Corrections. (2006)

From the July 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Political trainspotters will have noticed the mistake in the part of last month's Greasy Pole devoted to Margaret Beckett when we said she "once savaged Neil Kinnock for his refusal to back Tony Blair against Denis Healey for the Deputy Party leadership". The Tony in question was of course Benn not Blair. Our apologies.

Also last month, in reply to a letter on "redirecting production to meet needs", we wrote that "it has been suggested that world food production would have to be increased by at least 60 percent to get to a position of sufficiency for everybody on the planet". To avoid misunderstanding, this suggestion referred to more than basic food needs. Total food production even today is theoretically enough, if evenly divided, to prevent anyone dying of starvation. "Enough food is now produced worldwide to provide sufficient calories for all humans, but distribution is uneven and unequitable" (http://uk.encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia _761576477/Food_Supply_World.html#s 3). Of course, in socialism, with the artificial scarcity and organised waste of capitalism gone, enough food will be able to be produced to provide a more than adequate diet for all.

The editorial in April stated that "real power today does not lie in elected bodies but in the hands of those who own the world's wealth". This was a reference to the power to take economic decisions not to political power - the power to set the machinery of state in motion - which is in the hands of governments ultimately responsible to elected bodies, even if used today in the interest of those who own the world's wealth since those currently elected support and sustain capitalism.

What price democracy? (2006)

From the July 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Recent scandals about donations to political parties confirm that under capitalism some – those with money – are more equal than others.

Births – marriages – deaths – everything in capitalism, even that which currently passes for democracy, has a price, and last month the Electoral Commission, an independent body that oversees political party spending on elections, published its balance sheet on the costs of the last UK General Election.

Mrs Blair, the wife of the Prime Minister, who was not contesting any constituency, apparently spent £7,700 on having her hair done.  The acceptance of this by the independent commission presumably means that this woman’s hair was in some way related to the electoral system that is supposed to underwrite our alleged freedom of choice.

There were other serious items: £3,638 went on make-up for the then Tory leader, Michael Howard – an expense that failed utterly to disguise his loutish leer.  The Labour Party spent £264,000 on a bus and another £75,000 having it converted and yet a further £3,172 re-branding it as the Prescott Express – a somewhat tantalising sobriquet in the light of recent events.

And then there were the very serious items; very serious because the huge amounts involved were spent on providing personnel in the form of spin doctors and professional liars skilled in mendacity and obfuscation who it was calculated could con voters into parting with their votes.  £441,000 was paid to an Australian ‘political tactician’, while his short-stay accommodation in London cost the Tories a further £27,000.  Fortunately for Labour, there was no need to import political charlatans as part of the carefully choreographed Blair strategy was to cultivate their own indigenous species of con artists.

Why?

In total the infamous ‘three main parties’ spent some £40 million pounds buying representation in the House of Commons. That, it could be said, is the price of British democracy.  The Labour Party spent £18 million, the Tories roughly the same amount and the Lib-Dems £4.3 million.  Effectively, this is what it costs to ensure that the personnel staffing British capitalism’s political administration do not pose any threat to an economic order firmly based on the exploitation of the overwhelming majority of the electors.

Traditionally, rich and very rich people supported the Tories and when the Liberal Party was the alternative government of British capitalism it, too, enjoyed the influence and affluence of the rich and powerful.  It was unnecessary to ask why rich people and prosperous business enterprises supported these parties; their donations were investments in politics; investments that would encourage a healthy return in the form of ensuring that government would not pursue legislative practices harmful to the interests of its donors.  In other words, that politicians would not bite the hand that feeds them.

Labour Party spokespersons were once vociferous in exposing and emphasising this support of the landed gentry and the industrial and commercial magnates for its political opponents.  Labour’s then more frugal organisational and campaigning funds came largely from the trade unions, who also assumed they were promoting a political interest sympathetic to the cause of their members as well as opening avenues to career betterment for aspiring union leaders. 

That was before the Labour Party had demonstrated to the British ruling class that it had become the electable alternative to the Tories and could safely exchange places with the Liberal Party. Despite the occasional bit of leftist sloganising from its slow learners, experience had clearly shown that Labour leaders were now aware that in government they had to facilitate capitalism – a task they could frequently do more efficiently than the Tories because the fiction prevailed that they represented the working class.

Incompatible with genuine democracy

The media, which is supposed to inform us, didn’t raise a head of steam about the Electoral Commission’s report but did raise a fuss about the remarkable generosity of the millionaires clamouring to ‘lend’ money to the Labour Party under foot of reasonable expectations of titles of one sort or another.  The Tories, on the principle of honour among thieves, didn’t overly embarrass the government either – indeed Prescott’s sexual adventures received more attention than the scarcely covert corruption in both government and opposition.

The question is, where does all this leave the issue of democracy, that vague principle which the government have men and women trained to kill and die for and which we are told is the guarantor of our freedom? 

The politicians, the media and the rest of what are called ‘opinion formers’ insist that we have democracy, that we have free elections which allow us to choose whatever form of government we wish, unlike countries where a single-party dictatorship exists. 

Such dictatorships usually allow elections where the people may approve or disapprove of given candidates within the dictatorship but have not the freedom to vote for any other parties or for independent candidates.  In other words the people have imposed on them by force, corruption or the control of information a specific political regime and have not got the necessary democratic machinery to challenge that regime.

Dictatorship and bourgeois democracy

Looking at the vast sums of money involved in our allegedly democratic elections we can hardly claim that they are ‘free’!  In fact in most of the so-called democratic countries it could be said that the astronomical costs of challenging for political power have been deliberately manipulated in order to ensure that those who cannot attract rich backers will be denied meaningful access to the democratic process.

Effectively this means that in the same way as people in dictatorships are denied the right to make real political changes, in Britain and other allegedly democratic societies prohibitive financial restrictions are placed in the way of the working class organising politically to effect real economic change.

This does not mean that socialists equate dictatorship and bourgeois democracy.  Within the latter we are free to organise politically and to develop our support to the extent where we can eventually overcome the embargoes and impediments that capitalism’s restricted democratic forms impose on us, whereas in the former any Socialist work is necessarily clandestine and can invoke severe penalties.

What we can equate is the hypocrisy of bourgeois politicians, who rightly condemn those capitalist dictatorships where political freedom is denied and yet are willing participants and vociferous defenders of a form of capitalism wherein financial impediments exist that make a mockery of real democracy.

