Final Demands (1992)

Cartoon from the October 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

They Said It . . . (1992)

From the October 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

• I believe large wealth in private hands is only morally sustainable if it used to benefit people—The Duke of Westminster.
• We might execute a 12-year old. It depends on the case—US District Attorney John Holmes.
• The government deserves every sympathy in its present situation—Daily Telegraph leader on the sterling crisis. 
• We do not attribute emotions to Her Majesty—Buckingham Palace aide, on the Queen and the Fergie photos.
• The Quayle family believes in the power of prayer—Dan Quayle, to a Christian Coalition rally.
• A presidential campaign is not a democracy—Lyn Nofziger, Reagans political director, on the Bush campaign.
• I'm not an expert on the economy— Norman Lamont.

Shelley – Poet and Socialist (1992)

From the October 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

I became acquainted with Shelley in 1944. At the time I was eighteen years of age and a Republican remand prisoner in Belfast jail. I liked poetry and, searching for something readable in the prison library—a cupboard which they opened twice weekly to the accompaniment of bawling screws, who could see no justification for delay in lifting one of the books—I found a treasure: The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Eventually I got my own copy of Shelley and, over many, many years, I have prized it as the first real socialist literature I ever read. It is, I think, fitting that, on the 200th anniversary of his birth, an appreciation of his life’s work should appear in a socialist journal.

Poets, with their abstract notions of freedom and justice, can momentarily help a prisoner transcend the ignominy and degradation that the prison system imposes. But Shelley’s ideas of freedom and justice were no way abstract; his was no mere solace for the soul. Yes, there were the odes To The West Wind, To A Skylark, To A Cloud; beautiful word music in the classical tradition of English metrical composition.

But, more importantly, there was the wisdom that stripped to its essential ugliness a system of society that dissipates, wastes and destroys wealth in order to make its rich richer while mentally and physically impoverishing the producers of that wealth. There was the vision of a new world, a world of dignity and equality where cash would not be the measure of human need. And there was the indignation, the anguish, even the pain—sometimes written in a spontaneity of anger that defied the discipline of well-marshalled prosody. Here was a text-book of revolutionary thought that showed the futility of the cause for which I was imprisoned and extended my vision beyond the empty rhetoric of nationalism.

During his lifetime Shelley had come to Ireland to protest at the misery of the peasantry. Some Irish nationalists have equated this with sympathy for Irish nationalism but Shelley, whose constituency was the toiling masses everywhere, did not subscribe to the myth that the English working class were the beneficiaries of English imperialism. Thus, after hearing of the Peterloo Massacre at Manchester in 1819, Shelley wrote the Masque of Anarchy in which he describes the contemporary condition of the working class in England:

Asses, swine have litter spread
And with fitting food are fed;
All things have a home but one—
Thou, Oh Englishman, hast none!

This is Slavery —savage men,
Or wild beasts within a den
Would endure not as ye do—
But such ills they never knew.

This poem, consisting of some ninety-one short stanzas of varying lengths was written at Leghorn in Italy. According to his wife, Mary, when Shelley heard how the military murderers had waded into a peaceful reform protest “it . . . aroused in him violent emotions of indignation and compassion”. According to some purists, that anger adversely affected the quality of the poem.

Whatever its poetic qualities, Shelley’s Masque of Anarchy must rank, from a working-class standpoint, as the most didactic of English poetical works. His verse castigates every rotten facet of capitalism: its law, its judiciary, its priests, its parasite class and the foulness of its oppression. His words bear the reader along the path of anger and frustration seeking, it would seem, retribution, revenge.

But Shelley, in an age when violence was the tool of revolution, was too deeply perceptive of the need for democratic action if the revolution which he craved was to realise his vision. True, he makes us angry, makes us loathe this evil that murders people for profit but, on the crest of our anger, he stops us:

Then it is to feel revenge
Fiercely thirsting to exchange
Blood for blood—and wrong for wrong—
Do not thus when ye are strong.

What then? What should we do when “we are strong”? Shelley, the democratic socialist says we should use the unassailable power of our numbers. Poetically, he says we should think . . . decide:

Stand ye calm and resolute,
Like a forest, close and mute,
With folded arms and looks which are
Weapons of unvanquished war.
(…)
Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number—
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you—
Ye are many—they are few.

In 1888 Marx’s daughter, Eleanor, and her partner, Edward Aveling published an appreciation of Shelley under the title Shelley’s Socialism. The justification for their assumption is abundant throughout Shelley’s poems and prose writings.

In one of his notes to Queen Mab, Shelley quotes Godwin with approval: “there is no real wealth but the labour of man”. Prometheus Unbound, The Masque of Anarchy, Queen Mab, The Ode to Liberty, these, with his prose writings, his prologues, his sonnets and his songs chronicle the misery of the peasant and the wage slave but always, there is the optimism of the true revolutionary; the clarity of vision, as here in Prometheus Unbound, of a future where:

The Loathsome mask has fallen the man remains
Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but man
Equal, unclassed, tribeless and nationless,
Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king,
Over himself, just, gentle, wise.

In this passage from Queen Mab he criticises the way money contaminates all human relationships:

All things are sold: the very light of Heaven
Is venal; Earth’s unsparing gifts of love,
The smallest and most despicable things
That lurk in the abysses of the deep,
All objects of our life, even life itself,
And the poor pittance which the laws allow
Of liberty, the fellowship of man,
Those duties which his heart of human love
Should urge him to perform instinctively,
Are bought and sold as in a public mart
Of undisguising selfishness, that sets
On each its price, the stamp-mark of her reign.

He saw money, “paper coin—that forgery of the title deeds”, as capitalism’s instrument of theft; he saw slavery as a natural result of property society; he saw the poverty and alienation of the masses and, especially, did he decry the intellectual poverty and deception which capitalism inflicted on its wage slaves.

Richard Montague

Lamont's long wait (1992)

From the October 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

  “We have already weathered the worst of the storm and signs of stability are already appearing".

So said Lamont on 6 December . . . 1930. No, not Norman, but Robert P. Lamont, President Hoover’s Secretary of Commerce. As Marx once remarked, when history repeats itself the first time is a tragedy, the second a farce.

Following the Wall Street Crash in October 1929 industrial production in America fell continuously until by the second half of 1932 it had dropped by nearly a half. During this period the politicians and economic “experts” regularly predicted that the bottom had been reached and that recovery was just round the corner:

1 January 1930:  “I have every confidence that there will be a revival of activity in the spring and that during the coming year the country will make steady progress."—Andrew Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury, in his New Year message.

15 February 1930:   “The bottom of the business decline appears to have been reached.”—Cleveland Trust Company.

15 September 1930:  “Business appears to be turning the corner, and industrial activity seems to be increasing."—Cleveland Trust Company.

