Editorial: On Banning the National Front (1979)

Editorial from the January 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party of Great Britain is wholeheartedly in favour of the fullest freedom of speech. This is because we hold that out of full and free discussion of today’s social problems only one valid conclusion can emerge: that Socialism alone will provide the framework within which they can be solved.

Full free speech means exactly what it says: any and every view should be allowed expression so that it can be examined and shown to be wrong. One of the more obnoxious views current these days is racialism, the idea that some human beings are inferior to others and ought to be treated as such.

Many well-meaning people, appalled at the growing support for the National Front and determined that a racialist party should never again be permitted to gain political power anywhere, have been prepared to listen sympathetically to those who call for the NF and its views to be banned. This is an understandable gut reaction but a little dispassionate reflection will show it to be wrong.

Would banning the NF lead to a diminution in racialist sentiments and ideas? Indeed, have the various Race Relations Acts banning the expression of racialist ideas in their cruder forms led to this? The anti-racialist legislation on the statute book has only led to racialists being more careful about the words they use. Ideas cannot be suppressed by legislation.

The real problem is why do certain sections of the working class hold racialist views and how can they be got to abandon them. It is fairly clear why certain workers entertain anti-black prejudices. Suffering from bad housing, poor hospital services, poor schools, etc., and having seen an immigration of black people into their areas they mistakenly link the two together to conclude that it is the coming of black immigrants that is the cause of their problems.

The various racialist Immigration Acts which have been passed by both Conservative and Labour governments to keep black people out have done much to give respectability to the view that immigration rather than capitalism is the cause of today’s social problems.

So workers with racialist ideas are workers who, in their search for an explanation of and solution to their problems, have reached a mistaken conclusion. How can they be convinced that they are wrong? If they can’t be convinced by legislation they can be convinced even less by the tactic of the Socialist Workers Party and others of insulting and even physically assaulting them. The only way is to try to demonstrate to them that their conclusions are wrong.

This is the approach the Socialist Party has always adopted and why, rather than physically fighting with the British Union of Fascists, the Union Movement or the NF, we have exposed their dangerous racialist nonsense before an audience of interested workers.

People who deny the validity of our tactic of combating racialism in calm, open argument are in effect denying that workers are capable of being convinced rationally of the error of racialism. Many of these people have been influenced by Lenin and his contemptuous claim that left to themselves the working class is capable of evolving only a trade union consciousness. They believe that the working class is only fit to be led, in one direction or another, by some minority or other, and so need protection from those who like the NF seek to “mislead” them.

The ultimate basis of all arguments for censorship (and the call for the NF to be prevented from expressing its views is a call for censorship) is such an assumption that people are too stupid or irresponsible or immature to make up their own minds and that some superior body must therefore decide for them. For the SWP and others this superior body is themselves—the self-appointed vanguard of the working class. If they ever came to power the application of this claim to decide what the working class shall and shall not hear would mean the end of free speech for workers just as it did in Lenin and Trotsky’s Russia.

Mere anti-racialist propaganda on its own, unlinked to propaganda for socialism, can’t be effective. It offers no solution to the problems and frustrations which drive some workers to embrace racialism. It leaves unchallenged the cause (capitalism) while trying to deal with the effect (racialism).

The only effective way to combat racialism, then, is to propagate socialism.

Cooking the Books: Extracting profits (2019)

The Cooking the Books column from the February 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Tide has turned against capitalism, but socialism is a failed alternative’ read the headline of an article in the Times (4 December) by its economics editor Philip Aldrick. Of course socialism hasn’t failed as it’s never been tried; the examples he gave of Russia, China and Venezuela were state capitalism not socialism. But he also had something to say about Marx:

  ‘Marxists believe that their ideological father was right, that capitalism would destroy itself once growth was exhausted and profits could be accumulated only by appropriating the wages of labour.’

After bemoaning that an increasing number of workers had no stake in capitalism as they couldn’t afford to buy a house and to point out that inequality had increased since 2006, he went on:

  ‘For Marxists, there are other signs that their time is coming. At a global level, capital has been eating into labour’s share of the economic pie, proof that profits are being extracted from wages. According to McKinsey, incomes were flat or falling between 2005 and 2014 for two thirds of households in 25 countries.’

Aldrick seems to be accepting, as taught in economics textbooks, that both capitalists (called ‘entrepreneurs’) and workers contribute to the ‘economic pie’ and normally get their fair share, as profits and wages respectively, in accordance with their contribution. Things have gone wrong, according to him, as profits have begun to eat into the workers’ share, a view he attributes to Marx.

This implies that profits are not normally made by exploiting wage-labour. Marx’s view was that all profits arise from the surplus value produced by wage workers over and above what they are paid as wages. It does not come from reducing wages (even if this is a way of increasing profits). In fact profits are extracted from wage workers even if wages are rising.

For Marxian economics, wages are the price of what workers sell to their employer – their mental and physical energies, their working skills, what Marx called ‘labour power’. Like all prices this is determined by what it costs to reproduce, in this case the cost of what workers have to consume to restore the mental and physical energies used up in the course of their work. Normally they receive the full price but are still economically exploited as, while working for a capitalist employer, they produce more value than that of their wages and which is appropriated by their employer.

Marx was aware that some employers paid wages that were less than the value of their workers’ labour power, but this could not last as, if the workers couldn’t fully restore their labour power, then their health and so the quality of their work – and their employers’ profits – would suffer. Marx explained that this was the capitalist rationale behind the Factory Acts. Employers don’t have an interest in doing this and it is only done these days by small hole-in-the-corner capitalists employing the most unskilled labour. As Terry Woolmer, of the engineering employers’ federation, put it, ‘it has long been recognised that a healthy workforce is a more productive workforce’ (Times, 26 November).

Wages have stagnated or fallen over the past decade, not because employers have started to exploit workers (they do that all the time), but because that is what happens in a slump. The reduced demand for products means a reduced demand also for what workers have to sell, so, in accordance with the law of supply and demand, its price falls. If this helps turn the tide of workers’ opinion against capitalism, that’s all to the good.

On Your Way! (2019)

From the February 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

There can be few experiences worse than being evicted from your home, but this is a problem affecting more and more people. In 2017, according to Ministry of Justice figures, an average of 169 evictions a day took place in the UK, an increase of over half since 2010. This ignores those who move because they are threatened with eviction, or fear they may be, or cases where the eviction is illegal, so the figures understate the extent of the problem and how much it impacts on people’s lives.

The effects of course can be devastating. In 2013 a housing association tenant in London killed himself as a result of being evicted, while a study in Sweden found much higher levels of suicide among those evicted than the general population (New Statesman 28 March 2018). One woman, who had been evicted with her husband and two sons from a London house for the second time in two years, said, ‘With young children it is a nightmare. It is awful to live like this, where every year you’ve got to move. We’ve got boxes that we haven’t unpacked. Everything is so temporary’ (Guardian 18 August 2018). In such cases the children’s education is inevitably disrupted. Eviction can also have major implications for people’s physical and mental health and their prospects of finding and keeping a job. In the US, being evicted can show up on a person’s official record, which may make it harder for them to get public housing.

