Rear View: Poor People’s (ongoing) Campaign (2018)

The Rear View Column from the May 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

Poor People’s (ongoing) Campaign

The 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination was covered widely in mainstream media last month. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 for combating racial equality through non-violent resistance. For the last five years of his life, King was subject to scrutiny by the FBI. J Edgar Hoover was concerned about ‘communist’ infiltration of civil rights groups and unions but proof proved elusive. Baptist minister King had apparently read some of Marx’s writings and did not like his materialism, but such influences can be seen here: ‘the profit motive, when it is the sole basis of an economic system, encourages a cutthroat competition and selfish ambition that inspires men to be making a living than making a life.’ He even stated ‘the fact is that capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor – both black and white, both here and abroad,’ yet rather than seeking to replace capitalism with socialism he campaigned for reforms to restructure it – e.g. he strived for a universal basic income as well as end to ‘overpopulation’. Days after his death Congress passed the Fair Housing Act, which prohibited discrimination in housing basis of race, religion, or national origin. Decades later, Obama’s ‘change’ meant business as usual. Today, racism is waxing not waning, 40 million Americans live in poverty, the top 1 percent has more wealth than the bottom 90 percent, and ‘just 1 in 10 black Americans believe civil rights movement’s goals have been achieved in the 50 years since Martin Luther King Jr was killed’ (theindependent.co.uk, 31 March). And this, from Taylor Branch, the Pulitzer winning historian, says it all (probably unwittingly) : ‘all the issues that he raised toward the end of his life are as contemporary now as they were then’ (nytimes.com, 4 April). Dr. King focused famously on the ‘Triple Evils’ of poverty, racism and militarism, i.e., symptoms rather than the underlying disease.


Poverty without end

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela died the same week as the anniversary of King’s death. Media reaction was, unlike to that of Dr. King, very mixed. ‘Winnie was working as a hospital social worker when she realized the abject poverty under which most people were forced to live in, created by the inequalities of the system. It is from this point that she strived to bring change and equality’ (standardmedia.co.ke, 3 April). She married Nelson Mandela several years prior to the Sharpeville massacre of 1960 (289 murdered). Established in 1912, the African National Congress had employed largely non-violent means in its campaign to secure voting rights for non-white Africans, but this changed in 1961 with the formation of an armed wing. When Nelson was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964, the South African state punished Winnie too. She was beaten, tortured and held in solitary confinement. Andrew Malone writes as if she deserved such treatment, describing her as ‘an odious, toxic individual who continued to preach hatred rather than reconciliation right up to the end of her life’ (dailymail.co.uk, 3 April). Yet for a woman accused of murder, fraud, kidnapping and theft, comments from the South African Human Rights Commission in an article titled A tribute to Madikizela-Mandela: ‘A true revolutionary is guided by great love’ (thetimeslive.co.za, 3 April) seem equally over the top. No, the most apposite remarks were made earlier by another and anti-apartheid activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu: ‘They stopped the gravy train just long enough to get on themselves.’ He went on to say that Zuma’s administration is ‘worse than the apartheid government’ and that he would ‘pray for the downfall of the ANC.’ ‘More than two decades after South Africa ousted a racist apartheid system that trapped the vast majority of South Africans in poverty, more than half the country still lives below the national poverty line and most of the nation’s wealth remains in the hands of a small elite’ (npr.org, 2 April).


One world, one people

'Nothing should be allowed to obscure working class unity nor to hamper its struggle to set up the new social order. We know enough of racism, and of what it does to human beings, to reject it as a destructive, anti-social force. There is a better way; we have a world to win and little time to lose’ (Racist myths, Socialist Standard, June 1988).

After Tsarism (2018)

Book Review from the May 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘The Experiment: Georgia’s Forgotten Revolution 1918-1921’. By Eric Lee. (Zed Books, 2017)

Georgia is a country located south of the Caucasus mountains and between Russia and Turkey. A hundred years ago this May, Georgia declared itself independent as did a number of other former Russian territories. Eric Lee’s book, looks at the short-lived ‘democratic socialist’republic and its wider context, including its smaller scale predecessor the ‘Gurian Republic’.

Lee writes: ‘Between the Communist Manifesto in 1848 and the Russian Revolution in 1917, there were only two examples of socialists seizing political power and attempting to realise their vision of a new society. One was the Paris Commune of 1871 . . . the other was the Gurian Republic of 1902-6, widely known at the time but largely forgotten today.’

Georgia was a remote outpost of the Russian empire, and the vast majority of its inhabitants lived in poor rural communities. Guria was a desperately poor district in Western Georgia. What happened in Guria foreshadowed the later triumph of ‘democratic socialists’throughout Georgia.

‘The Gurian Republic, led by an orthodox Marxist party, instead of a few weeks, lasted for several years.’ ‘The Gurians helped to solve the land problem by redistributing land directly to the peasants, and curtailed the power of the tsarist state and the church. They instituted a kind of direct democracy in their villages. These were no small accomplishments –most happened, before 1905, when Tsarism was strong.’

Perhaps this was why Georgia returned Mensheviks by a landslide in 1905 elections to the Russian Duma. Although ‘Social Democrats’in Russia had split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks—from then on ‘Social Democrats’ in Georgia meant Menshevism and the author uses the two terms interchangeably. Heads of the Social Democratic faction in the Duma, Noe Zhordania followed by Irakli Tsereteli, were both from Georgia. The Social Democrats were the only mass party in Georgia. When Soviets were formed across Russia in 1917, Social Democrats dominated the Soviets in Georgia too, so the Bolshevik slogan ‘All power to the Soviets!’ made no sense. The Georgian Bolsheviks remained a tiny and ineffectual force.

Lee explains that no  party claiming to be Marxist had yet come to power anywhere in the world, but by the summer of 1914, it seemed like that day was not far off. The Social Democrats  were the largest party in the German parliament, and the second largest party in France, even in the United States, so they seemed on the cusp of making a breakthrough.

When Tsarism collapsed, Georgian Social Democrats had no intention of seceding from Russia; independence was not on the agenda. It was only after the ‘October revolution’(the Bolshevik coup) in Russia, that Georgia took matters into its own hands. Georgian military forces raided the arsenal in the capital Tiflis, Russian soldiers stationed there surrendered and Lenin was reportedly extremely displeased.

In the Russian Constituent Assembly elections in November 1917, Georgia again returned representatives who were overwhelmingly Mensheviks. This did not translate into a Menshevik majority in the Russian Constituent Assembly where the ‘Socialist-Revolutionary’ party won a comfortable majority over the second-placed Bolsheviks with Mensheviks a distant fourth. It was this result that prompted the Bolsheviks to dissolve the assembly by force

On May 26 1918, Georgia proclaimed its independence. Elections in 1919 (where suffrage was universal, equal and secret), returned even bigger landslides for Social Democrats, even under proportional representation. Trotsky railed, falsely portraying a powerful Georgian Bolshevik party ready at any moment. Kautsky countered this, and the archives bear out Kautsky. Trotsky and other Bolshevik propagandists then tried portraying Georgia as colluding with Anton Denikin’s White Army. Again, this is contradicted—this time by British dismay that the Georgians were repelling Denikin contrary to British orders.

Lee writes the most important action was their agrarian reform, selling state land to peasants. In this they were following Plekhanov’s municipalisation of land model and rejecting Lenin’s nationalisation of land which was thought to  lead to back to ‘a semi-Asiatic order’.

Georgia was developing a strong civil society with trade unions at its core, it enshrined the right for trade unions to strike long before most countries even legalised the right to join a trade union.

In Chapter 9 on co-operatives Lee describes the French Social Democrat leader Jules Guesde’s politics as purist and fanatical ultra-leftism. He writes that Guesde gave an example of his Marxist fundamentalism in July 1910, it is impossible to attach any socialist value to co-operation in itself. Anyone who suggested otherwise, he considered utopian.・ This is unfair to Guesde who wasn’t arguing that cooperatives were useless, only that on their own (‘in itself’) there was nothing socialist about them, as their subsequent history has shown. His views can be found here.

In 1920, three participants from the Second International, Kautsky and two Belgian Social Democrats, Vandervelde and Huysmans,visited what they saw as ‘the most perfect Socialism in Europe’–not Russia under Lenin, but the provincial backwater known as the Georgian Social Democratic Republic.

The British Labour Party delegation drew just as stark comparisons between the countries; Ethel Snowden’s criticisms of Bolshevik Russia were later published in a book Through Bolshevik Russia (to the annoyance of the Left in Britain), and Labour Party leader Ramsay Macdonald claimed the Georgian republic shared the aims of the Independent Labour Party.

Georgia was undoubtedly, as Lee says, ‘a vision of a new society radically different from the one Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin were creating’. It was a pluralist, multi-party democracy of free elections, where the constitution guaranteed universal suffrage, a free press, separation of church and state and abolished the death penalty.

The Mensheviks correctly observed that impoverished, backward societies cannot skip historical stages and proceed to create socialism. Bolsheviks wrongly claimed they had done otherwise in Russia.