5 November 1930:  “The prospect is that by March unmistakable signs of business recovery will be available."—Standard Statistics.

21 March 1931:  “The business decline, if not already ended will end in the present half year, and be succeeded by general business improvement."—Harvard Economic Society.

27 May 1931:   “We believe that the worst of the industrial depression has been witnessed."—Standard Statistics.

18 October 1931:   “The depression has been deepened by events from abroad which are beyond the control either of our citizens or our government."—President Hoover.

26 October 1931:  "Important forecast: During the winter and early spring, business will round out the U-bottom trough."—Babsons.

1 February 1932:  “In our opinion, evidence now at hand strongly suggests that business sounded bottom in the last quarter of 1931.”— Babsons.

As in Britain over the past two years, these predictions were worthless. And for the same reason. Capitalism is an uncontrollable economic system which will bend neither to the wishes of politicians nor to the opinions of experts. But Marx was wrong. Not about slumps being inevitable from time to time under capitalism but about what happens when the same event occurs twice in history. The predictions of Robert P. Lamont in 1930 were as farcical as those of Norman N. S. H. Lamont today.

(The source of the quotes above is Faith, Fear and Fortunes by Daniel Starch, published in New York in 1934.)

What is capitalism? (1992)

From the October 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Just as some "experts” once justified the relations of feudal society as “God-given” and eternal, so today others seek to justify capitalism as an eternal state of affairs, holding good for all time. Why a small section of humankind should exclusively own, control and dispose of the means of life holding the rest of us to ransom, is a question we are encouraged not to ask. History, however, shows us that existing social relations are far from reflecting "eternal truths"; that society is dynamic, and that the society of today is just as much a result of socio-historical evolution as were previous social systems. A social and economic system comes into being through its ability to fulfil a useful social function. When it ceases to be of social use, it decays, and a new social system rises out of that decay.

In our present social system (which exists in all countries) the means of production and distribution (land, factories, offices, transport, media, communication, etc) are monopolized by a minority, the capitalist class. All wealth is produced by us, the majority working class, who sell our mental and physical energies to the capitalists in return for a price called a wage or salary. The object of wealth production is to create goods and services which can be sold on the market at a profit, not to satisfy human needs. Not only do the capitalists live off the profits they obtain from exploiting the working class, they go on accumulating wealth extracted from each generation of workers.

The influence of the capitalist class over the minds of the working class is also powerful. From the early stages of our life, they try to shape our way of thinking through the institutional brain-washing machine. In the society we live in vast impersonal forces are making for the centralization of power and a regimented society. The role of the workers in this regimented society today is unacceptable. They experience themselves as a commodity, as an investment, their aim is to become a success, that is to sell themselves as profitably as possible on the market. Our value as people lies in our saleability
not in our human qualities of love, reason or in our artistic capacities.

How did the capitalist system of society evolve? This system came out of the decay of feudalism. In spite of the horrors of the transition from feudalism to capitalism, capitalism was a great progressive force, which reorganized and linked up the world, developed the means of production to their present day level where they can provide plenty for all. Capitalism has now fulfilled its usefulness. Now the time is ripe for the working class to move on, into a different system of society— socialism—prior to that they must understand it, want it and accept it.

Michael Ghebre

Letters: Sinead O’Connor (1993)

Letters to the Editors from the February 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sinead O’Connor

Dear Editors,

It was wonderful to see the article on Sinead O’Connor in the January Socialist Standard. I wasn’t aware just how clearly she had come out about the money system, and it is very heartening to think that this stuff is getting discussed.

I had been more conscious of her strong feelings about the abusive upbringing of children. and your article has inspired me to set out my ideas about how the two areas relate to each other. I hope I can put this fairly succinctly.

To live under capitalism is to live for some other purpose than our own fulfilment, as Erich Fromm recognises. We strive and suffer, not to grow more fully ourselves, but to amass figures on a screen somewhere. Our lives only have meaning, and our needs will only be met, if someone else can extract some value from us.To live is to be used.

Does this not echo the reality of a child whose parents simply use her to carry their hopes and fears, and do not value her for who she is? Perhaps capitalism can be seen as a big abstract parent, telling us what we can’t have, punishing us for not being good enough. In the face of this system, our deepest needs have to be set aside as we try to satisfy its endlessly changing demands.

I have great respect for the Socialist Party’s realism in facing the fact that workers choose capitalism, that we arc often resistant to ideas of liberation, no matter how rationally argued. Perhaps our acceptance of such a punitive social system is merely our replaying in a different form our punitive childhoods. The resistance to change and new ideas certainly has a very rooted quality to it. I am conscious that you may react with suspicion to these suggestions on the grounds that 1 may appear to be saying “It’s not a matter of economics, but of personal insight”. But I’m not saying that. As long as we have a money system, leaders, coercion. countries, buying and selling and all the rest of it, then humanity will be held back from realising our true potential. and poverty and violence will remain endemic. What I am saying is that this personal dimension seems to me to be a hidden obstacle on the road to a truly free and humanistic society.

I am a parent myself, and no stranger to the pain of wondering if I’m being as supportive and respectful towards my children as they need me to be. Maybe sticking with what we know is a way of avoiding the fear of looking at who we are and how we relate to other people. Maybe the struggle towards a healthy society is connected with the struggle to become healthy individuals.

In any event, best of luck to you (and best of luck to Sinead O'Connor).

Peter Rigg

Nelson, Lancs

Reply:
Rest assured, we don't regard the ideas of Erich Fromm with suspicion. Quite the contrary, in fact—Editors.


Class War again

Dear Comrades,
It was a pleasure to read your article on “The Politics of Class War”. The subject was dealt with very sympathetically and I hope that any members of the CWF who happen to read it. take up your offer to discuss their views further.

Although the article stated that the CWF attracted the attention of the tabloids down South, I had never heard of them or seen any reference to their organization in the Scottish Press—although, admittedly, I am out of touch with political affairs.

Nonetheless, their viewpoint as stated in your article seemed familiar. About fifty years ago when 1 was active in working class politics, there was a European organization—I think they called themselves “Council Communists" or Spartacists (I can’t recall which)—whose literature was sold by a Glasgow organization the "Workers Open Forum”. The “Open Forum” was just that—an open forum which provided a platform for all shades of working class opinion. Every Sunday evening workers could go to the Open Forum and hear speakers from the SPGB. the SLP, the ILP, the CPGB, the Anarchist Federation, the RCP and the Labour Party. Its committee also organized debates between the various organizations mentioned. Literature from these organizations was sold at all these meetings. As you will appreciate there was little opposition from the “Telly" in those days and the meetings were well attended.

It was at these meetings that I obtained the literature of the Council Communists and, speaking from a somewhat snaky memory, I recollect that their views were similar to the CWF. The exponents of their case that I most remember were Anton Pannekoek, a Dutch astronomer, who dealt with philosophical and scientific matters, and Paul Mattick who dealt with economics. I remember them mostly for their articles in the Western Socialist.

