Current Jargon (1982)

From the March 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Arguing with left-wing groups is not always a useful way for socialists to spend their time, but it’s difficult to resist when they are so willing to take up the role of fall-guys to the socialist case. One such group which often attends on the SPGB is the International Communist Current; our opponents in several recent debates.

Outwardly their talk and publications are forbidding, unless you have a political appetite that relishes jargon. “Bourgeoisie”, “decadent” and “reactionary” are the ICC’s favourite words. Trade union leaders are always “derailing the workers”, politicians are always uttering “verbiage” and the proletariat are always being exhorted to “generalise their struggles”. Not bad sentiments really, except that they lose their descriptive power when you read them ten times in a single journal. Nevertheless, some do adjust to this form of political communication because it always gives the impression of familiarity, like a collage of well-known newspaper headlines gummed onto a canvas. Those members of the ICC with whom I have argued are among the most committed political people I know. Perhaps the jargon and the commitment are linked. For if you exchange the power of creative expression for a set of ready-made phrases, that only make sense when bolted together in particular ways, then you cease to be able to describe the world if you change your political position. And if you do, you must suffer a period of communicative incoherence.

Strangely, the case of the ICC is quite unlike their mechanical language. They delight in and glorify spontaneous action by the working class. Whenever some workers down tools or typewriters and strike or occupy their workplaces, this fills the ICC with hope for the revolution. Their publications are full of details about strike committee meetings around the world and they devote much space to encouraging attempts to seize control of an industry by councils of workers.

It is here that the ICC display an amiable, if childlike, character. Their sensitivity to the economic and social difficulties of the workers makes them lionise those who express militant discontent. An ICC member in an occupied factory would count him or herself as one among the potential key actors at a possible turning-point in history.

So great is their respect for spontaneous expression in the economic class struggle, that they build their programme of action around an international expansion of strike committees or workers councils. Themselves they see as providing the missing link between anarcho-syndicalism and the vision of socialism carried by the SPGB, repeated in their principles:

   Socialism, the mode of social reproduction initiated by the workers’ councils, is not ‘workers’ self-management’ or ‘nationalisations’. Socialism requires the conscious abolition by the working class of capitalist social relations based on the law of value, such as wage labour, commodity production, national frontiers, and the construction of a world human community. (International Review, May 1976, back page)

Urge the workers’ councils on, they say, and these will spontaneously throw up political institutions able to dictate the will of the workers, overcoming the capitalist class and their governments. From this exercise of power by the workers will arise full socialist consciousness in an international workers’ councils movement, that can then be used as an untainted vehicle for a complete revolution; in much the way that the SPGB says the parliaments of the world could be.

The fragmentary and local nature of workers’ councils means that their solidarity is easily broken by very ordinary propaganda from the employers. While the massive effort required to create and co-ordinate a world-wide council movement is likely to trigger invasions, or wars, in the countries so disturbed.

Anyway, the existence of the SPGB is a standing refutation of the ICC claim that all who advocate “revolutionary parliamentarism” become corrupted and absorbed into capitalism.

B. K. McNeeney

Thought For The Day (1982)

Quote from the March 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

A peasant approached his king and asked: "How is the fight to abolish poverty going? The king replied, "Very well". The peasant then asked, "Then how is it that I am still poor?" "Ah", answered the king, "I am winning, you are losing".

(BBC Radio 4, 1.2.82.)

From Privilege to Profits (1990)

From the March 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

On a recent visit to Poland I stayed, first, in Warsaw, then moved to Wroclaw (formerly Breslau) in the south-west. In both cities, my main contacts were with the Polish Socialist Party (Democratic Revolution). This is a minority political party, opposed to the Solidarity government of Mazowiecki. It originated in a breakaway from the PSP, led by Jan Lipski, a revival of the old social-democratic, reformist PSP. At its first congress in December 1989 it adopted a new programme, and from this it is worth quoting their analysis of “Polish changes”:

  The alliance concluded between the opposition elite and the nomenklatura rests upon an agreement on a pro-market and pro-capitalist course of change in the economy. The immediate result of this has been the rescue of the ruling nomenklatura at the price of the admission of part of the opposition to power. At the same time, Solidarity has been transformed from an organisation struggling for the rights and interests of the workers into an instrument for wielding power. This is expressed in the conception of the union as a partner in government. In reality it has had to become a mechanism for transmitting orders from the government to the workers . . . The nomenklatura has realised that the previously existing system of rule over society has broken down and has executed indispensable manoeuvres to adapt . . . Part of its privileges are being exchanged for the profits arising from ownership, rather than political authority . . . 

This makes a lot of sense. It helps explain Jaruzelski’s sudden craving for “democracy” and power-sharing as being due to the ruling nomenklatura’s need for some sort of survival strategy. Last year Gorbachev declared that Russian troops would not be used to prop up unpopular regimes in Eastern Europe. Without Moscow’s support, and facing up to unpopular economic reforms, the nomenklatura needed some other prop, and Solidarity’s bosses could deliver the votes.

Secondly, the old “official unions” which had previously functioned as “a mechanism for transmitting orders from the government to the workers” were completely discredited. They served as a part of  management, disciplining the workers and urging them to increase productivity. But now that they no longer had sufficient support or credibility to be effective a new organisation was needed to take their place. Solidarity was happy to oblige.

The third point to note is that the nomenklatura – the Party officials, government apparatchiks and bosses of all sorts – are determined not to go under. A free market and a private enterprise system is taking the place of the old, corrupt and inefficient “planned economy”. Successful adaptation will require them to become capitalists and ideology is not going to stand in their way. Some have already set up private companies and are taking over the assets of state enterprises. Opportunism was a characteristic of Lenin. It continues to characterise Lenin’s heirs.

The workers’ position remains the same as before – working for wages while others reap the profits. Exploitation is always exploitation, and it doesn’t matter at all whether the bosses are organised as a private company, a public corporation or a party committee. Whatever the arrangement, what we get are mere wages; what they get is all our unpaid labour.

