.

Except that it's not the bosses – the owners - who will be abolished, only their managers. Sitting above the entire global production factory of human-termites overseen by machine-gangers and cyber-foremen will be that same class of obscenely-privileged fat fucks which already exists today, only with even more wealth and even less to do to keep it.

There's been much paranoia recently about the dangers of runaway AI and breathless speculation about Terminator-like scenarios where the robots take over and kill us all. Much of this was caused by Professor Stephen Hawking who seems overly fond of giving the greedy press tasty soundbites in the manner of Dad's Army's lugubrious Private Frazer grunting 'We're all doomed'. But robots would only do what we told them to do, and it seems hard to imagine why we'd build ones that didn't. Even if out of sheer laziness we built ones that made all our decisions for us (like politicians?), it seems equally hard to see what possible motive they might have in wanting to kill us off, unless we unintentionally designed them with the psychopathic tendencies of an average multinational corporation. What's much more likely is that we are the ones who are dooming ourselves by behaving like the very robots we're so afraid of. From this perspective, devising a way to lock ourselves permanently into a future of automated robotic slavery, where the real robots are us and not the machines, seems quite a plausible way forward for capitalism. Let's see, what does 'robot' mean again? Oh yeah, that's right. 'Worker.'

Sex and a cigarette

But if we're putting robots out of jobs by doing the jobs ourselves, does that make the robots redundant? Apparently it's not game over for them while they can still resort to the oldest game. There is a burgeoning industry in sex robot design and manufacture. Some prototypes are in development and some primitive models, costing around £5,000 each, are already reaching the market, though more as a proof of principle than in the expectation of any serious sales.

It may sound like science fiction, but this has been looming for years. Henrik Christensen of the European Robotics Research Network announced to a surprised Sunday Times reporter in June 2006 that 'people are going to be having sex with robots within five years' (source: Wikipedia). As it turned out this was a somewhat premature ejaculation on his part, but nonetheless things have moved on to the point where now two academics are calling for the banning of sex robots (BBC News, 15 September).

The argument boils down to a fear that the machines will objectify women, which is to say further objectify women. Underneath this rather vague claim lurks a darker implication, that the ability to do vile and unspeakable things to a robot will foreshadow a desire to do those things to real women. This idea, not unfamiliar from video game debates, is further sensationalised by the inclusion of children in the argument. Since no known child sex robots are under development, the obvious intention is to bury rational debate under a mountain of moral outrage.

What are the real grounds for such fears? Would users of these devices be more or less likely to see women or children in a dehumanised way? Might it make no difference, or indeed might it go the other way, with women and children finding themselves freed from potential sexual predators and thus enjoying greater net safety in society?

It's impossible to say because the robots don't exist yet. In the circumstances, demanding a ban seems perverse, and it's hard not to suspect a moral 'Yuk' factor at work, trumping every other consideration. Such people don't care what the facts are, and don't care about millions of lonely inadequate men and women who might benefit, they just know that sex robots are 'wrong'.

An oddly parallel argument is raging right now over e-cigarettes. The British Medical Association and the World Health Organisation have come out against them, arguing that there is no good evidence that they result in reduction or cessation of cigarette smoking (and conversely may even encourage it). Following their lead, many countries and organisations are banning them from public places, and all sorts of restrictions on sales are being imposed. On the other side, the 'vapers' are furious at what they see as victimisation. They are trying to give up the demon weed, as they see it, by using something incontestably less dangerous than tobacco, and instead of lending support the BMA and others are absurdly trying to create difficulties for them. There is no good evidence of benefit in the case of coffee, or chocolate, or weekends in Cornwall. Society doesn't and shouldn't automatically ban things on the basis of some dubious 'precautionary principle'. If it did that we'd never have climbed out of the trees in the first place.

Has the BMA overstepped its authority? Vapers, at least those with a sense of social responsibility, are not demanding the right to vape in public places if it's going to annoy other people. But equally they feel affronted at being the subject of a ban imposed without any substantive evidence of harm. People are not banned from wearing suffocatingly bad perfume despite its known harm to asthmatics. People are not banned from Tube trains if they have excessive BO. People are not banned from farting in lifts. Or from driving diesel cars. The BMA's position seems to be that, regardless of the facts, smoking or vaping is just 'wrong'.

A society that bans things first and ask questions later, or perhaps never, is not a society aiming to encourage open-mindedness in its citizens and in its debates. For socialists, the prospects for rational debate about socialism thereby diminish, and that's something that should have everyone fuming.

PJS

Life Without Money (2012)

From the Life Without Money blog

Adam Buick on a life without money

Adam Buick's script from our panel discussion on Life Without Money at Bolivar Hall (London) on 30 May 2012 follows. Well over half of the discussion involved the around 40 participants who attended and it was quite lively.I [Anitra Nelson] spoke about why and how we came to write the book and Derek Wall talked more generally about the power of money and contemplating radical social change while the first question that Adam addressed was: What might a 'life without money' mean?

It’s an ambiguous idea. It can mean trying to survive without using money within or at the margins of existing money-dominated society. Or it can mean a change of society to one in which money would be redundant. Both points of view are represented in this book.

Then there is the question of what is meant by “money”. There are those who want to replace notes and coins, cheques and electronic transfers by labour credits or consumption vouchers. They too are represented in this book, even though some might regard them as only wanting a different form of money. But then, Karl Marx, a famous critic and opponent of money, envisaged using “labour-time vouchers” instead of money in the early stages of socialism pending it becoming possible to go over to full free distribution and full free access.

None of the contributors argue that all that needs to be done is to abolish money and leave everything else unchanged. That would be madness and would lead to a breakdown of production and distribution. If you’ve got a system based on producing goods and services for sale on a market with a view to profit, you’ve got to have money. So, no, we don’t want to go back to barter.

As a Socialist, I’m one of the contributors who wants to replace the present capitalist system with a new system based on common ownership instead of ownership by the few and with production directly to meet people’s needs instead of production for sale on a market with a view to profits. In such a socialist (or communist) society – the two words mean the same – money would be redundant. So I don’t want to “abolish money”. I want a change to a society with a system of production and distribution in which money would be redundant and so would disappear.

For me, the case against money is the case against capitalism.

Capitalism is the system which now dominates the world. No country escapes or can escape from its influence and effects. It is essentially an economic system where the means for producing useful goods and services take the form of “capital”, or wealth used to produce more wealth with a view to profit, and where the goods and services produced take the form of “exchange value”, they all have a price and have to be exchanged for money.

The farms, factories, offices and other places where wealth is produced are owned and controlled by rich individuals, capitalist corporations and states. Under the pressure of competition, those in charge of these “units of capital” are driven to seek as much profit as they can, not so much for the personal benefit of the owners (though this does come into it) as to get funds to reinvest in cost-cutting innovations so as to be able to compete with, and outcompete, their rivals. One consequence of this is that more and more capital is accumulated. This in fact is what capitalism is all about: the accumulation of more and more capital out of profits.

So, over time the means of production and their productive power have built up and society has now become able, in theory, to produce enough useful goods and services to meet people’s needs. But the economic mechanism of capitalism does not let this happen. Making profits and re-investing them as more capital always comes first.

It’s an irrational system of “production for production’s sake”, of “growth for growth’s sake”. There are other anti-social results of capitalism. Such as the recurring economic crises and slumps like the one we’re in now. Such as the wars and preparation for war that occur as capitalist states compete over sources of raw material, trade routes, markets and investment outlets. Such as putting short-term cost and profit considerations before protecting the environment and respecting a balance of nature. But the one I want to concentrate on is that it does not allow production to be geared to meeting the needs of people for food, clothes, housing, healthcare, education an the other amenities for an enjoyable life.