I further recollect that they organized a meeting, either in Paris or Amsterdam, to which the SPGB was invited as an observer. The Executive Committee of that time (some forty or so years ago) declined the invitation. At the time I thought the EC were mistaken in their attitude but I can no longer remember the arguments.

Can it be that the CWF are the modern counterparts of the Council Communists? Whether they are nor not, I hope that your invitation to a dialogue is taken up.

Bob Russell

Glasgow

Reply:
As far as we know there is no direct connexion between the Council Communist group you mention and Class War— Editors.


Dear Editors,

Reading the October issue I thought I'd outline a few political points regarding Class War and anti-fascism, and the naive line of the Socialist Party.

I feel there is a great misunderstanding of the transformatory process, and the tasks to be carried out by the revolutionary working class. A revolution will entail new forms of power being used by the working class; both externally for the political struggle against the class enemy/counter-revolutionary forces, and internally for the control of anti-social behaviour (as I do not believe it will disappear overnight).

The sorts of working class active units I have in mind are closely related to the local workers councils or general assemblies. These decision-making bodies monitor the decisions made; and continuous action from, by and for the class is run by the local working class active units. Accountability in the struggle guides effective working class action on problems faced, and methods used in the past to see if they're working properly, and to devise new tactics if necessary.

“Punishment” may include violence if the class enemy is involved, and educative measures within the working class (historically this is the case). This does depend upon the particular situation facing the class though.

Also, no-go areas are not the only revolutionary strategy Class War has. I envisage widespread strikes, demonstrations, pickets, riots etc. Imagining that "the capitalist minority will be likely to cave in peacefully” is unrealistic, lacking historical backup, missing the range of bourgeois forces lined up against the working class, and the levels that they have dropped to and will drop to again.

You also misunderstand the nature of anti-fascist violence (back page, Socialist Standard, October), violence is only fascist if it is used with fascist ideas and intentions behind it. Anti-fascist violence is done with revolutionary working class ideas behind it, being one of the elements of revolutionary working class strategy.

Gerry Gable (bigwig of Searchlight) is against giving a (bourgeois) democratic platform to fascists; he recently said “I was in Germany recently and the coverage they were receiving was disgraceful. They would show young thugs attacking refugee hostels,' which was okay—it showed them for the mindless fools they are but then they would return to the studio and some well-dressed articulate neo- nazi would go on to justify these attacks in what some people would accept as a plausible fashion”. One of the working class anti-fascist strategies is no platform for fascists, the others being education and agitation.

Finally, I suggest Socialist Standard readers read The Coercive State by Hillyard and Smith. It’s a bit liberal but it carries lots of useful information on the "State of Democracy". Since it was published, however, things have got worse—people off the electoral register because of poll tax, etc. The message to be drawn is that we will never win on their terms.

I support Class War (and class warfare) because it is the war to end all wars!

Dave Clark

East London Class War 

London E8

Reply:
The danger in the "transformatory tasks” outlined is that the revolutionaries punishing, educating and guiding the rest of the population might well take on the authoritarian attitudes of a new ruling class. The only way to avoid this is to ensure that no revolution proceeds unless and until a majority of workers understand and want it. It is Class War’s failure to see the crucial importance of conscious majority action which could lead them, like "revolutionaries” in the past, into the rut of leadership tactics.

We do not agree that only intentionally fascist violence is fascistic. We are hostile to fascists, not least for their policy of dragging working-class politics into the mire of violence, and we shall play our part in defeating their pernicious ideology, using the force of scientific reason. (See the article "What the Fascists Need” elsewhere in this issue).

We have read the book which you recommend, which does indeed offer a piercing critique of the viciousness of the modern British state. For the record, one of its authors is a member of the Socialist Party and can therefore be expected to understand what the state is all about—Editors.

Old King Coal in His Labour Robes (1947)

From the February 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

January 1st, 1947, saw the opening of one of the funniest political farces for a long time, the inauguration of State coal mines under the National Coal Board: time must pass before the miners discover its tragic aspects. M.P.s who had sung the Red Flag when the law was voted presided over the unfurling of flags bearing the mystic emblem “N.C.B.” – an emblem the irreverent have already happily refashioned. Notice boards were erected at the pitheads informing the coal wage-slaves that the mines are now operated by the State “on behalf of the people.” Leaflets were handed out telling the men of the stupendous transformation. Meetings were held and speeches delivered, at one of which Sir Ben Smith, now a regional coal official, told his miner audience they had reached “the end of a road.” Enough time and energy were spent on publicity to have raised a hundred thousand tons of coal, and all of it based, it, seems, on the curious notion that if you really had removed a prisoner’s handcuffs and leg-irons and thrown open the gates of his prison, you have to tell him so in case it should look to him that to-day is just like yesterday.

Cabinet ministers graced a ceremony at the Board’s London headquarters and the Minister of Fuel. Mr. Shinwell, handed over a specially bound copy of the Act to Lord Hyndley, the Chairman of N.C.B. Mr. Shinwell spoke about the campaign for nationalisation having at last triumphantly reached its goal. He said a few words about the pioneers – Mr. Keir Hardie and Mr. Robert Smillie – though it is at least open to question whether those two, if they were alive to-day, would feel gratified at what has come out of their well-meant but mistaken labours for nationalisation. The workers asked for nationalisation because they thought it would mean higher wages, and security against speeding-up and unemployment. The industrial capitalists wanted cheaper coal for their factories and thought that unification and modernisation of the mines was the way to get it. The Labour Government has adroitly wedded the two by giving the capitalists what they wanted but under the name that appeals to the workers. The catch will disclose itself in due course.

At Horden Colliery, Durham, the secretary of the local miners’ union “dropped a hatchet into a hole dug in the ground under the National Coal Board flagstaff. They were burying the hatchet, he said, as a symbol that in future there would be no dispute between owners and men. It was the end of the old regime” (Manchester Guardian, 6/1/47). The hatchet is already being dug up again long before it has had time to rust, and it is obvious that some at least of the miners have no illusions. The National Union of Mineworkers, on January 2nd, issued a statement that the miners do not intend to abandon the strike weapon. The statement was issued, the Union explained, in order to correct “a mistaken impression” that had got into the Press (News Chronicle, 3/1/47).

Mr. Ernest Thurtle, Labour M.P., informed the readers of his column in the Sunday Express that “capitalism has been deposed.” “A Socialist theory of long standing is being put to an acid test. It is that if private profit is taken out of an industry, and that industry is owned and controlled for the benefit of the nation as a whole, then the workers in it will exert themselves with increased zeal and enthusiasm” (Sunday Express, 5/1/47). Of course, the tongue-in-its-cheek Daily Worker (4/1/47) had to lend itself to the same game, with a report of a fall in absenteeism under the heading “State Pits Spur Miners to Record Turnout.”