Russian Bolsheviks (re)conquered Georgia in 1921 despite fierce resistance and rebellions (the biggest of which was suppressed and whitewashed by German Communist leader Clara Zetkin). Heartening though was the reception Stalin’s return to Georgia got, on addressing a crowd of 5,000 workers. He congratulated them on ‘overthrowing the Menshevik yoke’, whereupon audience members heckled ‘Lies! There was no Menshevik yoke here! There was no Communist [Bolshevik] revolution in Georgia! Your troops have removed our freedom!’.

DJW

Proper Gander: A Tale Of Two Cities (2018)

The Proper Gander column from the May 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

You’d be forgiven for thinking the world was turning into some kind of dystopia, like the old Cold War again but with creepier people in charge. Dystopias have come back into fashion on the telly as well, following the popularity of the adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (see July 2017’s Socialist Standard). Less striking, but still worth a watch is BBC2’s recent The City And The City, a mash-up of a police procedural and dystopian thriller, based on the 2009 novel by China Mieville. The main criterion of a dystopia is that it’s set in a fictional society somehow worse to live in than our own. The City And The City gives us two joyless settings for the price of one. The cities of Beszel and Ul Qoma share the same space, but are divided. They’re not separated by Berlin Wall-style fences and soldiers, but by the citizens of each city being trained to ‘unsee’ the other. Blurry shapes can be made out across the other side of the street, but otherwise the cities could be miles apart. Campaigns to unify the cities are illegal, while most people have just learnt to accept the strange situation. Both Ul Qoma and Beszel have fascist regimes, which have created drab, rule-driven societies. When people cross legally between cities, they must attend a two-week induction course to orientate themselves. Crossing over to the other city without authorisation, and even recognising it, is a grave crime called ‘breaching’, which involves a citizens’ arrest, a nasty interrogation and an unknown penalty.

Although the TV version doesn’t dwell on any meaning behind the populace being blind to what’s around them, it reminds us of what we unsee in the real world. As Andrew McKie wrote in his review of the novel in the Spectator (20 June 2009), ‘all city-dwellers collude in ignoring real aspects of the cities in which they live—the homeless, political structures, the commercial world or the stuff that’s “for the tourists”’. Like the characters in the drama, we can get used to shutting out what we don’t want to confront.

The stylish, imaginative design work almost distracts from how the drama reuses lots of familiar tropes. The police procedural aspect of the story starts with the murder of a young woman, which is investigated by a gruff, troubled cop with a personal connection to the case. The dystopian setting borrows imagery from Cold War-era Eastern Europe, from the styles of architecture down to the propaganda posters. The dystopian plot has echoes of Orwell’s 1984, with its paranoia, the character who flirts with a resistance movement, and harsh punishments for breaking the rules. What’s more original in The City And The City is the weird set-up of the two separated communities, and the truth behind the subversive rumours of a third city, supposedly a utopia.

The City And The City and The Handmaid’s Tale are not the only recent dystopian dramas on television. Last year’s SS-GB was set in an alternative 1941 where Britain was occupied by German Nazis, and several episodes of the anthology series Black Mirror have imagined different hellholes caused by society becoming too reliant on technology. On the big screen, dystopias have been the settings for popular films like Ready Player One, Blade Runner 2049 and The Hunger Games series. These have all followed the usual pattern: the writer takes a particular trend in the real world –such as fascism, surveillance technology or alienation –and extrapolates it until it dominates their invented future. Left-wing principles are criticised in dystopias as much as right-wing ones, as in 1984’s regime as well as in the surprisingly large sub-genre of dystopias aimed at teenagers. Ewan Morrison, writing in The Guardian (1 September 2014), was suspicious of blockbuster young adult dystopias like The Hunger Games, Divergent and The Giver, which he says are ‘whether intentionally or not, substantial attacks on many of the foundational projects and aims of the left: big government, the welfare state, progress, social planning and equality’. He was concerned that modern dystopias surreptitiously instil right-wing libertarian ideals, especially by having individualistic lead characters. A more balanced view, though, is that dystopias should challenge all aspects of capitalist society, left and right. They are warnings of what could happen to society and ourselves if we become complacent to troubling aspects of the world, especially divisions between people. Although with the depressing direction which global politics is taking, dystopias will have trouble keeping up with reality.

Mike Foster

Dialectic of Power: Leaders and the Led (2018)

From the May 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have seen it all before but once again heads of state have been indulging in verbal international belligerence. Whether it is a matter of trade, borders or resources such leaders feel it is both their role and duty to be seen to protect the ‘national interest’. Most commentators for the media and their readers take it for granted that this represents, to various degrees, the exercise of the leader’s power. But can a single individual possess political power and if they can what is its nature and origin?

The myth of the ‘strong man’and the invincible leader is an essential component of bourgeois ideology since any authoritarian system must have a summit to its pyramid of power. But like every other component of reactionary political theory this too might turn out to be just another myth. Could it be that this illusion of power is testament to the power of illusion?

Political power itself is no illusion. The state is the incarnation of social power and exists in part to restrict access to the fruits of production by the producers (the working class of wage and salary earners). The tiny parasitical minority knows that it is only through violence and the threat of violence that they can maintain ownership of the means of production. And here we have the origin of all social power: the relationship of an individual and his class to the production of the means of life. No individual or group can force anyone to do anything without the threat of the removal of access to the means of living (sometimes absolute or, more often, various degrees of imposed poverty). Authority is given to those who have undertaken to protect the wealth and power of the minority ruling class. Those who are seen to be successful in doing this acquire access to a higher rank which can potentially lead to the ‘presidency’ itself.

Of course those with ‘connections’ have a head start on all of the others but even these privileged individuals will get nowhere if they are not seen to do their job with the ruthlessness, duplicity and immorality needed to justify oppression, exploitation and greed. Given the nature of such success and the character and skill set it requires it is not surprising that it is the insecure, sociopathic and narcissistic who are most likely to succeed. Paradoxically it is quite possible, within this cultural context, for the weakest (in terms of moral integrity and intellectual insight) to access the highest office. The weak are attracted to power and power seeks out the weak. Given this perspective can we say that those thought of as having the most power are, in fact, among the weakest within the community?

Not so great men

Biographers spend their time seeking out the ‘essence’ of a personality –what is it that sets the famous (or infamous) apart from the rest of us? Biographies of leaders focus on this element within the subject’s character and come up with titles like: The Dark Charisma of Adolf Hitler or God’s Englishman (Oliver Cromwell) etc. Many of these individuals are driven personalities who seem to be desperate to prove something about themselves to others. Ironically one definition of strength is the relative absence of this egotistical obsession. But before we get too taken up with the popular hobby of pseudo-psychology what is usually overlooked in such biographies is that when a society believes in the myth of leadership it creates leaders. It is the office and not the individual (who emerges, invariably, as a great disappointment in terms of character analysis) that needs to be analysed if we seek the origin of perceived power.

The myth of a dominion that flows downwards from some ultimate authority is still very prevalent. In fact it is quite the opposite: ruling classes rule through the illusion of individual leadership which is ultimately dependent on the political manipulation of the masses. This is made possible by the stability, or otherwise, of political institutions. When such historical stability is absent a ruling class may lose control of the individuals it has promoted to look after its interests. Such an occasion was the weakness of the Weimar Republic in Germany in the 1930s that allowed the rise of the Nazis and Hitler. Capitalism’s failures had led to the political disillusion of millions at that time in Europe and many supported leaders who made promises to radically change things; and the true litmus of any attribution of power is this ability to bring about change. With the whole power of the state concentrated in his hands did Hitler bring about any profound and lasting change?

For those who lived and died through the Second World War Hitler’s decisions obviously had a great impact but the ‘Thousand Year Reich’ was quickly seen as the delusionary mirage of a madman. Fascism is the most unstable form of government and depends on continued military success. Hitler’s power was dependent on the maintenance of an illusion and illusions cannot survive the realities of the momentum of history. Millions believed in him but he was still just a troubled insecure little man who understood nothing of historical reality and believed in the myths of racism and German legend. Change happens as a result of a confluence of elements: development of productive technology, failure of old relations of production and the subsequent ideological doubt and theoretical innovation. Cromwell, Napoleon, Lenin and Hitler rode on the coat-tails of change and were not instigators of it. Without the ability to instigate change individual power is seen for what it really is –merely a licence to bully; and that is always an indicator of weakness and never of strength.

Myth of political competence

If we turn to the reasons why the majority still believe in this myth of individual political power we, as ever, have to look deeply into our own motivations, needs and paradigms. Quite often when discussing socialism someone will accept our case but will then confidently declare that most everyone else would not have the intelligence or education to believe in it. This ‘projection’ onto others of political ignorance is usually an indication of the intellectual insecurity of the speaker. We live in a world of ‘specialisms’ where the division of intellectual labour is exclusive and rarely inclusive.