People’s needs are met but only to an extent – to the extent that they have money to pay for them. There are various ways an individual can get money. They can inherit it (be born with it). They can steal it. They can beg for it. Or they can work for it – which is what most people do.

I don’t criticise those who try to avoid this by establishing rural communes or by living off what they find in skips. That’s a lifestyle choice but not an attractive one for most people. I don’t even criticise those who chose to steal money, at least not as long as they steal from the rich.

But what sort of society is it where most people have to fend for themselves to get money so they can access what they need to live – and where, even in a developed country like Britain, 10-15 percent can’t keep up and are forced to rely on more or less meagre handouts from the state? This, when, from the point of view of technology, society could produce enough for all, especially if we get rid of capitalism’s artificial scarcity (the need to make a profit holds back producing enough to meet people’s needs) and its organised scarcity (not just of wars and preparation for war, but also all of the resources devoted to the counting and transfer of money).

As a Socialist, I say capitalism must go if we’re going to be able to provide a decent living for every man, woman and child on the planet. 

What is needed in place of capitalism is for the Earth’s resources to become the common heritage of all. Then, they could be geared to satisfying people’s needs. If productive resources were commonly owned, then so would what they produced. The issue to be dealt with would be, not how to sell to people what had been produced (how could you when they’re already the joint owners of it?) It’s how to share-out/distribute what’s been produced. In other words, exchange (buying and selling) is replaced by distribution (sharing-out and taking). For this, money is not needed.

It’s possible – right at the beginning or as a result of some major natural disaster – that some useful things might be temporarily unavailable in sufficient quantities. In which case there would have to be a temporary rationing of them till supplies were increased or restored. But, given modern technology and capacity to produce, the general rule (and certainly the aim to be reached as rapidly as possible) would be free distribution and free access, the implementation of the old communist principle of “from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs”. With free public transport, healthcare, education, gas, water, electricity, telephone, internet access, and other public services and amenities. And people free to take from the stores and distribution centres according to their needs. As I said, there would be no need for money. It would be redundant. The notes and coins we now use would find their proper place in museums.

Why not? Would it work? And how would  – or, rather, could – it work?

The main objection is a popular version of the basic dogma of modern conventional economics: that resources are scarce because people’s wants are infinite. Or, in its popular (populist) form, because people are greedy, so they would take too much and the whole system would collapse in chaos.

But are people’s wants really infinite? “Infinite” is the word they actually use in the textbooks. If literally interpreted, it would mean that everybody desires to obtain the whole universe. Which is absurd. People’s needs are not infinite. But are people “greedy”? In today’s society, where you can’t be sure of the future, it makes sense to make hay or gather nuts while you can in case things go wrong and your future money income is reduced (if, for instance, you lose your job or your employer or the government freezes your pay).

But even today within capitalism, when some things are free at the time of use and people know they will continue to be freely available they only take what they need. I’ve got a Freedom Pass that allows me to travel free on public transport in London. So have hundreds of thousands  of others. Do we spend all our time going from one end of the line to another or round and round the Circle Line? Of course not. We only travel when we need to. Maybe more than we would if we had to pay, but there’s nothing wrong with that. It only shows how having to pay means that some needs have to go unmet.

So, overconsumption is not going to be a problem. The problem will be organising so that the stores and distribution centres are always stocked with what people are likely to need. Here we can go again to the textbooks of conventional economics. They say that production is geared to meeting paying consumer demand. This isn’t the case, but let’s assume that it is. The theory is that consumers determine what is produced by the way they spend their money. What they buy over a given period is a signal as to what to produce. If stocks run short, that’s a signal to produce more. If stocks build up, that’s a signal to produce less.

This system of signals via stock levels can work just as easily irrespective of whether the stocks run short or build up as a result of what people buy or as a result of what they take freely. So the sort of central planning involving planners deciding in advance all that’s needed – which some people see as the only way to organise the production and distribution of useful things without money – is not necessary. In a moneyless society too, production and distribution could be largely self-regulating.

Anyway, this is not a blueprint, just an illustration of how organising the production and distribution of wealth without money is feasible.

The session was taped and will be posted on You Tube in about month's time.

Class-free, State-free (2015)

From the October 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

In English, words of the form X-less mean ‘without X’; examples would be homeless, jobless, loveless, useless, pointless. As you may have noticed, these words generally have a negative meaning, since the X part is seen as something good, whether a home or a use. There are exceptions, such as painless, but on the whole it’s true.

In contrast, words consisting of X-free have positive meanings: trouble-free, problem-free, fat-free, cholesterol-free. Here the X denotes something negative, so to be without it is a good thing.

Socialists often describe socialism as a classless, stateless, moneyless world community. But, based on what we’ve said above, it might be better to say it would be class-free, state-free, money-free, putting an explicitly positive spin on these ideas. Socialist society will be free of the encumbrances of class, the state and money, leaving people to co-operate without institutions that oppress and exploit.

You might object that it doesn’t matter very much whether we speak of a classless or a class-free society. This may be correct, but the point is that using slightly unusual terms such as class-free and state-free may help those who hear our case to think a little about what they mean and what some of the implications about a changeover to socialism would be.

Paul Bennett

Uncle Joe and Young Alexei (2011)

Book Review from the October 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Stalin Ate My Homework. Alexei Sayle. Sceptre. £8.99

It is often said that stand-up comedians are the product of a troubled childhood and in Alexei Sayle’s case that meant growing up as a half-Jewish, atheist, Scouse Marxist. Or at least a Marxist of sorts, because Sayle was brought up in Anfield in Liverpool the son of active Communist Party parents (his father, Joe, was an active trade unionist in the National Union of Railwaymen and incidentally a key witness in the famous Hanratty murder trail).

Sayle’s childhood was certainly unusual. Most Liverpudlian children of his age holidayed in places like Blackpool or Llandudno: his parents took him all over the former Eastern Bloc instead, often as guests of the local ruling Communist Parties. Sayle says he became a Young Communist as a matter of kinship and faith because his parents were Communists, but in his mid teens and while still at school something clicked intellectually too:

‘Once you understand Marx all the apparent chaos of human existence resolved itself into a coherent and comprehensive pattern . . . You can imagine, armed with this philosophy, how full of myself I now became. Even when I hadn’t had the secret of human history in my grasp I had been a mouthy little bastard in class. Now I was unstoppable.’ 

As those who have seen his act will appreciate, Sayle went from being a mouthy little bastard in class to being a mouthy big bastard on stage, and an entertaining one at that. On the way he also had a spell as a Maoist, joining the Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist) for a while.

His time as a teenage Maoist is where this engaging autobiographical account ends and it is hoped that there is to be a sequel covering his development as one of the original ‘alternative’ stand-up comedians in the UK.

DAP

Caught in the Act: Also rans (1990)

The Caught in the Act column from the February 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Also Rans

Just in case, in this eleventh year of Thatcher rule, there is any misunderstanding: there is only one Prime Minister. But there is no restriction on the number of those who regard themselves as admirably suited for the job and who plot their future accordingly. Indeed, when a new leader takes over it is often fascinating to learn how, from the humblest beginnings, they nurtured the hope to make it to the top of the greasy pole of politics, no matter how many necks they trod in the process. Nervous readers will have seen one implication of this: that lowly MPs like Harry Greenway and Terry Dicks cannot be counted out as future occupants of Number Ten, and they may hope that the best such publicity-crazed Members can hope for is to go down in history as what have been known, since a TV serial of the [same] name some years ago, as Nearly Men.