As for the reasons behind evictions, falling behind with the rent naturally plays a large part. The introduction of Universal Credit has created problems for many tenants, with initial payments being delayed, and many landlords now refuse to accept tenants who receive any kind of housing benefit. But a surprising number of evictions are of the no-fault type: under section 21 of the 1988 Housing Act a landlord can evict a tenant who has paid their rent on time and has not damaged the property in any way. An Assured Shorthold Tenancy can be brought to an end because the landlord wants to sell the property, divide it into more flats or bedsits, or ‘improve’ it in some way. Such no-fault evictions have more than doubled since 2009, and there were over ten thousand last year.

The government’s response to such developments is to say that the reasons for evictions are complex, and cannot simply be ascribed to problems with Universal Credit. Of course, that does not stop politicians offering simplistic arguments, such as the claim by James Brokenshire, the housing secretary, that the big increase in rough sleeping was partly due to the spread of psychoactive drugs such as spice (Guardian 18 December). Now, probably most evictions have a fairly complicated story behind them. Even a no-fault eviction will have some tale about why the landlord wants to get rid of existing tenants, and other evictions may involve such matters as illness, unemployment, the break-up of a relationship, problems with claiming benefits, and so on. There may well be a vicious circle of poverty, eviction, unemployment, poverty.

But that does not mean that there are no underlying causes behind evictions – and behind homelessness and poor housing in general – and it is not hard to see what these are. Housing is provided, not to meet human need, but to make a profit for the landlord, house-builder or whoever. Many people simply cannot afford the rent, let alone the mortgage, for a decent home, and the number of ‘affordable homes’ is nowhere near the amount needed.

There are various ways in which the insecurity of workers under capitalism makes itself felt, such as fear of unemployment, a wage cut or a reduction in working hours. Fear of having your home repossessed is another example of how the profit system makes so many lives a misery.

Paul Bennett

The Review Column: Out of Control (1967)

The Review Column from the January 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Out of Control

Politicians are fond of depicting themselves as men who have capitalism firmly under control.

They talk of capitalism as if it were a car, which needs only a touch on the brake or the accelerator to keep it humming smoothly along to prosperity. Or, like Richard Crossman last November, as if it were someone with a minor illness:

  For if it is vital not to let up until the medicine has really worked, it is equally important not to endanger the patient's recovery by the kind of overdose which could transform a carefully calculated cutback into an unplanned crisis of confidence and a collapse of private capital investment.

This sounds as if the politicians really know what they are about, as if the economy can be cured without a lot of difficulty.

It might be more reassuring if it were not for the fact that from the start the Labour government have said they had the situation under control, only to be hit by repeated crises which, they confessed, took them unawares.

It might be more reassuring were it not for the long history of unpredictable economic ailments which have come upon capitalism—the Slumps, the Recessions, the Great Crashes.

And again if it were not for the long list of politicians who have gone down in confusion after telling us, like Crossman, that as long as they were at the bedside there was nothing to worry about.

Capitalism cannot be controlled, no matter how refined and delicately calculated its politicians' policies may be. The system runs the politicians, not vice versa.

Perhaps Crossman knows this. One thing he certainly knows. Whatever the situation, a capitalist politician must always keep up appearances; he must never admit that the system has beaten him and even though the patient dies there must never be any verdict other than accidental death.


How to Build Houses

Labour's election manifesto last March said “Our first priority is houses." It asserted that in 1965 a total of 383,000 houses had been built and promised. "In the next five years we shall go further . . . we intend to achieve a . . .  target of 500,000 houses by 1969/70."

What progress is being made?

The latest available figures—for October last year—show a fall in houses built of 3.252 compared with the same month in 1965. In the first ten months of 1966, there were 245 fewer houses built than during the same period in 1965. The Daily Telegraph reported “Much bigger falls are forecast for the first half of next year . . ."

Does this mean that the need for homes is declining?

A new organisation, a National Campaign for the Homeless—Shelter it calls itself—says that there are three million families in Britain living in slums, near slums or in grossly overcrowded conditions. London has 7,613 homeless people in hostels; Glasgow has 78,524 families on its waiting list; Liverpool has 73,733 unfit houses.

Is there then a shortage of building materials?

As the building figures go down the stockpile of bricks goes up; over 700 million are in stock now, enough to build nearly 50,000 homes. The President of the National Federation of Clay Industries, Mr. Kenneth Timperley, describes the recession in brick demand as “. . . quite the worst I have experienced in 30 years. . ."

Does it make sense?

More people in desperate need of a decent place to live, less houses being built, more building material being stockpiled.

An inhuman muddle, but it does make sense in terms of the economics and the priorities of capitalism, whether it is capitalism under a Tory government or Labour.

Bonn-Crisis Over?

The political crisis in Bonn was averted by the formation of a coalition government made up of the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats.

As a result Willy Brandt, Mayor of West Berlin, became Foreign Minister and Kiesinger’s deputy. Seven other Social Democrats joined the Cabinet.

Some people may wonder that parties which were once so hostile to each other can suddenly form an alliance. They may wonder that a party which calls itself Socialist can sit in the same Cabinet as one which openly stands for capitalism.

In fact the German Social Democrats, far from standing for Socialism or indeed any political theory, are one of the most adaptable parties in existence. Before they joined up with the CDU, it was strongly rumoured that they were about to throw in their lot with the other main German party, the Free Democrats.

This would also have been a painless business: the Guardian's Bonn correspondent reported on the marked similarity between the two parties and said the Free Democrats had ". . . published a policy statement . . ."

All capitalist political parties are basically the same and, when the occasion demands they have no difficulty in closing ranks with each other. They have little respect for what they profess as principles and for the meaning of the very words they use. All of them are after political power, and will do any sort of deal to get it.

The flavour of capitalist politics is international. It is also extremely unpleasant.

Rhodesia

In the Commons debate on Rhodesia on December 8 last. Harold Wilson said:

  The present situation in Rhodesia faces Britain with the greatest moral issue she has had to face in the post war world.

On the same day in the House of Lords, Tory Lord Ferrier was assuring the government:

  I and millions like me could never be persuaded to open fire on our kith and kin in Rhodesia.

In Salisbury, lan Smith has said all along that he stands for a settled, civilised way of life against barbarism.

In other words, however much both sides may disagree on other matters, they are at one in presenting their struggle with each other as a moral issue.

There is of course nothing new in this, although it is something of a mystery, why politicians think it is always necessary. There is no evidence that working class support for capitalism would decline, if they were told the truth about its power struggles.

Capitalism has many conflicts, all of them basically economic in origin. There is no morality involved in them, no human interests, no distinct division between right and wrong.

Wilson’s professed moral indignation against Rhodesia, for example, does not at present extend to South Africa, which has never made any secret of its support for the Smith regime.

The reason for this is plain. South Africa is too valuable a trading partner for Britain’s Labour government to want to upset.