Importance of Democracy

PSP(DR) actively supports efforts to put pressure on Solidarity to hold democratic elections, long overdue. Although Solidarity was set up in 1980 as a democratic organisation, it long ago ceased being that and, as an organisation, has operated just like the Communist Party, with the leadership deciding policy over the heads of the members.

My impression is that the people I met liked our Party’s consistent and thorough-going opposition to vanguardism and to Lenin’s elitist view that workers need to be told “what’s what” by intellectuals and “experts”. They asked about how our Party is constituted and organised, and seemed to approve our insistence on democratic organisation, with our policy decided by the membership at conference, and our executive committee and party officers being required to comply with conference decisions.

I was asked if we were Trotskyists. There wasn’t much time, so I dealt with this bluntly by saying that any who call themselves Trotskyists have to answer for the suppression of the workers at Krondstadt in 1921.

Another point which had to be discussed was our opposition to reformism and refusal to ally ourselves with non-socialist organisations. Here we differ from the PSP(DR). Their programme includes a lot of immediate demands. In particular, they advocate “self-management”. At enterprise level, this suggests that workers’ representatives can work in tandem with management. The PSP (DR) also intend that workers’ self-management representatives should play a role in regional government and form a separate chamber in the Sejm (parliament). They do not specify how this would function in relation to the rest of parliament or what its powers and responsibilities would be.

This is to suggest that the state could be transformed to operate in the interests of the whole community. Tinkering about with constitutional changes does not change the reality of the system.

Fighting Solidarity

Another group I met was Fighting Solidarity, a group which operates underground, having little confidence in the success of perestroika in Russia. Like the PSP(DR) it campaigns for democratic elections in Solidarity but its ideas have little in common with ours. Essentially they are liberals, with a strong belief in such vague values as freedom, equality, brotherhood, and human rights. Liberal too in their belief in “natural market regulators”.

As I considered Poland’s worn-out pre-war trams, the drab half-empty shops, the archaic telephone system, well, I must admit I thought they might have a point. At least, in England you can get lavatory paper quite easily in the shops. But then I returned to England. And in this happy land I saw beggars in the Tube stations and teenaged jobless and homeless in London’s Cardboard City. The “natural market regulators of supply and demand” achieved that. Somehow I don’t think the grass is greener on either side of the fence. It never is for the working class.

What we would say to Fighting Solidarity and those who think like them in Poland and the other parts of the Russian empire is this: Do not deceive yourselves. Your problems as workers will not be solved merely by shaking off Moscow role. Free enterprise capitalism has precious little to do with the ideals you cherish.

In conclusion, the fact that ours is a movement with a clean and honest record where Leninism and dictatorship are concerned – our critical stance maintained over many decades has been shown to be right – will surely open many doors for us in Eastern Europe and Russia at this time of change.

Charmian Skelton

Marxism versus Leninism (1990)

From the March 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marx’s theory of socialist revolution is grounded on the fundamental principle that “the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself”. Marx held to this view throughout his entire forty years of socialist political activity, and it distinguished his theory of social change from that of both those who appealed to the princes, governments and industrialists to change the world for the benefit of the working class (such as Robert Owen and Saint Simon) and of those who relied on the determined action of some enlightened minority of professional revolutionaries to liberate the working class (such as Buonarotti, Blanqui and Weitling).

Conscious Self-emancipation

Marx saw that the very social position of the working class within capitalist society as a non-owning, exploited, wealth-producing class forced it to struggle against its capitalist conditions of existence. This “movement” of the working class could be said to be implicitly socialist since the struggle was ultimately over who should control the means of production: the minority capitalist class or the working class (i.e. society as a whole). At first the movement of the working class would be, Marx believed, unconscious and unorganised but in time, as the workers gained more experience of the class struggle and the workings of capitalism, it would become more consciously socialist and democratically organised by the workers themselves.

The emergence of socialist understanding out of the experience of the workers could thus be said to be “spontaneous” in the sense that it would require no intervention by people outside the working class to bring it about (not that such people could not take part in this process, but their participation was not essential or crucial). Socialist propaganda and agitation would indeed be necessary but would come to be carried out by workers themselves whose socialist ideas would have been derived from an interpretation of their class experience of capitalism. The end result would be an independent movement of the socialist-minded and democratically organised working class aimed at winning control of political power in order to abolish capitalism. As Marx and Engels put it in The Communist Manifesto, “the proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority”.

This in fact was Marx’s conception of “the workers’ party”. He did not see the party of the working class as a self-appointed elite of professional revolutionaries, as did the Blanquists, but as the mass democratic movement of the working class with a view to establishing Socialism, the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production.

Lenin’s Opposing View

This was Marx’s view, but it wasn’t Lenin’s. Lenin in his pamphlet What Is To Be Done?, written in 1901-2, declared:

   The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own efforts, is able to develop only trade union consciousness, i.e., the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation, etc. The theory of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical and economic theories that were elaborated by the educated representatives of the propertied classes, the intellectuals” (Foreign Languages Publishing House edition, Moscow, pp. 50-51). 

    Class political consciousness can be brought to the workers only from without, that is, only from outside of the economic struggle, from outside of the sphere of relations between workers and employers” (Lenin’s emphasis, p.133). 

   The spontaneous working class movement by itself is able to create (and inevitably creates) only trade unionism, and working class trade unionist politics are precisely working class bourgeois politics” (pp. 159-60) .

Lenin went on to argue that the people who would have to bring “socialist consciousness” to the working class “from without” would be “professional revolutionaries”, drawn at first mainly from the ranks of the bourgeois intelligentsia. In fact he argued that the Russian Social Democratic Party should be such an “organisation of professional revolutionaries”, acting as the vanguard of the working class. The task of this vanguard party to be composed of professional revolutionaries under strict central control was to “lead” the working class, offering them slogans to follow and struggle for. It is the very antithesis of Marx’s theory of working class self-emancipation.

The Bolshevik Coup

The implication of Marx’s theory of working class self-emancipation is that the immense majority of the working class must be consciously involved in the socialist revolution against capitalism. “The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority in the interest of the immense majority”.