One of the most prominent of the Nearly Men of the Tory Party (whose ranks are thick with them) is Willie Whitelaw, whose removal from the running was so deliberately serpentine as to be notably less traumatic than that of most of his deposed colleagues. Whitelaw traded on his reputation for unflinching loyalty to his leader—although his recently published memoirs reveal an admiration for Thatcher which is, to say the least, qualified. He also depended for his survival on always trying to appear slightly less intelligent than he actually is, another way of saying that his image as the bluff, cheerful, kindly Teddy-bear of politics was a deception, a front behind which he carefully assessed his chances and plotted his moves.

But when his big chance came the Teddy-bear was shackled by that image; in the 1975 election for the Tory leadership Whitelaw did not stand in the first ballot because, it was said, it would have been disloyal to do so. In fact he was counting on Thatcher making a poor showing on the ballot and so promoting him as the front runner on the second ballot. But Thatcher's campaign had been too well organised and by the time Whitelaw entered the contest her bandwagon was unstoppable. So he didn't get to be Tory leader and all he had to console him was his loyalty to a new leader, his riches, his stately home, his estates and his cunning.

Whitelaw is a past master at the old trick of pretending that all his possessions are not really his but held in trust for the rest of us. This may cause him to give his servants and other employees a rather easier time than they might get from a less guileful employer; doubtless his retainers are well looked after in their old age—not thrown out into the Cumbrian snow when their working life is done, that sort of thing. But it is also a contribution to one of the most widespread and pernicious deceptions of capitalism: that private property does not exist, nor does class division, nor privilege, nor inequality. Whitelaw could practise that deception more successfully than most, perhaps because those he deceived really did believe that he was less intelligent than he really is.

Unsqueezed Pips

There is a Nearly Man in the Labour Party who is as cuddly as Whitelaw but who has a different reputation. Denis Healey ends his political career as a genial, wisecracking thug, an ex-member of the Communist Party (when it was the smart thing to be) turned into the scourge of Labour's leftwing (now that it is the even smarter thing to be). In his tireless defence of the interests of the British capitalist class—of their possession of the most destructive available military force, of their need on occasion to depress working class living standards—Healey was adept at getting himself in the news by encapsulating his ideas in punchy, gutter-press phrases. Defending his policies as Chancellor of the Exchequer against leftwingers who were, as usual, dismayed that capitalism cannot be run in a way contrary to its nature, Healey told his critics that they were "out of their tiny Chinese minds". He had clearly forgotten that, as newly-appointed Chancellor, he had himself stimulated those leftwingers with his promise to squeeze the rich until the pips squeaked.

However, when Labour lost the 1979 election it was apparent that, far from their pips being squeezed, the rich had actually increased their share of wealth; which meant that the poor's share had decreased. Towards the end of that government Healey laid down the policy that pay rises were to be no higher than 5 percent, which proved to be the last straw for the unions, and so conceived the Winter of Discontent. His programme of cuts in government expenditure made him the forerunner of Thatcher's Chancellors. At that time, Healey's famous sense of humour did not desert him; his Chief Secretary. Joel Barnett, later recalled how he would ask his underlings to think up "ripping wheezes" which were his name for disguised cuts in spending, measures designed to make it seem that the cuts were not happening. A year or so after Labour lost the election Healey, still in joking form, refused to cross a picket line, quipping that he did not believe in strike-breaking. It dod not seem to bother him that his government had used troops and Green Goddesses to break the fire service strike in 1977 and that his Prime Minister Callaghan had openly urged workers to cross picket lines whenever they felt like doing a bit of individual strike-breaking.

In spite of Healey's shabby record it is arguable that when Callaghan resigned the leadership after the 1979 election the Labour Party would have been well advised, by the gruesome standards of capitalist politics which say that the best leader is the one who, whatever the methods, wins the most elections, to have made Healey leader instead of Michael Foot. As it was, Healey was left as a Nearly Man, raking over his wretched memories, watching in probable irritation as Foot blundered into his party's worst defeat for fifty years.

A Future Nearly Man?

At this point Caught in the Act would like to indulge in a little forecasting about a possible future member of the Tory Nearly Men. Kenneth Clarke was put in charge of the Department of Health after what were acknowledged as some crude public relations blunders by his predecessors, notably the unlamented John Moore. Clarke, of the overweight, cigar-puffing nonchalance, had the reputation of a supremely accomplished communicator, just the man to convince us that it is not what the government does which damages us but the fact that the damage is made to sound attractive and restorative. At his great moment of opportunity Clarke's moon face beamed out from every newspaper as the man of the future, the next Prime Minister but one.

All that was changed by his handling of the dispute with the ambulance crews, which, as ambulance workers piled up an overwhelming public support, exposed Clarke as desperately inept at the crafty game of political deception. Memories were revived of Selwyn Lloyd's ill-advised battle with the nurses and what then happened to him in the Night of the Long Knives. Clarke's colleagues in the Cabinet—his rivals for the top job—were positively underwhelming in their support for him. Not for the first time, to be spoken of as a rising Tory was like being told that you have a terminal illness. We therefore nominate Kenneth Clarke, who has so grievously disappointed his admirers through his lack of guile, as the first Nearly man of the 1990s.

Nearly Men (so far there has been only one Nearly Woman—Barbara Castle when she was in charge of the Department of Employment and composed Labour's union-hobbling proposals in In Place of Strife) are nurtured on the assumption that things would have been different—better—if they had been the one to reach the top of the Greasy Pole. There is no evidence to sustain that for it is not personalties which count but the basis on which those personalities try to realise their ambitions. That is why all leaders fail to solve the problems characteristic of capitalism and why there are so many Nearly Men to trouble history with their piquant grumbles about What If and If Only.

Ivan

Fuzzing the Issues (1980)

From the January 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is probably fair to say that public lack of confidence in the police is more widespread now than it has been for some years. The reasons for this are a crop of cases which go well beyond the sporadic exposures of police corruption and reveal violent handling by the police of prisoners and others. During an anti-National Front demonstration in Southall, Blair Peach died after being beaten around the head, and witnesses have stated that it was policemen who did the beating. The Kirkby division of Merseyside police has figured in several allegations of brutality: in one case a man died who had been arrested for drunkenness, while in another, the victim 'only' had his spleen and one kidney removed after being 'interviewed' by the arresting officers. In Glasgow a policeman resigned in disgust at the way other officers had treated a man who died in police custody. 

Part of the disquiet is due to the way such accusations are dealt with, for it is the police who police the police. In the Glasgow case, a sergeant was charged with culpable homicide and acquitted, but usually an internal inquiry is all that takes place. After the Blair Peach incident, a member of the Special Patrol Group, an 'elite' anti-demo squad, was suspended from duty, but nobody has been charged with murder or even assault. 

'Accountability' is a word beloved by liberal supporters of capitalism when discussing the police force. If public rather than internal inquiries were held, they argue, the police would be seen to be answerable and subject to the laws of the land just like ordinary citizens. Even politicians who as a rule staunchly support police actions will sometimes join in the call for a public inquiry, since it will simply 'clear the police's name'. 