The African states in the Commonwealth may protest at this, and they also use moral arguments to support their case.

Behind all this fog of confusion and official lies, the processes of capitalism grind inexorably on. They recognise no morality and the only issue they are interested in is a healthy balance sheet.

Concentration of Industry (1967)

From the January 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Under capitalism wealth takes the form of capital. Wealth is used to produce more wealth not to satisfy human needs but to make profits. Most of these profits are re-invested and in this way capital accumulates. What forces the capitalist to re-invest his profits (rather than consume them all in riotous living) is competition. Each capitalist competes against other capitalists for a share of the market. This means he must run ever faster to stand still. He must use his profits to buy machinery that will cheapen his costs. This has certain technical effects: it leads to an increase in the size of productive units. This competition between capitalist enterprises is the motive for increasing productivity.

But competition has another result. It tends paradoxically to reduce the number of competitors. As the technical process becomes more complex and costly only large enterprises can survive. The weak and inefficient go under and their wealth passes into the hands of those who survive. Thus industry becomes controlled by fewer and fewer enterprises.

This whole social process makes Socialism a practical possibility. Ever-increasing productivity makes a society of abundance possible. Socialised methods of production make the private ownership of socially-produced wealth outdated—and worse, a fetter on production. As control of industry is centralised into fewer and fewer enterprises democratic social control becomes possible. Thus does capitalism prepare the technical basis for Socialism.

Marx, the man who did so much to put socialist theory on a scientific basis, when he was studying capitalism over a hundred years ago discovered this tendency towards the concentration of industry.

A recent study of this subject was published in The Journal of the Royal Statistical Society in 1965 by Alan Armstrong and Aubrey Silberston under the title “Size of Plant, Size of Enterprise and Concentration in British Manufacturing Industry 1935—58”. For this study they used the 1958 Census of Production and previous studies. Their conclusions were:

  Output has risen greatly since 1935, but the number of plants has risen much less, and in recent years has been falling. There has been a movement towards fewer, larger plants in most industries . . .  Further the average size of the largest plants, measured by employment, has in general increased, and large plants now account for a higher proportion of total employment in nearly all industrial groups than formerly. The same is true of their share of total output. Finally, plants are, in general, being operated by fewer enterprises, and the extent to which many industries are dominated by a few “giant” enterprises seems to be increasing.

(By plant is meant “premises under same ownership or management at a particular address”; by firm “one or more plants under the same trading name”; by enterprise “one or more firms under common ownership or control”.)

One of their tables, reproduced here, is particularly revealing.

A further table shows the percentage of workers employed by the largest three enterprises in some “industries” (as defined by the Census).

Employment is used rather than output as it is easier to measure. But as the larger enterprises will tend to be more efficient the concentration in terms of output will be greater than the figures given here. For oil refining the percentage is 84; for man-made fibres 81; for sugar between 70 and 91; for Tobacco between 66 and 85; for watches and clocks 70; for margarine between 59 and 75; for steel tubes between 49 and 79; for asbestos 63; and for soap, detergents and candles and linoleum both 60. The top four enterprises in dyestuffs employ 88 per cent of those in the industry and in cement between 71 and 85.

Although both Tories and Labourites praise competition and denounce monopoly they have long since ceased to tilt at the windmills on this point when in office. They accept—and even encourage —the concentration and the centralisation of control of industry. A White Paper put out in January 1966 spoke of setting up an Industrial Reorganisation Corporation just to encourage concentration. The White Paper stated:

  The need for more concentration and rationalisation to promote greater efficiency and international competitiveness of British industry, which was emphasised in the National Plan, is now widely recognised.

and went on:

  There is no evidence that we can rely on market forces alone to produce the necessary structural changes at the pace required.

Hence the IRC. There’s no talk of protecting the small man here.

On this point no defender of capitalism can deny that the early Socialists were right, though they will of course deny where it leads: the social ownership and democratic control of the means of production.

Adam Buick

Finance and Industry: Are They The Only Cranks? (1967)

The Finance and Industry Column from the January 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Are They The Only Cranks?

So the Social Credit Party has won a seat in the New Zealand parliament. These currency cranks have fielded a full complement of candidates at every election since they set up their Social Credit Political League in 1953. Their theories are based on the mistaken ideas of Major Douglas that at present there is a chronic shortage of purchasing power. Odd, you might think, that people can think that in a period of inflation there is a shortage of purchasing power. In any event, when the New Zealand government set up a Royal Commission on Monetary, Banking and Credit Systems, the Social Crediters decided to have a try at proving this. The Appendix to the Commission’s Report which appeared in 1956, and which deals with the Social Credit witnesses, makes interesting and amusing reading. Giving “evidence” for Social Credit were Mr. Jordan of the Social Credit Association and Miss King and Mr. Young of the Social Credit Political League.

Social Crediters claim that the present monetary system is inherently defective as there is a chronic gap between the amount of purchasing power and the prices of goods and services. The chief cause of this gap is the banking system which has, they say, a monopoly of the destruction and creation of money. In place of the present system they propose that the power to issue credit should be vested in the “community.” Hence the name: Social Credit. They propose to cover the gap by the issue of “debt-free money” which will allow taxes to be cut, prices to be reduced and social security benefits to be increased (Good vote-catchers these!). Further non-commercial public works could be financed in the same way – without any increase in the public debt. The ultimate aim of Social Credit is a system where all income takes the form of a national dividend, financed by debt-free money.

Douglas encouraged the myth of a chronic shortage of purchasing power with his spurious A+B Theorem. He merely took over the myth that banks create wealth from the Mystical School of Banking Theorists, as explained in last month’s Socialist Standard.

The Social Credit witnesses put up a sorry show. They refused to defend the A + B theorem; they could not even precisely define “purchasing power”; they had no idea of how banks operate; they implied that money doesn’t circulate; and their statistics were exposed as frauds.

Basically, Social Credit is a conservative movement wanting to preserve private enterprise capitalism while trying to remove some of its defects by tinkering with the money system. The Commission had little difficulty in showing where such tinkering would lead:

  If made in the present circumstances, the large issue of debt-free money contemplated by the Association and recommended by other Social Credit witnesses would produce most serious and chronic inflation and gravely disrupt New Zealand’s economy.

The Commission gleefully pointed out that the Social Credit schemes for abolishing interest would in the end be incompatible with the continuance of private enterprise capitalism. This was enough to temper the witnesses’ opposition to interest.

The Commission did manage to extract some revealing confessions. Poor Mr. Jordan seems to have been convinced that there was too much purchasing power! Says the Report:

  The Association’s original submissions were clearly based on the assumption that the supply of purchasing power in New Zealand has been and remains inadequate. But we can only conclude from Mr. Jordan’s final address that the Association had by then come to the conclusion that New Zealand was suffering in present circumstances from excess spending and an excess supply of money. Indeed, Mr. Jordan appealed to the Commission for a recommendation ‘that the war against inflation be carried on’.