Then to crown the farce one of the “people” who now own the pits was had up in court for stealing “coal worth 1s. 6d. belonging to the National Coal Board” (Daily Express, 7/1/47). The magistrate, binding him over, said “the coal was now the property of the King and stealing it was a serious offence.” Apparently the man had thought it at least equally serious that “he had no coal at home.”

A week later another criminal act took place. Someone unknown, either “as a prank or as an expression of hostility towards nationalisation,” had stolen the N.C.B, flag hoisted at Upton Colliery, Yorkshire. He had taken it “from the 50-foot flagpole which stands near the main offices.” The local miners’ secretary told a reporter “its disappearance had caused indignation among the 700 miners at the pit” (Manchester Guardian, 13/1/47).

Then, by contrast with the flag-wagging and jollifications, Lord Hyndley, Chairman of N.C.B., told some sober facts about the Board’s plans. Writing in the Observer (5/1/47), he mentioned the problem of “the closing of uneconomic pits and consequent transfer of labour,” the raising of £150 million new capital to modernise the mines, increase output and eliminate waste, and the likelihood that out of the proceeds of the industry some £10 million a year will eventually be needed to pay interest on the capital. (What Mr. Thurtle calls “taking private profit out of an industry” is thus shown merely to consist of calling profit by another name.) Of course, Lord Hyndley gave assurances that in all that is done to secure the production of coal “at the minimum cost,” due regard will be paid to the miners; but they will find that being speeded up, and being eliminated from their jobs by labour-displacing machinery, tastes just as bitter when served out by the capitalist State under the N.C.B. Flag as it does without those trimmings.

Looking to the future, it can be seen that the pressure to screw more and more production out of the miners will he accelerated as cheaper fuels come into competition with coal. The likely development of atomic energy is one and oil is another. The Manchester Guardian (2/1/47) points out that the proposed oil pipe line from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean “would make it profitable to sell oil here at, half the present price. With the cost of coal being what it is and transport on the verge of a great; development of the continuous combustion engine or gas turbine, cheap oil would deeply affect Britain’s industrial future.”

These developments will also deeply affect the miners, and help prove to them that, far from having reached the goal of Socialism which will emancipate them and other workers from capitalist wage-slavery, the struggle has yet to be waged. The ballyhoo surrounding the inauguration of State capitalism in the coal fields serves only to mislead them and to direct their minds away from the real issue that concerns the working class.

 Edgar Hardcastle

The Economics of False Teeth (1947)

From the February 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

The prolonged dispute between the official representatives of the dental profession and the Government over the scale of fees for the supply of dentures to panel patients under the National Health Insurance scheme has brought the art of mechanical (as distinct from surgical) dentistry rather prominently before the public eye. A few days before Christmas Mr. W. J. Brown, M.P., shocked the members of the profession by publishing a statement of some of the main facts relating to the production of dentures and the pay of the producers (Evening Standard, 20/12/46). In the words of Mr Brown, “In the West End you pay anything from 30 to 40 guineas for a set of teeth. In the provinces from 10 to 15. Even under the National Insurance scheme the price is over seven guineas. But the actual cost of the material which goes into a set of dentures is only about 15s. The balance represents the wages of the mechanics . . . and above all, the profit of the dentist. For the mechanic, on an average rate of £5 to £6 a week, will make several sets of dentures in a week’s work.” Here we have a fairly neat summary of small capitalist exploitation in a handicraft.

Artificial dentures, unlike boots and shoes, and clothes generally, cannot be mass produced. There is no such thing as making for stock. Every set of dentures must be moulded to a pair of models taken from impressions of the individual patient’s mouth. Hence there is little scope for machinery in the production of dentures and the capital outlay on a dental workshop is small as compared with that on the normal run of productive establishments. A considerable number of mechanics, financially more fortunate than the majority of their fellows, have set up such workshops, but the provisions of the Dentists Act of 1921 prohibits anyone not on the Dental Register from taking impressions. Hence the mechanic working on his own account can only deal openly with a member of the profession and not with the public directly. He cannot therefore obtain the full market price for his commodity under normal conditions. Moreover, even in this narrow sphere, the middle-man has managed to insert himself, and a few fairly substantial concerns, employing, perhaps, a few dozen of the more poverty stricken mechanics, have claimed their percentage of the dentist’s profit.

As Mr. Brown points out, however, the 1921 Act has not prevented mechanics from repairing and even reconstructing existing dentures, and during the war a regular rash of repair shops has sprung up in most large centres of population. The dental profession have a shrewd and probably well-founded impression that behind the mask of the repair shop a good deal of illegal impression-taking goes on. Hence their desire to wipe out the repair-shops by means of a clause in the new Health Services Bill. Side by side with this effort they are demanding nine guineas as the price of a set of panel dentures (representing about eight hours’ work on the part of the mechanic), to which the dentist himself contributes about an hour of his time, although, of course, it is highly skilled labour. Whatever the outcome of the dispute, the position of the majority of mechanics will remain that of wage-slaves. Their direct or indirect employers are not agitating for higher fees in order to have the pleasure of paying more wages. During the war the small “ sectional organisations of mechanics, inside the larger bodies such as N.U.D.A.W. (and the Society of Goldsmiths, etc., in London), gained official recognition from the associations of professional men. Little serious effort has been made, however, on the part of these associations to compel their members to take mechanics seriously by respecting the terms of the national agreement. A temporary scarcity of mechanics has enabled them to force up wages in an endeavour to meet the rising cost of living. This appears to have reached its limit and even a Trade Union hospital such as Manor House has scrapped the grading scheme and adopted a wage scale which private employers are quite willing to pay. Bemused by the fancied advantages of “nationalisation” (in some form or another), the mechanics’ officials attach more importance to co-operating with their employers on public bodies than to improving their ability to defend their own interests. Under the new National Health scheme the wage-negotiating machinery will remain, as now, under the control of a Joint Council of masters and men with an alleged common interest in “the welfare of the craft” as a guiding idea.

Mr. Brown’s article leaves the reader with the impression that the legalisation of impression-taking by the mechanics would solve the problem; but the general poverty of the major portion of “the public.” (i.e., the working class) makes intense competition either for work or customers more or less inevitable. Any considerable increase of mechanics working on their own account would lead to a considerable number going broke and losing their savings, much as happens in other branches of production, etc., where the small man seems, on the surface, to have a fighting chance. The fight is short and the longest purse wins the day. Attempts to answer Mr. Brown in the columns of the Evening Standard followed on January 1st, 1947.