Such demands can be placed in their proper perspective if we ask ourselves exactly what capitalism wants from its police force. The police exist to enforce the laws promulgated by the state with the aim of conserving the capitalists' rnonopoly of the means of production. The police must therefore be as efficient as possible in protecting property (which means predominantly capitalist property) and in apprehending those who take what legally belongs to someone else. Whether such efficiency expresses itself in bending the law and framing innocent people is of no concern unless it becomes sa blatant that public respect for the police is called into question. 

For the capitalists also want the workers — those excluded from owning more than insignificant amounts of property — to regard the police as the protectors of all, high or low. The police arrest not only the perpetrators of bank frauds but also those who mug old age pensioners in the street. They protect individual workers from the wrath and potential violence of picket lines, and also control crowds and keep the peace at football matches. We are, the conventional wisdom runs, all equal before the law, and the police — who are subject to it themselves — do not discriminate in the way they enforce it. 

The capitalists and their apologists scoff at any suggestion that such a description is a myth, and staunchly uphold the honesty and reliability of the police. When this honesty is called into question, it is defended even more strenuously. But just occasionally it becomes impossible to keep up the pretence any longer, and the bent or brutal copper is made an example of and made to resign — or even sent to prison for a stretch. Members of the police force who are found out in this way are characterised as 'rotten apples', the assumption being that such behaviour is quite alien to the vast majority of the police. 

However, the view that the rotten apples are few and far between simply isn't supported by the evidence. An American commission investigating police corruption in 1970 discovered that in one section of Brooklyn, 73 out of 75 policemen were regularly taking small bribes from gamblers and supermarkets for turning a blind eye to lawbreaking. The way bent policemen are exposed is so often the result of chance that many must go undetected, since they never make a crucial slip. For example, Soho's notorious Sergeant Challenor was only exposed in 1963 because one of the people he tried to fit up was an active member of the National Council for Civil Liberties. (Challenor was charged with perverting the course of justice but found unfit to plead through 'insanity'.) 

Such framing of the innocent may happen because of the pressures on the police. Financial reward, promotion and improved status are usually achieved in the force by results — which means a large number of arrests and convictions. Policemen are workers who are forced to sell their mental and physical energies for a wage, and they suffer all the poverty and oppression entailed by such a status. If the prospects for a wage increase will be assisted by a higher rate of solved cases, then the temptation may be hard to resist to bend the rules a little, and gradually to do so more and more. 

The main pressures on the police, however, are due to the kind of society in which they and we live. A society based, as capitalism is, on oppression, violence and inequality will yield crime and policing in its own image. A century and a quarter ago, Karl Marx wondered "what a state of society is that which knows of no better instrument for its own defence than the hangrnan?" And what a state of society is that which relies for its defence on violence and corruption on the part of those who are supposed to ensure the safety of all its citizens? The bent copper — whether one who frames the innocent or takes bribes from lawbreakers — is merely responding to the cut-throat, dog eat dog ethics of capitalism. 

But a police force without corruption — were such a thing possible — would still be an instrument of class warfare, designed to protect the capitalist class's monopoly of property and power. This is seen most starkly in the way the police harass pickets and give protection to blacklegs, thus helping to blunt the efficacy of strike action. Grunwick was just one of a long line of such cases. To expect capitalist laws and capitalist police to act in any other way is utopian. The way the law defends property was revealed in a judgement against squatters handed down by Lord Denning in 1971: 

If homelessness were once admitted as a defence to trespass, no one's house could be safe . . .  the courts must, for the sake of law and order, take a firm stand. They must refuse to admit the plea of necessity to the hungry and the homeless, and trust that their distress will be relieved by the charitable and the good."

(Quoted in J.A.G. Griffith, The Politics of the Judiciary)

Rarely has ruling class interest be en expressed so transparently. 

Besides the possibility of being framed or beaten up, anyone who comes into contact with the police runs the risk of being held in prison while awaiting trial. Judges usually accept police opposition to bail, even where, should the verdict be guilty, the sentence will not be a custodial one. One such case is summarised by Barry Cox in Civil Liberties in Britain: 

A man was charged with conspiring to rob and possession of a firearm. He had no previous convictions, yet the police successfully opposed bail four times before they withdrew their objections — after the defendant had spent a month in prison. At his trial the judge stopped the hearing and directed the jury to acquit him. But by then he had lost his job and council house, his wife had had a mental breakdown and his son was having to have psychiatric treatment.

It is also worth pointing out the extent to which the police actually create the law as well as enforce it. Picketing is a case in point — the law allows much latitude to the police to decide on the spot what does and does not constitute reasonable picketing. The conspiracy laws are so all-embracing that they allow the police to charge people on suspicion that they planned to commit an offence — even if they don't actually commit it. The centuries-old vagrancy laws come close to giving the police carte blanche to arrest anyone on 'suspicion' that they may be intending to commit an offence, and they have in recent years been interpreted in a racist manner as a device to keep young black people off the streets.

There are also things which the police do without legal justification. Nobody is obliged to go to a police station unless they have been arrested , not even to 'help police with their inquiries'. There is in law no such thing as a general warrant — but the police are in practice allowed to search houses for anything incriminating, not just for items connected with a specific crime. It is not illegal to hold meetings in the street — but that didn't stop two Socialist Party of Great Britain members in Bolton in September from being charged with obstructing the highway. Such is the capitalist concept of freedom of speech, and such is the grubby work of enforcing capitalism 's laws. 

Workers should reject the liberal view that a publicly accountable police force could be turned from a tool of oppression into a bastion of liberty. The police are a class creation and will always remain so. It will be a testimony to the human and comradely nature of socialist society that it will require no policing and no police. 

Paul Bennett

Enoch Powell exposed (1970)

Book Review from the January 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Rise of Enoch Powell, by Paul Foot. Penguin 4s.

Enoch Powell is a hypocrite and an opportunist as Paul Foot shows in this short book.

Powell entered politics after the war as a Tory Imperialist who opposed giving India independence and even suggested how it might be reconquered. But the mid-fifties, however, he had abandoned these illusions and was a Conservative Cabinet Minister. During this period the late Sir Cyril Osborne began his ranting and raving about coloured immigration leading to a "coffee-coloured" Britain. Powell, on the other hand, said nothing controversial on this issue. Foot can find no speech of his against coloured immigration or integration till 1964. In fact Powell was Minister of Health for three years and, as Foot points out:

During Powell's régime at the Ministry of Health, Health Service recruitment drives for doctors and nurses in the West Indies and from India and Pakistan were not slowed down in anyway.

What led Powell to change his mind and make a series of sensational racialist speeches in 1968 and 1969? Foot suggests that it was sheer opportunism. The Tory victory at Smethwick in the 1964 election had shown that colour prejudice was a vote-winner. Powell, says Foot, resolved to exploit this in a bid to become leader of the Tory party.

At one time Powell could have been regarded with some respect because of the frank way he spoke out against futile attempts to reform capitalism. Capitalism, his message went, runs on profits and Governments should recognise this. Socialists, of course, agree that capitalism runs on profits and have always said that any Government, be it Labour or Tory, would be forced to recognise this in its policies.

This is where Powell is shown up as a hypocrite. Foot quotes some of Powell's many speeches in favour of the "free movement of labour". In the Sunday Telegraph of 3rd May, 1964 he asked:

Instead of trying to reverse economic trends, might it not be better to reinforce them by helping and encouraging the man who needs a job to move to the place where someone is anxious to employ him?