Enough said. Social Creditors are of course easy meat. But they are not alone in promising to cut taxes and prices and to increase state hand-outs. There are others who claim to be able to solve the housing problem, abolish destitution and stop war to boot. If Social Credit are cranks, what are these others?


Jobs for the Bosses

Our masters seem to be split on whether or not to support their Labour government. On October 27 the Times reported a speech by Sir Frank Kearton, chairman of Courtaulds, under the headline SOCIALIST VIEW OF BUSINESS RESTATED. While SHAWCROSS CALL to RESIST SOCIALISM was the Daily Telegraph headline on December 2, reporting what Lord Shawcross, a director of Shell Petroleum, said in the House of Lords.

Kearton, who is also chairman-designate of the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation (the body set up by the government to encourage mergers), told his American Chamber of Commerce audience:

  As a young man and as an undergraduate I was an active worker for the Conservative cause. It is only now that I have become an old man that I have had to rather reluctantly recognise that the current Socialist Administration seems to have a better appreciation of business matters than did its Conservative predecessors.

He gave as his reason the fact that Labour was trying to build up the “dialogue” between government and business, as already happens in America.

Shawcross, on the other hand, confessed :

  Twenty years ago I was a Socialist myself. Five years of active experience in Government convinced me that whatever might be the position from an idealistic point of view. Socialism did not work in practice . . .
  I think the time is coming, if it has not already come, when leaders of private enterprise in this House and outside it. will have to consider whether, in the light of recent events, they should not more actively assert the advantages of the system in which they believe, rather than co-operate in measures which are intended to undermine it.

Of course, Kearton and Shawcross are not arguing about Socialism. We can be sure that as leaders of private enterprise they don’t look at anything from an idealistic point of view. What they are arguing about is the degree of state control over industry.

Kearton may have been a Tory but Shawcross never was a Socialist. He was Attorney General under Attlee, his two claims to fame being to shout “we are the masters now” in 1945 and having a go at prosecuting some strikers in 1951. Now he doesn’t want to co-operate with Labour. But the present Labour government is trying to do what the last one did: to man the organs of state control over business with people from business. Besides Kearton, those who are cooperating are impressive: former Tory Minister and former chairman of Stavely Industries Aubrey Jones (the man paid £15,000 a year to see we don’t get too much ourselves), arms salesman Ray Brown of Racal Electronics and his predecessor Sir Donald Stokes of Leyland. Ray Geddes of Dunlop and Lord Plowden of Tube Investments who have chaired Royal Commissions.

Adam Buick

The Passing Show: And a Happy New Year (1967)

The Passing Show Column from the January 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

And a Happy New Year

If the Labour Government gets its way, the wage freeze will continue almost unabated until July. And even after that, there is going to be a lot of top level interference in pay negotiations, whatever the T.U.C. may feel. This much emerges from the Government’s White Paper issued at the end of last November.

When the Government’s plans were announced on November 22nd, there followed one of those little discussions in the Commons in which one or two interesting things were said. For instance that pearl of wisdom from the lips of Mr. Ian Macleod: ‘The normal or primary cause of poverty is the size of families.” What enlightenment! And this is one of our ‘betters’—a man we are supposed to respect for his wisdom in guiding our affairs. More about poverty next month, but for the time being, we’ll just content ourselves with reminding Mr. Macleod of the large families which exist, some of them very rich indeed. The cause of poverty has nothing to do with family size, although of course an already poor condition can be affected by it to some extent.

But if Mr. Macleod waxed eloquent in his ignorance, he certainly could not find a much better match than Economic Affairs Minister Michael Stewart, who was at great pains to explain how legitimate and desirable profits were. “Of course,” he said. “It’s up to the Government to take fiscal measures to deal with excessive growth of profits” . . .  and just what that meant is anybody’s guess. From our point of view, there is no such thing as “excessive” profit; we are opposed to the profit-making system anyway. But for the Labour Party, perhaps an apt new year’s slogan would be. Profits for the few and a wage freeze for you.

Incidentally, if you watched TV a couple of nights later, you may have seen the rotundly well fed Mr. Callaghan telling us all to get ‘lean and fit’ for the battles ahead. This is merely a variation on an old and tedious theme which went under different headings in the past, such as ‘pull your belts in.’ And strangely, it is often uttered loudest by those with the biggest waistline. There is no shortage of large girths and accompanying impertinence, in the present Labour Government.

Exit Another Promise 

It was Mr. Krushchev, I think, who said: “Promises are like piecrusts, made to be broken.” Well, as a particularly cynical Soviet politician, he should have known; but when he said it, there were umpteen other politicians hastening to make public condemnation of his words. Yet they certainly had a ring of truth in them as far as capitalist politics is concerned. We can all recall, for example, how the Tories said they would stop the rise in the cost of living—and failed; and we have seen how Mr. Wilson’s government are doing all sorts of things they said they would never do, like favouring unemployment. The latest of their broken promises is in housing. According to the Housing Ministry’s report of November 14th 1966, there is little prospect of their programme going above 382,000 dwellings this year, despite their 1964 election pledge of 400,000 a year minimum. If you are a Labourite, you will perhaps be surprised and disappointed. If you are a Socialist, practically nothing will surprise you.

Maybe some politicians make promises they know they haven’t a chance of keeping. Maybe others are more sincere. It makes little difference to the end result, because capitalism operates regardless of the sincerity or otherwise of its statesmen. Its caprices can make a mockery of the most modest promises, and housing has been a perpetual casualty in this respect for many years. Yet you can take an even bet that every capitalist party will make a promise to solve it, at the next election.


The Cost of Living — and Dying

We live in an acquisitive society; everyone is concerned directly of otherwise, not only in producing wealth, but in grabbing hold of as much as possible of it. Nevertheless, it’s a process which favours the few to a considerable extent, for most of us can only dream of being rich. Amassing riches means, among other things, that sales must be kept as high as possible and costs as low as possible. Hence a constant obsession with production costs in capitalist society is all-pervading, and pokes its ugly snout into fields where, we have been traditionally led to believe, the only concern is human welfare.

Such as medicine. And it is depressing to see the cold-blooded way that some of the leading doctors and experts accept without question that costs are really more important than human beings — although they would fiercely deny this if you expressed it so baldly.

According to the Guardian (28.11.66), between 6,000 and 7,000 lives a year could be saved in the 15—44 age group, if there were concentrated research, medical facilities, and health education. Good for its own sake, you might think, but the fact that it would mean a “nett contribution to the economy of about £30 millions was the salient point to Mr. George Teeling-Smith of the Office of Health Economics. Each survivor, according to Mr. Smith’s calculations would be worth about £5,000 . . .

  . . . and if the cost of curing him was less than this it was ridiculous not to find it.

You see what I mean? What if the cost were greater? The object is to get a profit, or at least avoid too great a loss, and if that can’t be done, then the priority shifts elsewhere.

This sort of consideration has affected the allocation of haemodialysis machines for the treatment of kidney disease sufferers. At present there are not enough of these machines to go round, so doctors have the unenviable job of deciding priorities. Those who are lucky enough to get a machine will at least have their lives prolonged, but in the present state of medical knowledge, the remainder will almost certainly die.

