China is capitalist — official (1986)

From the September 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Early last year pork rationing was reintroduced into most of the largest cities in China, after having been phased out a decade before. In Beijing and Shanghai, for instance, the monthly ration is one and a half kilograms of pork for each person. It is possible to buy pork in some shops without ration coupons but at a higher price, naturally. The reason for bringing back rationing is an unexpected shortage of pork: in 1984, 20 million fewer pigs were slaughtered than in 1979 And the reason for this shortage is the familiar one of profit and loss. Farmers in China simply make more money from growing grain or raising rabbits than from raising pigs, so pork production has declined in favour of more profitable occupations.

Then in May 1985 the government decided to bring Beijing into line with most of the rest of the country by removing price controls on many everyday items. Overnight, the price of 1.500 food items rose by an average of 30 per cent, but in some cases the rise was much higher, with beef, for instance, more than doubling. This was accompanied by an income subsidy for residents of the city, but most were still left out of pocket. Panic buying before the rise led to serious shortages and scarcity prices for vegetables, and the Beijing City Council had to restore the controls and subsidies for vegetables. Again, the shortage had been exacerbated by farmers switching to more profitable crops than cabbages and cauliflowers. A government spokesman explained the price rises as aiming at "encouraging production through the law of value", passing over their effects in decreasing people's living standards. As under capitalism anywhere, production priorities in China are clearly determined by considerations of profit not of human needs, and so play havoc with any attempts at economic planning.

Deregulation of prices naturally opened the way to profiteering of one kind and another. Some shops mixed fat and lean meat, selling the result at prices prevailing for lean meat. The get-rich-quick atmosphere led to some factories producing useless and even dangerous fake drugs and medicines, which were sold at vast profits. (At the same time, hospitals experienced shortages of genuine essential drugs; Beijing hospitals can obtain only half the amount of insulin they need to treat diabetics) There have been plenty of other examples of workers buying shoddy and lethal goods, backed up by ludicrously exaggerated advertising claims from unsafe electric fans to drink laced with industrial alcohol and tape recorders that break down and prove to have worthless guarantees. All are produced in the name of profit, not of satisfying human need.

The rivalry for profits between industrial concerns extends to competition among different places in China. For instance, the old industrial centre of Shanghai is falling behind its younger competitors and new local government bosses have been installed there to try and reverse the situation. And of course, an economy where the driving force is profit needs some policy for factories and other enterprises which, for whatever reason, cannot make a profit. Various government branches are at present discussing a bankruptcy law which will allow for enterprises to be closed if they make a persistent loss. Already the north-eastern industrial city of Shenyang has enacted its own bankruptcy regulations and has declared officially bankrupt one factory whose fate was sealed by its unpaid debts. No matter whether anything socially useful was being produced capitalism cannot maintain production in the absence of profits.

In 1985 China had a staggering trade deficit of 15 billion US dollars, caused by a huge increase in imports being matched only by a negligible increase in exports. The ruling class have realised the threat this deficit poses to their continued prosperity and so are attempting to boost exports, by insisting that the goods produced should be competitive on the world market in terms of quality, delivery date and price. So a major priority is the production of commodities for export at as low a price as possible, in order to reduce the trade imbalance. Fluctuations on the world market — the vagaries of capitalism, in other words — will have a clear influence on China's domestic economy. It is because of its dependence on the globe economy that China has recently applied to join GATT, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which attempts to regulate the conditions of international trade.

Shareholding is no longer denounced in China as a capitalist vice, for shareholding and joint stock companies openly exist, albeit as a very peripheral part of the entire economy. A department store in Beijing issued three million shares, which were bought by various state-owned organisations. In other cases, workers in an enterprise are permitted to buy some shares in it. The state is likely to remain the largest shareholder in companies run on these lines — but clearly profit will be the dominant theme in their activities. Legislation is in progress to ensure that stocks and bonds can be inherited.

It goes without saying that the benefits from all the hard work of Chinese workers won't be theirs. The economic editor of Beijing Review complains that some organisations

have started providing their workers and staff with money for decent clothes and a free lunch every day. Such practices may seem trifling, or even in the best interests of the workers and staff members. But the results are horrible. If every worker in the country were given a daily free lunch, it would cost the state 18 billion yuan a year. If that were to happen, how the state finances would suffer!

And how the workers suffer from a system of profit and exploitation!

The appalling housing situation, for instance, means that 90 per cent of newlyweds must live with parents, in flats which are already grossly overcrowded and allow the minimum of privacy. In Shanghai alone. 100,000 families are in need of rehousing, while in the whole country only 350,000 were rehoused between 1979 and 1982. With the population increasing, the housing shortage can only get worse.

Whatever its form and whatever the mix of private and state ownership, capitalism everywhere can never be run in the interests of the workers.

Paul Bennett

Editorial: Socialists are the democrats (1982)

Editorial from the November 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Margaret Thatcher is reported to be giving some thought to legislation which will force trade unions to hold secret ballots before they call a strike. There is, of course, nothing new about this idea; more than one government in the past has considered a similar scheme, all on the assumption that it would be an effective method of reducing the incidence of strikes. There is little evidence to support this notion; and governments, as representatives of the ruling capitalist class, might consider the fact that a strike called after getting majority consent at a ballot would be that much more difficult to break.

Nevertheless, Thatcher's plan may well be popular among those workers who are under the impression that trade unions are too powerful, that the union bosses effectively run the country, that unions are undemocratic monoliths which grind contemptuously over all reason, all opposition, in their determination to win massive rises for their members. Those who study electoral trends, and who try to find out why parties win and lose elections, are generally convinced that strikes are harmful to the Labour Party, with its close connections with the unions, and help the Tories, who are supposed to be distinguished by a resolve to curb the unions’ power.

The truth is rather different. Trade unionism — the principle that workers should unite to protect their interests on the industrial front — is essential as long as capitalism lasts. It expresses the fact that capitalism is a class divided society, in which one class needs to sell its labour power to the other in order to live. If workers ignored trade unionism they would be at the mercy of their employers and there would be a consequent decline in their living standards.

But at best this is a holding operation, itself at the mercy of the prevailing economic trends within capitalism. When there is a slump, workers’ unity will very often be needed to resist a lowering of their wages and a worsening of their conditions — something which is happening today, with the employers trying to keep rises well below the increase in prices. In a boom, workers’ unity may be effective in exploiting the advantage which a high demand for labour power gives them. At such times, there will often be pressure from governments on the unions not to exploit the advantage to the full — as we saw, for example, under the Labour government after 1945.

The response which some unions gave to that approach from the Attlee government illustrates that trade unions do not invariably meet the principles of trade unionism, that at times they are prepared, for various reasons and on various excuses, to betray the interests of their members. At such times we hear nothing from politicians about the need to make the unions more democratic, of the need for the union membership to have a say in the policies and actions of their union, of trade union leaders being unrepresentative of their members’ wishes. When the unions are following a line generally favourable to the employers their leaders are swamped with gratitude and congratulations from the government. Many of them, at the zenith of their career, end up in the House of Lords, which is hardly the place for a democratic representative of the working class to find themselves. Any visitor to Parliament can see the numerous figures of ex-trade union bosses who once said their rabble rousing say, then did their bit by the capitalist class and now, in their leathery dotage, recline on the leather benches of the Lords. It is not an edifying sight.

This amply illustrates the motives behind Thatcher's threats to bring in her new law. The government must always be working to control the unions, whether by elbow-squeezing in the back rooms of Labour Party headquarters or by arm-twisting across the negotiating table or by head-bashing on the picket lines. This conflict is essential to capitalism and it will not go away, whatever laws are passed and whatever the wishes of the opposing participants, until capitalism is abolished.

Meanwhile, where do socialists stand on the issue? We have already pointed out that the class struggle is unavoidable and that workers are compelled by their own interests to join in it. At present, this is the role of the unions, with all their defects, but the job of the class conscious socialist is to work to make the unions more effective. One way in which this can be done is to make them more democratic, to encourage workers to take a more conscious part in the organisation and to ensure that any decisions taken are in accordance with the members’ wishes.