Powell often argued that it was foolish to try to stop the drift to the South East. As if the same economic trends which brought workers from Ireland, Scotland and the North to London and the Midlands did not also bring workers from the West Indies and India!

What is worrying is not so much what Powell thinks but that millions of workers follow him on the colour issue. The task of Socialists remains to point out that colour doesn't matter and that workers have no country.

Adam Buick

Who needs religious morality? (1984)

From the November 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

The capitalist system of society, with its production of wealth for sale at a profit on the market, has not always existed. Contrary to common belief, such social features as wage labour, the cash nexus and capitalist companies are relatively new developments in social evolution, To the citizen of England in the early fifteenth century, the economic characteristics which modern British workers are conditioned to regard as natural and inevitable simply did not exist.

Prior to capitalism the feudal mode of production prevailed. Under the feudal system all land was owned, theoretically at least, by the king. He allowed members of the feudal ruling class—the aristocracy—to control areas of land on his behalf. Those who laboured on the land were peasants, obliged to contribute most of what they produced to the landlord, leaving the remainder for their own subsistence. Feudal Britain was almost entirely dominated by agrarian production; neither industrial manufacture nor trade played any significant economic role. Most agricultural production was arable: in short, producing food for the domestic population was the chief feudal concern. It would be no exaggeration to say that it was the emergence of the European woollen cloth market, centred in Antwerp (the commercial capital of the Holy Roman Empire), that had the most profound effect on the transformation from feudal to capitalist production in Britain. As arable farming was contracted to make way for sheep, as peasants' arable strips and common lands were enclosed to allow room for the new, relatively massive pastoral farms, and as the landlord increasingly lost social power in relation to the merchant, the imperatives of capitalist trade—caring for nothing but profit and prepared to trample on tradition for the sake of commerce capitalism came to life. As early as the fourteenth century the export of woollen cloth began to be significant: in the 1390s over 43,000 sacks of woollen cloth were exported; by the early 1500s the figure had increased to 84,789 sacks; in the years 1538-42, 118,000 sacks were exported—accounting for 92 per cent of exported wool. With the rise of merchant trading, the priorities of sale and profit shook the social stability of the medieval slumber: the rise of capitalist trade transformed peasants into landless labourers, robbed of their strips by landlords who were forced into commercial avarice by the dictates of the market. Propertyless, the peasants had no option but to offer themselves as hirelings to whoever could afford the price of their mental and physical energies. The class of wage slaves was born. 

The morality of feudalism placed value on social routine. The king's power, and therefore the power of the ruling class which owed feudal allegiance to him, was justified by the theory of divine right. Why was the king on top? Because a god ordained that he should be. And as the feudal god determined that the few should live in privilege, so it was His Holy Word that the poor should accept their lot with humility and deference. Feudal ethics left little room for the prospect of social mobility: inherited privilege and ordained poverty were not to be interfered with by social action. The Roman Catholic code of ethics condemned trade, moneylending for interest (usury) and the general idea that those who were not affluent should pursue riches at the expense of others. Catholicism was not a business morality, but one concerned with the perpetuation of class rule by undisturbed custom. St. Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic moralist, argued that "immoderate love of possessing" is covetous and "covetousness is a sin". His colleague, St. Antoninus, stated that "If the object of the trader is principally cupidity , which is the root of all evil, then certainly trade itself is evil". Until 1545 it was illegal for bankers (or moneylenders) in London to lend money for interest: there were cases of men being imprisoned for engaging in such practices. In an age in which the trader and the banker had little or no role, religious morality reflected the material interests of the land barons and the hereditary rulers. 

With the rise of capitalism came the birth of a new morality. The ethic of capitalism was the holy scroll which the new legalised robbers wrapped around themselves to cover their naked class thievery. Now, there is a school of thought, dating back to the writings of those far from unreasonable social thinkers, Max Weber and R.H. Tawney, which contends that the emergence of the capitalist ethic—protestantism, and especially Calvinist puritanism—gave rise to capitalism. This is to mistake cause for effect or, to be more precise, to ignore dialectical interaction between economic and intellectual forces (both of which are material) and to present an idealistic interpretation of history, that is, one which assumes that ideas determine material development. The idea of capitalism did not give rise to the new social order. It was the evolution of the new system, generated by the contradictions between the emerging world market and the anachronistic social relationships of feudalism, which gave rise to new ethics. 

The morality of capitalism reflected the class interest of those whose affluence was derived from surplus value—rent, interest and profit. The old feudal ethics were swept aside, much to the displeasure of the aristocratic remnants who maintained their moral whining for the old system of parasitism well into the nineteenth century. According to the new morals there was no contradiction at all between becoming rich at the expense of others and being morally pure: "O ye rich citizens, we tell you from Him, whose title is Rich in Mercy, that ye may be at once rich and holy", proclaimed the protestant preacher, Joseph Hall. The Nonconformist preacher, Richard Steele, urges capitalists "to be most happy in your shop and business and drive the nail whilst it is going. But direct all to a right, the honour of God, the Public Good as well as your Private Commodity, and then every step and stroke in your trade is sanctified". The protestant ethic of justification by faith left morality to the conscience of the individual: it you can kid yourself that your actions are motivated by love of god, only the outward expression of "simple faith" is required to ensure moral righteousness. In his 'Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses', the celebrated spokesman for the new capitalist theology, John Calvin. justified usury, rejecting the claims of those Christians who still hung on to the old feudal morality: 

... those who think differently may object, that we must abide by God's judgement, when he generally prohibits all usury to his people. l reply, that the question is only as to the poor, and consequently, if we have to do with the rich, that usury is freely permitted. (London, 1852 edn, Vol l, p.151.) 

And so it came to pass that this god, invented by men to give moral backing to their class actions, had one law for the poor—who must not lend money for interest—and another for the capitalists. 

As capitalism evolved, especially when it entered its industrial phase, the morality of the ruling class became more and more based upon the principles of profit as a reward for righteousness and thrift, humility and faith being the best virtues for the propertyless majority. The Church went hand in hand with the state, following the industrial capitalists in all of their sordid efforts to enrich themselves at the expense of others. And, as Bishop Sprat wrote in 1667, in his History of the Royal Society: 

If our Church should be an enemy to commerce, intelligence, discovery, navigation, or any sort of mechanics, how could it be fit for the present genius of this nation? 

As men, women and children were forced to labour in the most filthy, dangerous and undignified conditions, the churches blessed those who profited from such exploitation and counselled the exploited to accept their fate in obedience — for the righteous wage slave here on earth would be rewarded with paradise beyond the grave! The Church controlled education before 1870 and, in the age before mass broadcasting or the popular press, it fell to the religious bodies to spread information to the workers. Despite "Thou shalt not kill", the moralists of 1914 found it within themselves to justify the slaughter of lives for the sake of the material advancement of the ruling class. Indeed, the sight of vicars blessing bombs has not been an uncommon one during this century of ethical hypocrisy. In 1916, when workers were conscripted to fight in the war, the Seventh Day Adventists (a small, fundamentalist Christian sect) refused to fight on the grounds that 

As a Christian Church, believing in the undiminished authority and perpetuity of the moral law, given by God himself in the Ten Commandments, we hold that we are thereby forbidden to take part in combatant service in time of war. (Quoted in Seventh Day Adventists in Time of War by F. Wilcox, Washington DC, 1936.) 