As children we turned to our parents to explain the world and in later life we turn to our doctor, accountant, priest, therapist, lawyer, mechanic or IT expert. The different talents of individuals and our social interdependence make this a rational procedure but, in the end, it is you who have to make the decisions and in the full knowledge that experts can be, and often are, mistaken. The great problem with representative (bourgeois) democracy is that your right to make decisions concerning your life is given to another for five years and, as we’ve seen, those decisions are made not in your interest but in the interest of the ruling class. We are told that somehow these representatives are more knowledgeable or somehow more talented at knowing what’s good for you than you are. In effect they are claiming to be your parents and in this way the system infantilises the electorate. Another myth lurks here: that of ‘privileged’ information.

Many believe that once the ‘corridors of power’ have been accessed then, depending on the individual’s level of security, the secrets exposed provide a privileged insight into ‘what’s really happening in the world’. This is at the heart of the reason for the proliferation of conspiracy theories. It is somehow more comforting to believe that a Machiavellian conspiracy is responsible for the anarchy, suffering and immorality of capitalism rather than the impersonal and innate amoral character of the system itself. Although the secrecy of any political establishment has something to do with disguising corruption and lies it has everything to do with preserving the myth of political competence. The reality of stupidity and ignorance would immediately reveal the almost complete absence of the ability to change or direct capitalism in any major respect; the ‘corridors of power’ would be seen as all ‘smoke and mirrors’. Parliaments the world over are merely the façades of the illusion of control; they provide a political diversion masquerading as democratic power while the ruling class and their functionaries get on with their real business of exploiting everyone and everything for profit.

Again and again we see the dangers of attributing power to individuals, both in the hubris of those who think they have it and in the impotent illusion of those who think it is politically legitimate for ‘exceptional’ individuals to wield it.

Wez

Material World: Welcome if You’re Rich (2018)

The Material World Column from the May 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists have decried the erection of fences and the building of walls to keep out refugees and migrant workers who politicians accuse of undermining their identity and culture. Across the world, nations are tightening up their visa regulations to exclude those either seeking sanctuary or economic security.

Nevertheless, many nations have embarked upon a policy of what is called ‘citizenship by investment programmes’ (CIPs).  Such schemes offer rich individuals who invest in a country’s economy easier access to either citizenship or residency. Thousands of wealthy people acquire passports of other countries via CIPs every year. In 2014, the global rich spent an estimated $2 billion acquiring nationalities.

The wealthy already diversify their business assets for protection. Now they want to ensure their residency is diversified as well with a portfolio of passports. A second passport is more than a hedge against political uncertainty, it enhances the mobility of the rich. Passports from Iran or Pakistan, for example, will get you into fewer than 40 countries visa-free, but a passport from St. Kitts and Nevis will get you into 131. By selling passports, St. Kitts and Nevis slashed its debt from 164 percent of GDP in 2010 to 104 percent of GDP at the end of 2013. By 2014, passports were the country’s biggest export, and income associated with the passport business accounted for at least 25 percent of GDP.

Dominica offers dual citizenship at a budget price of $100,000 with no residency requirements and it comes with other useful perks such as no tax regulations on foreign-based income, wealth, and capital earnings. While being a British colony it retains certain privileges such as freedom to start a business in other British Commonwealth countries.

The government of Cyprus perk offers access to the European Community and its ‘golden visa scheme’ is a lucrative source of revenue, generating £4.3bn (€4.8bn). Cyprus made it even easier for rich foreigners to gain citizenship in 2016. An earlier requirement for investors to have at least €5m in domestic assets was reduced to €2m.

Malta started selling citizenship for a fee of €650,000 with no residency requirements. In the first six months, more than 200 investors signed up, earning the government $200 million. Because Malta is a European Union member, citizenship also gives holders the ability to travel and settle within the European Union.

Not all countries sell citizenship outright. Some, including the United States and the United Kingdom, offer residency with a path to citizenship to wealthy investors. Both countries expect investors to spend roughly half the year in residence for several years before applying for citizenship. In the US aspiring citizens who invest US$500,000 and create 10 jobs can apply for an EB-5 visa. An investor who can show that a project creates or preserves at least 10 jobs can get a green card and eventual citizenship.

The UK requires an investment of at least £2 million. Applicants are eligible for ‘indefinite leave to remain’ after five years. But the government recently added fast-track programmes for people who invest £5 million (requiring a wait of only three years) and £10 million (a wait of two years).

Australia announced its Premium Investor visa, nicknamed the platinum visa. That nation already has a golden visa, called the Significant Investor visa, which offers permanent residency after four years in exchange for an investment of A$5 million. More than 436 visas have been granted under the programme, bringing in more than 2 billion Australian dollars in investments. The new programme will give faster residency (in just 12 months) in return for A$15 million in investments.

Portugal started a ‘Golden Visa’ program in 2012, under which the purchase of a property worth at least €500,000 will get you a residence permit. Spain implemented an almost identical programme. Greece hands out residence permits for the purchase of a property worth €250,000. In Hungary, you can buy residency by investing €250,000 euros in a five-year state fund. The Netherlands has jumped on the bandwagon: an investment of €1.25 million in the Dutch economy will entitle you to live in the country.

Some critics suggest countries offering citizenship or residency for cash are aiding and abetting fraudsters and criminals. As countries around the world compete to attract global millionaires and billionaires who are the real economic migrants, those who really do require a safe haven, fleeing from war, hunger and economic hardships, do not receive a warm welcome. The xenophobes who denounce immigration because it supposedly changes their nation ignore that parts of their country are unaffordable to locals due to the increase in house prices.

Inside world socialism, there will be no countries and no national borders. Everyone on Earth will be free to roam the whole world without passports or visas, free to settle wherever they desire or for as long as they wish.

ALJO

Shadow Boxing with the Ghost of Lenin (2018)

Book Review from the May 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

L’Ombre d’Octobre (‘The Shadow of October’) by Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval (Lux, Montreal)

The centenary of the Russian revolution of 1917 turned out to be a singularly uneventful year in the social calendar of the Left in Europe and elsewhere. In many ways this was only to be expected: our images of the Russian revolution have been so saturated by the vision of the horrors of political repression, civil war and labour camps that it has become difficult for the supporters of the Russian adventure to put forward a more positive thematic just as it has been difficult for the more sceptical to form a clear picture of what actually went on. Many opt for a studied indifference to what was an attempt to foster a haphazard form of social reform in the unforgiving environment of a backward society stuck on the losing end of a brutal war. However, the continued existence of Leninist parties makes it somewhat incumbent upon socialists to reiterate the important points at issue between the mainstream Marxist approach to the movement for socialism and what Lenin and his acolytes considered – against all the evidence – to be the one best road to socialism. 

This task, however, is accomplished by Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval in L’ombre d’Octobre (‘The Shadow of October’) (Lux, Montreal). The authors demolish the myth that the Bolshevik movement established an economic system rooted in the autonomous activity of the working population as a whole, the supposed object of the whole enterprise. From the outset this outcome was unlikely as many of the leading students of Marx of the period had already pointed out. The Russian empire contained a small but growing industrial working class and a huge mass of peasants living on the edge of subsistence. Illiteracy was the lot of the vast majority. Revolutionary parties tended to be miniscule and divided on many issues although many expressed a growing fascination with the somewhat scholastic Marxism of the day. Nonetheless, there were  many signs that the working population in the period preceding the Bolshevik takeover were taking the political situation very much into their own hands by establishing independent trade unions, strike committees, peasant groupings, tenant organisations, village councils, military committees and Soviets (workers’ councils) The hierarchical vanguard party led and inspired by Lenin enthusiastically tapped into this activity, fanning the flames of discontent whilst insinuating themselves into a mutinous army. The party was structured in such a way that its military wing could have made a successful bid for state power at any time in the dying months of 1917.

The important point made by the authors is that the peculiarly zig-zag itinerary traced by the Bolsheviks in their relationship to these popular movements laid the foundations for the subordination that the working population would subsequently experience at the hands of the state following the coup d’état in October. The Bolsheviks’ explicit support for the Soviets – which went from lip-service to highly vocal and back again – ultimately operated as a convenient smoke-screen behind which Lenin and his acolytes created sufficient room for manoeuvre in their bid for the monopoly of state power. It allowed him to neutralise his opponents – other anti-Tsarist revolutionaries like the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries – in the Soviets whilst using the threat of a renewal of the war effort to overthrow the Provisional Government under Kerensky. The actual takeover of power concerned, at most, a few hundred armed militants in Petrograd, a febrile and short-lived insurgency in the streets, and many more arms crossed among a bemused and impatient civilian population. Whilst we can credit the Bolshevik takeover with a large degree of passive support, subsequent support for the emerging Leninist state was increasingly brow-beaten out of the coerced masses. A government lacking a state – that of Kerensky – had been replaced by a fully armed state with a government lacking democratic legitimacy. Pretty soon there would be no room for dissenting voices.