If a Socialist world had to deal with such a problem, we would first of all strain every nerve and fibre to overcome the machine shortage, and if despite this doctors still had grim decisions to make, at least the question of cost would have no part in them. But today, in a set of eight criteria listed by Professor de Wardener of Charing Cross Hospital, the following are noteworthy for their callousness:

What are the financial consequences?
Who ought to pay?
Ought the large sums involved be directed to this purpose?
                                                               (Guardian 28.11.66).

It seems there are more ways of dying for capitalism than on a battlefield.

Eddie Critchfield

Notices (1967)

From the January 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have received a letter from E. Ashley, without any address. It is not our policy to publish such letters, but if she will let us know her address—which will of course not be revealed—we shall be pleased to publish her letter with our comments.

#    #    #    #

Last month we published what seemed to be an article, with the title, ‘Its up to You’. We did not make it clear that this was in fact a letter from a person who at the time was not a member of the Socialist Party of Gt. Britain.

#    #    #    #

Jamaica

All those interested in Socialist cause contact George Dolphy, 26 Hannah Street, Hannah Town. Kingston, Jamaica.

Letters: The spirit of Clause Four (1967)

Letters to the Editors from the January 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

The spirit of Clause Four

Sir,

In your August edition of the Socialist Standard, H in his book review of Incomes Policy. Legislation and Shop Stewards refers to Clause Four as the clause “which commits them (the Labour Party) to mass nationalisation or state capitalism”. On reading Clause Four I find no mention of nationalisation or state capitalism but only “common ownership” and “popular administration”. I do not deny for one moment that Clause Four has come to mean state capitalism, but that was. and is, not the spirit behind it.

P.A.S. 

Leamington Spa

Reply:

What is the "spirit” behind Clause Four? It talks about common ownership, in the same way as Labour Ministers assert that the wage freeze is a step towards Socialism, but it also mentions the means of exchange. There is a contradiction here, for how can wealth which is commonly owned need a means of exchanging it?

Clause Four is typical of the confusion and the hypocrisy of the Labour Party. To the mass of Labour supporters, common ownership means nationalisation. If this is a change in “spirit” then that is what was to be expected from an organisation which sought support from non-Socialists and which cadged for votes on a programme of capitalist reforms.

In any case, why have a constitution which is open to interpretation and whose “spirit” can be changed? An organisation which stands for Socialism can say so, clearly and consistently. Have a look at our sixty-three year old Object and Declaration of Principles.

Editorial Committee

Negative Criticism

Sir,

I have read the Socialist Standard for over a year now, in which time 99 per cent of your space has been devoted to the negative criticism of capitalism in all its aspects.

However, you never seem to ask yourselves “Where do we go from here?” Granted that capitalism is rotten and that Socialism would be far better; you seem unable to advance any positive ideas for the establishment of Socialism. You do not put forward any plans for the running of world Socialism if and when it is here.

You only appear capable of waiting on the sidelines for the “inevitable collapse of capitalism”; perhaps you do not know that the only thing which comes to he who waits is whiskers.

Look at your party’s object — “The establishment of a system of society . . .” Very well, then, do something constructive to help this.

Possibly you have been so long criticising, looking for the bad (and finding it) that you are unable to think in a positive way.

Surely instead of continually thinking and writing of the faults of capitalism today you would be better occupied thinking and writing of ways and means to implement Socialism tomorrow?

D.M. 

Eltham, S.E.9

Reply: 

The collapse of capitalism is not inevitable; if we thought it were, we would not be working so hard to bring capitalism to an end; it would happen whatever we did.

Socialists are not content to wait for Socialism; we are impatient for it and we know it to be urgent now. But Socialism cannot be established by a minority; it must be the political act of a majority of workers who are consciously Socialist.

We live today under capitalism because the majority of the working class are content to do so. The job of a Socialist is to encourage the spread of discontent with capitalism and to show that there is an alternative to it. How are we to do this?

First we must diagnose society’s illnesses. We must point out that capitalism causes problems like hunger and poverty and war. We must expose organisations like the Labour Party, and the fraud in Russia; we must analyse the influence which “great men” are supposed to have in society and so on. What this amounts to is a criticism of capitalism. And because the workers’ support for capitalism is so widespread, and so deep-rooted, we have to spend a great deal of time in criticising.

The first positive idea about the establishment of Socialism —an idea held only by the Socialist Party — is that it can only be brought about by a Socialist working class. We do not know when this will happen; we do not know, for example, what methods of production and communication will be at man’s disposal when it does happen. Because of this, we cannot lay down plans of what Socialism will be like. We can only set out its basis —the common ownership and democratic control of the means of wealth production and distribution. We are as impatient at this as anyone. The remedy is with the working class. We are working as hard as we know to bring Socialism about. D.M. has been reading the Socialist Standard for a year now; if he agrees with our case his place is inside the Socialist Party, helping us.

Editorial Committee

GLC Elections (1967)

Party News from the January 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party of Gt Britain is planning to contest 14 seats in the coming GLC elections; the full numbers of candidates will be put forward in the following areas: Camden (3), Ealing (4), Haringey (3) and Lambeth (4).

Further details will be published next month. Meanwhile funds are needed and donations are welcome. Please send your donations to E. Lake, Treasurer, Socialist Party of Gt. Britain, 52 Clapham High Street, London, SW4.

The bulk of the work will be done by the branches in the areas concerned. These are Paddington and Bloomsbury (Camden); Greenford and West London (Ealing); Haringey (Haringey); and South West London (Lambeth). Those interested in further details can contact the secretaries of these brandies.

Proper Gander: Living The Dream (2016)

The Proper Gander column from the December 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

It might sound obvious, but the way we react to global events depends on what information we have about them. In his latest epic polemic, Adam Curtis takes this simple point and turns it into something deeper and more unsettling. He argues that the way we have come to see the world is through a process of ‘Hypernormalisation’, also the name of his film, available through the BBC iPlayer.

The title comes from Alexei Yurchak’s book Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More, which analysed the mood in the Soviet Union during its last decades. Yurchak coined the term ‘hypernormalised’ to describe the strange way that Soviet society was perceived by its populace at the time. Official pronouncements about matters like rates of commodity production were recognised as unreliable by most people every time they went to an empty shop or joined a food queue. But without alternative explanations, everybody had to act as if the official story was real, distorting their sense of reality. An analogy familiar from many workplaces is how targets and outcomes are measured, which everyone involved realises are manipulated and fake, but which we all pretend are objective and accurate. We’ve bought into a ‘dreamworld’, shaped from the top by politicians and financiers, as a way of covering up how they don’t have control over events, from suicide bombings to Brexit, from corruption to migration. The aim is to maintain as much stability as possible in an unstable world.