Of course, this is best done by having a socialist trade union membership. Socialists do not need leaders to instruct them as to where their interests lie. They do not need union officials to tell them how to carry on the class struggle and that they should co-operate in a government’s efforts to hold back wages and worsen working conditions. They reject all encouragement, from union as well as political leaders, to compromise their hostility to the capitalist system and to those who uphold it. So a socialist trade union membership would insist on their organisation carrying out its part in the class struggle to the full; they would not be diverted by specious assurances about an alleged common interest with their employers.

They would also establish a properly democratic organisation. A socialist membership would ensure that every policy and action by the union was fully in accordance with their knowledge and their wishes. And as a democratic, conscious union, they would be an historically powerful force. But that, of course, is not what Thatcher wants nor what was wanted by her predecessors in both Labour and Conservative governments.

The situation we have described — of a large socialist trade union membership — implies a high and widespread degree of socialist consciousness among the working class. And that brings us to the next, most vital, point. While socialists recognise the need for trade unions under capitalism, they are also aware of their limitations. Unions spring from, and can exist only in, a class divided society. They can do nothing to end that society; their action must be confined to the industrial field where the two classes dispute over the division of the wealth which the working class produce. They can have no say in the ultimate struggle, over the ownership of the means by which that wealth is produced and distributed. The unions can exist and struggle in capitalism but they can go no further than that.

It is on the political field that capitalism will be abolished. And while socialists can co-operate in trade unions with workers of all types of political outlook, on the political field there can be no compromise. An organisation aiming to abolish capitalism must consist only of socialists, of workers who understand capitalism and how its problems can be ended by socialism alone. Here also socialists have no use for leaders. They have no need for slick politicians to tell them that their problems are caused by undemocratic unions, by greedy workers, by menacing foreigners. Their socialist consciousness gives them a unique insight into the workings of human society. They will not be deceived; they demand socialism and nothing less.

A socialist party, consisting of workers conscious of their class interests and of how to act to bring socialism into being, a party therefore without leaders, is a properly democratic party. All its decisions are openly taken, after free debate and a majority opinion. This does not exclude the right of the minority to seek always to reverse a decision, while they carry it into effect. It implies a free availability of all knowledge and the fullest opportunity for participation of all members in the organisation, in its administration and its activity.

Such a party is the Socialist Party of Great Britain and its companion parties abroad. Socialists have a concept of democracy a long way ahead of what passes for it in other organisations; they recognise that a properly democratic society — which is what socialism will be — can be brought about only through the use of a properly democratic political tool. The democratic nature of a socialist party is an essential to the revolution to overthrow capitalism.

Editorial: The Shaving of Shaw. (1925)

Editorial from the February 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the Daily Herald of November 8th, 1924, appeared a copy of a letter on the Russian question, written by G. Bernard Shaw for .the Russian paper, Iznestia. This letter seems to have caught the fancy of the Daily Herald, as in a leading article next day it is described as a “brilliant analysis” of the Bolsheviks' position in Russia, and one alliterative phrase is quoted with great glee:—

“Wherever Socialism is a living force instead of a dead theory it has left Karl Marx as far behind as modern science has left Moses.”

The toadying policy of the Daily Herald towards the leaders of the Labour Party is so well known that little notice need be taken of its comments. It is curious, however, that two critics of Mr, Shaw’s letter, Mr. Longden, National Council of the I.L.P., and Mr. Max Beer, should have missed the double fallacy in the statement quoted.

What is meant by the phrase “ a living force”? Shaw, as is usual with him, attempts no explanation. “A living force” may vary from zero to the point where it over-rides all other forces. In no case or place has Socialism reached the latter position. In every country where it is being advocated it is at present accepted and taught by a minority, and can, therefore, only exert any “force" indirectly through its influence upon the fears or hopes of the ruling class, or of the majority. Without any exception, in every place where Socialism is seriously examined, criticised, or fought, it is always the teachings of Marx that are taken and dealt with by both supporters and opponents. Shaw in his propaganda is usually—though quite incorrectly— looked upon as a buffoon, except when he uses the Marxian case. In his debate with Professor Wicksteed, in the early eighties, he was only able to score by using Marx’s economics. When addressing a meeting of the “Technical and Administrative Workers,” at the Central Hall, Westminster, about two years ago, he gave Marx’s analysis of capitalism and showed how the concentration of capital into a relatively few hands had rendered impossible the old notion of an individual starting in business and building up a fortune by “ability and hard work”! Neither the Fabian Society nor the “Independent” Labour Party, which Shaw claims as “the living centre of English Socialism” (italics ours—as though Socialism could be national!) can produce a single notion or proposal worthy of a moment’s thought by the Workers, without basing such proposal upon the teachings of Marx. Even the Catholic Mr. Wheatley, a late Cabinet Minister, is talkihg of and advocating the class war in his latter-day speeches.

Mr. Shaw’s first fallacy is, of course, well known to all students of Socialism, including Mr. Shaw. His second fallacy, that the actions of the Communists in Russia are Marxian, or even a sensible deduction from Marx’s teachings, has been exposed on several occasions in the columns of the Socialist Standard. This fallacy extends farther than Shaw, and is extremely useful to supporters of the capitalist class in their attempts to oppose and "refute" Marx. In two public lectures on Marxism, given at King’s College, London University, in December, 1924, this was the line taken by the lecturer to show the "failure" of  Marx’s teachings.

On certain occasions Shaw will use Marx’s works, without acknowledgment, but evidently feels uncomfortable in handling such advanced material. As his writings and actions during the war and at other times show, he does not care to keep pace with Marx, or even with Moses, but feels quite at home when he goes Back to Methuselah.

Revolution or Resolutions? (2016)

The Halo Halo! Column from the January 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

There’s nothing the devout Christian likes more than a righteous feeling of guilt and sin. Fortunately Christianity gives its punters plenty to feel guilty and sinful about.

And although their god, like most others, is all-seeing and nothing escapes his attention, guilt-ridden Christians happily torment themselves with their sinfulness to their heart’s content, safe in the knowledge that although the invisible man in the sky is fully aware of every guilty secret, every bit of illicit pleasure and every sin committed, he will forgive them.

To regularly remind him, though, that their sins are to be forgiven, they occasionally need to demonstrate their repentance and remorse. Lent, the forty days leading up to Easter, for example, is traditionally spent miserably fasting and reflecting on these sins. And the New Year offers a wonderful opportunity for further repentance and misery by the drawing up of lists of New Year’s resolutions to torture themselves with.

And this year, for any Christians sanctimoniously agonizing over what New Year’s resolutions impose on themselves, the Halo-Halo column is here to help. Forget about giving up fags and booze, it’s not very original and you’re not going to stick to it anyway. Here’s something you can really feel guilty about. How about giving up your religious delusions? It seems you have more to be ashamed of than you thought.

A recent study by the University of Chicago indicates that children from religious families are less likely to share with others than were children from non-religious families. A religious upbringing is also associated with more punitive tendencies in response to anti-social behavior.

The results ‘challenge the view that religiosity facilitates prosocial behavior, and call into question whether religion is vital for moral development – suggesting the secularization of moral discourse does not reduce human kindness, in fact it does just the opposite’ said Prof Jean Decety (Science Daily, November 2015).

And a previous, but similar study by Royal Holloway, University of London found that ‘When subconsciously exposed to religious ideas and concepts, religious people are far more likely to actively punish those they believe are acting selfishly and unfairly’ (Science Daily, November 2010).

It’s a funny old world. As any socialist who has ever tried to reason with a Christian knows, if you try to describe a future society without poverty, hunger homelessness etc. and call it socialism, the Christian will call you a dangerous communist. Ask them to describe heaven and, if they can give an answer at all, they’ll describe pretty much the same thing. (Except with harp-playing angels and temples with pillars of gold).

The Christian, it seems, (in spite of his self-declared sinfulness) expects to go to heaven and be forgiven, but at the same time, reserves the right to be selfish, and to punish those of us who argue for a world without poverty here on Earth.

NW

Puppet Kings and Labour Prudes (1937)

From the January 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

The most talked-of political event of the past month was the dramatic exodus of King Edward VIII. One week he was the world’s most publicised figure, titular head of the world’s greatest Empire, moving with the authority of his position among one of the world’s wealthiest circles yet at the same time able to arouse great enthusiasm among the poorest of the poor by his visits to depressed areas and references to the poverty problem. The next week saw him spirited away under cover of darkness to a wealthy semi-exile, robbed of his royal position, and replaced by his brother. And this, says Mr. Baldwin, all occurred because the proposed marriage to a woman who bad been married twice before to men still living would have robbed the Crown of some of the lustre and respect essential to the maintenance of the bonds of Empire.