Against this consider that the various Soviets represented a plurality of political orientations and a potential for an active and growing democracy. Prior to the takeover, there was even something of a movement towards a government centred on them. The fact that this considerably complicated the task for the hardliners in the leadership of what became the Communist Party largely explains Lenin’s ambivalent attitude toward the Soviets. Indeed, their popularity was the reason why militants and the population at large were encouraged to believe that the Bolshevik takeover was an attempt to defend them. However, many of the more active elements in the population – and even some Bolshevik leaders – had misgivings about the Leninist cornering of state power by military means. That this was the principal goal of Lenin explains the inconvenient fact that he was more concerned that the takeover should take place prior to the Pan-Russian Congress of Soviets on 25 October than he was about fostering their autonomy. On this day he issued his famous proclamation taking power in the name of the Soviets. But he was also far-sighted enough to remove from the draft of the text any mention of the constitution of power based on the Soviets (as the authors point out on pages 56-7). Indeed, the ‘Soviet government’ (Soviet of Commissars of the People) issuing from the coup was appointed prior to the Congress of Soviets. It emerged in the absence of any consultation with the Soviets themselves and resulted from a back of an envelope list drawn up by a small group within the Central Committee of the Communist Party; henceforth the unique source of all power in Russia.

In the subsequent period, the train of events rolled along the rails laid down by a miniscule party leadership. Delegates to the Soviets were vetted by would-be civil servants, electoral rolls were modified to suit the government and the complexion of what was left of autonomous political tendencies within them came to reflect the economic priorities identified by the state. The Constituent Assembly – the object of the widest election in Russian history – became irrelevant and was closed down. The press was muzzled despite laws guaranteeing freedom of the press, a secret police was set up and a haphazard and arbitrary policy of terror paralysed what was left of political life. Bolshevik leaders moaned about the increasingly bureaucratic nature of the state they were creating; bureaucracy being the code-word for a political set-up which strangled all autonomous political activity at birth. Oceans of ink would be wasted on whether this state was a degenerated workers’ state, a state which had capitalist leftovers, an incomplete workers’ state, the first incomplete stage of communism, or whatever. For the workers, Taylorist production methods were recommended; a detailed subdivision of tasks, the division of management from the shop-floor and even military-style industrial discipline. State capitalism in short.

M. M.

Jottings. (1910)

The Jottings Column from the August 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

The risks of capitalists have been finely illustrated at the expense of the cinematograph people who shelled out some £30,000 to the principals in and promotor of the recent glove contest in America. One Jeffries essayed to "take up the white man's burden," which in this instance was to prove the superiority of the white over any other human complexion. It was thought a pretty safe calculation that the universal interest in the spectacle of "Mistah Jeff " taking up the white man's burden, would warrant the outlay, but alas ! for the "schemes of mice and men," it was forgotten that the same pictures might show the black man helping him to lay it down again. Of course the overlooking of this contingency made all the difference.

#    #    #    #

Was it to be supposed that civilisation could stand it ? We all know that civilisation is based firstly upon the superiority of the white to the coloured races, and secondly upon the superiority of the capitalist to the ordinary or worker white. But what sort of an effect would these moving pictures have upon the social aspect in Africa, and what tale would they whisper into the ear of young India, and how would they be received on the banks of the Nile, where the burden of the white man's civilisation sits none too lightly on brown backs ? The best black man has beaten the best white. The best black is better than the best white. The black is better than the white.

#    #    #    #

As Japan snatched the halo of sanctity from the Western brow when she drove the Russian legions before her, so these pictures of the best white man trying and failing to chew all he had bitten off might be taken by the dusky ones the world over as evidence that the miraculous no more belongs to the white skin than to the Western position, and that even the most godlike of white men has a crick in his neck if the axe is put on in the right place—and then goodbye to British misrule in India and Egypt, and farewell to white supremacy in East and West. And then when the worker white made the startling discovery that there was nothing inferior to him he might begin to seriously ask if  there is anything superior, and such an inward searching really would place the foundations of our capitalist civilisation in jeopardy.

#    #    #    #

And now will anybody put up a purse for the Parliamentary champions of the I.L.P. and the S.D.P. ? It need not be a large one for these gentlemen's price is not high. Some time ago Mr. Will Thorne, M.P., raised "hell and Tommy" to get a battleship built on the Thames, and with the assistance of that other good Liberal, Sir John Bethell, M.P., succeeded in steering an order into the offices of a Thames shipbuilding firm. Mr. Keir Hardie, M.P., on the other hand (according to the Manchester Guardian, July 5) said that five and a half million pounds were to be added to the naval expenditure this year and asked : "Where is this going to end ?" He went on : "When will the working class of Great Britain realise that so long as you go on squandering millions upon the navy and the army there is no money left for social reforms ? "

#    #    #    #

Now here ia a pretty kettle of fish ! Both Bill Thorne, M.(um)P.(er) and Keir Hardie, M.(um) P.(er) are reformers of the first water, and while the latter cusses over the naval expenditure, the former yells for more. Pitch them a twenty-four foot ring — a twelve-foot — nay, a six-foot will better suit their agility, not to say slipperiness — and let them set to.

#    #    #    #

At the same meeting where Mr. Hardie gave voice to the words quoted above he also had something to say upon the Conference on the House of Lords question. "It is a matter of no concern of mine," he said, "whether the Conference meets with closed or open doors, but may I say in fairness to the Conference that if there was to be a conference at all it was in the vary nature of things bound to be a secret conclave. Whenever the Miners' Federation meet the masters to discuss matters in dispute you do not admit the Press, and rightly too."

This, of course, is quite in keeping with the good old I.L.P. tradition. Don't admit the Press, the might tell the "rank and vile," and the "rank and vile" have got to be "(b)led."

On Third World debt (1988)

From the December 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the Economic Summit held in Toronto in June this year, the seven leaders agreed, in principle, measures to ease the debt problems of the poorest countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Africa is mainly dependent on raw materials for its trading income, but because of the state of the world economy, and the introduction of substitute materials, the demand for Africa’s staple products has dropped, so that a typical 'basket' of exports buys nearly one third less imports than ten years ago. Debt service obligations for countries like Mozambique. Sudan and Somalia now pre-empt the whole of their export income.

The measures eventually worked out by the Paris Club, from the "menu of options" (sic) agreed at the Summit, will do little to relieve the conditions of the poor in those countries. The lucky beneficiaries of debt relief must first be undertaking internationally approved "adjustment" programmes. This means conditions laid down by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The aim of such conditions is to increase exports, and those most frequently imposed are devaluation of the currency, drastic reduction of government expenditure, price increases, wage cuts, and the reduction of domestic consumption. When added to the difficulties arising from the dependance on particular products, the concentration on growing cash crops, "unfair" competition and falling world prices, these policies spell disaster for people whose incomes are precarious at the best of times. Over forty countries are under IMF "guidance", while others practice Fund doctrine without formal agreement, in order to obtain loans from other sources.

Formed at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944, the IMF is a financial institution, primarily concerned with promoting trade, which only slowly became involved in developing countries. It is governed by the Group of Ten leading members, and voting rights are related to the quotes put in by each member country, although the US has what amounts to veto power on important issues.

Although the deprivation endured by mill ions in Third world countries has intensified, their poverty did not begin with the debt crisis. It is a capitalist world. Every country is run in the interest of its owning class, following the dictates of a system geared to sale and profit. The Third World (or "The South' or "less developed countries") accounts for three-quarters of the world's population, and includes countries at widely differing stages of development. Most of the high interest debt has been incurred by the better-off developing countries, while the countries needing most help to "develop" are the least attractive from an investment/profit point of view. There has not been the same incentive to push loans to them. Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for less than 9 per cent of total Third World borrowing. In A Fate Worse Than Debt Susan George details the background, and the many implications, of debt for the less developed countries. She describes the dire consequences of IMF adjustment programmes for the poor — who do not benefit from the loans; how repressive ruling elites are assisted by IMF loans; how billions of dollars have been "squandered on current consumption or spent on sterile pursuits or has ended up Northern banks" (p59); and the way in which huge foreign loans have contributed to "environmental plunder, widespread impoverishment and ethnocide" (p161).

The International Bank of Reconstruction and Development, known as the World Bank, was also founded at Bretton Woods. The 134 member countries have to be members of the IMF. and subscriptions and voting power are on the same basis. The projects financed by the World Bank are supposed to follow guidelines with regard to migration, minorities and the environment. These guidelines have been flouted by internal migration programmes in Indonesia and Brazil. The Grande Carajas iron ore project in Brazil is receiving major funding from the World Bank, Carajas, the "several billion tons of iron and half a dozen other mineral-ore deposits", has been described by the Brazilian government as a "national export project", and as an answer to the country's crippling debt problem. It will cost $62 billion (with an EEC contribution of $600 million) and will mean an area the size of France and Britain together, being partially or totally deforested. To hasten the completion of the Tucurui Dam. forest was not cleared but sprayed instead with the defoliant Dioxin — agent orange. Landless peasants are sent to the deforested areas, where the soil is unsuitable for cropping. to grow soybeans — a major cash crop — for the foreign exchange needed to help pay between $12 and $14 billion in interest on loans each year. The price of soybeans is depressed because of “overproduction" in the US (the effect of the current drought in US remains to be seen), so more must be grown “to keep the revenues stable". However the motivation for extracting mineral wealth, and for the drive to export, is the pursuit of profit — regardless of the debt problem

Servicing the debt is seen as a major obstacle to development, with development itself adding to the debt burden. Under the influence of foreign experts, the western industrialised model has been followed in Third World countries regardless of whether it was appropriate, and the costly capital goods and energy requirement have been financed by borrowing. Some highly inappropriate and expensive projects have been debt financed. In the Philippines a nuclear power plant was sited in a zone of high seismic activity — it is not being made operational. Possibly up to $40 billion of Brazil’s debt is due to the purchase of nuclear reactors (also non-operational to date). Twenty per cent of Third World debt is down to military spending.