Lt.-Col. Drury, representing a group of dental surgeons, held up his hands in horror that an M.P. should boast of encouraging a defiance of the law and roundly declared that mechanics had insufficient knowledge of anatomy to take impressions. Unfortunately for the Colonel’s argument, the 1921 Act also placed on the register hundreds of men who, without calling themselves dentists, had for years been operating on mouths (as well as taking impressions) without any college training. These men, obviously, had no more access to knowledge of anatomy than the average mechanic. Further, it is obvious to any layman that taking an impression is not a surgical operation. It still seems to be true that the “professional” section of society are distinguished from the rest of the working class chiefly by their larger conceit.

Eric Boden

Priority Imports (1947)

From the February 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

  “A cargo of uranium ore from the Belgian Congo which arrived in the Elder Dempster ship, Fulani, is being handled at Toxteth Dock, Liverpool. It is contained in nearly 1,300 drums, weighing altogether more than 860 tons”

(Daily Telegraph, 20/11/46).

The Nationalisation of the Railways (1947)

From the January 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

Railway nationalisation has a long and varied history. In comparatively recent times it has occupied a prominent place in the Labour Party programmes, has been backed by railway unions, and has been made an urgent problem for Governments because of the rise of competing motor traffic. Yet the first Act of Parliament giving the British Government power to take over the railways was passed over 100 years ago, more than half a century before the petrol motor was invented or the Labour Party was born. The Railway Regulation Act was passed in 1844 under Sir Robert Peel’s Conservative Government and was introduced into the House of Commons by Gladstone, at that time a Conservative Free Trader and President of the Board of Trade. The immediate purpose of the Act was to force the railways to reduce charges in the interests of the whole body of capitalist manufacturers and traders, by holding over their heads the threat of nationalisation. The power was never used, but the threat remained a useful weapon. It is an odd commentary on the broad continuity of policy under different governments that if the compensation terms of that Act had been applied before the recent War (25 times the annual profits based on a three-year average) the compensation would have been very near to the £900 millions that the Labour Government now offers. (If applied to the past three years when traffic and revenue were swollen by abnormal war conditions, the compensation would have been more.)

The Labour Government’s Transport Bill provides for the nationalisation of Railways, Road Haulage (except short-distance local carriers), Canals and Buses and Trams. London Passenger Transport Board will be included in the scheme, and power will be given to take over harbours. The present owners will be bought out. The whole organisation, employing nearly 1,000,000 workers will be managed by Boards set up by the Government. When the Bill becomes law British capitalism will have entered on a new stage in the organisation and control of inland transport, nearly a century after railway nationalisation began in some European countries. In Britain it has been a story of continuous conflict, between the sectional groups of capitalists who owned the various means of transport and the whole body of capitalists who depended on them. The former were out to get maximum profits; the latter wanted cheap and efficient service. The owners of the transport services also competed with each other. Proprietors of horse-drawn coaches on the 18th and early 19th century Turnpike roads were at war with the Turnpike Trusts over the tolls the latter charged for passage on the roads. With the first canal in 1761 an era of competition began between road and canal; followed after 1825 by the entry of a new competitor, the railways. The manufacturers needed the railways, but the canal and road vehicle proprietors used every effort in Parliament to protect their own investments by preventing the railways from being built. In due course the railways triumphed, then fought each other for traffic, then went in for amalgamation to protect themselves against wasteful competition.

At this stage a long battle was waged by traders to get the State to exercise more and more control over railway fares and charges. In the present century the petrol motor brought the roads back into the picture and it was now the turn of the railways to use their influence in Parliament against their road rivals. Already before 1914, many observers had become convinced that British capitalists’ problem of underselling the new great trading powers, Germany, America, Japan, etc., in the markets of the world required unification of inland transport with State ownership, or at least close State control, so that the whole body of manufacturers would get cheaper transport for their goods. Their chief argument was that national unification would eliminate wasteful competition and overlapping, and permit charges to be reduced. Supporters of the movement for nationalisation were the Fabian, Mr Emil Davies, the Liberal, Sir Leo Chiozza Money, and other Liberal and Labour politicians, as well as manufacturers and traders. It was, however, road competition that gave the movement new life, and in 1919 the Tory-Liberal Coalition Government declared its intention of nationalising, though it then drew back and contented itself with the compulsory amalgamation of the numerous large and small railways into the four existing companies.

It was Mr Lloyd George who, in March 1918, told a TUC deputation on nationalisation of railways and canals that “he was in complete sympathy with the general character of the proposals put forward”; and Mr Churchill, who said at Dundee, December 4th, 1918, “that the Government policy was the nationalisation of the railways (The Times, December 5th, 1918). It has remained for the Labour Government to complete what the Coalition Government in 1918 hesitated to do. Truly, as the Daily Herald remarks (November 19th, 1946): “the co-ordination of transport has been advocated by people who are far from Socialist in outlook”.

The reactions of the capitalists to the present Bill reflect their various sectional interests. The Manchester Guardian and The Times are much concerned with the new organisation that is to be set up, wanting to be satisfied that it will provide cheap and efficient transportation.

While most newspapers maintain that the compensation terms are harsh, one exception is the Beaverbrook Evening Standard (November 19th, 1946), which suggests that the shareholders have little to complain about and that it is the “taxpayer” to whom the deal “by no means represents a bargain”.

The Economist (December 7th, 1946) takes a cautious view. It starts off from the proposition that the railways and the road transport industry together are much more than is needed to carry the traffic. In fact, as the recent war showed, the railway system “is still about large enough to carry the whole burden”. Consequently it would be possible to divide the traffic between railways and road transport in such a way that each handled the kind of traffic it could deal with most efficiently and most cheaply. The railways could handle long-distance traffic and the road industry could act as “feeder” to the railways. The important point to notice is that this unification would enable both industries to dispense with a great deal of their present equipment (including railway branch lines) and reduce the number of workers employed, these economies being the chief object aimed at. Why the Economist hesitates about endorsing nationalisation is that it considers further inquiry is necessary to make sure that these economies can actually be achieved and that the structure proposed in the Bill is likely to produce them.

The Liberal Party issued a statement supporting the nationalisation of the railways (as it had also done at the General election, 1945), but opposing nationalisation of the general road transport industry. The Liberal view is that nationalisation will only give “cheapness and efficiency” if competition is retained. In their view there should be nationalisation of the railways, canals and docks, and also of the road transport services owned by the railways, but the rest of road transport should be left to compete with the nationalised concern. The Liberal Party also considers that the compensation arrangements are unsatisfactory (Manchester Guardian, December 11th, 1946).

Naturally the shareholders clamour for higher compensation. Their special grievance is that, unlike the Bank of England shareholders, they are not being guaranteed the same income as they were getting during or before the war. In effect, they are to receive a State-guaranteed income of about £22,500,000 a year in place of a larger but uncertain sum they received as shareholders in concerns the profitability of which had been rendered precarious by road competition. How the shareholders must regret not having jumped at Nationalisation on the much better terms they would have got in 1919, when profits and share values were higher!