Consolidation

The recent debacle surrounding the revelations of enormous financial donations and alleged loans from the millionaires to Labour and the Tories (the Lib-Dems do not represent as promising a political investment as the others) may have caused some embarrassment.  It will, however, be a passing phenomenon because the very system that exposes them also protects them in that it excludes meaningful opposition from outside the ‘three main parties’.

That said, however, the evident chicanery of the whole nasty business requires some means of political sanitising that will shield the politicians while still providing the parties of capitalism with the financial means of maintaining their monopoly of power – without allowing any democratic access for cultivating meaningful opposition either to the system itself or its trusted political agents.

Various suggestions have been made but the front runner appears to be the state funding of elections.  Such a method, across the board and pertaining to every candidate in elections, might be a welcome widening of the political process, which is why it is unlikely to happen.  More likely is a scheme to allocate funds on the basis of the number of MPs each party has in parliament, which would simply perpetuate the present situation and consolidate the current undemocratic scheme while resolving the embarrassing issue of funding for the politicians and their parties.

Fair and free elections 

The idea of fair and free elections would give the ruling class political apoplexy.  Imagine a general election where socialists had a level playing field, an election that was in effect a plebiscite on the question of Socialism or Capitalism.  The traditional parties of capitalism would be united in telling us about the remarkable plethora of reforms they intended to introduce to ease poverty in certain areas, to reduce crime, to tackle the housing problem, help the aged, build nuclear bomb shelters, etcetera.

The socialists would not be offering any reforms of the old, failed system in which the vast potential of the planet is owned and controlled by a relatively small minority of people who allow the production of goods and services only when it holds the promise of profit for them.  On the contrary, we would be asking for a mandate to abolish the entire concept of ownership in the means of production and distribution so that everyone could freely participate in wealth production and everyone would be free to take from the common pool of wealth thus created in accordance with their needs.

Further, in the context of what we are discussing, we would be offering the establishment of an open and genuine system of participative democracy in a world where the massively destructive and ubiquitously corruptive power of money would no longer exist.

Richard Montague

Letters: Scientific proofs (2006)

Letters to the Editors from the July 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Scientific proofs

Dear Editors

As both a scientist and a socialist, I was dismayed to read two statements in the May Socialist Standard which appear to reflect an anti-science or anti-academia bias. The first statement, found in the Pathfinders column, is that “science itself is unable to prove anything very much at all, whether it is a theory of gravity, evolution, or climate change”. While this is ‘technically’ true, it is more than a little disingenuous, and may lead readers to believe that the Socialist Party rejects science as a tool for understanding nature and the human condition.

Science works by proposing theories, which are tested to see if they account for the available data, and then modified if they do not. Because new data is always being discovered, scientific theories are never proved with absolute certainty in the sense of a mathematical or logical proof, but rather in the sense of a legal proof – “beyond a reasonable doubt”. The overwhelming evidence in support of the theory of evolution is such that no biologist disputes its ability to account for the fossil record and origin of species; in this informal sense the theory can rightly be said to be “proven”.

Socialists should therefore not reject calls for scientific proof of our social and economic theories; rather, we should meet them by providing supporting evidence, or by modifying our theories when presented with contradictory evidence.

The second passage with which I take issue appears in Voice from the Back, where some professors are ridiculed for speculating on some matter of Christian mythology instead of speaking out against world hunger.

I’d like to know what evidence the author of this piece has that these professors are not socialists and are unsympathetic to the problem of world hunger. And is it his belief that the study of ancient history and literature has no redeeming value, and that it will be abandoned in socialism? Or merely that any activity not directly related to bringing about socialism should be held up to condemnation and ridicule?

Perhaps the author may be able to devote every waking hour of his life to socialist propagandizing, but most of the rest of us need to set aside at least some of our time for employment, hobbies, relaxation, and yes, even inconsequential philosophical debates.

Tristan Miller, 

London SW4

Another view of Freud

Dear Editors

I’d like to comment on the article “Freud and Marx: do they mix?” (May Socialist Standard) and put forward some of my own thoughts on the subject. In order to appreciate Freud you really need to approach him with the right mind-set. That mind-set, in my opinion, is an ability to understand where he’s “coming from”, together with a willingness to appreciate his insights without necessarily buying into his ideas wholesale.

This second point was explained by J.A.C. Brown in his book Freud and the Post-Freudians:

“It is convenient to regard the total body of Freudian thought as falling into roughly three categories: its basic psychological concepts; the theories based on clinical observations and described in terms of this conceptual scheme; and the essentially philosophical conclusions on such subjects as the nature of society and civilization, war and religion, which Freud drew from his own thought and experience. 

Whether or not such a division is logically justifiable it is undoubtedly empirically useful in any consideration of his influence on scientific thought; for many would accept his general approach to psychological problems who would not be uncritical of his theories, and others would accept both without taking very seriously his metaphysical conclusions.”

Freud’s outstanding fault was over-generalisation. But even this criticism of him has to be qualified because you have to judge each of his points individually. Making sweeping statements about someone who made so many different individual points over so many years is it itself an overgeneralisation. Many people have claimed that Freud’s ideas are untestable. This isn’t necessarily true. Seymour Fisher and Roger P. Greenberg have made a concerted effort to test Freud’s ideas against a wide range of scientific evidence. Their findings are compiled in their two books The Scientific Credibility of Freud’s Theories and Therapy and Freud Scientifically Reappraised.

The following paragraph, which appears in their first book, gives you an idea of their general approach:

“Overall, the best argument we can muster for scientifically testing Freud’s models is the fact that many competent people have already tried their hand at it and discovered new, interesting things. It should be added that their fairly precise quantitative observations are making it possible to speak in terms of the degree to which Freud’s ideas are valid or not valid, rather than simply Freud, at least in terms of his theoretical conclusions, had a somewhat pessimistic view of human nature, and in this sense saw things differently from socialists."

However, I believe that this should be set against Freud’s compassionate acceptance of human weakness and limitation, and in this respect, I believe, Freud and Marx were soul mates. Many of their peers would have been happy to regard the hysterical men and women as well as the poor oppressed masses as both, each in their own way, the cause of their own misfortune. Freud and Marx regarded them as fellow human beings, championed their causes, and sought to relieve them from their suffering. In doing so they both went completely against the grain of the societies they lived in, and for that bravery of spirit alone, deserve our gratitude and respect.