For us, as Socialists, the incident has its own significance. We aim at a system of society, Socialism, that will have complete stability because its foundation, the method by which the wealth of the community will be produced, owned and distributed, will be completely satisfying to the mass of the population. Having no privileged class, such a society will have no need of armed forces to protect the haves from the have-nots. Nor will it need those institutions which cover the naked reality of class privileges and class rule with the glamour of kingship and aristocracy, and thus prevent the working class from perceiving how they are robbed and by whom. Socialism will need no kingship, for it will have no need of an institution the main function of which now is to hide the fact that the State is an instrument used by the propertied class to enable them to exploit the propertyless.

It has always been the aim of the Socialist Party of Great Britain to point out how easily that State machine could be captured by the working class and transformed into an instrument of working class emancipation. Our propaganda has been faced with many obstacles, two of which have centred round the Crown. We have been told, on the one side, that the King “rules as well as reigns,” and that, therefore, to gain control of Parliament is useless, as the King could defy a Socialist majority controlling Parliament. On the other side, we have had to meet the argument that the Crown is not part of the capitalist machine but an independent force which might help the workers against capitalists and the capitalist class. The events of November, strikingly dispose of both contentions and thus will help to remove from workers’ minds doubts that prevented acceptance of the Socialist message.

In the first place we have witnessed how easy it was for the Party controlling Parliament to dismiss the most popular monarch of centuries because he would not accept their conditions, be a docile royal rubber stamp, and order his life as they wished. Many members of the Cabinet must have reflected that it was more easily carried out than the dismissal of organised wage-earners in their own factories. (Incidentally, those who still believe that Parliament is an unworkable machine may usefully observe how expeditiously it put through on operation of such magnitude and importance to the ruling class.)

The second point concerns the former King himself, for here we had an individual on whose behalf it has been claimed that he. interested himself in some of the problems of the working class. The extent of his understanding or the depth of his interest need not concern us here. It can, however, be said that it is impossible for anyone brought up in such surroundings to gain a correct appreciation of the working class point of view, let alone accept it. Nor would such an individual be prepared to support the only remedy, Socialism, since that involves the end of class privilege as well as the end of the monarchy. Inevitably, in essentials, the Crown must be the handmaiden of capitalism.

Nevertheless, in several directions Edward VIII interfered in social and political questions sufficiently to incur the disfavour of the ruling groups, and that was a reason why his abdication was desired in addition to the question of his marriage to Mrs. Simpson. The astonishing ease with which they accomplished that feat should prove to everyone that the notion of the modern monarchy opposing capitalism or even acting as a check on it is fantastic.

The episode is instructive, too, for the way it exposes the ruthlessness and hypocrisy of official circles. The Crown must, in the interest of the propertied class, be an untarnished symbol fitted to deceive the masses into a belief that the ruling class are a superior caste and that the country is governed by them in the interest of all, not merely of themselves. Also, the Monarch must be an apt instrument, prompt to obey capitalist orders. Edward, having some tastes and views of his own, was not willing. So Edward must go. Then, without more than an instant’s pause, the high-powered slush machines—the Press and the Pulpit— plastered the new King with all the amazing attributes with which they had been endowing his predecessor only a week before. One journal, simultaneously with the announcement of Edward’s abdication, hastened to inform its readers that the brother is a better golf player and tennis player, and better all-round athlete. Within a day or two we had learned that the new King is the only member of the Royal Family who was in action in the Great War (Edward was in France, but not in action, it seems, but we were never told so until now), that he drove a railway train, attends summer camp for boys, and takes a keen interest in social questions.

One good thing about all this is that it overreaches itself, and thousands of workers will be set on the road to useful thought through their feeling of nausea at such sycophantic utterances. The capitalists got their new King, but they have fortunately struck a blow at the institution, and through it, at their own position.

Regarding the way in which the dismissal was arranged, the full story will no doubt not be told for a long while. Sufficient is, however, apparent to show that the official Baldwin version is by no means the full story. The insistence that the King’s wish to marry Mrs. Simpson was the whole issue is hard to square with certain facts. It is an open secret that the King’s visit to South Wales, like previous excursions of his, and his awkward references to slums and poverty, were offensive and harmful to the Cabinet. And it was on this issue, not on Mrs. Simpson, that the Times and Daily Telegraph (November 24th and 25th) fired the first public shots in the conflict. They took the line that, to contrast the King’s “personal and representative concern for the well-being of a section of the people with the administrative steps of his advisers, is a constitutionally dangerous proceeding, and would threaten, if continued, to entangle the Throne in politics.” In form the attacks were directed against certain newspapers, but in substance against King Edward. It is interesting to recall also, that, at his accession, the Times evidently had their doubts about him (January 23rd, 1936), and put in a plea for him to be given "time to take the strain of his new duties.” . . . ” There is a feeling instinctive in the British race which likes to give any newcomer to any walk of life a fair chance.”

(Cynical people might say that King Edward ought to have expected trouble as soon as the organ of the British ruling class had started talking about “fairness.”)

On October 14th, The Week published a statement that a scheme was then being set on foot “for a social bomb to be exploded under the King.” This was a few days before Baldwin, according to his own statement, first broached the question of Mrs. Simpson to King Edward. The Times editorial on the South Wales visit (November 24th) coincides with the period in which, according to Mr. Baldwin (Hansard, December 10th), the suggestion had been made of a morganatic marriage. It appears that the Times at that stage was warning the King that even if he gave up Mrs. Simpson, or, alternatively, if the morganatic marriage provided a way out, he would still have to toe the line marked out for him by the Cabinet on behalf of the propertied class.

Two other aspects of the abdication deserve to be placed on record. One is the unanimity with which the Press lords agreed that there was not the slightest attempt to suppress the news about Mrs. Simpson in the months during which it was filling the columns of the foreign newspapers. Yet the New Leader reports that its printer not only refused to publish material on the matter but asserted that other printers would refuse to touch it also. Unofficial pressure by those who control industry and the Press can be as tight as any official censorship.

The other incident is the refusal of the Cabinet to allow Edward to broadcast before his abdication (Times, December 12th, 1936). The significance of this is that the British Broadcasting Corporation operates on a Royal Charter, and is thus nominally an organisation more directly under the authority of the Crown than any other. Yet he was not allowed to address his “own” subjects over his "own” B.B.C. Those who still persist in believing that the Crown has control over the armed forces or other bodies which work in the King’s name should ponder this. In fact, Parliament’s control is effective whenever those who are in a majority want to act. When a politically organised Socialist majority gains control of Parliament they will find it an effective instrument for the emancipation of the working class. Neither lords nor kings, lawyers nor financiers, will be able to stand in the way.

The conduct of the Labour Party towards the question was truly laughable. Having no policy— unless a palsied fear of Fascism can be called a policy—the Labour Party lined up behind "honest” Stanley Baldwin’s Cabinet. It shuddered at the idea of Mrs. Simpson becoming Queen —"married twice already. Both her former husbands are living" (Daily Herald, December 5th)— and echoed the capitalist plea that the Dominions would not accept her. It discovered, with the capitalist Press, that the King's acts "are the links which hold the Commonwealth together” (Daily Herald, December 3rd). The statement is absurd, whether from a capitalist’s or from a worker's standpoint. Capitalist interests hang together in the Empire from motives of mutual profit and mutual fears. The Crown is only the symbol with which the capitalists dazzle the eyes of the dispossessed populations in all the Empire countries. From a worker's standpoint—that is from the standpoint the Labour Party pretends to occupy—what binds the workers of the Empire and non-Empire countries together is their common fate as an exploited class and common interest in ending exploitation. Instead of basing its attitude on these elementary facts of the working class position, the Labour Party supported the capitalist monarchy and helped the capitalist class to sack an awkward occupant of the throne. They even sank so low as to echo the excuse that Edward had failed in his duty of sacrificing his personal affections—“The King failed to subdue the man" (Daily Herald, December 11th, 1936).

What a policy and what a Party!