The Bolshevik coup in November, 1917, carried out under the guise of protecting the rights of the Congress of Soviets, did not enjoy conscious majority support, at least not for socialism, though their slogan “Peace, Bread and Land” was widely popular. For instance, elections to the Constituent Assembly, held after the Bolshevik coup and so under Bolshevik government, gave them only about 25 per cent of the votes.

John Reed, a sympathetic American journalist, whose famous account of the Bolshevik coup, Ten Days That Shook The World, was commended in a foreword by Lenin, quotes Lenin as replying to this kind of criticism in a speech he made to the Congress of Peasants’ Soviets on 27 November, 1917:

  If Socialism can only be realized when the intellectual development of all the people permits it, then we shall not see Socialism for at least five hundred years . . . The Socialist political party – this is the vanguard of the working class; it must not allow itself to be halted by the lack of education of the mass average, but it must lead the masses, using the Soviets as organs of revolutionary initiative…” (Reed’s emphasis and omissions, Modern Library edition, 1960, p.15).

Compare this with a passage from the utopian communist, Weitling: “to want to wait . . . until all are suitably enlightened would be to abandon the thing altogether!” Not, of course, that it is a question of “all” the workers needing to be socialists before there can be Socialism. Marx, in rejecting the view that Socialism could be established by some enlightened minority, was merely saying that a sufficient majority of workers would have to be socialists.

Lenin’s Legacy

Having seized power before the working class (and, even less, the 80 per cent peasant majority of the population) had prepared themselves for Socialism, all the Bolshevik government could do, as Lenin himself openly admitted, was to establish state capitalism in Russia. Which is what they did, while at the same time imposing their own dictatorship over the working class.

Contempt for the intellectual abilities of the working class led to the claim that the vanguard party should rule on their behalf, even against their will. Lenin’s theory of the vanguard party became enshrined as a principle of government (“the leading role of the Party”) which has served to justify what has proved to be the world’s longest-lasting political dictatorship.

The self-emancipation of the working class, as advocated by Marx, remains on the agenda.

Adam Buick

Practical Socialism pt.2 (1990)

From the March 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

The first part of this article appeared in our January issue

Our practical proposals for the organisation of production in socialism are not based on arbitrary speculations about future society. These are developed, as Marx insisted they should be, from “the existing state of things”. In socialism, useful labour will produce goods and provide useful services directly for needs. In outlining the ways in which this could operate we begin from the fact that a world-wide structure of useful production already exists.

Under capitalism, useful production serves privileged class interests and is geared to all the conditions of the market, buying and selling and the profit motive. With the establishment of socialism these class features will be abolished, leaving the useful factors to operate freely and directly for needs. The mechanisms which co-ordinate the structure of useful production now will be continued into socialism.

Modern production is an immense structure throughout which even a simple article has a complex productive history involving a world-wide division of labour. For example, the components of a ball-point pen include a plastic holder, a plastic tube containing ink and perhaps a brass ferule joining the steel ball point to the tube. Yet these few components and their materials are the products of metal mining and processing, the oil and chemical industries, energy supply, and world transport. These features of modern production are widely dispersed and, in supplying each other with processed materials and finished components, they combine to produce goods with no single or overall plan. Instead, they operate in a way which is self-regulating. Each mine, industrial plant or manufacturing unit and each point in the distribution of materials and goods performs its function without having to know what is happening in all the other parts, even though it may depend upon what these other parts are doing.

Useful Stream of Information
A copper mine in Zambia receives orders from around the world and this is sufficient information to signal it to begin mining activity. A plant processing brass in Britain may order quantities of copper from Zambia and quantities of zinc from Australia, and on receiving these materials it produces brass which it then supplies to the units producing things like ferrules for ball-point pens. At a further stage in this sequence, the unit which produces brass ferules supplies them to the unit which assembles ball-point pens. In response to its orders, this point of final assembly then supplies them to the distribution system and eventually they are taken up by the users.

This communication of required goods and materials operates as a sequence of signals throughout the entire structure of production, indicating what each part of the structure should do. If orders exceed stocks, this indicates more production. Conversely, if stocks exceed orders, this indicates reduced production. Without any need for a single, overall plan, this will operate in socialism as a system of self-regulating production directly for need.

This useful stream of information begins with consumer needs and then flows throughout distribution and on to each required part of the structure of production. In the opposite direction, throughout the markets under capitalism, there takes place a contra-flow of information. It flows from producers, through distributors, to the consumer. This information is the prices of goods determined by the accumulating costs of production and distribution plus profit. Prices are increased in each part of production, from mining through industrial processing, manufacture and assembly, then accumulating further through distribution until the final price is passed on to the consumer.

Whereas the useful flow of information expresses needs and both stimulates and co-ordinates the production process, the opposite flow of information about the prices of goods constrains production by restricting it to what can be sold at a profit. In this way the effects of the market, with its buying and selling, are disruptive in that they erect economic barriers against the free use of society’s productive powers. The effects of the market also load production and distribution with a burden of wasteful activities which vastly reduce overall productive efficiency. A further related fact is that the disruptive effects of the market constrain the rational allocation of resources for needs.

Waste of the Market
This is most obviously demonstrated by the countless billions of work days which have been lost over recent years as a result of unemployment and the fact that it has not been profitable to employ the workers concerned. Unemployment has excluded from production a wide range of human skills vital for the well-being of the community and represents a lost opportunity to produce of incalculable magnitude. Due to the constraints of the market we have seen from time to time an accumulation of unsold stocks of goods that people have desperately needed. This has included such things as building materials when many people are homeless. Millions of hectares of land in Europe and America have been taken out of production because of limited market capacity for food sales, while at the same time millions have died of hunger.

Because of economic rivalries between capitalist states, millions of people are held in military forces and vast resources including materials, sections of industry, manufacture, energy supply and high technology are diverted into armaments production. Because of the high costs involved, the techniques which are now available for reducing emissions of sulphur dioxide from coal-burning power stations have not been applied. As a result, this pollution continues.

The economic mechanisms of the market serve no socially useful function whatsoever. On the contrary, their effects are entirely destructive. The function of cost/pricing is to enable a business enterprise to calculate its costs, to fix its profit expectations within a structure of prices, to regulate income against expenditure and, ultimately, to regulate the exploitation of its workers.