The political and social climate in which this shift in perception has taken place developed from the mid-70s. Then, according to Curtis, the way authority was exercised changed from old-fashioned political negotiation to new-style power through money and threats. Two examples he gives are from 1975, when in America, banks stopped lending to businesses, and took authority away from politicians, and in Syria, where President Assad’s attempts to unite Arab nations were scotched by the then US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. He used an approach he called ‘Constructive Ambiguity’ to fracture alliances between Arab states by misleading them about the details of treaties between other nations. This succeeded in disuniting the Middle East and infuriating Assad. These events helped shape the world we live in now, of tensions between Islamic states and a West still facing a financial crisis. Being unable to control the situation has meant that governments focus on manipulating our understanding of them, through other tactics like ‘Perception Management’. One example of this was the American government and armed forces engineering the UFO phenomenon. Curtis argues that they spread disinformation that the strange lights and shapes people were seeing in the skies could be alien spacecraft, to cover-up their real explanation as experimental military planes.

The strategy of Perception Management is more than just telling lies, though. Its ‘highest achievement’ was when George W Bush and Tony Blair turned to Colonel Gaddafi of Libya for help with the situation in Iraq. The Public Relations industry, espionage and most academics all contributed to Gaddafi’s reinvention as an ally, having been demonised by the West for years. Gaddafi pretended to dismantle weapons of mass destruction he didn’t have, and took the blame for the Lockerbie bombing in exchange for sanctions against Libya being lifted, introducing the odd notion of accepting responsibility for something you don’t admit doing. Gaddafi’s role and persona has been remodelled by Western states, regardless of the truth about him, whatever that is.

The government and media personified conflict in the Middle East with ‘evil people’ like Saddam Hussein, Assad of Syria and, sometimes, Colonel Gaddafi. This distracted us from how the conflict was really shaped, as described in Curtis’ previous broadcast (see Socialist Standard, March 2015). In Bitter Lake, he argued that American and European military and economic involvement in the Middle East fuelled jihadism and suicide bombings, which in turn fuelled more Western involvement, creating a feedback loop.

In Russia, perception has been manipulated through the work of ‘Political Technologists’, such as Vladislav Surkov, now working as a personal adviser to President Putin. Surkov sponsored fascist groups, and anti-fascist groups, and parties opposed to Putin. Then he let it be known that he was doing this, so that no-one could tell how real these organisations were.

When so much about the outside world is confusing and contradictory, we’ve turned to cyberspace to find some reassurance. But the algorithms behind social media mean that we get pulled to online content which isn’t likely to challenge our views. According to Curtis, in an age of individualism, we find security in having ourselves reflected back at us.

Radical politics has also changed to fit with our uncertain times, and now tries to influence people’s thinking through personal expression, not through collective action. So, singers, artists, comedians and writers (including Curtis himself) voice radical ideas which may empower them and produce great, perceptive works, but they can’t change the world because that relies on working together. Curtis says that radicalism now doesn’t involve people giving themselves to a collective project as much as those in the 1960s civil rights movement did.

He discusses the two recent movements which did involve people acting collectively: the Arab Spring and Occupy. He argues that the Occupy movement set out to make real the original aim of the internet, as a leaderless space, free from politics and hierarchies. The sharing and spreading of ideas which the internet enables means that it could be used to organise a revolution without leaders, and it contributed to both how the Occupy movement and Arab Spring operated. However, after using social media to organise themselves, radicals in the Arab Spring ground to a halt without having a vision of what they wanted society to be. Hard-line Islamists did have a plan for the future, though, and this gave them the drive to gain power. In the West, the Occupy movement lacked a programme to really change society, and instead became confused and dominated by meetings. Its members had no vision of a future world, so instead the movement was less about ideas than how to manage situations.

In interviews, Curtis has emphasised that not seeing a better, future society is central to the problem of our ‘hypernormal’ perception of capitalism. We’ve lost the ‘thrill’ of wanting to jump into an unknown future, and find reassurance in accepting the version of reality presented by (and suited to) the capitalist class and its apologists.

Rulers manipulating the ‘truth’ is nothing new. The difference now is the sophistication with which this is done, whether through Perception Management, Constructive Ambiguity, Political Technologists or algorithms. Curtis’ argument isn’t just that these approaches are used to keep control of us, but also to cover up the lack of control each section of the ruling class has over global events. His aim is to help us see through the ‘hypernormalised’ version of reality we are fed, to raise awareness of our awareness.

Mike Foster

Poster Boys (2016)

Book Review from the December 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Mad Men & Bad Men: When British Politics Met Advertising’, by Sam Delaney. Faber & Faber £9.99.

Political advertising is not allowed on radio and TV in the UK, but is permitted on posters, in the press and on-line. Party political broadcasts do not count as advertising, though advertising gurus work on them. Political ads are not subject to the advertising code, so do not need to be honest and truthful. Here Sam Delaney examines the contribution of advertising to politics, based mainly on interviews with admen and a few politicians. A couple of adwomen get brief mentions.

Saatchi & Saatchi are well known for their work on Conservative Party posters and election broadcasts. It worked both ways, though, as the political impact helped make the agency very successful. Delaney opens, however, by recalling an interview that Maurice Saatchi gave when Thatcher died, in which he claimed that the agency had not really done very much, and that presentation was not all that important in politics. Maybe this just illustrates the common adage that the adman should never take credit for the client’s success, since it is all down to the quality of the product (whether shampoo or a political party). Of course sometimes admen do claim that they played a central role. Possibly the truth is that advertising and presentation are crucial in close elections, such as that of 1992, but not otherwise.

The Conservatives have nearly always had far more money to spend on advertising than Labour, and Tory ads have often been rather more brutal than those of Labour. Perhaps the best-known political slogan was ‘Labour isn’t working’ from 1978. Complaints about this led to even more publicity for the Tories and the poster containing it. The ‘Labour’s tax bombshell’ poster from 1992 had a comparable impact, despite being not entirely accurate. Big ad agencies have been reluctant to be associated with Labour, on the grounds that their corporate clients might not approve, so their links have sometimes had to be kept secret.

One of the book’s themes is the way the balance of power between admen and politicians has changed over time. Originally admen were very much in the back seat, and Callaghan only consulted them after making decisions. But gradually they became more central, softening Thatcher’s image, for instance, and influencing which topics were given most importance in campaigns. The emphasis on criticising opponents rather than presenting a party’s own achievements and promises remains, but admen and their agencies now seem to have less of a role.

After reviewing the 2015 General Election campaign, Delaney writes, ‘It is hard to see why or to what end political parties will ever employ ad agencies again.’ This does not mean the end of political advertising, but a big change in how it is carried out. In April 2015 the Conservatives were spending £100,000 a month just on Facebook advertising. The use of social media has now become central, together with ads targeted at specific groups of voters (such as voters in marginal seats, or women who might be thinking of voting UKIP rather than Conservative). A lot of money has been spent in building up a database of actual and potential Tory voters, partly based on the causes people supported in petitions on change.org. Just as all advertising has become slicker and more ‘professional’, the same applies to its political cousin.

There is no mention of admen in Anthony King’s Who Governs Britain?. It can hardly be argued that the admen are among those who govern, but they clearly sway people’s opinions and that shows the influence wielded by money.