So much for the shareholders. What of the workers? The workers merely change one employer for another; little else is changed, for the State undertaking, as the Daily Herald specially emphasises (November 19th, 1946), has got to pay its way. The Evening Standard remarks that nationalisation cannot bring any possible benefit to the railway worker—”for him it can mean neither higher wages nor shorter hours” (November 19th, 1946) And the Observer, in like vein, says, “It . . . leaves the transport workers and the consumers to wonder what difference it can make to them except for the worse” (December 1st, 1946). The sudden solicitude of these two journals for the worker is naturally suspect, but “Critic” writing in the Labour New Statesman (November 30th, 1946), also confesses that “nationalisation of the railways . . . really doesn’t much matter to anyone except the shareholders, who seem likely to make an uncommonly good thing out of it”. This deserves notice, coming as it does from a year-long supporter of nationalisation.

Another journal which has had a sudden flash of enlightenment is the News Chronicle. Writing on the trade union “closed shop”, and the danger it involves that if for any reason a man forfeits his union membership “he becomes an economic outlaw and may be unable to get a job at all in his trade”, the News Chronicle (November 21st, 1946) goes on to discover that “an even worse danger threatens in a society which is moving steadily towards ever wider nationalisation”, the danger that a worker will have to belong to one “monopoly union”, that union tending more and more to co-operate with the employer – the State – rather than represent the interests of the men. It will no doubt surprise the News Chronicle to be told that the Socialist Party of Great Britain at its formation 42 years ago was pointing out to the workers that nationalisation of an industry would put the worker even more at the mercy of the employer, the State. With competing concerns a worker sacked from one may seek employment in another, but the worker who earns the displeasure of the State monopoly and loses his job is effectively barred from the whole industry.

The other problem affecting the workers is that of redundancy.  Nationalisation, by eliminating overlapping will lead to the displacement of many workers, and even if some compensation is provided and they manage to get other jobs, it is bound to mean a worsened position for many of them. It was always the complaint of railwaymen, when the railways were being amalgamated, that a railwayman’s specialised training is largely useless for other occupations. The advocates of nationalisation have not been blind to the certainty that it would mean the displacement of many workers: it has, in fact, been one of their main arguments in its favour that it would eliminate waste. Mr Emil Davies in the Fabian pamphlet State Purchase of Railways (1910, p. 19), suggested that railway nationalisation ought therefore to be introduced gradually in order not to throw too many men out of work at once.

The Labour Government has kept its pledge to nationalise transport, but for the workers it is all sound and fury, signifying nothing. Nationalisation is State capitalism and leaves untouched the real problem of the working class of emancipating themselves from capitalist exploitation.

Edgar Hardcastle

The Wrong Way (1947)

From the January 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

The first day on which the daily newspapers were able to increase their size—September 23rd, 1946— the Daily Herald saw fit to commence publication of a series of articles by J. B. Priestley, entitled “The Mood of the People.” It seemed strange to read on the same page, first the Editorial, which said that the advancement of the Labour cause was the task which the Daily Herald wanted to perform and, second, the article by Mr. Priestley, which was a bitter attack on the present behaviour of the workers.

"Too many people are going the wrong way,” he said, by which he meant that there is “a dwindling interest in the job. A cynical indifference as to what value is given for money received. An undisguised contempt for the customer. And too much downright dishonesty.” He was careful to safeguard himself by saying that most people are doing their decent best, and he had noticed in his own special fields of interest that the people to-day are livelier and more intelligent but, says he, the fact still remains that too many people, including a high proportion of the young, are going the ‘‘wrong way.” He claims they are losing their community sense, all pride and interest in the job—they are “rapidly becoming bad mannered, lazy and cheaply cynical.”

He points out that the workers no longer feel the threat of unemployment and poverty—that the world has been improved, otherwise such people would not feel at liberty to behave so badly in it. Whilst giving him credit for not wishing to see conditions which produce unemployment and poverty we cannot but take exception to his effort to get the workers to work harder simply for the reason that we think, and apparently we are not alone, that the world has not been improved, nor the threat of unemployment and poverty removed by the advent of a Labour Government. If workers find themselves in ‘‘an emotional and spiritual vacuum” now it must be because all the hot air exuded by Labour Party candidates to gain votes at the General Election has too rapidly risen to the skies and left a void behind.

According to Mr. Priestley we are now taking part in a gradual slow-motion revolution, and new incentives must be found to get the workers to give the wheel a shove instead of applying the brake.

All of this might be good if it were true; if Socialism were here—but, unfortunately, it is false.

Where is this revolution that is “transforming our whole society’’?

Is it a revolution to have caused the Bank of England stockholders and the owners of a few other large concerns to exchange their stock for Government securities—their stake in a corporation for a stake (of greater security) in the National Treasury. Is it a revolution to have introduced the payment of family allowances—which will have a depressing influence on wages? Is it a revolution to introduce social ” security ” schemes, which with their niggardly increases merely bring pre-war pensions and doles approximately in line with the present cost of living?

These are the sort of things for which the voters voted. For reforms—not revolution; for patching up the old society—not for transforming it; for capitalism —not for Socialism.

Mr. Priestley, flirting with Russian “stakanovisin.” says that in order to get the best out of men and women a system of ‘‘functional privilege” should be introduced—different baits in different jobs—until there is plenty of everything for everybody and everybody can buy what they like! Here we have the crux of the matter and find that these articles are only another form of apology for present-day capitalism. Simply the old argument dressed up in fine phrases—the workers should work harder to put the country on a sound profit-making basis, rebuild its export trade, then, when a surplus has been produced, sit back and enjoy it to the full.

No wonder Mr. Priestley cries, ” Away with dry and dreary economists—we want a psychological approach” !

"Give us a carrot or two!”, he pleads.

The capitalist class has been dangling carrots of all shapes, sizes and descriptions in front of the workers’ noses for a century or more! Yet Mr. Priestley wants a carrot!

For the past seven years the workers have been exhorted by all means of propaganda to eat carrots instead of oranges—yet Mr. Priestley wants more carrots.

Now we have a Labour Government promising all sorts of goodies in the misty future—yet Mr. Priestley still wants more carrots!

As workers we can’t understand the man. ”A little elementary psychology,” indeed—for whom?

Look around you, Mr. Priestley—there is no need to go to Russia to use your powers as a “trained observer.” Is the economic position of the working class in our society basically different from what it has been since the birth of capitalism? Has the Labour Government expropriated the wealth which the capitalist class call their “private” property, but which is the accumulated labour of millions of workers extracted from them during tens of decades of vicious exploitation? Have they taken it, and are they administering it as the common property of the whole of society? And, in doing so, have they thereby removed the necessity for all workers to find a buyer for their ability to work before they can acquire the wherewithal to eat, drink, clothe, and sleep? Is it no longer necessary to find a market for and to sell at a profit the things which are produced?