Ironically, more pragmatic Christian theologians were appointed to sit on tribunals and do their best to drive the fundamentalists away from their politically unacceptable position. In fact, the position taken by the Seventh Day Adventists demonstrates very clearly why it is that morals, which are always presented as absolute precepts, are relative standards of social behaviour, adapted over the years to fit in with the class needs of different rulers. A striking modem example is the attitude of Islamic morality towards commerce. R. Levy points out that "The Koran forbids as a deadly sin all taking of increment as distinguished from . . . transfer for equivalents" (The Social Structure of Islam, Cambridge, 1962, p 257). This has not prevented the extensive growth of banking and interest-taking in the Islamic countries in modem times. 

Socialism is not a moral proposition based on absolute values but the product of a class analysis of capitalist society and its material contradictions. Once we have socialism there will be no need to advocate "socialist ethics": the people of the world will live their lives unfettered by the certainties of dogma. 

Steve Coleman

Lewis Henry Morgan and the last 100 years (1977)

From the February 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

One hundred years ago, in March 1877, Morgan's final work, Ancient Society, appeared. Morgan was not a Socialist, but his book was the result of objective investigation into mankind and its social institutions. If anything, he was religious. The book is dedicated to the Rev. Mcllvaine, DD, a close friend, and describes the evolution of society in approximately 600 pages. Marx and Engels praised the work, and Engels, writing in the 1884 preface of his own work The Origin of the Family, said Morgan "in his own way had discovered afresh in America the materialist conception of history discovered by Marx forty years ago". Marx intended to present the result of Morgan's researches in the light of his own conclusions, but his death in 1883 prevented it. Engels took over the task and based The Origin of the Family on Morgan, but went far beyond Morgan by showing the political and economic implications, the changing political systems arising from the historic development of property, the emergence of social classes and consequently the State. 

Working independently, Morgan provided the scientific corroboration of Marx's theories. He was the founder of the science of anthropology, but his work was largely ignored on both sides of the Atlantic when it was realized that his theories and discoveries clashed with the ideas and interests of the ruling class. The established capitalist view was that religion, property and the family are as old as man himself, and these institutions had always existed and were unchanging elements in society. Scientific ideas which challenged this concept were treated with hostility. Morgan, a Republican Senator and lawyer, spent forty years on the preparation of his book, his sole purpose being to explain the evolutionary process, but in doing so he inadvertently committed the cardinal sin of exposing the working of society. He showed that the idea of property had undergone the same growth and development as had society generally, and was far removed from being an eternal category: 

Commencing at zero in savagery the fashion for the possession of property as the representative of accumulated subsistence has now become dominant over the human mind in civilised races."

(Ancient Society, p. vii preface. MacMillan, 1877.) 

Part 4 of the book goes into greater detail and investigates the growth of the idea. The growth of property is shown to be closely connected with the increase of invention and discovery, and with the improvement of social institutions, commencing with the stage defined as Savagery. Human progress from a state of ignorance in Savagery slowly advanced as men gained experience, as nature forced them to obtain subsistence or perish. The procuring of the means of subsistence is intimately associated with the idea of property in the very early stages of man's development. The gradual accumulation of knowledge leading to greater control over nature pushes society along through its various stages up to Civilization: the idea of property is no longer based on subsistence but on its social power. 

Since the advent of civilisation the outgrowth of property has been so immense, its form so diversified, its uses so expanding, and its management so intelligent in the interests of its owners, that it has become on the part of the people an unmanageable power. The human mind stands bewildered in the presence of its own creation, The time will come nevertheless when human intelligence will rise to the mastery over property, and define the relations of the State to the property it protects, as well as the obligations and the limits of the rights of its owners. The interests of society are paramount to individual interests, and the two must be brought in to just and harmonious relations. A mere property career is not the final destiny of mankind, if progress is to be the law of the future as it has been of the past. (Ancient Society, p. 552)

Views like these, backed up by factual evidence coming from a capitalist politician who was a rich man in his own right, shocked the capitalist class at the time. It was just as well that Morgan secured an audience at which he shook hands with the Pope in 1871. He certainly would not have received one after his book was published in 1877. These ideas attack the roots of capitalism and its claim to permanence. 

But this was not all. The central theme in Morgan's work was that mankind had gone through several successive stages in its road to Civilization. The proposed ethnical periods described by Morgan commenced with the three stages of Savagery — the lower status, middle and upper. Then came the lower, middle and upper status of Barbarism, and finally the status of Civilization. Food supply commenced with the collecting of natural food in tropical forests and the gradual acquiring of the knowledge of the use of fire and a fish subsistence, The invention of the bow and arrow prepared man's entry from the upper stage of Savagery into the lower stage of Barbarism. This began with the invention of pottery and the domestication of animals, followed by the cultivation of plants and the use of clay bricks in the middle status of Barbarism. The upper stage of Barbarism commenced with the smelting of iron ore, the use of iron tools, and the development of field agriculture. Civilization was reached with the invention of the phonetic alphabet and the use of writing. 

These seven stages, claimed Morgan were universal as were the forms of social organization based upon the gens which corresponded to them. From Australia in the south, the whole of Europe including Rome and Greece, the Eastern Mediterranean and India — all their respective social organizations were based upon the gens. Although Morgan commenced his researches among the American Red Indians (he was a blood-brother of the Iroquois) he made an extensive study of the known forms of tribal society, and studied the histories of all forms of civilization. 

The point of Morgan's theories was that ethnic groups who had reached civilization had only done so after a long development through these seven stages, and that this general evolutionary principle governed all social development which had taken place. The fact that backwoods tribes discovered today in the state of savagery can be brought forward rapidly into capitalist civilization without undergoing the long development as postulated, does not invalidate the theory. 

The materialist conception of history discovered by Marx forty years earlier had the same principles, but with the addition that the economic organization and social relations corresponded to the' particular stage society had reached in the development of its productive forces. Morgan proved the existence of a social organization which was neither political nor economic, but pureIy administrative. It was based on gentes, phratries and tribes, and he demonstrated how this form of organization held ancient society together and prevailed throughout the entire ancient world. The gens were founded upon kin; descent was linked to the female line and it embraced all persons who could trace their descent through a common female ancestor, and possessed a common gentile name. 

These gentile institutions were thoroughly democratic. Two or more related gens organized themselves in phratries (brotherhoods), and a number of phratries constituted a tribe. Several tribes formed a confederacy, and eventually coalesced into a nation occupying common territory. Because the basic unit of organization was democratic there was no State or political society. As special social needs or objectives arose, the form of organization was enlarged to meet them, but its democratic function was maintained throughout. Bureaucracy could not arise because there was no separation between administration and people, as exists today in the form of the coercive state which has replaced the administration of 'people by territorial government administering and maintaining property relations in the interests of a small minority of people. 

Morgan also showed that systems of communal ownership gave rise to and were the basis of this social organization for many thousands of years. The State, which according to the capitalists had existed throughout history, was a comparatively recent development, and arose with the advent of private property. 

Theories such as these could not go unchallenged. The ruling class did what it will always do when its interests are threatened: ignore or misrepresent the facts. Anthropology was taught in universities in England and America, but up to very recently Morgan was ignored, although many of his theories and methods were plagiarized. His classification of ethnic periods was attacked, as also was his theory of the origin of the family, and the role of women as the original property owners. Morgan showed that the family had passed through successive forms commencing with consanguinity, which was founded on the marriage of brothers and sisters (own and collateral) in a group. This was succeeded by the Punaluan (intimate friend) family founded up on the intermarriage of several sisters wit'h each other's husbands in a group. Also, the intermarriage of several brothers with each other's wives in a group. Then the pairing family founded upon single pairs, but without exclusive co-habitation and with voluntary separation. The patriarchal family founded upon the marriage of one man with several wives. Finally, the present monogamous family founded upon single pairs with an exclusive co-habitation. 