Paul Bennett

Rear View: Clueless Charities (2017)

The Rear View Column from the January 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

Clueless Charities

Shelter, a charity campaigning to end homelessness, celebrated its 50th anniversary last year. Towards the end of 2016 they reminded us that during the season of goodwill 120,000 children in Britain would be homeless. Related news coverage has been grim and predictable. ‘A homeless man froze to death on the streets of Birmingham just a day before UK charity Shelter warned more than 250,000 people in England will be homeless this Christmas as high rents, benefit cuts, and a worsening housing crisis create the perfect storm. The body of the unknown man was found in the West Midlands city at 11.30pm GMT on Wednesday, the coldest night of the year. It is understood the body, found in John Bright Street, is that of a 30-year-old man with no fixed address. Figures compiled by Shelter reveal that 255,000 people across the country are forced to live in hostels and other types of temporary accommodation, or to sleep rough on the streets. London has the highest rate of homelessness. As many as one in 25 residents of the central London borough of Westminster are without a home” (rt.com, 1 December). But what has 50 years on the reformist treadmill achieved? We are informed that presently one in three UK households are on the ‘brink’ of homelessness. This ‘problem’ existed long before Shelter and many other charities came into being and will persist for another 50+ years unless we bring an end to capitalism. Oscar Wilde expressed this well: ‘their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease. They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor. But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible’ (The Soul of Man under Socialism, 1891).

Free Speech

‘Cardiff University in Wales has said it will no longer ban events by controversial speakers, declaring censorship is not the answer. The decision was made by the Cardiff University Students’ Union at their annual conference last week, where they passed a motion called Challenge, Don’t Censor‘ (patriotnewsagency.com, 3 December). This is good news. Socialists value free and open debate with all opponents, and naturally oppose censorship and safe spaces. George Yancy, a professor of philosophy at Emory University, stated recently ‘I refuse to entertain my students with mummified ideas and abstract forms of philosophical self-stimulation. What leaves their hands is always philosophically alive, vibrant and filled with urgency. I want them to engage in the process of freeing ideas, freeing their philosophical imaginations. I want them to lose sleep over the pain and suffering of so many lives that many of us deem disposable. I want them to become conceptually unhinged, to leave my classes discontented and maladjusted’ (nytimes.com, 30 November). Such a rare and provocative approach to education has been reported to the Professor Watchlist, a modern-day form of McCarthyism promoted by the conservative youth group Turning Point USA. The Economic League in the UK had similar objectives for the duration of its existence, 1919-1993.

Pious Platitudes

Who said ‘. . . what we are speaking about is the common good of humanity, of the right of each person to share in the resources of this world and to have the same opportunities to realize his or her potential…’ (time.com, 3 December)? Marx? Morris? Wilde? No, one Jorge Mario Bergoglio – in his current role as Pope. The 1 percent have no need to tremble in their designer boots as the Dalai Lama went through such a phase, even calling himself a Marxist, without socialism being any nearer. Besides, did not Sarah Palin insist recently that one or other gods had intervened in the US election in order to give us Donald Trump? The prayers of the capitalists are answered: it’s business as usual.

It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World

‘. . . pyrimethamine, the drug the Sydney Grammar School kids were able to make for $2 per dose, and which Turing sells for up to $750, can be bought in India for as little as $0.10’ (qz.com, 2 December). That’s capitalism folks!

Proper Gander (at the movies): The Benefits Trap (2017)

The Proper Gander Column from the January 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

Film Review: 'I, Daniel Blake' director Ken Loach

The most important film of 2016 was undoubtedly Ken Loach’s passionate response to the government’s austerity measures, I, Daniel Blake. The eponymous main character (played by stand-up comedian Dave Johns) is a 59 year-old joiner living in Newcastle. The story begins with Daniel recovering from a heart attack. His GP has judged him not fit to work, and has signed the ‘med 3’ form (used to be nicknamed a ‘sick note’, now renamed in doublespeak as a ‘fit note’) he needs to claim Employment and Support Allowance sickness benefit. However, at the ‘work capability assessment’ which claimants have to undertake to continue to be paid, he is judged to have enough capacity to find work. Perversely, this decision by a ‘healthcare professional’ trumps that of the GP. So, Daniel (almost literally) half-heartedly looks for employment, but feels unable to accept jobs because of his GP’s advice. He makes a claim for Jobseeker’s Allowance, but struggles with the procedures for looking for vacancies online. In the job centre, Daniel meets Katie, who with her young children has been relocated from a homeless hostel in London to a flat in Newcastle. She is claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance, but her claim gets suspended (or ‘sanctioned’) because she’s late for an appointment. Without an income, she is forced to instead turn to prostitution and food banks.

The script was researched with the assistance of Department for Work and Pensions employees, who remain anonymous in the credits for fear of losing their jobs. The film doesn’t dwell on the reports of job centre workers having targets for the numbers of claimants they sanction, although it features staff being told off by a manager for being helpful. Other details in the film are familiar to anyone who’s tried to navigate the benefits system, such as the questions in the work capability assessment: ‘can you raise either arm as if to put something in your top pocket?’. Similarly accurate is the music heard when Daniel inevitably gets placed on hold when phoning the benefits office. What would Vivaldi think now if he knew that was the use to which his Spring would be put?

I, Daniel Blake has had a wider impact than Loach’s recent films. In November, the film’s pivotal scene of a spray-paint protest was played out for real when the words ‘I, Daniel Blake’ appeared on the wall of Exeter job centre. In a Prime Minister’s Question Time session, Jeremy Corbyn suggested that Theresa May should watch it when he was criticising the ‘institutionalised barbarity’ of the benefits system in relation to unwell claimants. Someone who hadn’t seen the film was Damian Green, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, who nevertheless felt able to describe it as ‘monstrously unfair’. One of his predecessors – Iain Duncan Smith said ‘The film has taken the very worst of anything that can ever happen to anybody, lumped it all together and then say ‘absolutely, this is life as it is lived by people’. And I don’t believe that’. A DWP spokesperson chipped in with ‘This film is one person’s artistic interpretation of the benefits system. … It is a work of fiction, not a documentary’.

Loach has said that he finds politicians criticising the film ‘predictable’. In a comment to the Press Association, he said ‘If they don’t know what they are doing to people they are incompetent and shouldn’t be in government. If they do know what they are doing then they are not fit to be in government.’ Elsewhere, Loach has criticised the Tories for the ‘conscious cruelty’ of the benefits system. He’s a fan of Corbyn, but isn’t a member of the Labour Party, having previously backed Left Unity before it was eclipsed by Labour’s shift leftwards. He still calls Labour ‘the party of the working class’. While Loach may be a left-wing reformist, his film doesn’t openly advocate reforms to the benefits system. Instead, it shows the bureaucratic trap where many people too unwell for work fall (being unable to fall into the other trap of employment), and allows us to draw our own conclusions. The film is likely to reinforce the views of those who back reformism, but could equally be interpreted as illustrating how the whole system of which the welfare state is a part is unworkable. Once he has to rely on the benefits system, Daniel finds that it’s not really there to benefit him, and its rules and procedures seem designed to make it harder to maintain a claim.