The answer to all these questions is- NO!

How, then, can there ever be plenty of everything for everybody under such conditions?

It is common ground for all economists that a "sellers" market exists to-day—almost anything that can be produced will find a willing and eager buyer anywhere in the world. As a consequence, all nations are producing as much as they can in order to sell as much as possible in the markets available before they become saturated with goods. When the markets become saturated, and there are signs of it already, prices and profits will tend to fall as a result of competition which will become keener and keener as supply exceeds demand. As a result of the imminent fall in prices the capitalist class will he driven to cutting costs, and this will be done by decreasing wages and staffs and getting more work out of each worker left employed. Thus when there is plenty of everything will he precisely the time when the majority of the people—the working class—will have less money to spend, and a greater inability to buy the goods they have produced.

It is no good Labour spokesmen prating about full employment and social security—they can provide neither so long as profit-making is the aim of production, whether this latter be State controlled or privately controlled. The whole mentality of the Labour Party clearly shows that there is no intention of producing goods solely for the use of the community, and the fact must therefore he faced that in carrying on production for profit they are acting as the agents of capitalism, and against the interests of the workers.

The Labour Party, with roseate phrases, has taken its stand as an allegedly working-class party, and now that it has obtained power it is faced with the insoluble problem of running capitalism and yet trying to satisfy working-class demands. It cannot do this, and must not be surprised, therefore, if the workers’ instinctive revulsion to increased exploitation becomes apparent.

Although some of the tendencies of the modern working class ay he obnoxious to those whose minds can conceive of no better world than one in which goods are produced for sale, it seems to us very questionable whether they are going the wrong way. Perhaps they are instinctively going the right way, and when instinct gives place to knowledge, we have no doubt they will sweep away every vestige of capitalism, including all its intellectual apologists, and set up a society in their own interests based on the common ownership of the means of wealth production.

Then, there will be plenty of everything we need and no need to buy anything.

N. S.

Whither Arthur Koestler (1947)

Book Review from the January 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Thieves in the Night,” Arthur Koestler’s new book, has the sub-title, "Chronicle of an Experiment," the experiment being the foundation of a Palestinian Settlement. Actually the purpose of the book appears to be to tell us about Koestler's latest ideas hopes and fears, these being expressed through characters who are rather mouthpieces than individuals with a life of their own.

The scene of "Thieves in the Night" is laid in pre-war Palestine and opens with the arrival of Jewish refugees armed with tractors and fertilisers at yet another settlement, determined as always to make "the desert blossom as the rose," and to put to shame the miserable Arabs scratching the earth with a wooden plough. Both these intentions are realised. Meantime persecution of Jews in Europe proceeds apace, the British Government limits immigration into Palestine in 1939, and as a reaction Jewish terrorism breaks out. It is indeed a topical book!

It states the case for the Jews, more particularly the so-called Revisionists against the Arabs in a forcible manner. But even the editor of the "Jewish Standard" (the organ of the Revisionists of Great Britain) reviewing the book, feels that Koestler is a little unfair to the Arabs. The Revisionists are one of the very many sects or parties of Zionists, perhaps the most radical, who violently oppose partition and any form of compromise short of having the whole of Palestine for the Jews, with the Arabs as a minority. Vladimir Jabotinsky was the founder of the movement, and it is to him that the book is dedicated.

Koestler was a Revisionist in pre-war Vienna, and it would appear that he is par excellance a man basing all political aspirations on emotions and the whim of the moment, his sympathies moving as on a pendulum. In 1931 he joined the Communist Party and spent a year in the U.S.S.R. In 1936 he went to Spain as a journalist to cover the Spanish War. He was filled with indignation at the horrors of civil war and from it emerged "Spanish Testament.” His works, “Darkness at Noon" and the "Yogi and the Commissar,” portrayed his disillusionment with Soviet Russia and his swing away from the Communist Party. It was whilst he was enamoured of [the] Soviet Russia that he dropped Zionism believing that "Socialism,” though presumably by this he meant Russian State capitalism, would be the solution to the Jewish problem. This did not, however, worry his Jewish friends, who knew his pendulum-like temperament; Jabotinsky is reputed to have said, “he will return to the fold again.” He appears to have done so. Bauman, the Jewish terrorist leader of “Thieves in the Night,” says:—“We can’t wait until Socialism solves all racial problems. That will perhaps happen one day, but long before that day we shall have been exterminated ” (page 296).

Koestler has now concluded that Socialism is not the solution to Palestine's problems but it is not Socialism but merely his misconception of Socialism that is at fault. The Socialist Party of Great Britain did not make his mistake concerning the Russian revolution, hence it does not experience Koestler’s disillusionment, nor yet conclude that terrorism is the solution.

The Revisionists view Britain’s intentions in Palestine in a decidedly realistic manner. They realise that British capitalism requires Palestine as a Middle Eastern base, and wish to deny it to any potential enemy. They realise that no base is effective if the native population is definitely hostile. Their terrorist acts are based on the supposition that if the Jews in Palestine show themselves capable of waging war and thus make the use of the base untenable the British will fall in with their wishes and hand over Palestine to their control.

This does not, however, take into account the fact that the Palestinian Arabs do not stand alone, but are backed by the Arab Federation plus the might of Great Britain. A bloody civil war therefore is not unlikely if their present terrorism continues. Dissension also exists among the Jews. The Jewish Agency has pledged itself to reduce terrorism and it was reported in the Daily Telegraph (November 11th, 1946) that the Haganah, the Jewish defence organisation, had begun an underground war to suppress the terrorist organisations, the Stern Gang and the Irgun Zvail Leumi.

The real solution of the Jewish problem seems distant. It does not lie in terrorism nor yet in partition. The problem will remain while capitalism remains. The working class, whether they be Jews or Arabs, must free themselves from the chains of nationalism and tackle their class problem on the basis of Socialist understanding. Nationalism is a cloak that covers the real aims and interests of the ruling class of the major capitalist countries and is a hindrance to the development of a Socialist movement. International comradeship for a Socialist world may seem at the moment a long way off; but it must come if we are to survive. Koestler’s acceptance of terrorism as a solution to the problem of Palestine (and he appears to accept it as such, in this book) helps nobody.

W. P.

On The Air! Or In The Air? (1947)

From the January 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard 

In the Daily Herald Hannen Swaffer writes: “So ‘narrow' is the B.B.C. supposed to be politically that I have been congratulated by more than one M.P. on my ‘artfulness’ in introducing into my ‘birthday party’ in ‘Monday Night at Eight’ a talk in which I assured young John Clark—he plays 'Just William’ on the air—that he is not facing an age of slavery but an era of broader freedom.” (Daily Herald, November 4th. 1946.)