Edgar Hardcastle

Between the Lines: Beyond the dark (1988)

The Between the Lines Column from the September 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Beyond the dark

In case you can't find enough Tory dogma stuffed down the columns of your morning newspaper, Channel Four has provided just that added touch of repulsion at the end of the week, in the form of a new Friday-night discussion programme, Right Talk (a 10pm)

A Tory Lord chaired the first in the series. "Well", he began, "after nine years of Thatcherism we have all made lots of money . . . "; one immediately knew it was going to be one of those discussions. Lord Blake, who looked like an extra from Brideshead Revisited, couldn't be sure whether Thatcher's ideas owed more to Gladstone the Liberal or Disraeli the Tory. The participants drank orange juice out of glasses in silver holders (handling the glass itself might have seemed a touch too close to feeding themselves) and debated whether society really exists or, as Thatcher has suggested, we are all no more than a collection of individuals, united at most by family ties. Of course, the notion that there is no society is pretty handy when you are running one in which eight million workers arc dependent on state welfare payments, all of whom you choose to ignore. 

The discussion was frighteningly smug, which should perhaps be expected when a bunch of like minded doctrinaires get together and look at the world. I kept hoping that a socialist would burst in on the discussion (maybe Channel Four would send one in to collect the glass-holders), take on the whole pack of them and still drink his orange juice But the door never opened, and as the inane chatter continued I couldn't help thinking that the Tory party conference must he an awful place to be if you have a mind of your own.

Laughing at the riff-raff

In 1974 a BBC producer made an innovative fly-on-the-wall documentary called The Family. In July BBC2 re-screened it. Watching it the second time round, it became clear just how bloody wretched the lives of many workers are, a wretchedness which transcends any poverty statistics. The Wilkins family were not Victorian beasts who lived in one room and had arses hanging out of their trousers. That eight of them inhabited one pokey house in Reading was bad enough — bad enough indeed for two of the them to be rehoused in the course of the series, leaving only six of them to luxuriate in the palatial residence But it was not just the grimness of an impoverished family existence which made the Wilkins' predicament especially sad. It was the fact that these people had clearly been brought up to know their place in the world a mean and humble place, where complaining is in order but "you can't do nothing about it". In the course of the series I did not once see a single Wilkin reading a book, which is not a patronising jibe but a comment on the cultural impoverishment of many of our fellow workers. No books, but plenty of tabloid newspapers were in evidence As the series progressed the family became both more likeable and more pathetic One imagined a capitalist family watching the programme, mystified that people can live such pinched, cramped, repressed lives without wanting a revolution and laughing their heads off at the foolish antics of these simple slum-folk

Like many other viewers, I enjoyed watching Tom, the drunken, comical son-in-law whose native wit seemed to sustain the Wilkins in their ceaseless battle against the troubles of life. In the last episode Tom said that he had enjoyed the notoriety winch the series had given him, he thought he might now try his hand as a stand-up comedian. Unless he has disguised himself, the quest for stardom does not seem to have led to much in the last fifteen years Tom would have been better becoming a stand-up socialist; he could certainly have taught the Wilkins family a thing or two about how to change their situation.

One postscript on the series: its repeat showing led to a revival of public interest in the family Three of them were invited on to the Wogan show to tell us what had been happening since 1974. Every one of them had since been divorced. Mother and father were no longer together. Tom's wife had divorced him and married twice more, the son had divorced his wife, the teenage girl, unmarried in 1974, has been through several fathers for her children And all of this under a social system which, according to Mrs Thatcher, ties people together through the sacred knot of the family.

Through the keyhole

Back in 1974 there were doubts about the ethics of having a TV crew move in with a family for several months and observe their every move. The defence was that the Wilkins family knew what they were letting themselves in for. Even so, speaking in 1988. the mother of the family complained that they had been awfully underpaid for having been so used by the BBC. But what they did is nothing in comparison with the latest brand of voyeurism put out by ITV to please the advertisers. Family Affairs (6.30pm Fridays) is possibly one of the most tasteless ideas for a TV series ever conceived (And no. I haven't forgotten Cilla and her Blind Date.) Each week the presenter, Mike Smith, invites a couple to sit on a stage before an invited audience and argue about their most intimate problems. In one episode a black husband and a white wife are on the point of divorce; he will divorce her unless she slops seeing her racist father, who refuses to treat his black son-in law as an equal or, indeed, as a human being. She sees his point, but can’t bring herself to make the break. The audience, like over-emotional spectators at a street brawl, shout their advice. "Tell her father to go to hell." “If you loved him you'd give up your dad." "Be a man and take no notice of her old man., it's her you've married." On hand is marriage counsellor, Philip Hodson, whose sole function seems to be to make embarrassing, platitudinous statements like "Listen, why don't you turn to her now and tell her you love her." Oh yes, that will definitely save the marriage. Does this guy get paid for mouthing such banalities? It is a truly sick format which is likely to run and run.

Dictatorship games

As you read this column you may be submerged in 24-hour coverage of the Olympic Games from Korea, a country with a truly disgusting dictatorship You will recall that when the Games were in Moscow the USA would not go and Thatcher, who believes that politics should be kept out of sport, advised British athletes to stay away or whistle for an OBE. When the Games were in Los Angeles the Russian government ordered its boys and girls to stay at home. Now, by any standards, Korea is a worse hell hole and a fouler police state than either the USA or Russia. But both superpowers are sending their workers to compete there. Within a few weeks you will know the American national anthem down to the last beat; you will probably become pretty familiar will the Russian and East German ones as well. As for die British idiot-song — well, you had better stick to watching BBC closing down because "our' team is going to demonstrate what it means to have virtually no sports funding. Alternatively, you could keep watching Right Talk on Channel Four. I've just got this horrible feeling that any week now they're all going to burst into a solemn rendition of "God Save the Queen".

Steve Coleman

"People's capitalism" — a fraud (1987)

From the February 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the nineteenth century and until comparatively recently workers who were able to save deposited their spare cash in the Post Office Savings Bank and other savings banks and received a small but steady rate of interest on it. The present government has changed all that. At a cost of some hundreds of millions of pounds, including that of a massive advertising campaign, several million workers have been persuaded to become shareholders in British Gas and other formerly nationalised industries now privatised. The bait for the worker-shareholders is that the current stock-exchange price of the shares is appreciably higher than what they paid for them. There is of course no guarantee that the high share prices will last. Depending on the trading experience of the particular company and on the certainty that at some time there will be another big fall of all share-prices, the initial gain may disappear.

For the Tory Party the expectation is that many of these worker-shareholders will feel that they have an interest in voting for the Tories at the next election and on this ground alone the cost will be money well spent. But it has much wider implications, affecting as it does the question of the position of the working class in relation to capitalism.

The socialist case, in the words of our Declaration of Principles, is that society as at present constituted is based on the ownership of the means of living (land, factories, railways etc) by the capitalist or master class and the consequent enslavement of the working class, by whose labour alone wealth is produced. And that, therefore, there is an antagonism of interests manifesting itself as a class struggle, between those who possess but do not produce and those who produce and do not possess.

In the last resort the owning class depend for the protection of their privileged position on political power, their control of the machinery of government, including the armed forces. But from the time when the working class obtained the franchise and could determine the result of elections, the owning class and their tame philosophers and economists have devised all sorts of plausible theories to create confusion in the minds of the workers to prevent them from seeing capitalism as it really is. The aim of all the theories has been to deny the existence of a class struggle between possessors and non-possessors and to maintain that workers and capitalists are all members of society having the same interests, any differences there are being merely those of degree.

One of the theories dealt with savings. Adam Smith and Senior represented the way in which the capitalists accumulate capital as forms of abstinence and self-denial. As if there is really any similarity between the savings of workers with wages often little above subsistence, and the wealth and position of people with incomes running into hundreds of thousands of pounds a year. Sir William Ashley, an economic historian who knew about the way capitalism developed in Britain and who was an adviser to the Tory Party, wrote about that “abstinence" and "self-denial" theory in his The Economic Organisation of England (page 157).

Phrases like these have occasioned no little mirth: it is hard to discover self-denial or parsimony, as the world understands these words, in the processes by which modern capital is most largely accumulated.

But Ashley's recognition of the facts has done nothing to prevent modern apologists for capitalism from still using the arguments of Adam Smith and Senior.