Over a quarter of the debt accumulated by the totality of Third World countries is accounted for by the increase in oil prices following the oil and energy crisis of 1973/4 and 1979/80. When the Reagan administration refused more resources to the IMF bank, lending, which had already expanded, was increased to the most heavily indebted countries. In the four years to the end of 1982 the amount loaned by US banks grew from $110 billion to $450 billion. The banks eagerly sold money to Third World countries, including those with oil (Mexico borrowed heavily to develop the oil industry), ignoring the usual constraints and safeguards. There was pressure to serve the interests of their domestic clients. Bank loans enabled countries to purchase the products of US and European corporations like Boeing and Westinghouse. Some of the money borrowed is invested outside of the debtor country. Banks accommodate this capital flight which accounts for billions of dollars in debt — possibly 70 per cent of the new loans to the big ten Latin American countries between 1983 and 1985. Money from corrupt government officials, or national companies whose government has guaranteed the debt, goes straight back to the banks — some of it actually carried back in suitcases taken there empty for this purpose — but has still been added to the burden of debt. Multinational corporations have taken over the role of direct investment. Apparently the banks do not consider development to be any of their business Bank strategy, based on the assumption that countries could not cease to exist, was (is) simply to make money. Even the debt crisis was looked on as "a true windfall" with Brazil, for example, paying back $69 billion in interest between 1979 and 1985. However, global recession brought home to the banks their over-exposure. Clearly countries could have repayment problems, with further borrowing as the only way to service their debts.

Borrowing and lending are normal commercial and banking practices, and the usual answer when countries get into repayment difficulties is to reschedule the debt. There were 144 reschedulings of official debt alone in the ten years to 1985. Default is not in the interest of either side. All of the indebted Latin American countries defaulted in the 1920s and 1930s when most of their debts were in the form of government bonds held by individual investors. Today the situation is different. In 1982 Mexico came close to default when holding $80 billion of debt. The nine largest US banks had 44 per cent of the capital tied up in loans there. A deal was eventually agreed between assorted representatives from US government Departments and Agencies — including the White House, "top brass" from the commercial banks with their lawyers, the Mexican team led by their Finance Minister, and with the involvement of the IMF. The banks were saved from having their stock plummet, an international financial crisis was averted — and Mexico got $8.3 billion in fresh money. Dividends declared by the big nine banks increased by more than a third between 1982 and 1985. (the fate of more than 400 smaller banks was rather different.) A country which defaulted would have considerable difficulty getting new loans. When Argentina showed signs of stopping interest payments in 1984. coercion was applied by US bankers, and representatives from the IMF, commercial banks and officials from major industrial countries. The US Treasury compiled a list of items likely to become "scarce" — and raised questions of what would happen to a President of a country if, for example, "the government couldn’t get insulin for its diabetics? (George. p68).

Third World countries are expected to solve their problems by exporting, but their exports have to compete in world markets. They also provide markets for creditor countries. The Brazilian computer industry became so successful that in 1985 it managed to outsell the transnational competition, which brought threats of "trade reprisals" from the US if local (Brazilian) demand continued to be satisfied at the expense of IBM. Ironically IMF imposed conditions mean fewer imports. US exports to Latin America fell by 42 per cent between 1982 and 1984. and hundreds of thousands of US workers lost their jobs. The annual report of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) calls for the writing off of at least $90 billion of Third World bank debts, and says that, if combined with the $5 billion of debt relief for sub-Saharan African countries, debtor countries could increase their "net demand for imports by $18 billion each year". A third of this would come from the US “helping its trade get out of the red" (The Guardian, 2 September 1988). The report also argues that debt relief on this scale (30 per cent of the $300 billion owed to banks by the 15 worst afflicted countries) would enable Third World economies to grow faster, and boost the world economy.

Since the Mexican rescue the banks have made their own provision against the effects of possible bad debts, by adding to their reserves. (Some debts have been sold at a discount, and some "debt for equity" swaps have also been made.) Together with the IMF. they are opposed to the UNCTAD proposal, preferring the present strategy whereby each near-defaulting country is dealt with "case by case".

Whatever deals over debt relief are agreed in order to facilitate trade, they will not end Third World poverty — that is not their purpose.

Pat Deutz

Letter: A "normal observer" amazed (1988)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors.

I recently had occasion to see a list of the General Election results of the Socialist Party of Great Britain since 1945. I must confess to being shocked. The conclusion I draw from seeing that in 18 parliamentary elections the Party has barely achieved an average of one per cent of the vote is that your dogmatic attachment to the "principles” formulated in 1904 has made you into a kind of religious sect, perhaps a more sectarian one than any other and even less successful in winning people to its point of view.

Being "sectarian" doesn’t necessarily mean having a short-sighted attitude or a wrong view of things. It's possible for you, a tiny minority, to be right and almost everyone else, the vast majority, to be wrong. But what has never ceased to amaze me in my regular reading of the Socialist Standard is the total lack of consideration by the SPGB of the causes and reasons for the absence of a "socialist"' movement in the sense that you understand the term. I'm also amazed by your failure to try and analyse your total lack of success over the years. After 40 years of participating in elections on behalf of democratic parliamentary socialism, you've got absolutely nowhere. And this after the cataclysm of 1939-1945 and after Auschwitz and Hiroshima. (1 don't of course know what electoral success' your Party had between 1904 and 1945.)

As for the efforts of the Socialist Standard in trying to reach the working class, you are labouring under delusions about your chances of success. If the capitalist dailies average circulations of several million what chance is there for the spread of socialist ideas without a mass circulation working- class daily?

Marx had a clear theory about the "transition" from the capitalist mode of production to the socialist-communist one. He also had knowledge of what was required for the creation of a "communist consciousness" in terms of the psychology and social development of workers and bourgeois intellectuals — what you might call the "ethical" side of things. This consciousness was supposed to be created spontaneously under the weight of ever worsening material and moral conditions. This idea of Marx has given rise to controversies between the various different schools of Marxism about so-called "increasing misery" among the workers. According to the idea, the resistance and opposition of the workers to an employing class that was becoming smaller and smaller in number yet increasingly richer and more oppressive would intensify until it finally brought about the famous reversal of roles as to which class dominates — the "negation of the negation" — with the period of transition having the form of a "dictatorship" of the immense majority who would cleanse society of its capitalist institutions. But much has happened since the disappearance of Marx and Engels which should cause us to "reconsider" the materialist . . .

If we look at the result of your "activities", which consist of trying to 'make' socialists before the objective circumstances favourable to the establishment of socialism appear; if we consider the fact that four-fifths of the world's population are ruled by economic, political and ideological dictatorships with methods of terror and brainwashing which are increasingly more efficient and sophisticated, then we must be tempted to question not only your methods but also all so-called "socialist" strategies in the whole of the so-called ""free" world. And we must also ask the question whether it wouldn't be more reasonable to abandon the traditional terminology which has done nothing but mislead people since the capitalist empires of the East have managed to usurp the names of "socialism" and "communism".

Reading your replies to readers" questions in the Socialist Standard, your extreme sectarianism becomes apparent. Under cover of rejecting "reformism", you throw cold water on all participation in movements of protest and opposition not carrying the "socialist" label as defined by yourselves. In a context of limitless barbarism wherever one looks in the world, you reject out of hand the imperative need to put aside ideological disputes and join hands with radical pacifist, ecological and feminist movements. Not once in the Socialist Standard have I read a serious study of the uniqueness of the present crisis which for the first time ever raises the question of the very survival of the human species. To the question. "If that's the point we're at, whose fault is it?" the SPGB will reply: "It's capitalism that's to blame But of course, one could equally well reply: "It's the workers who are to blame". Your French-language journal, Socialism Mondiale, in reviewing a book by Serge Kolm (No.2. 1985). criticises the author's thesis according to which to arrive at relations of economic equality people must behave in an altruistic not a selfish fashion. While we would all reject the notion of "human nature", we must nevertheless admit that to behave like a socialist (in the SPGB sense) means to behave in an opposite way to the majority of workers. And are we not in actual fact being "altruistic" in aspiring to a community of conscious human solidarity without seeking either power or wealth for ourselves? Unfortunately, the problem of today's world is precisely one of "altruism": that of the workers who sacrifice themselves to ensure the wellbeing and the continued authority of the ruling class.