With the establishment of socialism these economic barriers against the free flow of information about consumer needs to the structure of useful production will be swept aside. People in mining, industry, manufacture, farming, energy supply and transport will in the first instance carry on with what they are doing, together with the people running useful services such as hospitals, education, communications and so on. The basic difference will be the new relationships in which they carry on this work. Instead of being employed as wage workers by capitalist companies or state capitalist enterprises, they will be able to work in voluntary co-operation with each other to provide goods and services directly for the needs of the community.

A proviso is that the self-regulating mechanisms which have been outlined, although adequate for an existing useful structure of production, will also operate against a background of democratic planning where further development is required. With the elimination of wasteful and destructive activities, however, vast resources of people, materials, means of production and technique will become available. Any such development would take place in accordance with a balance of needs and not the least of these would be a proper care of the environment.

Pieter Lawrence

The Passing Show: From the top (1961)

The Passing Show Column from the September 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

From the top

Who is for democracy?

Not Lord Citrine, if we are to judge by his recent speech in the House of Lords. The Daily Herald (15/6/61) reported him as saying:

  The TUC leadership has been weakened at almost successive annual conferences in recent years.
  I have sat and writhed in the balconies time after time when I have seen a wise, constructive policy put from the platform and defeated by the delegates on the floor.
  This is lamentable, because 1 do not think that really broad-minded policy can ever come from the bottom.
  I believe it must come from the top, from people who are capable of viewing the whole field.

This is a strong argument for dictatorship, from the man who was for twenty years general secretary of the TUC. If his views are held by many others in the head offices of trade unions, it would partly account for the yawning gap which exists in many unions between the officials and the rank-and-file.

Lord Citrine had more to say. He delivered a swingeing attack on the workers for their ignorance of economics. He said:

  The average worker has not the least realisation of the dangers of inflation. He does not understand that the economy can get out of hand and that savings can disappear overnight.

Perhaps the workers would show more concern about the fate of savings if the system we live under allowed him to accumulate any savings worth mentioning. But since one of the basic laws of capitalism is that the workers are paid only enough to keep them able to do the work required of them and to bring up the next generation of wage-earners, the protection of savings is a purely academic point for them. Those who have savings, i.e., the capitalists, will do their level best to see that nothing happens to them even if sometimes, since capitalism is essentially an anarchic system, they are not altogether successful. This is a problem for the capitalists, and we can leave it to them.

Lord Citrine, however, had better be more careful about upbraiding the workers for their ignorance. If they take him at his word, and find out the real nature of the present system of society, their next step will be to end it and to introduce Socialism. And what would happen then to Citrine’s noble title, and to the House of Lords where he airs his views, and to the cult of leadership which he supports?


Nothing defensive

Socialists have pointed out many, many times the absurd misuse of words when a ruling class arms itself with weapon-like bombs and then claims that is simply taking “defensive” precautions. The odd thing is that any ruling class, and its tame propagandists, can see this perfectly well—when the actions of any other ruling class are being discussed.

One example was seen recently in the Times. The Times leader-writers have very often discussed Britain’s "defence" preparations, the “defence" estimates, the country’s “defence” forces, and so on. But all this was forgotten when the executive of the Indonesian ruling class. President Sukarno, got Russia to agree to supply him with modern military aircraft. The Indonesian claim that these were merely for “defensive” purposes was seen at once as a hollow pretence. What was obscure to the leader-writers when it happened under their noses in Britain became crystal clear in the distant lands of southeast Asia. The first leader (5/7/61) said smugly:

  Jet bombers that are as advanced as any in the world have nothing defensive about them and it is obvious enough that West New Guinea provides the motive.

This is quite right, of course: one of the main aims of the Indonesian ruling class is to extend its rule over West New Guinea, which is at present still ruled by the Dutch. Obviously, as the leader says, modern jet bombers have nothing defensive about them. But what a curious case of selective blindness that the writer could not see that this applies to British jet bombers as much as to jet bombers in Russia or Indonesia!


Over-salted

In a world where many millions go hungry, one would have thought that the rich would try to conceal their more extravagant excesses of over-eating. But not so. One American gourmet is on a round-the-world “tasting trip,” and the Observer (6/8/61) tells us that he arrived in Tokio bringing with him:

   . . .  an alarm wrist-watch to time the grilling of steaks, a golden ball which will not sink immediately into caviar if it is over-salted, a miniature pair of scales for weighing meat and a microscope for checking its grain. He also carries a fourteen-point grading chart for statistical purposes.

Perhaps the very insensitiveness the members of the upper class, their willingness to display publicly the great gulf between the rich and the poor, will contribute not a little to their eventual downfall.

Alwyn Edgar

In Name only: “Socialist” Party of Austria (1961)

From the September 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have received the following letter from a sympathiser in Vienna, which gives a critical look at the 1961 Annual Conference of the Socialist Party of Austria.

With an impressive show, as befits a government party, the annual conference of the S.P.A was held in Vienna from June 6 to 9, 1961. Among others, the British Labour Party had also sent a delegate. From the reports of the proceedings and speeches published in the Arbeiter Zeitung, the central organ of the S.P.A. one could gather how much Socialism there is left in the "Socialist" Party of Austria.

"Democracy's big chance," said the chairman and vice-chancellor Dr Bruno Pittermann. "Would be in the further progress on the road to securing for the workers a voice in the management of industry, and of participation in the government, corresponding to the election result. Because, for the working people of our times, the ownership of the means of production is no longer the only question which is decisive. To this must he added the right of a voice in the planning of industry and in the distribution of the proceeds! This right of participation, which raises man to a factor of equality, side by side with dead capital, is being refused by both reactionary capitalism, and by the communists."

Thus, Pittermann is satisfied if the workers become “a factor" with equal rights beside "dead capital." He is no longer concerned with the abolition of capital (private ownership). Pittermann seems to be quite oblivious of the fact that capital is not a thing, not some dead object, but a peculiar social relationship between man and man. Did not a certain Karl Marx once scientifically analyse and explain it all?