Marx showed that the working class are exploited. The apologists for capitalism also use the term exploitation, but with a different meaning. For them only those workers are exploited whose wages are abnormally low. It is Marx's unique contribution to economic theory to show that exploitation takes place when the wages are what the trade unions would describe as "fair", that is wages negotiated with a trade union. The difference between Marx and the rest of the economists relates to what wages represent. The apologists for capitalism say (and a great majority of workers accept) that wages are payment for the workers' labour, so that a wage of £150 for a week is payment for, say, a 40 hour five day week. What the worker sells to the capitalist is not labour but his mental and physical energies, called by Marx, the worker's "labour-power". The capitalist pays to the worker a wage, which is the market price of labour power, and the capitalist then has the use of this labour- power. It is, however, the capacity of labour-power that it can create a value greater than a worker's wage. The worker in, say, three or four days, adds a value equal to the whole wage for the week and the rest of the week is unpaid labour for the benefit of the capitalist. Marx called this additional amount "surplus value", out of which come the industrialist's profits, the interest paid on any borrowed money and the rent of land where the factory owner does not also own the land. In this conception wages are prices, the price of labour-power, like the prices of other commodities bought by the capitalist. Only on Marx's theory is it possible to give a credible explanation of the sources from which profit, interest and land rent are derived.

If we accept the view that wages are fair payment for the workers' week's work, where do profits, interest and rent come from? So the apologists for capitalism have to invent other explanations. One was that the capitalist is paid for organising activities, in the capacity as manager of the enterprise. This had a certain plausibility, when the capitalists actually worked as managers of small firms. Marx pointed out that those capitalists were not owners of capital because they were managers, but were managers because of their ownership of capital. But it makes no sense in the modern world of big business where there may be tens of thousands of shareholders, none of whom ever sets foot inside the concern, and where all the managerial and organising functions are carried on by paid workers.

It is not even true that the shareholders as a body appoint the board of directors and therefore have ultimate control of company policy. In a typical big company, elections to the Board of Directors are not decided by the number of shareholders but by the size of their shareholdings. A company may have 20,000 shareholders but the huge shareholdings of a few individuals or, say, an insurance company can completely outvote the thousands of shareholders each of whom holds only a few hundred shares.

This puts into proper perspective the Tory myth that the creation of millions of small shareholders is going to change the structure and policy of British Gas and other such companies. The worker who withdraws a few hundred pounds from a bank or building society and buys a few shares instead, does not thereby become a controller of the company or enter into the ranks of the capitalist class. It will not make any difference to the fact that accumulated wealth of all kinds is concentrated in the hands of a small minority of the population.

Then there is the question, are not workers who own a few shares participating in the exploitation process? Are they not, in effect, capitalists? This is a very old issue. It was dealt with by Marx in Volume I of Capital, where he showed that the mere possession of a sum of money does not make the possessor a capitalist. For that, there must be present conditions enabling the money to be used for the employment — that is, the exploitation — of workers and for the accumulation of capital. (See Capital. Kerr edition. Vol I. Chapter XXXIII). And if the would-be capitalist is to be able to live above the level of a low-paid worker and not have to work in the business. Marx calculated how large is the sum of money needed to meet the cost of employing a sufficient number of workers and of providing the necessary means of production (pages 336-338). In relation to these realities of capitalism, the trivial sums of money received by workers as interest on savings, as profit on the sale of their handful of British Gas shares, or as dividends if they choose to keep the shares, are quite negligible. Of course these facts will not deter capitalism's academic hacks from pretending that in principle there really is no difference between owning £100 and being a multi-millionaire.

Where does the Labour Party stand on all this? They are among the apologists for capitalism. They reject Marx's theory of exploitation and deny that all forms of income from ownership come from surplus value, the unpaid labour of the workers. They made a quite indefensible separation between industrial profits on the one hand and interest on the other. Ramsay MacDonald once secretary of the Labour Party and Prime Minister in two Labour governments set out the theory in his Socialism, Critical and Constructive. Basing it on the writings of R. H. Tawney, MacDonald wrote:

When labour uses capital and pays it its market value, property is defensible: when capital uses labour and retains as its reward the maximum share in the product upon which it can keep its grip, property is devoid of a sure defence.

In line with this theory the Labour Party's "socialism" is capitalism as before but with the capitalist share-holders, now subject to the ups and downs of profit, changed into holders of government stocks providing a guaranteed fixed interest. Meanwhile the Tory government sets out to encourage an opposite change-over, replacing the workers' guaranteed interest on his savings with the ups and downs of profitability on company shares. Nothing to upset the capitalist class in either policy.

Edgar Hardcastle

Leninism versus socialism (1986)

From the November 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

This year sees the seventieth anniversary of the Russian Revolution. In November (October according to the old Russian calendar) 1917 the Bolsheviks seized power and the myth of Russian socialism was born — a myth because at no time during the last seventy years has Russia been socialist nor has it made any advances towards that goal. On the contrary, since the revolution Russia has only developed capitalism. The mythology of Russian socialism can be traced back to the writings of Lenin. But it is important to realise that this is not a quibble over words: Lenin's theory of "socialism" as a transitional society between capitalism and communism has proved to have disastrous consequences for the workers of the world.

One of the best academic books on Lenin is Neil Harding s two-volume Lenin's Political Thought. Harding's general conclusion in this work is that, far from being an opportunist. Lenin "was the most doctrinaire of the successful politicians of the twentieth century" (Vol.2. p.3). In at least one crucial respect, however, the facts do not support this conclusion. Harding claims that in 1917 Lenin made "no clear delineation" between socialism and communism (Vol.2. p. 172). But Lenin did write in The State and Revolution (August-September, 1917) of a "scientific distinction" between socialism and communism:

What is usually called socialism was termed by Marx the "first", or lower, phase of communist society. Insofar as the means of production become common property, the word "communism" is also applicable here, providing we do not forget that this is not complete communism. (Lenin, Collected Works,Vol.25. p.471.)

The first sentence of this quote is simply untrue and Lenin probably knew it was. There is no evidence that Marx or Engels made such a distinction; in fact they used the words socialism and communism interchangeably to refer to the post-revolutionary society of common ownership of the means of production. It is true that in his Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875) Marx wrote of a transition between a lower phase of communism and a higher phase of communism. Marx thought that, because of the low level of economic development (in 1875) individual consumption would have to be rationed in the first phase of communism, possibly by the use of labour-time vouchers (similar to those advocated by Robert Owen). But in the higher phase of communism, when the forces of production had developed sufficiently, the dictum would apply: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”. It is important to realise, however, that in both phases of communism (or socialism) there would be no state or money economy. Lenin, on the other hand, said that socialism (or the first phase of communism) is a transitional society between capitalism and full communism, in which there is both a state and money economy. According to Lenin: “It follows that under communism there remains for a time not only bourgeois right, but even the bourgeois state, without the bourgeoisie!" (Ibid.) But Lenin failed to see what this would involve. In effect, it was to become an apology for state capitalism.

Lenin's The State and Revolution was derived from the theoretical analysis contained in his Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1915-16). Lenin's theory of imperialism demonstrated to his satisfaction that the whole administrative structure of "socialism" had been developed during the epoch of finance or monopoly capitalism which, under the impact of the First World War. had become state-monopoly capitalism. He further claimed that state-monopoly capitalism "democratised" was socialism. As Lenin pointed out in his article The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It (1917):

For socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly. Or, in other words, socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly. (Lenin. Collected Works. Vol.25. p.358.)

Lenin's model for "socialist" development was the German postal service. In The State and Revolution, he declared:

A witty German Social Democrat of the last century called the postal service an example of the socialist economic system. This is very true. (Ibid., p.426.)

And in Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?, written one month before the Bolshevik seizure of power. Lenin said:

The big banks are the "state apparatus" which we need to bring about socialism, and which we take ready made from capitalism; our task here is merely to lop off what capitalistically mutilates this excellent apparatus, to make it even bigger, even more democratic, even more comprehensive. Quantity will be transformed into quality. A single state bank, the biggest of the big, with branches in every rural district, in every factory, will constitute as much as nine-tenths of the socialist apparatus. (Lenin, Collected Works, Vol.26. p. 106.)

Lenin's position was contradictory. Although he often stressed that socialism in a single country was impossible, the possibility of achieving socialism within a single state is clearly laid out. And it is from Lenin, particularly his The State and Revolution, that the idea of socialism as a transitional society between capitalism and communism originates. But as well as being a distortion of Marx's position there are also insoluble problems in theory and in practice.