Of course, an assurance by Hannen Swaffer, or anyone else, of an era of “broader freedom” without facts to justify it, is simply a matter of opinion and carries no weight. All that Swaffer did was to register his belief that the Labour Government would bring about that happy state of affairs. And, further, to repudiate the Tory suggestion that nationalisation would usher in the servile state. How far do the Labour Party’s achievements to date support his assumption?

Take, for instance, the drive for greater production. It is safe to say that the Tories would have met with less success in persuading the workers to greater efforts. But greater effort means intensification of labour. Whether the workers are driven by the threat of unemployment, or deceived by ambitious politicians and trade union leaders, the result is the same. The wage-slaves' are sunk to lower depths of enslavement, instead of being raised to a “broader freedom.” 

Accepting profit as the motive justifying capital expenditure, the Labour Government—backed by the Communists—have stressed the purely capitalist need to export in order to obtain imports. Under Socialism where production would be democratically controlled by the people, producing for themselves, no such complications could arise. Balance of exports and imports and maintaing profits and the balance of power would be things of the past, the only power necessary being labour power, and that no longer a commodity. It is the abolition of this commodity character of human labour power that is the Socialist objective.

But the Labour Government, while proclaiming a Socialist objective, are compelled to use their power to intensify capitalist exploitation, so that their “road to Socialism” appears to be the road to ever worsening conditions. Up to the present neither the Labour Government, nor the Labour Party, has ever shown how Socialism can be achieved except by making Socialists, a task they have always shirked.

In spite of their assertion that we have “Socialism,” human energy is still a commodity, bought and sold on the labour market. It is, as always, the workers only possession that can be changed into cash. Only by the sale of that commodity can the worker obtain wage or salary with which to buy the necessities of life. The normal condition on the labour market is a limited demand for the labour commodity. A condition that places the capitalist in an advantageous position in fixing wages.

It is only at times when there is an abnormal demand for labour that the workers are in a favoured position to increase wages. Such a position is, according to the spokesmen of all parties, prevalent now, yet the Government, assisted by the trade union leaders, are using all their powers of persuasion to prevent the workers from taking advantage of the situation. Why? Because the policy on which they were returned to power is increased trade by way of more efficient machinery and more work. And they are forced to argue that prosperous trade for the capitalist means prosperity for the workers, an argument that is plausible but only true to a strictly limited extent, and even to that extent entirely dependent on the efforts of the workers themselves.

No! Hannen Swaffer’s opinion of an era of “broader freedom” is only wishful thinking. A “broader freedom” for the mass of the people—the working class—cannot be achieved by concentrating their efforts on a drive for increased world trade in their masters’ interests. That way lies fiercer and ever fiercer competition, with the workers’ share of the increased production always anchored to the cost of living. Their “era of a broader freedom” must always recede into the distant future while they neglect to study Socialism. Because only Socialism with common ownership in the means of fife and democratic control by the people as a whole, can give us an “era of broader freedom” and emancipate us from the servile capitalist state.

F. Foan

Proper Gander: Sugar Rush (2011)

The Proper Gander column from the December 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

A new adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has appeared on our screens. The main character is Willy Wonka, who sits at the heart of his gleaming business empire. One day, he decides to hold a competition to lure the greediest children into his exclusive world. In a cruel endurance test, the selected kids are picked off one-by-one until the winner is rewarded with their own company. In the BBC’s new version, the affable-yet-intimidating Willy Wonka is played by Lord Alan Sugar and they’ve changed the title to Young Apprentice.

This is really a youthful spin-off from The Apprentice, of course. But that shouldn’t stop the estate of Roald Dahl from claiming royalties. In both Apprentice shows the contestants divide into teams which compete to make the most money. Their tasks are usually to market and sell a product: ice creams in week one, baby products in week two. Each week, a member of the losing team is ‘fired’ by the pointing of Lord Sugar’s chubby finger. Oompa-Loompa co-judges Nick Hewer and Karren Brady unfortunately don’t break into song after each contestant leaves. Instead, they sit disapprovingly in the background, occasionally raising an eyebrow when someone says something crass, such as claiming a flower arrangement had “rainforest chic”.

The teenagers taking part are all of the Veruca Salt variety: over-confident, self-obsessed and as irritating as sandpaper underwear. They all speak in vomit-inducing slogans from motivational posters: “I’m not focused on making friends, I’m focused on getting to my goals”, “I’m a ball of enthusiasm waiting to explode”. In fact, they don’t behave much differently to their pound-sign-eyed older counterparts in The Apprentice, and that’s what’s most unsettling. People are rightly concerned about children being exposed to sexual or violent influences. But why aren’t more of us also worried about how they can be corrupted by the world of big business? Why should children aspire to be money-hungry power-dressers with a permanent sneer? On a visit to London’s Natural History Museum, one contestant announced “I hate both nature and history but if it makes money then I’ll get to like it”.

And during a task to flog gadgets to the over 50s, another said “old people do just wanna like sorta dash their money ‘cos they just don’t see the point in saving any more”. Sadly, the winner of Young Apprentice will be the one who takes these attitudes furthest.

Perhaps they’ll use their winnings to open a chocolate factory?

Mike Foster

50 Years Ago: Stalin – the God Who Fell (2011)

The 50 Years Ago column from the December 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

For Stalin, the final disgrace.

His simple grave now mocks the memory of the days when he was the great dictator, who could make Krushchev caper like a court jester.

It mocks, too, the memory of the fulsome praise that was heaped upon him when his pitiless rule was at its height. Here is part of a poem which was published in Pravda on August 28th, 1936:

O Great Stalin, O Leader of the Peoples,
Thou who didst give birth to man,
Thou who didst make fertile the earth,
Thou who dost rejuvenate the Centuries.
Thou who givest blossom to the spring, . . .

And this is Krushchev himself, speaking at the eighteenth Congress in 1938 on the extermination of Stalin’s opponents:

  ‘. . . Our victory in defeating the fascist agents—all these despicable trotskyists, bukharinists and bourgeois nationalists—we owe above all to the personal effort of our great leader, comrade Stalin. . . . Long live the towering genius of all humanity, the teacher and the guide who is leading us victoriously to Communism, our beloved comrade Stalin.’

Now that the truth about the “beloved comrade” is officially acknowledged in Moscow, we can expect some more rewriting of history, just as it was when Stalin wanted to eliminate the memory of his enemies.

In England the Communist Party will be in confusion for some time. Always taking their line from Moscow, they were among Stalin’s worshippers, and disregarded the facts about the Russian dictator which Socialists, and others put before them. The latest change of policy will be hard to swallow, even for them.

(from editorial, Socialist Standard, December 1961)