“Besides the factor capital, the factor labour must at last find recognition" a delegate urged. Thus, despite the S.P.A.’s boasted many decades of activity, the “factor labour" has so far not yet found recognition. This delegate was moreover of remarkable modesty. He demanded for labour no more than a place beside capital. The latter can safely keep its hitherto held position. It would seem that this representative of “Socialism" too had never heard of capitalist conditions and of the capitalist mode of production.

“I should like to once more emphasize," said another leading light, the Sozialminister Proksch, “that over the present questions of the day our social policy must not relegate to a back seat our big fundamental tasks, to which belongs the fresh formulation of the old obsolete labour charter." Proksch distinguishes between the present questions of the day and the fundamental issue, i.e., the essential aim of Socialism. No person of common sense will quarrel with this. Strange it is, however, that a Socialist—and Proksch claims to be one—sees in the new formulation of labour rights a fundamental task of Socialism. Is not the "right of labour" the “right" of those dependent on, and exploited by, capital? Is it not by its very nature committed to perpetuate the existing relationship between wage labour and capital? Even if it be admitted that reforms have brought to labour some alleviation of hardships, it stands in question whether the benefit to the workers outweighs the harm done to the working class movement by this day-to-day reform policy. After all, the “fundamental task" of a Socialist Party consists not in perpetuating, but in abolishing the exploitation of the workers by capital. The watchword must ever be revolution —not reform. But apparently such is no longer Pittermann, Proksch and consorts' concept, if ever it has been.

It will be understood that at a party conference questions of the day, and measures for dealing with them, are discussed. It may be argued that one cannot always and exclusively concentrate on the all-important supreme aim. But in dealing with pressing temporary problems, as well as with proposals and plans in cases of emergencies, the genuine great Socialist principle must ever he all-present and all-transcending. It must never be lost sight of. This, however, was sadly missing in the speeches and discussions at the said party conference. Rather had one the impression that any allusion to the real aim being the abolition of the exploitation of man by man through the wages and money system, was designedly shunned in order not to give offence in any quarter. This, however, means nothing less than abandoning the supreme principle, which cannot but please its adversaries.

All demands and decisions made at the S.P.A.'s conference will only serve to consolidate the present constitution of society and, if possible, perpetuate it. The “Socialist Party of Austria” is therefore not entitled to call itself Socialist, if the word is to keep its true meaning.

Dr. Johannes Kleinhappl

Letter: Trade Unions and Socialism (1961)

Letter to the Editors from the September 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

What is the true position of the SPGB in regard to trade unions as they arc presently constituted in this country? Do you believe in the closed shop, and that members of your party should belong to a trade union and support it even though it may be anti-socialistic in character? Your writers often claim in the Socialist Standard that trade unions tend to help capitalism to run more smoothly; if this were so why not state in your journal that trade unionism is anti-socialistic and that no real socialist should belong to any trade union at all? This would be the only logical position that your party could take, hut as it is now you seem to be running with the hares and hunting with the hounds. Trade Unions may he necessary under a certain phase of capitalism just as the National Assistance Board is at present, but nevertheless it does not necessarily follow that socialists should support them.

R. Smith,

Dundee

                                                                                                                                          

 

Reply:

Capitalism is a social system in which most people have to go to work for wages in order to live. This means that they are forced to sell their mental and physical energies to an employer. The interests of the seller of any article are in getting the highest possible price for what he is selling. Thus the workers are forced to struggle for the best conditions for the sale of their labour power. This means that they must struggle for shorter hours, less intense working pace, higher wages and so on.

It is obvious that the workers will be able to assert their interests more strongly if they do so together: this is the basic reason for the existence of trade unions. They are the only weapon which workers can use under capitalism to defend and to improve their working conditions. Because of this, all workers should join their trade union. Any trade union action which is in line with working class interests is worthy of wholehearted support from all workers —and receives the support of the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

It is true, however, that trade unions do many things which are quite opposed to working class interests; some of them, as our correspondent points out, tend to help capitalism run more smoothly. Such actions are contrary to trade unionism and the Socialist Party opposes them. Thus we opposed trade union participation in the war effort and later their support of government productivity drives.

The closed shop is an arrangement which is operated sometimes with the aid and approval of the employers and sometimes by the workers themselves. While we hold that, on balance, compulsory trade union membership is not in the best interests of the Trade Union movement and the working class, we also recognise that trade union action, and strikes in particular, cannot operate without trying to compel would be blacklegs to conform to the decision of the majority.

It is hardly surprising that trade unions have their faults. They are, after all, a feature of capitalist society and they must recruit workers of all sorts of political and religious opinions, who are united only in the struggle against their masters. When Socialism is established, trade unions will exist no more—the need for them will have disappeared. Until that day, life under capitalism is a battle, and the workers must fight it with the best weapon available.

Editorial Committee

Russia again (1961)

From the September 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. S. P. Chambers, Chairman of the Imperial Chemical Industries, on a recent visit to Russia on behalf of his Company, reported on some very interesting observations he had made. He stated:

  "I had a measure of success and with one exception, all my questions were answered fully and frankly. The one exception was in the sphere of actual living conditions."

It appears Mr. Chambers wanted to see for himself how the people lived and asked for permission to visit their homes. This did not meet with the approval of the Soviet authorities. According to Mr. Chambers:

  The vast blocks of flats erected in and around Moscow represent by European standards a low level for new accommodation.
  In Industry, it seems to be the general rule for husband and wife to do a full day's work and the children are left at a nursery or creche, or in the care of some relation.

Mr. Chambers claimed that, although it is said hours of labour are reduced, if statistics were available they would show that many more hours are worked per thousand of the total population than in the United Kingdom or in Western Germany, Clothing and toilet articles, he said, are expensive, meat and poultry was of good quality and not unreasonable in price.

Like many other Directors of the I.C.I. who have previously visited the Soviet Union, Mr. Chambers has clearly shown that this country organises its industrial affairs just like any other capitalist country and has the same anomalies to contend with.