To return to another aspect of the verbal "fetishism" tirelessly cultivated in the Socialist Standard, may I mention: (1) your condemnation of money in the name of an abstract principle which the average worker will certainly find difficult to grasp; (2) your advocacy of "voluntary work"; and (3) your insistence on "free access". Kolm, in the book I've mentioned, suggests a form of "money" which has nothing in common with money as a source of profit but is used as a "general unit of accounting" in the tradition of utopian thinkers such as Owen and Proudhon, and indeed as advocated by Marx himself. Anyone who is in the slightest bit receptive to the reality of daily life, where money is more and more subject to the ups and downs of the finance market, will inevitably, when confronted with the fine phrases of the SPGB, ask questions about the virtues of "voluntary co-operation" and the principle of the "gift economy" and will in particular want a precise, detailed explanation concerning the transition from a capitalist mode of work to a socialist mode of work. Such an explanation will of course have to include a plan of organisation for the countless jobs and occupations in which today's millions of wage workers are involved and enslaved as they carry out tasks which are overwhelmingly useless and alienating inasmuch as they are producing goods or services for the exclusive profit of the master class (excuse my over-stark terminology — I am trying to make my point absolutely clear).

Let's take, for example, the large number of people (civil servants, office workers, manual workers, technicians, experts, etc.) involved in producing armaments for the "killing industry" or involved in work aimed at intoxicating people through the advertising industry or through foisting the latest fashions on them. These workers will not be able to be "recycled" from one day to the next to carry out tasks and occupations useful to the new community and will consequently have to be fed, clothed and housed "for free" by their "productive" fellow workers. This in fact presupposes a different kind of "altruism" from the present masochistic sacrifices of the world's workers.

Marx himself came to reflect on the problem of the "transition" and outlined his project for it in the Critique of the Gotha Programme. The SPGB rejects this "heresy", replacing it with phraseology it calls "materialist" but behind which is concealed a quite unjustified confidence in the feelings of solidarity which would be shown by those workers who had been transformed into "socialists" even before the Great Moment of Liberation (excuse the irony but I'm trying to stress how unrealistically vast are the Socialist Party's expectations of the mass of workers).

Hoping that your election results and my observations will cause you to reflect seriously on the conclusion any normal observer (and I count myself as one) is driven to when faced with your unrelenting and continuous lack of progress.

Maximilien Rubel 

Paris

Reply
These criticisms range over a very wide field — our failure at elections, the restriction of membership to those who accept our principles, the content of our propaganda, our refusal to join up with non-socialist organisations and, finally, the usefulness of our socialist objective. Maximilien Rubel clearly thinks his criticisms are his own original work. He is quite unaware that they are not only very old but that all the things he tells us we ought to do were put into practice long ago by self-styled socialist organisations; with disastrous results for the socialist movement.

Lack of success
Why does the Socialist Party regularly achieve such a low percentage poll when it contests elections? Is it our dogmatic "sectarianism", our refusal to "join hands" with other groups, (anti-war, ecologist, feminist)? Frankly we don't think so since, despite the enormous efforts of such groups, they have — both separately and joint — had very little more success than we have. And, more importantly, although we would not want to deny the goodwill and sincerity of these groups in seeking to improve living conditions and solve social problems, we would not want to merge with them to try and bring about reforms of the capitalist system. This is not sectarianism either. It is merely a way of keeping our objective clear and not being sidetracked into activity which has nothing to do with the work of building a movement to advocate and achieve a society of common ownership and democratic control. In fact, M. Rubel is himself not prepared to argue that restricting membership to those who accept a Declaration of Principles is necessarily unjustified. "Being 'sectarian' doesn't necessarily mean having a short-sighted or a wrong view of things." Indeed he concedes that perhaps we might be right, and the others were wrong.

In Britain we have had a party which was formed on the basis of precisely the theory and strategy he lays down. It was the Independent Labour Party, formed to rescue the socialist movement from the "dogmatic" and sectarian attachment to principles shown by the existing Social Democratic Federation (Later on the ILP made the same criticisms of us.) Keir Hardie. its chairman, pointed to the overall votes SDF candidates got and their consequent failure to be elected and said it was due to the SDF "wooing the electors on what they allege to be a pure socialist ticket.". The only way to get elected, the ILP said, was for socialists to interest themselves more in the workers' day-to- day struggle and take up whatever issues the workers happen to be concerned with from time to time. There was to be no "dogmatic" adherence to a rigid set of principles. Here are Keir Hardie's words: "a broad tolerant catholicity has always been a leading characteristic of the ILP. It has never had a hard and dry creed of membership". The ILP and the SDF have now both vanished from the political scene. We have no intention of accepting Maximilien Rubel's advice and meeting the same fate.

We are of course always keen to discuss and debate with other groups and parties, hold forums with them, carry their views in the letter column of the Socialist Standard, and indeed learn from them where they have knowledge that we do not have. At the same time, we would point out that literally thousands of such organisations have come and gone this century without managing to stem the barbarity and horrors which Professor Rubel points to and which appall us as much as they do him. There can be no doubt that had the Socialist Party joined forces with any such organisations, we would have gone too As it is, we have at least had success in keeping the socialist idea alive — perhaps no mean feat considering the obstacles we have constantly had to overcome.

Increasing misery
We agree with Professor Rubel that Marx's concept of "increasing misery" is open to interpretation, as is much else Marx wrote. But we don't think that what has happened since Marx's time negates the essence of that idea. Workers are increasingly worse off. if not in absolute terms, then in terms of the proportion of wealth they actually consume. In mentioning Auschwitz. Hiroshima and the "limitless barbarism" of the modern world. Professor Rubel himself surely points to a worsening of what he calls "moral conditions". But we don't think that such conditions, material and "moral", give cause for hopelessness. What they do in fact is to create an increasing likelihood that people will turn to the solution that socialism offers to their problems. Our own small voice trying to point people in that direction is one which has been born of those conditions and has seen a way out of them.

The transition
We can understand that our use of terms like "voluntary co-operation", “moneyless society" and "free access ' should seem like "word fetishism" to Professor Rubel. But all we are trying to do is to describe the kind of society we are aiming at. While we can accept that to many people these terms may seem over-abstract, we'd certainly be selling ourselves and others short if we didn't make it absolutely clear what our objective was. If there are other and better ways of putting across the same idea, we'd be genuinely pleased to know about them. Indeed that's what we re constantly looking for and we're as aware as Professor Rubel that the word "socialism" itself often leads to confusion and misunderstanding. The only thing we don't want to do is to conceal, or appear to want to conceal, the true nature of our objective. Nor do we want to claim that we can provide a detailed scenario for the transition from capitalism to socialism or for the organisation of socialism. We can't. It's true that many people, in order to feel that socialism is a tangible objective, want an explanation about how it s going to come about and then be organised. But it's an explanation we can only give in a general not in an exact and detailed way. We cannot, for example — small number that we are now — know exactly how the millions of people involved in socially useless work under capitalism will switch to socially useful work in socialism. We can, and do, speculate on this to a certain extent and this is one of the things we have tried to do in our recent pamphlet, Socialism as a Practical Alternative. But the kind of thing we can be fairly sure of is that as the socialist movement grows within capitalism, those in the movement will be developing plans as to how work will be organised in socialism and will be ready to put those plans into operation once the political changeover from one system to another takes place. Of course, as Professor Rubel suggests, this new organisation of work will not be an overnight process — nothing important in human affairs ever is — but at least the social basis for it will be there. Nor will "human nature" be in any sense an obstacle since making socialism work will be in the practical interest of each member of the community and will therefore not involve an "altruism" that some may find it over-optimistic to expect from the human species.

Socialism

Maximilien Rubel started by noting the slow progress towards working-class acceptance of socialism as defined by us. Then it transpires that he isn't really sure that our objective is worthwhile anyway! He raises supposed big difficulties in the operation of socialism and suggests, instead of free access, a money system which, he says, "has nothing in common with money as a source of profit but is used as a general unit of accounting". Other supposed difficulties are getting the workers to accept the idea of "voluntary work" (that is, the abolition of the wages system) and the problem of moving over to useful work all the great army of people at present producing armaments or doing other work necessary only to capitalism. He also says that we condemn money "in the name of an abstract principle which the average worker will certainly find difficult to grasp".

Taking the last point first, we do not "condemn money" on an abstract principle but on the basis that with the inauguration of production solely for consumption there is no useful function for money to perform. However, M. Rubel then proceeds to invent a supposed use for money in socialist society. How useless it is can easily be seen.

In socialist society it will be necessary to know how many tons of each kind of coal come from each coal mine, how many kilowatts of electricity from each power station, how many yards of each kind of cloth from each textile factory, and so on. This is easy to calculate and done already. And in precisely the form in which the consumer in socialist society will want the information. Maximilien Rubel wants to stick a price label on everything so that there will be a combined total of £x, covering prices of all the different kinds of products. For what purpose? It won't be wanted by the consumer and M. Rubel tells us it won t be a source of profit to anyone. So why waste effort doing it? And in M. Rubel's "socialism'. who will fix all the prices, including wages, the price of labour power? And on what basis? When M. Rubel says that the average worker finds it difficult to grasp the idea of abolishing buying and selling, has he considered the difficulty that workers will have in grasping his money that is not money and a price system that serves no apparent purpose?