The idea that people are the cause of their own misfortune is a central argument of those on the political right. This is particularly so in America where it’s even accepted by many of those who suffer as a result of it. The idea is that whether someone is emotionally disturbed, or mentally ill, or a single mother, or lacks the skills, strength, or ability to get a well paying job, they are somehow supposed to have chosen to be exactly as they are. Giving them no support is then justified on the grounds that they could choose to somehow magically change themselves and their circumstances if they really wanted to. It’s interesting to note that these right-wingers choose to see emotional and economic difficulties in a very similar way.

Freud and Marx would have been united in opposing this absurd idea. Freud would have pointed out that people with emotional problems are victims of their own natures and certainly don’t choose to be the way they are. I don’t need to say what Marx would have said about the source of economic hardship.

In spite of the huge differences in their areas of interests there are quite a number of ways in which Freud and Marx parallel one another. They were both big fans of Darwin and saw themselves as doing work in a similar vein to him.

For an explanation of how Marx’s views on religion correspond to Freud’s ideas about paranoia see Paranoia by David Bell. This is an excellent little booklet which I thoroughly recommend. It gives a brilliant explanation of “false communities”, racism, hatred of asylum seekers, resentment welfare recipients, etc. from a  psychoanalytic point of view. Psychoanalysis has a tremendous amount to offer to anyone who wants to have a better understanding of human behaviour.

I can’t resist mentioning the books of Robert Jay Lifton in which he applies his background in psychoanalysis to the study of recent historical and political situations. Socialists should simply take from Freud and psychoanalysis whatever they find helpful or interesting and leave aside that which they don’t.

Adam Waterhouse, 

Bristol

Dear Editors 

The article on ‘Freud and Marx’ (May Socialist Standard) was quite interesting and may lead some readers to study more of the works of Freud, Reich and Fromm. However, it appears to make the usual errors by critics of their pioneering work

Freud’s discovery of psycho-analysis is used by the medical profession world-wide and has proved to be beneficial and invaluable in treating patients with deep emotional difficulties.

The article states that “Instinctual Sexual Energy” has never been found. This is not the case. Any objective observation of older babies and very young children will demonstrate that they have a natural and “instinctive” sexual or sensual drive for genital play for long before they have any understanding or knowledge of sexual functioning.

While there have been advances in sexual liberation for adults, in recent years, this has not led to much improvement in social attitudes. There is a specific reason for this. Development in the first five years of life pass through the stages of oral, anal and genital evolution of pleasure zones.

By puberty, on average, girls are menstruating at 10 years of age and boys, on average, are ejaculating at 12 years. So physiologically they are ready for mating.

This in our “Civilised” society is understandably unacceptable. So unlike all other living creatures, the “Sexual Instincts” must be repressed and thwarted. Freud and Freudians understood this and suggested that a price in emotional terms would be made. Hence the ‘Life and Death’ instincts evolve that give rise to the emergence of all kinds of sexual perversions that can develop. These are also expressed in ‘death’ drives in addictions, such as drug taking, smoking, alcohol, etc. And as Wilhelm Reich proved, into homoerotic political diversions, such as fascist and nazi fantasies. (Study the Nazi symbols and expressions and the “death instinct” is self-evident.) Sexuality or sensuality is the deepest natural emotional instinct all humans possess.

Most people, though unaware of their repressed emotions, are able to cope sufficiently in life. It is essential, however, to understand the complexity of our personalities, if we are ever going to be able to create a fully successful socialist society that will be really lasting. For we are not machines or robots, but thinking animals with many emotional layers. Just as the work of Marx is a guide to understanding, and not a dogma like religions. So also, is the work of Freud, Reich and Fromm.

Lionel Rich, 

London NW6

Greasy Pole: No grace without favour (2006)

The Greasy Pole column from the July 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anyone whose memory is flavoured with a proper measure of vindictiveness will have little sympathy for the corpses of careers, once so promising, which crowd into the political morgues of capitalism. They will not be moved by tales of the bewilderment and distress experienced by the careerists at the dying of their ambitions. There will be no bereavement counselling for those who contemplate a bleak life without a platoon of flunkeys to organise their days, to usher them unsullied by probing questions from one media-intensive exposure to another. No sympathetic third ear for those who pine for the emotional highs sprouting from a passage of adroit fencing across the Despatch Box. A stolid indifference will be shown to anyone grieving for red boxes and gleaming limousines, uniformed chauffeurs and swarming police escorts. And no glimmer of empathy will console previous inhabitants of the architectural jewels which are known as Grace and Favour Residences

Dorneywood

As almost everyone who can switch on a television set or read a newspaper knows, it was deputy Prime Minister John Prescott who, at a time when he must have been desperate to avoid any more bad publicity, swung the media searchlight onto the whole matter of grace and favour residences when he was snapped by a tabloid photographer playing croquet on the lawn of Dorneywood. Croquet – a game which needs immaculate turf, traditionally played by men and women in straw hats with hat bands in club colours. John Prescott, who is supposed to represent the interests of the people of Hull East, where croquet is not a popular game. John Prescott – who once decked a man at an election meeting for throwing an egg at him, who feeds copy to the parliamentary hacks by gabbling his Commons speeches in a riot of confused syllables, mangled words and malapropisms. Prescott the ocean going steward who angered Harold Wilson by being among the leaders of the 1966 seamen’s strike. And all of this was played out on the immaculate turf of Dorneywood – Prescott’s elegant grace and favour home in leafy Buckinghamshire. The tabloids were ecstatic, playing the game they know so well – making sure as many people as possible are aware of embarrassing facts which, no matter how trivial, can then be left to speak for themselves.

Grace and favour residences are big business, coming in a variety of sizes and shapes and being awarded for many different reasons. But none of these homes attract the same degree of attention as the few which are allocated to prominent politicians – “given to the nation” as a retreat for senior ministers where they can re-energise themselves after the exhausting business of trying to control British capitalism. Chequers is unique because it is reserved for the Prime Minister of the day, donated in 1917 for that purpose by Arthur Lee, the Tory MP for Faversham and later Lord Lee.  The house nestles among the Chiltern Hills, easily visible from some of the public footpaths around about. Lee gave Chequers on the assumption that, consequent on the sequence of electoral reforms flowing from the Reform Bills, it could no longer be assumed that the Prime Minister would necessarily have their own landed estates. (At the time, some sections if the ruling class had not woken up to the fact that this was an unimportant distinction).