The claim that Socialism exists in the Soviet Union is disproved by the evidence from Mr. Chambers visit. Its workers, just like the working class elsewhere, have to sell their power to labour. There is commodity production, private properly and the same sort of social problems.

A curious fact mentioned by Mr. Chambers was that, at the Coke Chemical Works, a wall 8½ feet high and 3,000 feet long was built to ensure privacy against a rival factory—Agostral. Whoever heard of commercial rivalry in a Socialist economy? There are different classes for passengers in their liners — one of them plying to London has even five classes and that in a so called classless country!

Capitalism exists in the Soviet Union — and until such time that its Working Class understand and desire Socialism, poverty and insecurity will be the lot of the workers there.

Dick Jacobs

Voice From The Back: Down with Leaders (2015)

The  Voice From The Back column from the September 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Down with Leaders

Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansoor, Donald Trump, Jeremy Corbyn or Bernie Sanders? Nay, nay and thrice nay! No Governments, No Leaders, No Led! Take Bernie, a staunch supporter of the Democrats. If he becomes the next US President (or, indeed, if Jeremy Corbyn becomes next Prime Minister), what would this mean for the 99 percent? More of the same – and business as usual for the capitalist class. Eugene Debs, an earlier candidate for the same office, made the same observation in 1904: ‘The Republican and Democratic parties … are the political wings of the capitalist system and such differences as arise between them relate to spoils and not to principle. With either of these parties in power one thing is always certain and that is that the capitalist class is in the saddle and the working class under the saddle … The ignorant workingman who supports either of these parties forges his own fetters and is the unconscious author of his own misery.’ The same could be said of Labour and the Tories in this country.

Praying for Armageddon

’Pope Francis will give mass in Cuba’s capital on an altar next to a portrait of the revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara. A construction crew has begun erecting the altar where Pope Francis is planned to give mass on 20 September as part of his tour to Cuba and the United States. The altar will be placed next to a 36 meters high sculpted outline of Argentinian revolutionary Che Guevara, which covers the facade of the Ministry of Interior. The portrait is based on a famous photo by Alberto Korda and sculpted by Cuban artist Enrique Avila’ (telesurtv.net, 4 August). This seems appropriate as Che is viewed as the patron saint: at school every child must repeat each morning, ’we will be like Che.’ The icon is on record as stating, one year after the Cuban missile crisis: ’the people [of Cuba] you see today tell you that even if they should disappear from the face of the earth because of an atomic war unleashed in their names … they will feel completely happy and fulfilled.’

Ru$$ia

’Pictures of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman flashing a watch worth an alleged $620,000 [£397,000] on Monday sparked controversy in the crisis-hit country. Dmitry Peskov, who is given a broad remit to voice the views of the Kremlin strongman, was photographed wearing the pricey timepiece as he tied the knot with Olympic ice dancer Tatiana Navka on Saturday in the Black Sea resort of Soch’ (Zee News, 3 August). Socialists are not surprised by such news, having long ago realised that the November 1917 revolution did not end capitalism or the class system which continue today under Putin.

Up, up and away

The development of nuclear missiles in India started decades ago and more recently the launching of satellites commenced. Back on Earth, we are reminded that ’of the 300 million households surveyed, an overwhelming majority (73 percent) live in villages. Of this rural population, less than 5 percent earn enough to pay taxes, only 2.5 percent own a 4-wheeler vehicle and less than 10 percent have salaried jobs. Not only does rural India have miserable statistics on income and asset ownership, its literacy rates are low. Only 3.5 percent of students graduate and around 35.7 percent of residents can’t read or write’ (CNN, 2 August). The same source adds ’it comes as no surprise that the bulk of the Indian population is still overwhelmingly poor.’ Indeed.

Beyond economics

‘When discussing my upcoming book on the economics of Star Trek with people who have only a passing interest in the show, I have noticed that the issue of work keeps coming back. More specifically, casual viewers, professional economists and members of the press alike seem to hone in on the (fictional) consequences of automation. Arguably, Star Trek is the only sci-fi franchise that takes automation seriously. In Star Trek, the necessity to work to provide for oneself has vanished. Star Trek society, as depicted in the show, is perhaps the most popular example of what is called a ’post-scarcity’ economy, for lack of a better term’ (Business Insider, 3 August). Everyone in a socialist world will have the possibility to live long and prosper – without money.

Employment is prostitution

There has been much debate in the Guardian this summer over prostitution, should it be decriminalised or not? Lacking, sadly, is the socialist perspective, as put forward by Marx in his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, for example, in which he saw such work as ’only a specific expression of the general prostitution of the labourer.’ Such dehumanisation of those involved will only end when the terms buyer and seller become redundant with the establishment of socialism.

The Rainbow Party and Its Vision of ‘Socialism’ (2015)

From the September 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our correspondent in Zambia looks at local political developments

The Rainbow Party was formed by Wynter Kabimba way back in 2003. However, Kabimba ditched the Rainbow when he joined the Patriotic Front (PF) in 2009 and became its general secretary.

A lawyer by profession, he had strong objections to corruption and worked tirelessly to root out corrupt elements from the ruling party when it came to power in 2011.

He became more or less the second most powerful man in the PF, second only to President Sata. It was typical of him to differ with fellow cabinet ministers within the PF. This was especially the case when he published corruption allegations against Finance Minister Alexander Chikwanda and Geoffrey Mwamba, the Minister of Defence.

In 2013 he became embroiled in a tit-for-tat row with Mwamba that went unresolved until the latter resigned from the Cabinet in 2014. There were widespread calls for the removal of Wynter Kabimba from within the PF to which President Sata turned a blind eye.

Thus Wynter Kabimba became the political spokesman of the PF, explaining and defending the social and economic policies of the party.

It was Wynter Kabimba who advised President Sata to appoint Mutembo Nchito as Public Prosecutor in 2012 in order to remove the presidential immunity of former MMD President Rupiah Banda. It was alleged that Rupiah Banda and his son Andrew had swindled the Zambian government through a bogus oil deal signed between the Zambian government and Nigeria in 2009 to import crude oil from Nigeria. It was discovered by the Taskforce on Corruption that the government had paid huge sums of money for this but that the crude oil was not delivered to Zambia.