These would indeed be real, in fact, insoluble problems for muddled bureaucrats who envisage operating socialism with a non-socialist working class, either by leadership, exhortation or by imposing it through dictatorship. But the essence of our case is that there can be no thought of achieving power to establish socialism until a majority, politically organised, have come to understand and accept the socialist case with all the responsibilities that socialism will entail.

Another issue he reuses is that four-fifths of the world's population are ruled by dictatorships and that, consequently, we are "trying to "make" socialists before the objective circumstances favourable to the establishment of socialism appear" We do not accept the implication of M. Rubel's statement, which is that it is impossible for four-fifths of the world s population ever to have heard of the socialist idea and impossible for them to reason out for themselves where working class interests lie. How does he suppose ideas of socialism developed in the first place and were propagated in Britain, at a time when all industrial political organisation and propaganda were illegal and savagely suppressed? And it can hardly have escaped M. Rubel's notice that the supposedly monolithic and impregnable capitalist dictatorships in Russia and elsewhere are beginning to be removed, as they were long ago in industrially advanced countries like Britain. France. Germany and Japan.

The future

We too would like to see a mass-circulation working-class daily and agree that a small-circulation monthly publication can’t hope to make a great impact. But luckily the development of socialist consciousness does not depend solely on the Socialist Party and its publications but more generally on the conditions people live under in capitalism and the need to change those conditions. Having said that, we'd like the Socialist Standard to be as effective, wide-ranging and wide-circulating a vehicle of socialist ideas as possible; so the more people who have already arrived at a socialist consciousness become part of the organisation propagating those ideas, the more members and the more resources this will give us to increase our circulation and move towards weekly and then daily publication.

Editors.

Running Commentary: Used in evidence (1988)

The Running Commentary Column from the December 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Used in evidence
Certain members of the criminal set will have greeted with hollow laughter the announcement of the government's intention to abolish the so-called Right of Silence. A fat lot of good it ever did them, they may well have mused; for they are the people who have suffered the fate of being "verballed-up" — convicted on a spoken admission of an offence ("It's a fair cop. guv" sort of thing) which they did not in fact make but which was the creation of an imaginative copper.

Of course under the new arrangements suspects helping the police with their enquiries will still be able to remain silent if they wish and are able to hold out against their interrogation. But at their trial the prosecution will be allowed to refer to this and to make as much of it as they can, inviting the jury to conclude that only the guilty keep mum.

This has some embarrassing implications for all politicians and especially for those in positions of power. Poor Robert Armstrong, in the Spycatcher trial, talked about being economical with the truth; now what about those who economise in that way by a sparing use of words — those who use phrases like "no comment" or simply ignore pointed questions in order to hide their culpability in some outrageous decision or incident?

For example, a little while ago it was revealed that when he was prime minister the late Harold Macmillan decided to suppress the report on the 1957 fire at the Windscale nuclear reactor. This resort to silence was used because the report laid out some facts about the true scale and threat of the fire and Macmillan thought that to publicise this would have been an embarrassing complication in Britain's relationship with America, which he saw as balanced on nuclear capability. Human rights and safety did not enter into it. How do we now judge Macmillan?

More recently Mrs Thatcher habitually responds with evasions to parliamentary questions which prove some Tory vulnerability and could not. she may feel, be answered without conceding a point to Labour in their need to show that they would make the better job of running capitalism.

If, every time a politician stayed silent or evaded a question they were incriminating themselves, they would now stand convicted of a mass of very serious offences against human interests. Their guilt would lie in their impotence to affect or improve society as they have claimed they could. It would be in their unrelenting efforts to deceive us into keeping this social system in being although it cannot meet our needs and is repressive and destructive of us.

Whatever they say — how much, how little — they cannot hide this awful reality. They cannot evade the fact of their guilt and it is high time that what they stand for was brought to account.


Clamp-down
Home Secretary Douglas Hurd explained the government's plans to place restrictions on free reporting about events in Ireland by saying that it should not be possible for anyone to try to justify acts of indiscriminate killing and destruction.

He did not make it clear whether this will prevent future media obscenities such as the notorious Sun headline, which gloated over the ruthless killing of hundreds of Argentinian sailors on the Belgrano with the word "GOTCHA!".

At all events the policy — like quite a lot of what this government does — seems to be politically crude and ill-advised, an attempt to stifle what freedom of expression we have through an impulsive reaction to a problem. No minister can seriously believe that the sight of Gerry Adam 's cold features on television after the reporting of some IRA bombing would help to persuade anyone that the bombing could be excused. The very opposite is more likely to be true; for Adams — and on the other side the likes of Robinson and Paisley appeal only to the already-converted and tend to antagonise others.

Perhaps, twenty years after the Irish problem flared up again, the government is having to face the fact of its own impotence. Of course they are very free with the propaganda about the IRA suffering crucial setbacks, being on the point of final defeat and so on but there is plenty of historical evidence to show how futile it is for a power to engage in a prolonged struggle with a nationalist movement which has any considerable popular support.

In the case of Ireland, British policy is complicated by the rival economic interest and the manner in which these energise deep-seated bigotries — a feature not unknown in war. What is apparent is that since 1968 there has been no progress towards settling the troubles. Direct rule from London; occupation by British troops; internment; the abolition of juries; all have failed to have any real effect.

The only policy the British government have been left with is to step up the pressure on the IRA, for example by the Shoot to Kill tactic, by abolishing the Right to Silence and now by the media ban. They have also given considerable publicity to what they have done so that they appear to be effective when in fact they are not.

The persistence of the troubles, and the government's continuing inability to deal with them, provide evidence of how powerful is the conflict of interests in Ireland and of the bigotry there — which the British government has not been averse to using for its own ends in the past. This is a typical, tragic episode in this social system in which rival capitalist groups exploit the ignorance of millions of workers while politicians pretend to be able to unravel the mess. How the media behaves in this hardly matters; the realities are too clear and too urgent.


Maggie immortal?
If they had known in 1979 that Margaret Thatcher intended to remain as Prime Minister for ever or until she died, whichever is later, would the working class have been so ready to vote her into power? Her reign - for that is how she seems increasingly to regard her time at Number Ten — has been remarkable for a number of features. Typical of them was the style of her recent announcement about carrying on. when she said this was partly because nobody else was up to the job, which was a pretty damning thing to say about her ministers.

But this was inevitable, considering how assiduously Thatcher has weeded out anyone who posed as a threat to her. She has not sat easily with doubts or criticism from her supporters and now has a government which is likely to go down in history as a unique collection of toadies. She has turned on its head the once accepted theory that the most efficient government is the one which is most open to the stimulating effects of opposition.

Her administration has also been notable for its dismantling of the policy — which in some respects goes back to just after the First World War — that governments and local councils should have a decisive role in almost everything of social consequence. On that policy councils all over the country were enabled to set down housing estates, run homes for children and old people, clear up the rubbish and so on. The central state took control over industries which, to serve the interests of the British capitalist class as a whole, were most effectively run as an integrated whole. In that way were born the Post Office, the National Coal Board. British Railways and the rest. In the past Conservative governments were not averse to carrying through their own bits of nationalisation, or leaving untouched those which were already in existence, if they considered there was a case for this in terms of overall profitability.

Now that this is being replaced the former image of the all-caring, all-managing state has been replaced with the look-after-yourself, stand-on-your-own-feet image of privatisation. It did not seem possible, ten years ago, that a government would be able to inspire such a reversal of popular thinking but it has happened.

There is a danger that the mourning for state and council control will obscure some important facts. The policy was originally formed, not to serve the interests of the people who do all the work and produce all the wealth but to protect and improve the profits of their exploiters. The case for nationalisation was that it was a more efficient way of running a business like the coal mines and would therefore work towards safeguarding the profits of the industries which depended on coal. The case for the NHS was that the former fragmented services were not the best way of dealing with workers' illness, of servicing them into consistently productive and profitable employees.

Labour Party supporters will not appreciate the point, but from the point of view of workers' interests neither theory — state control or privatisation — has anything to offer. They are both methods of running a social system which cannot operate in our interests. Workers who are now debating the issue of privatisation should consider the actual experience of both methods, and draw the obvious conclusions. It would be nice if they did this before Thatcher finally goes, for the sooner the better.

Arrival and departure (1988)

From the December 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Combe Hill is the highest point in the Chilterns and from the top you can look westwards down onto Chequers, the Prime Ministerial estate where Thatcher and the least despised of her cronies have plotted some historically audacious propaganda coups. In the Vale to the north lies Aylesbury, dismally landmarked by the gnarled finger of concrete rising through the haze. It is a much uglier town now, after the planners and the developers have left their mark, than it was when I was forced to make a brief visit there in September 1939 — although in any case I was too young and unhappy at the time to have been able to value any virtues it might have had.