Chequers

Thatcher was enchanted by the place: “I do not think anyone has stayed long at Chequers without falling in love with it” she wrote – an assessment which would not have chimed in with the millions of workers who spend their lives in homes which, emphatically, they do not “fall in love with”. Ted Heath was also fond of Chequers and stayed there most week-ends, although he was typically frustrated by the refusal of Arthur Lee’s widow, who was allowed to live there until she died, almost forty years after Lee’s death, to agree to the improvements he was impatient to make. Heath organised social events and concerts there, when his guests could enjoy the indoor swimming pool which was a gift from another rich benefactor. If Heath could see no irony in this, the same can be said about Tony Blair and his fondness for hosting events attended by fashionable stars of the media and the entertainment industry – Elton John, David Bowie, Richard and Judy. The publicity was a useful promotion of Blair’s assumed credentials as a trendy – while he devoted himself to his mission to govern the rest of us in a distinctly outworn fashion.

Chevening, a grand house surrounded by a 3,500 acre estate, is now occupied by Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett – although what this will do to her well-known preference for caravan life is anybody’s guess. The Earl of Stanhope left Chevening to “the nation” in 1967, specifying that it must be used by the Prime Minister, a Cabinet minister or a descendant of  George VI. Prince Charles at first had his eye on it but then changed his mind; perhaps he was uneasy about being spoiled for choice. In fact Chevening, along with the now notorious Dorneywood, has previously figured in events exposing the meaner, ruthless nature of a politician’s ambitions and their perceived need to enforce recognition of their standing. When the scandal of Prescott’s office affair first broke he was adamant that he would not be forced out of Dorneywood, clinging to the house as a symbol of his power and influence; to give it up would be to admit to a decline in his standing. It was not until the pressure on him became too intense, symbolised by those photographs of him leaning on his croquet mallet, that he changed his mind, in the hope that this would assuage his critics and so save his place in the government. It was rather like Arctic travellers trying to distract a pack of pursuing wolves by throwing chunks of meat off the sledge – except that in this case it was not human lives, but the vanity of an arrogant, discredited politician that was at stake.

Chevening

There has been another, equally illustrative and sickening, example in recent years. In July 1989 Thatcher had run out of patience with her Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe, on the grounds that  “…his clarity of purpose and analysis had dimmed”.(which meant that he had disagreed with her too often). When she came to sack him Howe was furious, partly because he would have to give up Chevening, where he was very comfortable. To prevent him becoming too much of a rebellious nuisance Thatcher offered him another post and occupancy of Dorneywood, which at that time was occupied by Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson.  After a spell of bitter bargaining Howe settled for Leadership of the Commons, the meaningless title of Deputy Leader – and possession of Dorneywood. A Tory peer later raged at Woodrow Wyatt about Howe’s behaviour and the fact that the reshuffle had been “… overshadowed by a squalid squabble about houses … Why didn’t he keep his own house?”: to which Wyatt replied “probably because he doesn’t have any money and maybe he needed the money when he sold it”. This sordid episode is a commentary on how devotedly our leaders protect their own interests while they savagely denounce any workers who dare to resist the constant pressure to depress their conditions.

John Prescott must have found it very satisfying to lord it over Dorneywood and its acres. It was, after all, tangible evidence that this man who took pride (and won a few votes) in being rough and ready had climbed so high up the greasy pole. All the more bitter the irony then, that the place should have triggered his downfall.

Ivan

A so-called socialist in parliament (2006)

From the July 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Respect MP George Galloway, backed by the SWP, is a counter-example of how a lone Socialist MP should behave.

George Galloway is a corrupt and corrupting man.  Not corrupt in the sense in which a good capitalist would understand – grubbing for money in brown envelopes, a wide boy with an eye for the main chance when the price is right.  His success in the libel courts, which only understand the pecuniary corruption which is such a threat to capitalists’ profits, underlines this.  His corruption is one of a sort more familiar to the workers’ movement: a man giddy on success and status born from his ability to be at the centre of things.

The US Senate enquiry – in which he displayed his prolixity with sufficient robustness and deftness as to be able to have scored a victory by speaking truth to power and rebutting their slanderous lies – proved the point despite all his bluster.  The outcome of their enquiry was not that he had trousered cash corruptly obtained from the Oil For Food Programme set up by the UN under the Iraq sanctions regime – no matter how much they wanted that to be the outcome and the press trumpeted that likely outcome.  The truth was subtler than that.  It revealed how Galloway’s Mariam Appeal had been funded chiefly by a man called Fawaz Zuriekat – who was in all likelihood (according to the Senate investigation) a recipient of such theft.

Whether Galloway knew this or not is irrelevant.  As he rightly notes, the rest of the cash came from a handful of Saudi princes and potentates; but therein lies the real truth of his corruption.  Everything he is now is based on the success and prominence the Mariam Appeal won for him – it made his reputation as an opponent of the siege and attack on Iraq; but that appeal was funded by powerful capitalists with vested anti-working class interests in the Middle East and beyond.

The effect of this can be clearly seen in his parliamentary behaviour.  At the best of time a notoriously lax MP (he famously managed to miss a key vote on the terrorism act that the Government only won by one vote); however, when he does raise questions they almost always relate to Israel and the government’s behaviour towards it.  His primary purpose is to be a cheerleader for the ruling class in the Arab world against the ruling class in Britain and America – presumably in the name of some sort of  anti-imperialism, a doctrine long used by capitalists in relatively weak countries to try and pursue their ends.

The indication of his worthlessness was on 8 May when he secured an adjournment debate.  This is an opportunity open under parliamentary procedure for all MPs to be able to make speeches and have a reply from a government Minister on the subject of their choosing, lasting about 40 minutes all told.   The MP, who maintains that the fall of the Soviet Union was the saddest day of his life and whose biographies still refer to him as a socialist, chose to spend his nearly two thousand words in a fifteen-minute speech not on attacking capitalism, revealing its brutalities and its failure.

Instead, true to his egomaniacal form, he chose to discuss press regulation and call upon the government to make “thorough caps on media ownership, especially ownership by foreign billionaires whose loyalty is certainly not to this country.”  He dwelt extensively on how beset and abused he himself was by the media, as a basis for this call for a reform.  This, apparently, is the tribune of the working class, the voice of the oppressed majority – a so-called socialist in parliament.

What a Socialist could do

As the Socialist Standard has demonstrated for over a hundred years, two thousand words is plenty to incisively damn capitalism and point the way towards socialism.  The condition of the working class is such that it would be easy to find detailed cases and generally observable trends that need and deserve the light of day – ignored by the mainstream parties in their open support of capitalism.  The endless sophistries from their own mouths are meat enough for socialist attack. 