The political career of Wynter Kabimba took a nosedive in August 2014 when he was relieved of his duties as party secretary general and justice minister by the late President Sata. The departure of Wynter Kabimba had become a foregone conclusion and caused relief within the ruling party.

Dissatisfaction
The Rainbow Party is one among the myriad political opposition parties that were formed after the death of President Sata in 2014 to express dissatisfaction with the current political and social policies of the PF government under President Edgar Lungu.

The terminology of ‘socialism’ is not unique to the Rainbow Party, but is embedded in the political constitution of the PF. Dr Cosmas Musumali, the deputy general secretary of the Rainbow, recently said that the Rainbow Party would not hide that its focus was on workers, students, peasants and all progressive Zambians who have borne the brunt of capitalism since its ‘adoption’ (actually, moving away from state capitalism) in 1991 by President Chiluba: ‘If you look at the key documents of the PF constitution, you will find that under article 4, they are talking about socialism.’ According to article 4 of the PF constitution the party ‘shall wage a relentless fight against domestic and international forces of reaction. It shall fight for the eradication of capitalism, with its offshoots of hunger, ignorance, disease, corruption and the exploitation of man by man.’

Musumali went on to say that governance mistakes that have come as a result of capitalism should be exposed because remaining silent on the matter would be like giving ammunition to those who exploit others.

He said that Rainbow was not ashamed to expose the past failures of ‘socialist’ initiatives of the past:

  ‘For our part we believe in the future of socialism and we are not ashamed to expose the past failures because this is what gives us legitimacy. We went the capitalist route in 1991 and to date. In the past 24 years what have we achieved in Zambia?’

He further urged intellectuals in Zambia to familiarise themselves with the Rainbow Party’s manifesto and its social and economic programme.

It is a palpable fact that the Rainbow Part does not have a mass following among the workers, students and peasants in Zambia compared with the PF and the UPND. The ‘socialist’ ideas which are being parroted by the Rainbow Party do not echo well among many ordinary Zambians in the sense that the words ‘socialism’ (‘communism’) bring memories of police brutality, suppression of political opposition and indiscriminate political detentions that characterised the one-party  so-called ‘socialist’ state under Kenneth Kaunda.

We in the WSM look askance at the ‘Marxist-Leninist’ version of ‘socialism’ being propagated by the Rainbow Party as it is really a programme for state-run capitalism.

Kephas Mulenga

50 Years Ago: What Runs the Labour Government? (2015)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is almost a year now since the Labour Party formed a government. They felt that thirteen wasted years of Tory rule would give way to an administration that could solve social problems. It has been a year of renewed failure, in which their optimism has been humiliated by their inability to control Capitalism.

We do not doubt that the Labour Government really believed they could “get the economy moving”. There was to be steady expansion. Out of a four per cent increase in productivity there were going to be more schools, hospitals, roads, pensions. There were going to be more wages. A “planned” incomes policy. A “planned” growth rate. None of these schemes have begun to get off the ground, nor do they show any prospect of doing so.

We do not doubt that the Labour Government is serious when it implores the country to “pull its weight in the national interest”. The inane weakness of appeals to community spirit in a money grabbing, competitive society escapes them.

Mr. Wilson no doubt thinks of himself as an architect of social progress but in practice he imposes credit squeezes. In the reality of Capitalism his burdening problem is “to devalue the pound or not to devalue the pound?” This is the pathetic plight of a politician who claimed to have practical solutions.

No doubt members of the Labour Government are free from race prejudice yet they have legislated against the immigration of West Indian and Pakistani workers. Under Labour Government management, economic frustrations may well be creating more acute racial tensions.

In his role of peacemaker, no doubt Mr. Wilson is sincere. As head of the Commonwealth mission he felt that his wise counsels might prevail in Vietnam. Some months later we have almost forgotten about the peace mission, but the fighting continues.

The debate between Socialists and reformers goes on. They claim that as a Government they can control Capitalism. They argue that through a process of reform they can direct its affairs in the interests of the whole community. The sorry spectacle of the Labour Government today underlines how tragically wrong they have been.

(from editorial, Socialist Standard, September 1965)

Voice From the Back: Hobson’s choice (2015)

The Voice From the Back column from the October 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hobson’s choice

You have found work in the city but need somewhere to live, your choice is limited. ‘The shockingly bad rental flats, based mainly in Britain and the US, repeatedly appear online among lists of the worst homes available to rent. In one cheeky advert, a tent in the garden of a property in San Francisco is being advertised for £458 per month, while another ambitious landlord has listed a cupboard in Paddington, west London, for £160 per month. Elsewhere in Rheims, France, a room with a shower and toilet fitted next to the kitchen sink will set tenants back £169 per month, while a horrendously cramped room in Islington, north London, with a kitchen doubling up as a bedroom will set tenants back a staggering £730 per month’ (Daily Mail, 4 September).

Embarras de richesses

We produce but do not possess. Indeed, ‘for every dollar of wealth created, 93 cents goes to the top 1%’ (truth-out.org, 3 September). Members of the owning class can live where they want when they want. In preparation to accommodating King Salman bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia and his huge entourage last month one five star hotel, closed to other guests, was transformed. Crates containing golden mirrors, end tables, lamps and hat racks were unloaded and red carpets ‘laid down in hallways and even in the lower parking garage’ so that the parasites did not ‘have to touch asphalt when departing their custom Mercedes caravan’ (Politico, 3 September).

Killing is my business

The Saudi ruling class, backed by the USA, is using armed workers and advanced weaponry to enforce regime change in neighbouring Yemen.

Wars raging in the Middle East and elsewhere mean business is good for arms manufactures such as Textron. This Massachusetts-based manufacturer of cluster bombs, helicopters and jets had its stock upgraded recently ‘fromneutral to buy by a Citigroup analyst’ (vocativ.com, 4 September). The brutal Saudi regime, which has beheaded more people than the Islamic State so far this year, has used cluster bombs in Yemen.