The impact this information had on bourgeois Victorian society who bad barely recovered from the shock of Darwinism, was startling. Darwin at least dealt mainly with animals and man's biology, but the shame of being confronted in the respectable atmosphere of Victorian society steeped in cant about the dignity of the family and marriage, with tales of incest, group sex and polygamy, and all the other alleged vices (practised in secret by wealthy parasites) brought forth an avalanche of protest led by the religious hyenas of all creeds. The anti-evolutionary school of anthropology was founded by Dr. Franz Boas, Professor Westermarck, Malinowski, Lowie, Ashley Montague and many others. Their object was not so much to develop the infant science of anthropology as to prove Morgan wrong. The Catholic "cultural historical" school of anthropology led by Fathers Wilhelm Schmidt and Wilhelm Sylvester, and A Sieker, SJ, set out to oppose the theories of primitive communism. As far as the Jesuits were concerned Morgan's work was more beneficial to Socialists like Marx and Engels than any other section of the community. Lowie insisted that the State in various forms had always existed, and C. H. Stark and Professor Westermarck maintained that the present capitalist-type family had always existed. Dr. Franz Boas of Columbia University refused to admit discussion of the question because in his opinion there was no evidence, nor could there be any. He described Morgan's stages as arbitrary postulations. Morgan also upset the Jews by pointing out that Abraham married his half-sister Sarah.

The last hundred years have produced numerous controversies about certain aspects of Morgan's theories. For the most part these are peripheral and largely concern questions of detail. The main body of his work has stood up and remains the cornerstone of modem anthropology. The section in Ancient Society dealing with the origin of early Greek and Roman society is a classic by any standards, and brought particular praise from Marx. 

Morgan has become the Marx of anthropology, and like his famous contemporary is always being repudiated — a periodical exercise which usually collapses through lack of evidence being presented by the detractors, Typical of the kind of criticism are the remarks contained in Peter Farb's book Man's Rise to Civilisation (Paladin Books, 1971): 

He was a thoroughly conventional man, unquestioning in religious orthodoxy, and also a staunch capitalist, but he published his theories in Ancient Society at the same time Marx was working on the third volume of 'Das Kapital' (p. 100). 

There is no connection between the two, but the object is to discredit Morgan by implying that if it bad not been for Marx Morgan's theories would have had no importance. Later Farb makes his position clear: 

That bourgeois gentleman, Morgan, is to this day enshrined in the pantheon of socialist thinking," (p, 100) 

Again the innuendo being: only because of Marx and Engels's influence. Rubbish like this is supposed to represent a criticism of Morgan's work, but Farb carefully refrains from going into the work itself. His other nonsensical statement that "By a strange irony the League of the Iroquois has become a model for Marx's theory" shows his ignorance of the subject and of Morgan's theories as well as Marx's. 

The relevance of Morgan and Marx to modem Socialist thought and propaganda is in providing the positive proof that capitalist society is the culmination of a whole series of historical social changes. Men's ideas change, habits of thought and conceptions of life change. The man of today is not the man of tomorrow; the environment of today is not the environment of tomorrow, any more than the man of yesterday and his environment are relevant today. Capitalism is not the end of social progression, although the capitalist class and their servile adherents will claim it to be so, Morgan reckoned that out of an estimated 100,000 years that man bad spent on earth, at least 60,000 (three-fifths) had been spent in a state of Savagery; 35,000 years in the various stages of Barbarism, and 5,000 years in Civilization. Out of those five thousand years only the last 250 years have been spent under capitalism. 

The intensity of capitalism's development, with its compression of time and space, has produced the subjective man with little sense of history, dominated by social conditions which are not only anti-social but obsolete and unnecessary. Man must become objective and not dominated by his immediate conditions. We must move on to Socialism. A Socialist society will organize itself on a democratic basis at every level. The social form will not, nor cannot be, tied to the past, but it will truly reflect the great contribution of the past in he form of the accumulated knowledge and social experience so painfully acquired which has made Socialism possible. It should not be forgotten that the principal institutions of mankind have developed from a few germs of thought and a few simple cells of organization. The natural form of social man is that which equates him with his fellow man, and that great equalizer is common ownership of the means whereby he lives.

Jim D'Arcy

Editorial: Birds of a Feather: The Russo-German Bombshell (1939)

Editorial from the September 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

THE London newspapers on Tuesday, August 22nd (except the Communist Daily Worker, which was busy ringing up Moscow) reported with astonishment the announcement from Berlin that Germany and Russia had negotiated a non-aggression pact, and that Herr von Ribbentrop, the German Foreign Minister, was flying at once to Moscow for the formal signature of the Treaty. This announcement, which came immediately after the completion of a trade agreement between the two Governments, was confirmed by the official Russian Tass News Agency in the following terms : —

After the conclusion of the Soviet-German trade and credit agreement there arose the problem of improving political relations between Germany and the U.S.S.R.
An exchange of views on this subject, which took place between the Government of Germany and the U.S.S.R., established that both parties desire to relieve the tension in their political relations, eliminate the war menace, and conclude a non-aggression pact.
Consequently, the German Minister of Foreign Affairs, von Ribbentrop, will arrive in Moscow in a few days for corresponding negotiations. —(Evening Standard, August 22nd, 1939.)

The Pact was duly signed in Moscow on August 23rd, thus realising a possibility suggested in these columns more than once.

That the capitalist Press was, for the most part, genuinely surprised is undoubtedly true — though this betrays some simplicity on their part and remarkably short memories. They had reasoned on the basis that Russia and Germany were fundamentally divided over the issue of Communism and that, consequently, Russia could be counted on to help British capitalism in its difficulties with Germany, Italy and Japan, the three principal members of the Anti-Comintern Pact. The reasoning was superficial in the extreme and overlooked the ease with which Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini had arranged pacts of friendship on earlier occasions, for example, the Russo-Italian "Pact of Friendship, Non-Aggression and Neutrality" of September 2nd, 1933, and the ratification and continuation on May 5th, 1933, of a German-Russian Agreement of earlier date. Though Hitler was then in power and was ferociously crushing Communists in Germany, the Russian Government could put its signature to an agreement which affirmed that the two Governments, by prolonging the Berlin 1926 treaty of neutrality and non-aggression, " intend to continue the existing friendly relations between the Soviet Union and Germany."

The Press should also have remembered Stalin's speech of March 10th, 1939, in which he made it very plain that Russia had no intention of falling a victim to what he declared was British-French policy, the policy of enmeshing Russia in war with Germany and Japan.

Yet when all these facts have been allowed for, it cannot be denied that, for Stalin to choose this moment, when a German army waits on the Polish border, to enter into a new 10-year Pact with Hitler represented a staggering affront to all those people who had believed that the Russian Government was above the disreputable ways of traditional diplomacy and that for that Government opposition to Fascism and aggression was a matter of principle. As Mr. Lloyd George — a supporter of the policy of alliance with Russia, who has been much praised by the Communists — says, the German - Russian Pact "is a stunning blow to Britain's Peace Front " (News Chronicle, August 22nd). It was so regarded by supporters of the "Peace Front" in Britain and other countries and, according to Press accounts, was received with jubilation in official circles in Germany and Italy.