Galloway, however, is a living confirmation of the Socialist Party’s case of avoiding leadership and leaders in our movement.  The SWP and its Respect front are tied to this man and his spurious reputation.

Obviously, he is not the first.  The Communist Party had MPs in Parliament – even the trotskyist Militant Tendency managed to claim some MPs as their own in the 1980’s.   Usually, they were part of a minority of one, unable to make any real effect on the proceedings of Parliament.

The Socialist Party, though, maintains its intention to send delegates to parliament.  Not as leaders, but as servants of the cause – with a specific job to do.  The very minimum we could expect of a small number of socialist MPs is that they use the resources of parliament to uncover as much detail and information as they can about what is happening under capitalism to the working class.  The machinery of government collects vast reams of data in the course of its daily business, but data is worthless unless it is put into context and turned into information.

They could add to this by using the weapon of the parliamentary question, to try and force the government to give up more information and to ensure that it has an incentive to collect the relevant data in order to be able to answer such questions.  This would have the added advantage of giving the opportunity of getting our agenda onto the television and other media.

Whilst the votes of a small handful of MPs may not matter overall, their voices also would carry weight – and socialists in parliament would be able to put the case for socialism alongside defending the interests of the working class in their day to day struggle – such as during any major strikes or the like.  This would allow us to expose the sitting MPs of the capitalist parties and assist workers in rallying to the cause of their class – a platform from which to speak to the whole world.

Moreover, we would use whatever votes we would have while a minority to vote in the interests of the working class.  This would not be something for the still small conscience of our delegates but a matter for our movement to decide and instruct them upon – a means of being grit in the parliamentary machine as well as one of demonstrating our greater democratic legitimacy.  The growth of the socialist movement is the advance of the working class movement.  Until such time as the movement is able to take control of the whole of society, we will push for our common interests.  Not with some plan of making capitalism work for us, or with a set of reforms in mind but as a mill stone round the neck of capital.

The case for socialism rests on the understanding of the workers.  The working class’s support is needed for the ongoing existence of capitalism.  Once we understand our real interest and begin to consciously organise to get it no leader or deceiver is going to be able to deflect us from our course, and the days of the likes of Galloway will be numbered.   Until then the workers get the leaders and representatives they choose and deserve.  The job of socialists here and now if to promote the case for using our party as a weapon in the class struggle.  We don’t need to be in parliament to demonstrate how worthless Galloway and his followers are to the workers’ movement. 

Going to Parliament is not the act of good boys but of rebels fighting canny.

Pik Smeet

Time for capitalism to go (2006)

From the July 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Up until the time when capitalism had created the potential for the establishment of a truly socially democratic society it had, despite its awful costs in terms of human misery, been a progressive system.  Inevitably, like earlier social systems, class interest, and the power and influence to enforce that interests, makes it resistant to change and inevitably it became a reactionary, anti-social system.

But its rules and its values predominate in our world establishing their own social morality and we cannot judge capitalists by the social morality of an equitable system predicated on human need when such a system does not yet exist.  Indeed the nature of capitalism, its response to competition, its compulsion for expansion and its imperative for profit, gives it a dynamic beyond the control of either those who profit from it or those who suffer under it. 

The capitalist class does not seek to create things like unemployment as a punishment on the working class – after all its profits ensue from the wealth created by employed workers.  The capitalist class does not want wars and the colossal costs which are a burden on taxation which, in turn, is a charge on the surplus value accruing to the capitalist class.  The capitalist class does not want crime (other than the ‘legal’ variety it itself perpetrates!) which, like armaments and wars, are a charge on capital. Capitalism would be a more secure and socially restful system without the multiplicity of evils it creates but its nature precludes human control even by the capitalists or their political agents and within itself it is a system of fiercely conflicting interests.

Political unanimity within the capitalist class is limited to the need to protect its class interests.  Individual capitalists might feel constrained towards some charity or amelioration of some facet of a situation the system creates but such a response to social ‘conscience’ does not question the values and the priorities of the system itself and certainly the capitalist class, like their historical predecessors, are hostile to the idea of revolutionary change.  That change – again, like previous socially revolutionary changes – must be the work, and, thus, the politics, of those on whom capitalist exploitation is based: the working class.

Even if they wanted to – which of course they don’t – the capitalists could not institute the next phase in the social evolution of human society.  That job is the task of the working class, not because of its ‘moral’ superiority but because of its overwhelming numerical superiority and its historic imperative.

Foot soldiers

Previous social revolutions have occurred when the political and economic basis of a new phase of social evolution have matured in the womb of the old society and the means used has been the physical overthrow of the dominant class by the class representing the new phase for which history has prepared it.

The situation that determines the means of social revolution in modern capitalism is, however, markedly different in several respects to that of earlier societies and earlier revolutions.  The purpose of these latter was to overthrow an existing minority class and replace it with another minority class in order that the new class could establish political conditions that would facilitate a new mode of production.  The chattel slave and the feudal slave may each in turn have been the foot soldiers of revolution but only the conditions of their slavery was changed.

There is now no further minority class interests pressing the norms and social structures of capitalism for new relations in the mode of production and the working class can not turn the system on its head and carry through a revolution that would allow it to exploit the relatively small capitalist class!

At this stage we should define in general terms – because it is only thus it can be defined – what we mean by the working class.  We mean all those who in order to live are obliged to sell their physical or mental abilities to an employer for a wage, salary or commission.  Within that context there is a great variety of income but the common denominator is the compulsion to be and to remain a hired hand.  Conversely, a capitalist can be defined as someone who can live by profit, rent or interest and who works only if he or she wishes to do so.  Again, as with the working class, there is a great variety of income within the capitalist class and there are occasional situations that do not lend themselves to this form of categorisation but it is the only form of general classification that fits the situation as it is.

Capitalism made production social; now history imposes on the working class the task of making distribution social which is the sole means by which the myriad problems of society can be resolved.  It is this change to social distribution that establishes socialism and the politics governing the revolutionary role of the working class in bringing about this change is not only conditioned by the nature of the change itself but distinct from all previous revolutionary changes in the social organisation of society.

End of buying and selling

This can best be appreciated by an understanding of what socialism involves.  Briefly, socialism will be a system of society in which the means of life, the entire productive and distributive resources, will be owned and democratically controlled by society as a whole on the principle of “from each according to their ability and to each in accordance with their self-determined need” The establishment of that principle will mean that the wages system will be ended as will buying and selling and, hence the need for money as a means of exchange.