Migrant misery

War is undoubtedly one of the main reasons why millions have been, and continue to be, murdered, mutilated or forced to migrate. Over 2000 people have died taking the perilous but profitable for some journey from Libya to Europe. There is money to be made out of such misery: ‘with militias controlling large swathes of land, their attentions have turned to the people who cross their territories. The fighters assert they are bringing order to the country as they detain the refugees, yet these people’s lives have become valuable commodities to the militias as they try to solidify their positions in the country’ (vice.com, 4 September).

Hell awaits

You have the stuff of migrants’ dreams: somewhere to live and a place of work, but neither are secure. Your life is still at risk. Examples of death at work are legion, The BBC reported recently (1 September) that a ‘Dundee company has admitted health and safety failings after a worker died while cleaning out a chemical tank … The 33-year-old was sent in to remove debris from a chemical tank with limited protective clothing in August 2011… Dundee Sheriff Court heard that Mr Conway was sent into the tank containing volatile chemicals while wearing only trainers, tracksuit bottoms and a t-shirt and fleece.’

Slowly we rot

Somehow you reach the ever-increasing age at which you can draw your dwindling pension (delayed wages), but are you in any condition to enjoy your retirement? Is a care home on the horizon? ‘England’s care home regulator has repeatedly failed to act on official warnings from coroners in cases where elderly residents have died unexpectedly, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has found. The Bureau has examined 23 cases in which coroners warned that people could die in future if care providers did not make changes’ (The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, 2 September).

Defend the indefensible

This is what the head of the Care Quality Commission said he was not going to do in relation to the above, but the 1% are happy to defend capitalism – at a safe distance. Yet maybe the Egyptian billionaire who ‘has offered to buy an island off Italy or Greece in order to rehouse hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing Syria and other conflicts’ (Daily Telegraph, 4 September) is on to something. Come the revolution, any expropriated capitalists who do not want to live in a world of production for use and free access could be accommodated on such an island.

50 Years Ago: Los Angeles Erupts (2015)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

For a few days the spotlight was switched from the ever present horror of Vietnam and focussed on the United States itself.

Los Angeles, that most modern of cities – if such an outdated word as city can be used to describe a sprawl of over 452 square miles – erupted into violence. In an orgy of looting, arson and killing the Negro population, so often the victims of mob violence, themselves became the mob. The savage details were too well reported to need repeating, but many thousands of troops were needed to crush what amounted to a rebellion. When it was over, needless to say the Negroes were the worst-hit victims.

The suppression of the Negro, lasting for a hundred years after their “liberation,” ranging from murder to petty discrimination, and running through all strata of society, has produced a distrust and hatred that will take a very long time to overcome. At every moment and in every possible way, the Negro is made to feel inferior.

Such a situation, and the fact that it could be changed, must lead to an explosion. Los Angeles has been a modern legend, that personifies the so-called affluent society, the world of mass-produced commodities in profusion. Brash and ugly, a mass of sprawling suburbs and six-lane freeways where public transport has practically disappeared, the Watts-Willowbrook area where the explosion occurred is known as the Black Ghetto. Can anything illustrate the plight of the American Negro more than the use of this medieval word to describe the conditions of workers in an ultramodern city?

The riot was crushed, but as long as hatred between workers remains on such a scale and is added to the normal tensions and frustrations of capitalism, such eruptions will continue.

(from News in Review, Socialist Standard, October 1965)

Need a New Bike? Want to Destroy the Devil? (2015)

The Halo Halo! column from the October 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

You heard, perhaps, about the little boy sitting on his doorstep one Sunday morning crying his eyes out. ‘What’s the matter?’ asked the vicar as he passed on his way to church. ‘I want a bike’ sobbed the little boy, ‘All my friends have got one and I haven’t’. ‘Have you tried praying for a bike?’ asked the vicar. ‘Prayer is a wonderful thing. It can solve all your problems’.

So for the following week the little boy prayed every morning, but the next Sunday when the vicar passed there he was again, still in tears, and still without a bike.

‘You must have faith’ said the vicar, ‘and don’t stop praying. Prayers can solve all your problems’. So the little boy carried on praying every morning and sure enough, a couple of weeks later when the vicar passed, there was the little boy on his doorstep with a big smile on his face, and a beautiful, brand new, shiny red bike.

‘What did I tell you?’ said the vicar. ‘Isn’t prayer a wonderful thing?’ ‘Yes’, said the little boy. ‘You were right. Prayers can solve all your problems’. ‘What happened?’ asked the vicar. ‘Well I prayed really hard every morning’ said the little boy, ‘just like you said, but by Friday I still didn’t have a bike so I went out and stole one. Then I prayed to God to forgive me. And he did’.

Getting a new bike, though, would be a piece of cake for real believers. For the more ambitious there are numerous books available that explain, for a few dollars a go, not only how to make sure God is paying attention when you list your requirements, but how to beat the living daylights out of Satan while you’re at it.

You could start with ‘Discerning the Voice of God’ ($11.69). ‘Do you feel that the ability to hear God’s voice is for other people and not for you?’ asks its author. Don’t worry. With a little practice anyone can get into conversation with the voices in their head.

Or how about, ‘Prayers for Victory in Spiritual Warfare?’ ($10.59) ‘The enemy of your soul has gained the upper hand’, we are told. But again, nothing to worry about. ‘God has given you powerful weapons to help you withstand the onslaught of  Satan’s lies’.

And don’t miss ‘Fervent: A Woman’s Battle Plan to Serious, Specific and Strategic Prayer’ ($10.05) by Priscilla Shirer who, the advertising blurb assures us, is a ‘Prayer warrior’.

‘You have an enemy’ we are told, ‘and he’s dead set on destroying all you hold dear. This book is your chance to strike back. With prayer. With a weapon that really works. Each chapter will guide you in crafting prayer strategies that hit the enemy where it hurts’.

Blimey, that’s a bit strong. We assume Priscilla the Prayer Warrior’s number one enemy is the devil, but aren’t Prayer Warriors supposed to love their enemies? This makes those Catholic exorcisms that come complete with candles, a crucifix and garlic, look like a picnic in the park. Still, if you can get a new bike out of it . . . 

NW