Sordid Pacts Secretly Arrived At

The method by which the Stalin-Hitler Pact was reached merits a little attention, if only to expose the Communist hypocrisy of denouncing "secret diplomacy." Without being so naive as the Evening News (August 22nd), which says that the Pact "appears to have, been arranged without the (British) Foreign Office having the slightest inkling of what was going on," it is unquestionable that Germany and Russia must have been negotiating secretly for some considerable time, simultaneously with public declarations by Russia that all they wanted was the Peace Pact with Britain and France against aggression. The Daily Herald (August 22nd) reports from Berlin that, according to German accounts, the secret negotiations began in June, though the Evening News thinks they probably began even earlier, in April, when the Anglo-German Naval Treaty was denounced by Germany. Here we have an example of the cynical indifference of the Nazi and Bolshevik rulers to the views of the masses, so cynical that they can arrange in secret a Pact which must shock millions of simple-minded Germans and Russians alike. These rulers will, however, live to regret their action, for it will have repercussions as yet undreamt of by them.

Taking a long view, this is the outstandingly important feature of the Russo-German Pact, in spite of the fact that at no distant date both signatories to the Pact, having served their immediate purpose, may seek to explain it away as of no particular significance. The fact remains that Hitler, who built himself up on the slogan of protecting Germany against Bolshevism, and Stalin, who built himself up on the slogan of anti-Fascism, will have exposed themselves to their own sincere followers as being prepared to shake hands with their allegedly implacable foes, and to compromise with what they have denounced as the worst of all evils. From this realisation may flow the progressive demoralisation of both the dictatorships, with resulting revived hopes for democracy and Socialism.

Thieves Falling Out

Behind these negotiations are intrigues involving all of the Great Powers, an all in game of international blackmail. It is easy enough to reconstruct what has been going on, with reasonable confidence of substantial accuracy. The British and French capitalists, with interests in Europe, but with great interests in and on the way to the East, have long been vulnerable to an attack in both quarters at once. How, then, to gain the greatest measure of security? Equally the game of the German and Italian capitalists was to mass as many allies and potential allies as possible to keep the ring for their expansion. Russia's rulers, on the other hand, have feared that both groups might settle at the expense of Russian territory when various small nations had been gobbled up. After Munich, and the disappearance of Czecho-Slovakia, British policy veered towards a Russian alliance (though this still did not prevent private and "unofficial" conversations between the Secretary of the Overseas Trade Department, Mr. Hudson, and Herr Wohltat, Economic Adviser to General Goering, about possible economic assistance and a loan to Germany, these discussions being suddenly brought to light towards the end of July.) Nevertheless, British capitalist interests in and about China necessitated some action against, or compromise with Japan. Russia not desiring to be isolated, has retaliated with the Russo-German Pact, intended no doubt as a final warning to the British Government of a real Russo-German alliance unless the British Government would line up definitely with Russia and against the German-Japanese group. But in the international scramble every new alignment of forces provokes further jostling for position, so now Japan will have an increased fear of herself being isolated through loss of German backing, and the Japanese capitalists will have to ask themselves whether to crusade under the banner "Asia for the Asiatics," line up still closer in the Anti-Comintern Pact with Germany against Russia, or revert to the British alliance, and divide the Chinese market with the British Empire. Germany, having used the Russian Pact to try to bring Japan to heel, may drop it as quickly as it was taken up, in which case Russia, Britain and France may yet be forced into a close alliance. At the moment this still seems the most likely outcome, with, as a minor phase, a further attempt by Britain and France to detach Italy and Spain from the Axis. That the Pact is supposed to endure for 10 years will not disturb either party for 10 minutes if they want to break it.

One feature of the situation which has received less attention than it deserves is the trade agreement which preceded the German-Russian Pact. The Manchester Guardian's Moscow Correspondent (August 22nd) states that the trade agreement, under which Germany advances Russia a trade credit of £16,000,000, was delayed because Russia insisted on being supplied by Germany with "equipment of a strictly military nature" in return for Russian exports to Germany. The Guardian's Berlin correspondent states that, according to German accounts, the agreement arose out of Russia's great need of industrial machinery, which Germany can supply," and out of Germany's need for Russian exports. It may well be that economic difficulties in both countries are forcing the two Governments to revise their policies of recent years and, indeed, one German newspaper states that the Russian Government has recently decided to reorganise its foreign trade and aim at expanding it. (Quoted in Daily Express, August 22nd.)

In the meantime, the rights and wrongs of Danzig and Poland fall into their true perspective as mere counters in the sordid international scramble of the capitalist Powers — not omitting the Bolsheviks. One thing at least should be gained, a growing refusal by the workers to be influenced by the shoddy propaganda alike of "big-business democrats" and Nazi-Bolshevik believers in totalitarian capitalism.

The Apologies of the Communist Party

After their first reaction—one of utter consternation—the British Communist Party Central Committee published a remarkable statement in the Daily Worker (August 23rd). Its claims were so amazing and the evidence on which they were based is so negligible that the statement is no less amazing than if the Communist Party had decided to deny everything and declare the whole affair to be an invention of the capitalist Press. (They might just as well have taken this line for all the effect their apologetics seem to have had on most of their followers.)

During recent weeks the News Chronicle has several times reported statements that the German Government was making approaches to Russia for a Pact. Each time the Daily Worker has ridiculed the suggestion and put it down to pro-Nazi influences in Great Britain. Now, when it transpires that the statements were correct, and the Russian Government had secretly been negotiating such a Pact, the Daily Worker (August 23rd) blares forth in great headlines that the German-Russian talks are a "Victory for Peace and Socialism," a "Blow to Fascist War Plans and the Policy of Chamberlain." In brief, the argument is that Mr. Chamberlain's policy was that "of endeavouring to strengthen Germany to attack the U.S.S.R., and to refuse the Peace Front," and that "the action of the Soviet Union in its present negotiations with Germany has spiked the guns of the pro-Fascist intrigues of Chamberlain and has strengthened the hands of the British people in their fight for the Anglo-Soviet Pact. Now is the time and the hour to develop the mass movement for the immediate signing of the Anglo-Soviet Pact."

The statement further declares that it represents a climb-down and defeat for Hitler, and that the Pact is fully in line with past declarations of Russian foreign policy. To show this the statements made by Stalin in March last are quoted. One in particular will show the hollowness of the Communist Party's defence. Stalin is quoted as having said : —

We stand for the support of nations which are the victims of aggression and are fighting for the independence of their country.

To justify the present attitude Stalin should have added, "We also stand for Pacts of Non-Aggression with the aggressor State (Germany)." He did not do so, but that is what the Communists are now seeking lamely to defend.

If, as the Communist Party say, the Pact means defeat and "capitulation," of Hitler and the Axis Powers, they signally fail to explain why, in their own words, "the Berlin papers spread the news in the largest of type across their front pages. "

Altogether, the whole of the Communist Party's explanation fails to explain away the glaring impossibility of reconciling the action of the Russian Government with the propaganda of the Communist Party.

One true statement—but only half the truth—is this : —

What kind of discussions are proceeding to-day in German factories, shipyards and mines ? What a strengthening of the mass opposition to the Hitler regime the negotiations will present ? What an exposure of Hitler they represent.

For the other half of the truth read "Russia" for German and "Stalin" for Hitler, for it will be just as disconcerting in Russia as in Germany.