It needs little thought to appreciate all the wasteful functions that capitalism’s buying and selling world makes necessary.  Hundreds of millions of people are currently occupied in jobs and in entire industries that would disappear with the ending of the marketing system.  Similarly, with the ending of competition for markets, resources and areas of strategic interest, the cause of wars would no longer exist; armed forces and the vast and wasteful array of weaponry these employ would be redundant.  Equally, in a world of free access to needs most crimes would disappear along with the personnel on both sides of that industry.

Whereas in capitalist society the ending of hundreds of millions of jobs would be ruinous, in socialism the freed workers could be absorbed into the workforce ensuring firstly that the social infrastructure needed to end the appalling poverty that currently afflicts the lives of billions of people throughout the world could be speedily ended.  Thereafter, they would augment the workforce to lighten the burden of producing the goods and services needed in their communities and elsewhere.

It will be obvious that the society here envisaged could only be established and maintained on the broadest voluntary human co-operation.  Once established it will create, like all other forms of social organisation its own social conventions affecting human behaviour.  Initially, the ‘politics’ of its revolutionary establishment will require the endorsement of the overwhelming majority organised consciously within the general ambience of a political movement.

Richard Montague

50 Years Ago: Cat out of the bag (2006)

The 50 Years Ago Column from the July 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Upton Sinclair once wrote than “even Von Papen had to tell the truth sometimes, if only to rest his mind.” The saying applies to all politicians. The time comes when even the most diplomatic will blurt out the real motives of the British ruling class.

For example, Sir Anthony Eden. At Norwich recently he said:

  “The United Kingdom’s vital interest in Cyprus is not confined to its N.A.T.O. aspect. Our country’s industrial life and that of Western Europe depends to-day, and must depend for many years to come, on oil supplies from the Middle East. If ever our oil resources were in peril, we would be compelled to defend them. The facilities we need in Cyprus are part of that defence. We cannot, therefore, accept any doubt about their availability.” (The Times, 2.6.56).

The Prime Minister here admits that British capitalism’s need to protect its profits-which it could not do without oil supplies-comes before the promise which Britain has made, as a member of the United Nations, to uphold the principle of self-government. Socialists have been saying for a long time that capitalism always puts profits before principle, but it is not often that a politician as eminent as Sir Anthony Eden confirms it so explicitly.

(From an article by Alwyn Edgar, Socialist Standard, July 1956)

Editorial: Disappearing Loyalties (1951)

Editorial from the July 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

The case of “The Disappearing Diplomats” brings to the front more of the ugly and curious features of “civilised” life in which modern governments are inextricably involved, whether they call themselves Tory, Labour or Communist. Warfare, and preparations for warfare have, as one of their necessary accompaniments, “spies,” "traitors” and espionage systems. Part of an espionage system consists of getting hold of people in a different country who have “inside” information and persuading or coercing them into selling it. The business is a sordid one and all governments are of necessity engaged in it. The defence of the mealy-mouthed is that the practice is so general that a country which did not follow the practice would be placed at a serious disadvantage. It is curious to notice also, as an example of modern hypocrisy that when the “spy” is on “our” side he is a hero, but when he is on the "enemy’s” side he is a scoundrel.

All through past history, that is the history of civilised society, this kind of thing has been going on; it is inextricably bound up with all systems based upon property ownership. At periods however it flourishes like a plague; such, for example, was the position during the Reformation, the French Revolution and even when the Nazis were on the upsurge. The knitting of the whole world together in modern times, with the corresponding anarchy of production, national rivalries and wholesale imperialism has taken the disease out of its old narrow setting and spread it all over the world. In the last thirty years or so this has been particularly noticeable because many old loyalties have broken down, new loyalties have not solidified, and disappointment, distrust and mutual suspicion is widespread. The disease has become so sweeping in its ramifications that frightened governments are engaging in thorough-going heresy hunts; people look askance at their neighbours and few are sure whom they can trust. Mutual suspicion has even invaded family life and relatives are held as hostages to ensure loyalty. In answer to a question in parliament, Mr. Attlee expressed this prevailing suspicion when he said, referring to vital military information,

  “No one can be absolutely certain at any time that someone may not have information which he may possibly give away. All we can say is that the utmost care is taken with regard to every individual employed.” (Manchester Guardian, 12th June, 1951).

One curious feature of the modern espionage disease is the type of people involved in what may be called the seamier side. At one time the seller of military secrets was the unscrupulous cosmopolitan, the wastrel, those who were regarded as outride the pale of “respectable” society; now-a-days they are the product of select schools and universities—the cultured, the scientists, professors and the like. The “ old school tie” has become badly besmirched in the modern imperialist conflicts.

Looking at this from one angle it is another of the curious features of to-day. Long ago the holding of radical views concerning society was associated with hob-nailed boots, chokers and disgruntled working men belonging to the poorer sections of society. Now-a-days it has become fashionable for the “cultured” products of aristocratic schools to make fleeting excursions into what they call “left” politics and after deriving some notoriety and excitement, fade out. These gilded chameleons make glittering and, to themselves, devastating criticisms of society for the consumption of admiring colleagues, but they have no real roots in the political movement. Mutual admiration groups full of the conviction that the sun shines out of them, they plod their allotted path to ignominy. They condescend to give their assistance to radical movements of one kind or another but when they meet with rough treatment or fail to achieve the prominence which they feel is due to them they turn back in disgust, berate those they formerly called their brothers m the struggle and, in the process, eat the words they formerly blazoned forth to the world as expressions of heartfelt convictions.

Whether the actions of these people have been inspired by sordid motives or genuine, if mistaken, convictions they are self-branded as false guides; in a word, ineffectual, out of touch with the social forces that determine policies. Consequently every now and again one or other of them produces a book of contrition which purports to explain why they have come to the conclusion that their former conduct was all wrong and they have now, like sheep, come back to the fold. To the socialist these professed explanations are simply examples of the general lack of political information of the non-socialist, whether he calls himself cultured or just plain working man.

Beneath all the trickery, duplicity and heartbreaks associated with espionage is the social system from which this sordid disease springs. In this modern age it is the capitalist private property system that throws up this along with the many other respect-destroying complaints; this system sets nation against nation, man against man, children against their parents and twists the finest products of human ingenuity into means to drag humanity through the mire. While it lasts there is no room for the brotherhood of mankind and the basis of mutual trust is frail. High-sounding phrases are only used as screens behind which the false, the mean and the sordid lurks. The abolition of property ownership will bring with it a fresh wind that will sweep out of social relations all the sordidness that clogs humanity’s upward march towards a full, secure and joyful life.