In theory, the idea of a transitional society involves a misunderstanding of the state and a money economy. Money is a social relation. reflecting the private property basis of production and the fact that, however an economy is "planned ", there is still private or sectional appropriation. The state (whatever its form) is essentially a coercive machinery for maintaining the social relations of a powerful and privileged class against the interests of the dispossessed class. In other words, the state and its money economy perpetuate class-divided society.

In practice, the idea of a transitional society has led to confusion and disappointment. Since capital accumulation has continued (whether acknowledged as such or not), those governments which have followed the Leninist model have faced problems. How will they deal with the normal crises of capital accumulation? What happens if workers strike for more money? Will the unions be suppressed? But these questions are no longer academic. The history of those regimes which have adopted the Leninist model of state capital accumulation have shown themselves to be, if anything, more ruthless in their exploitation of the working class than their openly capitalist rivals. As a result, the name of socialism has been dragged through the mud. This is the legacy of Lenin. It is important to realise therefore that Lenin's conception of "socialism" means state capitalism. This is, after all, what Lenin said it meant. The idea of "socialism" as a transitional society between capitalism and communism is nonsense in theory and an unmitigated disaster in practice. It has diverted working class attention away from the vital issue facing them: to understand why they must reject capitalism in all its guises, including the idea of a transitional society and opt for socialism — a moneyless, stateless system of society in which the world belongs to the workers.

Lew Higgins

Note: All emphases in quotations are in the originals.

Leninspeak (1983)

From the May 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

It really is ironic that those members of the Militant group who face expulsion from the Labour Party should complain about the lack of democracy and tolerance which they allege is being shown to them. After all, as worshippers of Lenin they must know that their hero was no democrat and showed little tolerance of his opponents outside or inside Bolshevik ranks. We have yet to hear them condemn this.

One of the most amazing legacies of the Russian revolution and its aftermath is Lenin’s image as a humane, even saintly figure, despite the wealth of evidence to the contrary. To this day thousands of people all over the world will revile Stalin but revere Lenin, yet the truth is that it was the latter who commenced the reign of terror after November 1917 and who deserves his own place in history as a brutal, lying, ruthless dictator.

Right up till the Bolshevik seizure of power Lenin had been agitating for the abolition of the state apparatus including the army, police and bureaucracy. Every official, he said, should be elected and subject to recall at any time. He was all for freedom of the press and the right to demonstrate for “any party, any group". Immediately on gaining power he even promised to uphold the verdict of the coming elections for the Constituent Assembly

As a democratic government, we cannot ignore the decision of the rank and file of the people, even though we may disagree with it . . . and even if the peasants continue to follow the Social-Revolutionaries, even if they give this party a majority in the Constituent Assembly, we shall still say, be it so. (Report on the Land Question, 8 November 1917.)

All of this was, of course, mere window dressing, for Lenin knew that the Russian people would never have supported what he really had in mind for them. Far from abolishing the state apparatus he set about strengthening it, especially the secret police (Cheka), in order to impose the Bolshevik dictatorship. And instead of officials being elected and recallable the Bolsheviks simply appointed their own men who were answerable to them alone.

Gradually all opposition press was outlawed and their demonstrations forbidden. When the long-called-for elections for the Constituent Assembly resulted in a humiliating defeat for the Bolsheviks Lenin dissolved the Assembly by force. Later on he explained away those earlier promises on the grounds that

This was an essential period in the beginning of the revolution; without it we would not have risen on the crest of the revolutionary wave, we should have dragged in its wake. (Report of the Central Committee to the 11th Congress of the Russian Communist Party, 27 March 1922.)

In the run-up to the November coup Lenin and the Bolsheviks had won widespread support with their slogan “peace, bread and land". Of course the promises of politicians are always easier to make than to fulfil, as the Russian workers and peasants very soon discovered. The peasants, having got rid of the landlord, now had their grain and cattle forcibly taken from them in return for worthless paper money. Those who resisted were shot and many villages were burnt. Lenin claimed that his policy of robbing the peasants was necessary to avoid famine but, inevitably, the peasants retaliated by burning their crops and killing their cattle and so Lenin’s policy produced famine anyway.

In the cities and towns unemployment was rife and the workers, in or out of a job, were starving. Lenin’s response to the plight of the Petrograd workers was to tell them to

. . . set out in their tens of thousands for the Urals, the Volga and the south, where there is an abundance of grain, where they can feed themselves and their families . . . (To The Workers of Petrograd, 12 July 1918.)

How the workers and their families were go get to these areas in view of the fact that the civil war had broken out in each of them, Lenin didn’t say.

Early in 1919 many strikes and protest demonstrations were crushed with great loss of life. Starvation continued to be the workers’ lot for several more years but anyone who argued that the chronic food scarcity could be eased by allowing the peasants to trade their produce instead of having it stolen by the state should, said Lenin, be shot. This argument was “counter-revolutionary” — until Lenin himself made it official policy early in 1921.

Another myth surrounding the period of Lenin’s dictatorship is that at least there was democracy within the Communist Party. This is the so-called “democratic centralism", but Lenin no more welcomed opposition from his own comrades than he did from anyone else. Communists who criticised him or his policies were denounced as “unsound elements", “deviationists” or worse, and their arguments “mere chatter”, “phrase mongering” and “dangerous rubbish".

Lenin’s anger boiled over at those communists who wanted free trade unions independent of party control. He raged at the “loudmouths" and demanded complete loyalty or else they would throw away the revolution because

Undoubtedly, the capitalists of the Entente will take advantage of our party’s sickness to organise a new invasion; and the Social-Revolutionaries will take advantage of it for the purpose of organising conspiracies and rebellions. (The Party Crisis, 19 January 1921.)

He also complained that the debate on the trade unions had been

. . .  an excessive luxury. Speaking for myself I cannot but add that in my opinion this luxury was really absolutely impermissible. (Report on the political activities of the Central Committee to the 10th Congress of the Russian Communist Party, 8 March 1921.)

In short, shut-up and don’t rock the boat. Faced with this attitude the dissidents had no chance. Their various groups, such as “Workers’ Opposition", were expelled (even when they agreed to abide by majority decisions against them) and many of their leaders and members were jailed or exiled.

All Lenin’s actions were the result of his single-minded determination to seize power and hold on to it. even if it meant that millions of Russian workers and peasants died in famine and repression. The seizure of power was, given the chaotic condition of Russia at the time, comparatively simple: to hold on to power he had to create a state apparatus which, under his personal direction, was used to terrorise all opposition into submission.

The Leninists of today will argue that all of this was a case of the end justifying the means, that it was done in order to bring about socialism. But undemocratic means can never bring about democratic ends; any minority which seizes power can only retain it by violent, undemocratic methods. In any case, even before 1917 the Mensheviks and many European social democrats had used Karl Marx’s theory of social development to demolish the idea that socialism could be established in a backward country like Russia. The absence of larger-scale industry and the consequent smallness of the working class, both of which are essential ingredients for socialism, plus the presence of a vast, reactionary peasantry made socialism impossible. This earned them Lenin’s undying hatred, a hatred which only increased as he saw their view justified by events. All that was left to Lenin in the circumstances was to commence building up state-capitalism. The Russia of today is a grim reminder of how well he succeeded.

Vic Vanni

Einstein discusses Socialism (1931)

From the January 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

Professor Einstein has submitted to be interviewed by the "New Leader." In their usual extravagance of style, they speak of him as "the maker of an universe"; quoting Bernard Shaw they say “he is one of the eight greatest men in the world, the men who were makers of universes.” Is this the modern method of creating new gods? Are we to blame Einstein and the other seven for all the rottenness in the universe of to-day? After all language should express truth, and there is a wide difference between making a universe and explaining aspects of it.

On the other hand, Einstein cannot be held responsible for the pompous exaggeration of the "New Leader.” Possibly he sees the fraudulent nature of their propaganda, but is unwilling to commit himself to a scientifically reasoned socialism which would shock a ruling class that is daily according him high honours. Charles Darwin found himself similarly placed when his biological theory of evolution made the Adam and Eve story look silly. His concern was the acquirement of knowledge for the human race, and when freethinkers and Christians engaged in an embittered controversy, he covered himself by remarking that the Christian could accept the new explanation of the world and still keep his god, who breathed into a dead world the spirit of evolution that works without further interference on his part.