At the age of 80, Ken Loach has lost none of the anger at how capitalism affects people which his previous films have expressed. I, Daniel Blake takes elements from his previous work, such as the title echoing that of My Name Is Joe, his 1998 film about a recovering alcoholic. And he hired a stand-up comedian to play the lead role, as he had with casting Chrissie Rock as a victim of domestic abuse in 1994’s Ladybird, Ladybird. Most obviously, I, Daniel Blake shares its target with Cathy Come Home (1966), both criticising the failings of the welfare state, and both having an impact beyond the screen. Loach himself has said that it’s ‘shocking’ he’s made a film in a similar vein to Cathy Come Home fifty years on.

Mike Foster

Must There be a Ruling Class? (2017)

From the January 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is the social philosophy of Marxism a ‘pernicious illusion’, a variant of a ‘utopian dream’ which must cost humanity dear whenever an attempt is made to realise it? In other words is the realisation of socialism impossible?

They say ‘Yes’

A powerful argument against its possibility has been advanced in the political sociology of Mosca, Michels and Pareto. Their arguments are impressive, especially when we remember that, writing before the First World War, they were writing prior to the establishment of modern totalitarianism, and at a time when optimism was as general as pessimism is today. The fact that their predictions have been partially confirmed by events gives them added weight.

Anyone who has had experience of modern politics would tend to agree with Mosca’s theory; it has a high plausibility and contains much that is true. It asserts that political power in actuality never rests upon consent of the majority, that irrespective of ideologies or leading personalities, all political rule is a process, now peaceful, now coercive, by which a minority gratifies its own interests, in a situation where not all interests can receive equal consideration. As Mosca puts it in The Ruling Class:

  ‘Political power always has been, and always will be exercised by organised minorities, which have had and will have the means, varying as the times vary to impose their supremacy upon the multitudes.’

The means vary from public myths and legal frauds to direct brutal force, depending upon the conditions of the time. Whichever side wins the masses who have fought, bled and starved, lose. Their ‘saviours’ become their rulers under the prestige of new myths. The essential content of minority control and exploitation remains despite the fact that mythical forms change. For Mosca this is a ‘law’ of all social life which can be demonstrated to the satisfaction of everyone except the ‘dull,’ the ‘pious’ and candidates for political leadership. It is a ‘law’ accepted by every political partisan as obviously true for other organisations but as a slander when applied to their own.

According to Pareto (in Mind and Society) differences between groups and conflict between their interests are always more persuasive than the harmonies which idealist philosophers discover more often than not by definition. Belief in the homogeneity of society is a fable for simpletons. Every society divides roughly into two classes – an elite which includes all who enjoy the fruits of recognised excellence in virtue of their strength, cunning, valour, wealth, social origin – ‘the lions and foxes’ – and a non-elite which comprises the rest of the population – the sheep. The elite, in turn, subdivide into a governing elite and a non-governing elite which mutually support each other. Like the poor, the governing elite we will always have with us. Whenever its members lack quality of vigour, will, discipline and readiness to use force in an emergency new members are recruited from the non-elite, those who prove that they are not sheep after all. ‘History is the graveyard of aristocracies.’ But we will always have aristocracies. Power may be taken in the name of humanity, democracy and freedom; it can only be wielded by a few.

Michels in Political Parties reaches the same conclusions, but they are based on a far more empirical study. Political power on behalf of any ideal, no matter how democratically conceived inevitable, involves the emergence of a leadership which in the (last analysis) controls the organisation. If it is defeated it is replaced, not by a functioning democracy, but by a new leadership. All democratic movements, therefore, are doomed by the ‘iron law of oligarchy’. According to this ‘the majority of human beings, in a condition of eternal tutelage, are predestined by tragic necessity to submit to the domination of a small minority, and must be content to constitute the pedestal of an oligarchy’.

We say ‘No’

We should distinguish between the descriptive analyses and the theoretical explanations these writers offer. After differences in political rule have been taken into account most of their conclusions are valid. Ruling parties are controlled by minorities, they do rely on lies, chicanery and naked force. These are the props of political rule. We couldn’t agree more. But in explaining these phenomena Mosca falls back upon a psychological theory of human nature as something given and fixed independently of its social and historical context. Almost every one of his major explanations and predictions involves an appeal to an original nature, seen as essentially unalterable despite its varying expressions. Political laws are derived from the unchangeable elements in the nature of humans. Mosca referred to them as ‘wicked instincts’. It is from this conception of original sin that his direct prophecies flow.

Pareto’s doctrine of the constancy of the residues – instincts, needs and interests – is summed up in the sentence: ‘The centuries roll by and human nature remains the same.’ Michels weakens the force of his arguments which are drawn from the technical indispensability of the division of labour in all political organisations by deducing that ‘the majority is permanently incapable of democratic self-government.’

An argument from human nature is invoked to support a sociological law. The analysis, although historical in form and content, is based upon a non-historical theoretical explanation. The sociological explanation is empty because it is devoid of history, that is, it is not based on theoretical activities of man but upon presupposed psychological qualities which give rise to these activities.

For the sake of argument we can grant their claims except when they speak in the future tense. Social problems are always specific, are always rooted in the concrete needs of a particular people at a determinate time. How they will solve these depends upon the conditions at hand – the knowledge they possess, for example, the knowledge of political and economic laws, the predominant social values and a number of other factors. The way people will act in the future will depend upon the problems they will have to solve and upon their state of knowledge, and not upon any unchanging nature. The problems themselves change with changing understanding. The problems facing the socialist are difference from those facing the non-socialist. Different problems require different solutions, thus different behaviour, different ways of acting, a different human nature.

It seems, then, that any attempt to find an invariant core of properties which constitute human nature will not stand up to sociological or historical analysis. We can only observe how people behave and act under certain conditions. What we are interested in is what people actually do and how they do it, and since human activity and behaviour is continually changing, the study of human nature must be a historical study. Historical traditions, habits and social institutions play a much more important role in political behaviour, and are more reliable in predicting the future than any set of innate impulses, residues, instincts or urges. By isolating the latter from their objective cultural setting, selecting from among them an alleged impulse to dominate, to be selfish, to fight, love or flee, the pattern of human nature can be cut to suit any political myth. This is precisely what the elitist theorists have done.

They have rendered a service in so far as they make us realise the need for devising institutional safeguards for the attainment and preservation of democracy. The most import safeguard being the replacement of the institution of private property by that of social property. These theories are pernicious in that they amount to a counsel of despair. If human nature is something unchanging and static then any social change is futile, since domination, oppression and exploitation will remain although masquerading in different forms and under different ideologies. Indeed Mosca and Pareto (Michels is in a different category, although a pessimist, he advocates struggle and social revolution) maintain that social revolution is meaningless. We cannot agree. We find the status quo impossible.

L.H.