Roads to Ruin (1951)

Book Review from the July 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Roads to Ruin: The Shocking History of Social Progress," by E. S. Turner.  (Published by Michael Joseph, Ltd., 256 pages indexed with 11 illustrations. Price 12s. 6d.)

Nowhere in the book does the author claim to be a Socialist. Written entertainingly, without indignation, but sympathetically for the exploited, he deals with some of the lesser known social legislation which caused much controversy—and is now almost forgotten. Forgotten because we accept and can hardly conceive of modern society without such legislation.

Among others he writes of the Bills for the abolition of spring guns (1825-1827); the struggle to stop the employment of climbing boy chimney sweeps (1780 approx-1875);: the acts to legalise the Saturday half holiday (1825-1911) and the agitation for the Plimsoll Line (1850-1906). These are the chapters that will have most interest for Socialists, although the accounts of other minor political disturbances are not without their value in exposing the depths of hypocrisy, cant, humbug and self interest to which the defenders of the existing social system descended in order to safeguard their position, profits and pleasure.

A justifiable criticism against the work is that it tends to foster the discredited idea that the main participants in these movements were the original innovators of the reform. The fact is that the general rising discontent of the working class against their oppressive conditions, both rural and urban, first posed the question. Only then did certain individuals or groups see the need and voice the demand for the particular reform. A modern parallel could be drawn if one overemphasized the importance of A. P. Herbert and his small group of supporters, who so successfully steered marriage and divorce reforms through the House of Commons in the nineteen-thirties, and underemphasized the hardships that impelled him to do so. Mainly they were the changing relationships between the sexes, consequent upon more and more women becoming wage earners and participating in activities outside the home. Since the Married Women’s Property Bill (1856-1882), described in this book, women have striven for more equal status and more control over their own property and earnings. It was some of these difficulties showing themselves in the marriage relationship that A. P. Herbert tried to resolve with his Bill.

It is not difficult for Socialists to believe that squires and owners of game preserves claimed the right to kill by hidden guns attached to trip wires any poacher of their fattened birds or indeed any unsuspecting stranger accidentally trespassing. Not difficult, that is, after the experience of two world wars which were the defence of private property raised to national level.

An established phenomenon in 1776 and not abolished until 1827 their retention was upheld by some of the most inhumane arguments. On page 17.

  "If the market gardener can use spring guns to protect his cabbages why not squires to protect their game?"

Guns were cheaper than keepers and on page 26 we read that the Duke of Wellington supported this view point. Further on page 29.

  “The object of setting spring guns was not personal injury to anyone but to deter from the commission of theft and that object was as completely attained by hitting an innocent man as a guilty man.”

Throughout the shocking history of the exploitation of children, in mines, factories, mills and workshops, in the early nineteenth century, there also runs the brutal story of the climbing boy chimney sweep. The detailed description of the horrifying experiences of these boys (and not only boys, for the author states on page 51 that the flues of Windsor Castle were at one time swept by two girls) form a chapter which will not be lightly forgotten. The gruesome accounts of tragedies, wherein children died of asphyxiation or brutal treatment from vicious master sweeps, stirred the country from time to time reviving the agitation, which lasted for 100 years, for the abolition of the practice. Death was not the only horror. Quoted on page 38:

  ". . . they suffered from inflamed eyes and throats and all manner of skin irritation, the worst of which took the form of a scrotal infection known as chimney boys cancer. .. . There was no cure but the knife and the less fortunate chimney boy might find himself in his teens, not only a bandy-legged hunch back, but a eunuch."

Self-interest defended this employment and the Church was no better. On page 46:

  “. . . this witness had twice been stuck in chimneys in his youth—once at the Bishop of Lincoln’s and once at Lord Melbourne’s . . .”

The Religious Tract Society published a booklet entitled “The Young Chimney Sweepers" (C.1830) in which the following paragraph is deservedly quoted on page 51.

  "This little book will show you that little boys like you have gone to Sunday School and have learned to read and become good. Mind that you go also. Get yourself well washed on Saturday and mind that you are in time on Sunday morning. Your teachers will be glad to see you with a smiling face.. . . learn your lessons and try to read the blessed Bible and to think about the gracious Saviour of whom it tells you.. . . Thus you will be happy little sweeps and you will learn to praise the gracious God, who can make our situation in life comfortable whatever be the circumstances in which Providence has placed us.”

In these days when the claims are all for a five day week, the arguments for a Saturday half-holiday may seem outmoded but when it is realised that shop assistants worked a fourteen and sometimes a sixteen hour day it is easy to understand the growth of the Early Closing Association formed in 1842. Not wishing to be associated with the radical movements of that day the Association attempted to effect a limitation of hours by voluntary negotiation and met with the failure one would expect. Eventually after a welter of moralizing on both sides the struggle entered the political field and an effective Shops Act reached the Statute Book—but not until 1911.

Early Closing Bills had been rejected as “un-English" and “grandmotherly” and Charles Bradlaugh supported these views in 1888. He further argued that a Bill to reduce hours to twelve on five days and to fourteen on Saturdays was “opening the door to legislation which might be of the most terrible character.” He regarded the Bill as “immoral” because it struck a blow at the self-reliance of the individual. Evidently the advocacy of atheism did not extend to the granting of leisure to workers to further study and propagate its cause.

Finally to the fight to save the lives of seamen sent afloat in “coffin ships” from which unscrupulous owners gained greater financial advantage if the vessel foundered and the insurance company paid without demur, than if the rotten hulk reached port safely. It had been shown (page 179) that “. . . I seaman in 60 met a violent death as against 1 in 315 in the mines.” On page 143 a ship owner, Sir Walter Runciman is quoted when he describes those times as:

  ’’days of aboriginal stupidity and sordid bloodsucking” when ships were . . . “scandalously unseaworthy, rotten, leaky, badly found, badly manned, abominably fed and always overloaded.”

It was against those prevailing conditions that seamen organised themselves. They were aided in no small measure by the vociferous agitation of Samuel Plimsoll and his supporters, for a load line on all seagoing vessels. On Samuel Plimsoll there is quoted (but not supported by the author) on page 144 the following:

  ”. . . But he (Plimsoll) was not a reformer, he was a propagandist and the famous 'Plimsoll Mark' indicating the maximum safe draught of a ship remained a valueless safeguard for no less than sixteen years after he secured it, for the simple reason that the selection of its position on the ships side was left to the ’murderers’ (i.e. the shipowners) themselves.”