The parallel between Einstein and Darwin is not quite perfect. In Darwin’s day practically the whole ruling-class was ranged on the side of the clergy and against the freethinkers. If Darwin had expressed sympathy with their outlook he would have been socially ostracised. To-day a party that sometimes calls itself socialist is actually governing the country and the "New Leader" is a weekly organ of the party whose members are carrying on the business of government in the interest of the ruling-class. Consequently Professor Einstein has nothing to fear as a result of association with the Labour Party.

No one, to-day, is afraid to call himself a socialist, because in the minds of most people the name is associated with a government that is, in the capitalist sense, just as respectable, orthodox and even conservative as any of its predecessors.

Consequently there is nothing remarkable in the fact that Einstein finds himself politically in agreement with the Labour Party and the "New Leader," for the Labour Party is not antagonistic to the capitalist system of society.

Professor Einstein agreed to answer certain questions put by a representative of the "New Leader.” The first question was:

"What in your view is likely to be the influence of scientific discovery on social progress?"

His answer was (“New Leader" 7th Nov.): 

"The effect of the progress of science is to liberate human beings from sheer muscular effort and thus to render possible the participation of everyone in the social and intellectual life of the human race." (Our italics.)

Note the cautious phrasing of the portion in italics. Participation is rendered possible, but no suggestion of its becoming a certainty. He did not even tell the "New Leader" that it rests with the working-class to make it a certainty.

The next question, "as to whether or not the influence of scientific discovery would give capitalism a new era of greater stability and power,” failed to draw the Professor, who dexterously intimated “that it was not sufficiently clear what conception of capitalism was in the mind of the questioner."

Evidently the Professor is aware of the confusion that is characteristic of the "New Leader" when it attempts to explain social systems, either present or future. His refusal to be drawn compelled the ”New Leader" to put an alternative question, which reads:

"Whether or not the enormous extension of human power over natural resources is likely to compel the abandonment of concentrated private ownership and control of industrial processes and their substitution by forms of communal ownership and control?"

Einstein’s reply was :

"Science has furnished us with little information on this subject. The experience of history is, however, to the effect that an ever-increasing number of economic organisations have become public property or have been placed under public control. The concentration of large-scale industry which is an economic necessity brings about the imposition of public control."

The “New Leader" heralds this reply as "support for the socialist case for public control of industry,” a glaring example of their confusion over the term socialism. Public control means nationalisation, or collective control by the capitalist class, as we see it in the Post Office. The case for socialism is the case for a system of society where all the means of wealth-production and distribution are owned by the people and controlled democratically by them for their mutual benefit.

The two things socialism and nationalisation are totally different, in complete opposition to each other. To write, therefore, of the socialist case for public control, is like talking of the socialist case for capitalism, which would be just as nonsensical as the administration of capitalist affairs by a socialist government.

It will be seen that Einstein in his reply to the last question confined himself to the economic side of it; concentration is an economic necessity which brings about public control, i.e., a further economic necessity. Capitalism may develop one economic necessity after another indefinitely, but it can never develop socialism which implies a political revolution.

Socialism is unthinkable to the capitalist class, something utterly impracticable and unjustifiable. To a class that has been in possession for generations, the idea of common ownership is abhorrent. To-day they will not even admit the possibility of it. When they are forced to recognise it as an alternative to their own system, they will use all the forces at their disposal to hinder its advance.

Politicians and business men at present prefer, or pretend, to believe with the Labour Party, that socialism means the same thing as nationalisation. But nationalisation is a purely capitalist reform. Its chief object is to equalise the conditions of exploitation for capitalist competitors. Moreover, nationalisation has always been the work of capitalist statesmen and groups. It was not through the demands of the working-class that railways were nationalised in Germany, or the telegraphs and telephones in England, or, in fact, any of the services or industries that are common all over the capitalist world.

The workers gain nothing by nationalisation. Their status is unchanged. The capitalists still control the means of wealth production and guarantee the profits to themselves. They still compel the workers to sell their energy for wages that barely cover the cost of living.

Professor Einstein, in his replies to the "New Leader,” indicated that the tendency was for an ever-increasing number of economic organisations, or industries, to become state controlled. What of it? It does not need to be one of the world’s greatest eight to see actual events or tendencies. Einstein's reputation is very largely built up on the discovery of a theory which neither he nor anyone else has been able to make intelligible to the average man. "The progress of science,” he says, "liberates human beings from sheer muscular effort.” True, but it is liberation from the frying-pan of bewildering competition and endless toil into the flames of a burning desire for a normal life. With the progress of such liberation, instead of "the participation of everyone in the social and intellectual life of the human race,” the numbers tend to become restricted to the parasite class and a group of professional scientists, politicians and other time-servers.

The economic platitudes that Einstein voiced can be left to work themselves out, with or without help from the capitalist class, whom alone they concern. Concentration of industry, huge industrial corporations and nationalisation, while they affect the worker, often adversely, are not his concern. He cannot under capitalism retard or hasten movements that are purely economic. They result from the normal development of the capitalist system.

We say the worker who sells his labour-power continuously is fortunate. He is fortunate compared with the unemployed man. But does the fact of his holding a job make it possible for him to "participate in the social and intellectual life of the human race ”? Not much! He may occasionally wonder what it is like to be free from continuous toil, to have all his wants satisfied and to have the time and means to indulge in the every-day pastimes of the well-to-do. But the sordid nature of his contact with society lies always subconsciously at the back of his mind. Condemned to sell his energy in competition with his fellow workers, seeing himself always as something cheap, one out of millions who are thankful for half a loaf. Society can do without him, there are plenty to take his place. A whim of the overseer, a slump in the market, or a change in the habits of his fellow-workers may turn him into a waster. Capitalist production is carried on for profit, and in the process capitalists care less for the millions of human wasters thrown aside than for the obsolete machinery they are forced to scrap.

Einstein may be the greatest of living scientists. The problem before the working-class may be child's play to him, but he dare not reason out the solution for them. What is more, the "New Leader" did not ask him to do so.

F. Foan

How green can you get? (1989)

From the April 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Throw away the red paint, lads; green is the latest fashion. Red banners and class struggles are out of date. These days, if you want to look radical you have to be green. From Number Ten the Green Goddess has sounded the clarion call: "Let’s pretend we care about the environment — there are votes in this one". Where Thatcher leads the hapless promise-makers in the Neil, David and Paddy camps follow. On this year's Labour agenda, vote-losing, truncheon-battered miners are out, vote-winning baby seals are in. The Green Party is printing application forms on recycled paper for those who like the sound of its late Eighties, health-conscious. conservation-minded message. Pity that those filling them in have not checked the parliamentary record of the German Greens who, in order to make a few legislative deals with other parties, voted in favour of a huge military budget. The Left is going green too. In the Communist Party the fetishism of commodities is distinctly passé; Gramsci on the burning question of deodorant sprays and the ozone layer is big talk. The Two Royals, Phil and Charlie, are making speeches to whoever will listen about the importance of conserving this green and pleasant land. They own enough of it for the subject to be of direct interest. Meanwhile, they eagerly await the hunting and shooting season when they can pursue the noble sport of killing innocent animals. Elkington and Hailes Green Consumer Guide became a non-fiction best-seller last September, and now publishers are falling over one another to publish vegetarian recipes and shocking accounts about rain forests. It is fashionable to be green these days.

Socialists have been saying for a very long time that workers must wake up to the enormous threat of environmental damage which the profit system poses to the world around us. Nuclear weapons are just the most obvious and powerful symbol of self-destruction which capitalism has created. For decades it has been cheaper for capitalists to pollute the air workers breathe than to adopt clean techniques and practices. Methods of production which are unsafe, disease-spreading and potentially explosive have long existed. Workers' food has been adulterated for as long as there have been wage slaves; see Engels' comment about this in his book, Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844. In order to make a fast buck it has long been capitalist practice to destroy the earth’s irreplaceable resources. Animals are made to suffer and die needlessly; endangered species which have no exchange value in the market are free to become extinct. There is nothing new about any of this. It is not peculiar to the late Twentieth Century, and we did not require a new fashion to hit the tabloid headlines to recognise that we inhabit an endangered planet — endangered by the dictates of profit.