The alleys, inns and duck-ponds which once characterised the town have been swamped now by what is called progress but which is more accurately known as profitable, uncaring investment. A few mediaeval bits, as well as some Georgian and Regency buildings, have survived. There are industrial estates and wedges of 1960s suburbia, all set down to attract Londoners; thirty years ago the theory of urban overspill was the brilliantly insightful solution to inner-city congestion. That concrete finger — known as Fred's Folly after its architect — was built during the time to house the administrative offices of the County of Buckinghamshire. In between a lot of housing went up during the nineteenth century and it was to these that my two brothers and I were evacuated at the start of the Second World War.

On 1 September 1939 I was in school, enduring a moderately tedious lesson, when the Deputy Head came to whisper some awful message to our teacher. For a while she tried distractedly to carry on but then blurted out the news that the German army had invaded Poland that morning. This had little effect on me, much less than the pervasive gloom of the Munich crisis a year before, when I had learned to pronounce Czechoslovakia and looked it up on the map but had then accepted with relief my mother's crass endorsement of Neville Chamberlain's assurance that he had signed up for Peace In Our Time. After all, great men like the Prime Minister, the King and the Archbishop of Canterbury did not say things which were not true. By the end of the war I knew better.

Over the next two days the government plan to evacuate the children of London was carried out. For some weeks we had kept on the mantlepiece the instructions for our part in this huge operation — how we should be labelled, what we should do, where we should go (or "report" as it was militarily put), who we should obey — and the list of basic clothing which had to be packed in a rucksack (suitcases were officially frowned on, on the grounds that a rucksack would allow us to run faster in an emergency). We all knew what that emergency was expected to be; for example our headmaster had assembled us one day in school to bark at us some astoundingly stupid advice on how to survive an air raid, based on a government publication which was widely circulating. We were urged to keep a smart look out for bombs, the better to dodge them; they could easily be recognised because as they fell they looked like silver arrows. The evacuation plan was that we should go with our schools, presumably to ensure the greatest possibly continuity in our training in patriotism, the acceptance of international rivalry and the ultimate glory of military success. As far as my family were concerned, the problem was that my two brothers and I attended three different schools. To keep us together while civilised life was destroyed all around my mother had to ignore instructions and send us all to be evacuated with the local grammar school, where my eldest brother was a pupil.

So on the morning of 3 September we took a numb farewell and climbed aboard a fleet of requisitioned London transport buses which trundled off north-westerly to Aylesbury (although we were not allowed at the time to know where we were going; at that early stage we had the neurotic secrecy of wartime thrust down onto us). We were resigned never to see our homes and families again, for if war came the silver arrows would lay waste to London within the hour. When we reached Aylesbury our labels were examined and listed time and again by intimidatingly brisk women, we were given bars of chocolate larger than I had ever seen, let alone been encouraged to eat (these were our "rations" — the bombing was expected to dislocate food supplies immediately), and taken to our billets. As soon as we could we had to make our way to the local park, where as we assembled in the calm afternoon one of the older grammar school boys told us that war had been declared that morning, at just about the time we were getting on the buses. "We're bound to win", he assured us cheerfully but my elder brother told us his parents were German so we could not be sure about which side he meant by "we"

Perhaps because we had no official place on that evacuation, my middle brother and I had about the worst billet in the whole of Aylesbury, with a couple whose awareness of childish needs was as stunted as ours of geriatric eccentricities. Mr. Gilson — stout, silver-whiskered, frock-coated — was in his eighties and his housekeeper Miss Marks — thin, faded, anxious — was in her seventies. I suppose they did their best, which was more than could be said for us, who immediately succumbed to treating them with either fear or contempt. Their childhood was long lost in time and we could simply not imagine ourselves ever being as old as they were. Between us and them lay decades of school, employment, parenthood, retirement — with all they meant in poverty and stress. Their house was deep in musty gloom, with electric light in only a couple of the downstairs rooms and food cooked — and flavoured — by a paraffin stove. Miss Marks, in a rare spasm of forethought, had provided a cake to welcome us. It was meant to be a treat but as we gulped it down, appalled and terrified at where we found ourselves, we began to cry. Miss Marks was ready for this — or perhaps she had been hoping for a chance to show some physical comfort to someone. She crushed each of us briefly to her bony chest while Mr. Gilson shifted and cackled in embarrassment from his chair.

Whether our eldest brother had done better was hard to decide. He was with Mr. and Mrs. Davis, who were in their forties and whose house exuded respectability with the smell of polish and the resentment of these kids from a poor London home who were so scared yet so careless of so immaculate and sterile a house. Mrs. Davis gave a new dimension to frugality, grimly rolling newspapers into tight ropes which she then knotted into knobs for use as fuel alternative to wood or coal. Whenever we called for our brother she eyed our grubbiness with a disdainful ambition (Mr. Gilson and Miss Marks never noticed whether we washed) and one day she humiliated us into a distressingly painful scrubbing of our faces, necks, hands and knees before she allowed us out again. Perhaps enforced cleanliness was the crucial indignity, for it was about that day that we decided to go home as soon as we could. Only six days after being evacuated we were back in that London suburb, emerging from the railway station to find the place unravaged by bombs, unsullied by gas. untroubled by German spies or saboteurs.

Our defiance of authority gave us a little short-lived local status as heroes but then other evacuees began to trickle back, in particular from Wales and the West Country, with stories of impossible billets among unwelcoming communities. When the air raids did begin we heard with some wry satisfaction that Aylesbury was bombed before our town. The West also suffered, as I saw later in the war when I watched from coastal sand dunes along the Bristol Channel the flashes and searchlight sweeps of the air raids on Bristol and the South Wales ports.

So why did it happen? What was the reason behind the traumatic uprooting of all those children? Did the bureaucrats fail to consult a map before they planned to remove us to what they told us would be safety? Did they overlook the range of the German bombers? Was it simply a case of ignorance or incompetence? As the war dragged on, another explanation asserted itself. Only twenty years after the previous War To End All War, with families all over the country still grieving for the dead of the great battles of Flanders, the British people were being cajoled into going to war again. The reputations of the politicians of 1918 were in tatters. How could their successors in government rebuild the collective, self-destructive hysteria so necessary to a war effort? To some extent, the British ruling class had ready-made propaganda for this to hand, when they abandoned their policy of trying to carve up Europe in conference with their German counterparts and instead went to war with them, in the huge cruelties of Nazi Germany, which they had so recently been so ready to conceal. But a war effort is best energised by acceptance of its immediate, threatening reality among the people who actually have to fight it. Of course at times the propaganda to this end reaches the absurd — but as we all know in war the first casualty is truth.

I have already mentioned some of the misinformation which was fed to us about air raids. There was also an official obsession about gas attacks. For example, street furniture was treated with yellow paint which, just in case our lungs and nervous systems did not tell us that something was up, would help us by turning green in a gas attack. In defence we were issued with gas masks, which we were supposed to carry at all times in a small cardboard box on a length of string. (“I saw Mr. Gilson today." sneered Mrs. Davis. "He had his gas mask on his back. He'd never manage to get it on in a gas raid".) In truth, as was generally acknowledged later in the war, the gas masks would have been useless and they were soon consigned to junk-rooms and cupboards.

We were abjured not to pick up stray packets of sweets we might find lying about in the streets, in case they had been poisoned and deposited from German aircraft (German aircrews were imagined to be especially ruthless and cunning in their will to get at all the women and children in Britain). We were instructed in the recognition of German paratroopers, who were expected to drop from the skies dressed as nuns. Towards the end there was a rather different deception — the plans for a Welfare State as reward for our vigilant compliance in British capitalism's war effort. It hardly needs to be said that this may all have been a waste of time. Would not the British working class, unmindful of where their interests lay and deluded that they had some common, national cause with their exploiting class, have done all that was needed of them without such elaborate and costly goading?

In September 1939 our evacuation was experienced as forcible deportation, so that we three kids felt we had to keep our decision to go home a close secret. In fact, at the last minute our intention was uncovered so we made a run for it and were chased part of the way to the railway station. It felt as if Britain was one huge prison camp and we were absconding. Years later we learned that our departure had provoked an angry panic, that the entire school had been joined with the local grammar school to sweep the countryside to find us and drag us back to a speechless Mr Gilson.

The episode gave me an unreasoning hatred of Aylesbury which endured until I had to go there again, in December 1950, to help film the carol singers in the Square. I saw then how distorted my view of the place had been by my childhood and the miseries of evacuation. By then Mr Gilson must have been dead and I had my regrets that I had not gone back to apologise to him for the bewilderment caused by our arrival and the panic left by our departure. I would also have liked to rummage through his memories, for as I recalled him he was by no means senile and he had lived through such times as the American Civil War, the Paris Commune and the slumps and trade union struggles around the turn of the century. By then I was absorbed with the society of the future and he was a precious link with the past. There had been something to say for Aylesbury, after all.

Ivan