The Socialist Party is hostile to the Green Party. It is a party which stands for the continuation of the capitalist system, but in a different form. We stand for the abolition of capitalism in all forms. The two positions are irreconcilable. Those who vote for the Greens are doubtlessly sincere and caring people who want something different. In their own lifestyles, perhaps some of them have made genuine adjustments which are in line with a socially more co-operative way of living. So have many socialists, but we are well aware that individual lifestyle changes, whether they involve not eating meat or using what are called “environment-friendly" products, are not going to change the fundamental nature of the social system which oppresses us. A few million workers might give up using products which destroy the environment, but what power do we have in comparison with the minority who own and control the means of wealth production? The ruling class, be they multinational companies, state-capitalist bureaucrats or small manufacturers, have an interest in keeping their costs down. If their profits come before the long-term interests of workers, who can blame them for sacrificing workers’ needs? After all, workers voted for the profit system. Only by abolishing the system which is the cause of these problems can the effects be eliminated. The Greens, both in their own party and in the major parties, put out an on appealingly radical message, but when examined it becomes clear that it is a case for the market with a green tinge.

Green reformism

Let us imagine that a Green government is elected at the next General Election. What would it do? To begin with, it would govern. The job of governments is to run the coercive state on behalf of the capitalists who monopolise the means of life. So, like all previous governments, a Green one would be compelled to ensure that the workers are producing profits. In another sense, a Green government would not really govern at all: it would be governed by the profit system. Its Ministers would be constantly coming before us, like Labour reformists in the past, saying "Look, we honestly did want to reform this and that but. you see, with the capitalist economy being what it is..." And so the old story of reformist promises coming to nothing, followed by working-class disgust and disillusion, would go on. In Green Line (November 1988) Tim Andrews reported on a list of reforms which the Green Party Conference had just voted for: “the scrapping of the Common Agricultural Policy, the replacement of price support with income support . . . the party's intention to withdraw from the EEC unless reconstituted on ecological principles . . . opposition to free trade . . . commitment to economic as well as political decentralisation." In short, a package of policies to reform capitalism, many of which have been tried and failed in the past, and others which are just pious platitudes. A Green government of British capitalism would be no freer than any government before it to carry out changes which would conserve what is worth keeping in the world around us. Let us say that a Green government abolishes nuclear weapons, as they say it would. What weapons would it introduce instead? If none, then capitalism in Britain would be undefended and ripe for take-over by profit-hungry vultures from other states. If the Greens seek to introduce new, more humane, greenish weapons of murder, then let them spell out such a defence policy here and now. Likewise, let us assume that the Green government fails to persuade the EEC to reconstitute itself on ecological principles. Who will the British capitalists trade with? And why should non-EEC trading agreements be any less concerned with profit before need than the current ones are? Or would a Green government only agree to trade with nations which are ecologically principled? The question alone demonstrates the catastrophic implications of the expected green answer.

It is simply impossible to purify or humanise this capitalist system. And some of the more aware Green politicians, such as Jonathan Porritt, probably know this. They would argue that politics is about pragmatism, that is cynical compromise. It is about “lesser evils". But why vote for Porritt and his fellow would-be governors to administer the lesser evil when capitalism, which creates the evils, can be abolished altogether? The usual reformist answer is that the lesser evil will take less time to achieve than the grand socialist aim. The Socialist Party was told this by CND nearly thirty years ago when they were going to reform the threat of nuclear annihilation out of existence; we were told it by the reformists of the Labour Party over eighty years ago — they were going to eradicate poverty. It is a foolish myth that partial objectives are more worthy of support than realisable big ones. There is unlikely ever to be a Green government, and if there is, then its greatest critics will be present Greens who will complain that it has sold them out. It is inevitable with reformism; it must sell out in order to fit in with the needs of the system.

Green anti-materialism

Socialists are materialists, but not in the sense that the term is often used: it does not mean that we want people to have more and more “material” things, such as cars or video machines. To be a materialist is to recognise that human beings are rooted in our social environments. Our consciousness is social, and through conscious action we can alter the material environment of which we are a part. The environment is not something Out There which must be protected; it is part of us and we part of it. To be a materialist is to reject antiquated, idealist nonsense about the soul or the spirit. The present writer attended a debate two years ago in which the Green speaker pointed out that being green was all a question of the spirit. Asked to identify this spirit, the Greens laughed a little and ended up proclaiming that if you don’t know what it is then you ain’t got one. Are we to conclude from this that the new Green World is to be established by those who have discovered their spirits, leaving behind us poor wretches who have only our material selves to live with? There is a good deal of arrogant self-righteousness in the Green claim to have seen a better world. What they fail to understand is that seeing visions does not transform the world. Even Tories see glorious visions.

The task facing us is not to romanticise, but to revolutionise. Of such thinkers Marx wrote in The Communist Manifesto that they were “half lamentation, half lampoon; half echo of the past, half menace of the future: at times, by its witty and incisive criticism, striking the bourgeoisie to the very heart's core; but always ludicrous in its effect, through total incapacity to comprehend the march of modern history." Such will always be the condition of visionaries whose pictures of social completion are really images of a re-created past. The Green dream of a semi-rural arcadian utopia, undisturbed by the thundering force of Big Business and its needs, is really a looking backwards, a conservative ideal All this spiritual nonsense serves as a valuable diversion as far as the ruling class is concerned: while the proles are searching for the invisible spirits they will not be disturbing capitalism as a material reality.

The Times (26 December 1988) reported that "After a decade of old-fashioned pursuit of money and status. Americans and the citizens of the other rich countries will, as the planet runs low on space and resources, turn in the closing years of the century to spiritual fulfilment." The newspaper was responding to an article published in The Futurist, which is published by the World Future Society based in Washington DC. In the same city is the US Department which collects figures on official poverty. It reports that one in four citizens of the United States is living below the government poverty line. So, while bored Californians turn to the non-existent spirit for comfort in a worrying world, others cry for lack of material necessities to keep themselves warm, fed and clothed. There is no solution to be found in the so-called New Age ritualism whereby abstract idealism overcomes the need to attend to harsh material requirements. And it is precisely because there is no solution in such inaction that capitalism will quite willingly accommodate the growth of Green ideology.

Green profits

Big business is making plenty of money out of the new green consciousness. An article in The Guardian entitled “Conning of the Greens" (17 December 1988) pointed out that the supermarket chains are losing no time in cashing in on the willingness of workers to buy healthier food. This suits the capitalists who employ workers: the healthier we are the more exploitable we are. And it is increasingly suiting the retail capitalists who have created a whole new range of commodities which can be sold at extra cost — conscience money. Sainsbury's was selling organic potatoes at 64 per cent above the price of normal potatoes; organic leeks were 67 per cent dearer and organic lemons 114 per cent more. Tesco's is selling its “own-brand UK mineral water . . . that is calorie free ". John Elkington points out that “People . . .  like to feel that they are paying something extra to protect the planet." Very nice too, if you are one of the capitalists who own the planet.

Capitalism will pass a few minor reforms to win a few green votes, and also because the capitalists themselves realise that their investments are being damaged by the filth created by a lack of environmental concern. Just as they passed The Clean Air Act of 1956, so in the months to come they will attempt a few more self-regulating laws. Needless to say, these laws will be evaded by those rich and powerful enough to do so. Even when the capitalists are agreed on their common interest, there will always be one or two who will try to sneak behind the others’ backs and make an even faster buck.

The planet belongs to them. We, the workers who produce everything and run the planet from top to bottom, have given it to them. Our task is to take it away from them; to reclaim the planet. The Green Party, which does not stand for the socialist transformation of global society, cannot take the planet away from the capitalists. In the end, all they are is a rather futile reform group, pleading with the profit-taking class to do us all a favour and take less profits. Given such a pointless crusade, we need not to be surprised by the following section of the report of their 1988 conference:

Perhaps the most contentious issue at conference was the attempt by National Party Council to replace the sunflower as the party's logo with one of three designer-symbols commissioned by professionals . . . The arguments against keeping the sunflower were confused: it had become associated with healthy eating, some said, while others claimed it looked like a fried egg (hardly healthy food!). Commissioning new logos on such spurious pretexts seemed unnecessary. After all, sunflower logos only look like fried eggs when the petals have not been drawn properly . . . (Green Line, November 1988)

For further news of these exciting political dramas within the party of the future, watch this space.

Steve Coleman