As confirmation of this there was one “ whimsical Cardiff captain who inscribed the device on his funnel ” (page 170).

The scandal of coffin ships had exercised the deliberations of a committee of fifteen set up as far back as the eighteen thirties—over thirty years before Plimsoll was elected Liberal member for Derby in 1868. Nevertheless it was not until 1890 that the owners load line gave way to the Government load line, based upon scientific tables issued by Lloyds. Chambers of Commerce, Lloyds, shipowners, miners and engineers’ unions and not least of them, the Seamen’s Unions all played their part in the establishment of this and other regulations for sea-going vessels. The tragedy of it all is shown when we are informed that a thousand years before, Venetian and Sardinian sailors had a load mark, a disk similar to the Plimsoll Line. The Hanseatic League also used a mark, and, a glaring mockery to British sailors, so did the British Navy, based on fighting efficiency.

Who can doubt the accuracy of the Socialist case, with regard to reforms, in view of the length of time and enormous efforts which went into the establishment of even these minor reforms? Stated simply it is that whilst we accept all and every reform, grudgingly granted or strenuously wrenched from the capitalist class we do not advocate organising nor working for them. Our work is to organise for Socialism, knowing that when large numbers of Socialists exist the capitalists will be most lavish in the distribution of reforms in an attempt to retain their privileged position.

We recommend this book for reading by Socialists, and for all social reformers we suggest it as an “awful warning” to them for their future activities.

B.

Passing Comments: General Election (1951)

The Passing Comments Column from the July 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

General Election

A review of “The British General Election of 1950,” by H. G. Nicholas, was published at the beginning of this year by Macmillan and Co. for 21s. Mr. Nicholas calculates that the Socialist Party spent more per vote on the election than did any other; and he also describes some of the propaganda put forward by the Party during the election. “‘One thing we must warn you about,' they told their followers. 'Do not trust in leaders, trust in yourselves alone. Unless you understand the cause and the solution of your miserable condition no leader can help you, no matter how honest and sincere he may be; if you do understand, then you do not require leaders; you will know what you want and how to instruct your delegates to get what you want.'  "


Candidates

Recently this column quoted a survey about the Conservative candidates at the last election made by the magazine “Comment." Now the more authoritative survey of Mr. Nicholas has appeared, covering the candidates of all parties. In the Conservative ranks, as might have been expected, the businessmen had preponderance. Of the 621 candidates, 168 were employers or company directors; 30 were concerned in business finance as stockbrokers or bankers; of those who had private means, 39 had done nothing to justify their inclusion in any other category; and there were 12 farmers and 21 landowners. The total is thus 270. It is tempting to include in this group those 39 candidates for whom a company directorship was a subsidiary occupation, as well as the 16 whose subsidiary occupation was farming; but they might also have been included in some of the other categories already counted within the group. Nevertheless, the real total is somewhere between 270 and 325—the latter figure being over half the total number of candidates. For the rest, the Law accounts for 114, the Services for 62, and there are 30 salaried managers. Other professional and well-to-do people number 137, and four white-collar and seven manual workers bring up the rear.

Socialists?

The Labour Party put forward 617 candidates; and it is worthy of note in a party which claims to be a socialist one that no less than 92 of these candidates were engaged in business or agriculture at the profit-making level, including 40 company directors. There were also 78 engaged in the Law, 8 from the Services and 21 salaried managers. In the other middle-income groups there were 180 candidates; 43 were white-collar workers; 92 were manual workers; and 91 candidates had been manual workers, but had now moved up into the white-collar group (the great majority of these being trade union officials).


Liberals

Of the Liberal Party's 475 candidates, some 143 belonged to the employing profit-making group, including 85 company directors. It is significant that, as Mr. Nicholas puts it, "of persons owning their own small businesses, small retailers, etc. (a category hardly worthy of separate mention amongst Conservatives or Labour), there can be listed 23.” There were also 71 Liberal barristers and solicitors, 39 salaried managers, and 16 from the Services. 188 others were in the middle income groups, and there were 16 white-collar and 13 manual workers.

Apart from the large petty bourgeois representation among the Liberal Party’s candidates, the companies with which the party’s business-men were connected “were in most instances of modest size, what in the U.S.A. would be called 'small business.' Moreover, the emphasis throughout the business group fell on the export, transport or retail trades, often in the form of family concerns or private companies run by their owners."

This analysis of the Liberal candidates would appear to confirm those conclusions as to the class-backing of the party which one would draw from the fact that it receives most support in the small-farmer areas of North Wales and North Scotland.

The Stick and the Carrot

It is a common assumption that the chief domestic issue in this country at the present time is that of Capitalism versus Socialism. But so far from a Socialist government having been in power, Socialism has never even been put before the electorate by any party with the resources to ensure that it would get a fair hearing. To adapt a famous saying, Socialism has not been tried and found wanting; it has never been tried.

The real quarrel is between two schools of thought, both of which accept explicitly or implicitly the foundations of the capitalist system. The first school is represented by those who think, privately or publicly, that a certain amount off unemployment is a good thing because it drives the workers, by fear of the dole, to increase production; that business should be left to the individual owner or joint-stock company; and that expenditure on social services should be restricted. The second school has insisted, ever since the days of Robert Owen and his new-style cotton mills at New Lanark, that the worker would produce more if he were given reasonable security and good conditions; and that laissez-faire was generally to be frowned upon because open competition deprived the worker of security. Since, as Robert Owen found, few individual factory- or mine-owners were willing to accept and put into operation these new theories, those adhering to the second school have called for state-intervention in industry and a measure of state-ownership. But the fundamental problem over which the two schools differ is that of how to get the worker to produce more; is the stick or the carrot more effective?


"Socialists" on Nationalised Boards

But though the Fabian society and the other theorists of the second school made only a few conversions among the upper class, they found allies in the trade unions, which naturally approved of a theory which aimed at giving security and reasonable conditions to the worker. Just as the donkey, if questioned, would doubtless favour the carrot method, so did the workers accept the Fabian nostrums. And as the Labour Party built itself up into one of the largest parties in the country, domestic debate began to centre round the “welfare state” and state-ownership. But the issue of Socialism versus Capitalism was never raised on a national scale; the Labour Party was first called a socialist party by the conservative press, intent on rallying the propertied class round the Conservative Party.

The difference between the Labour Party on the one hand and the Socialist Party on the other has been emphasised once more by Mr. Harold Roberts, President of the National Union of Railwaymen (Carriage and Wagon Grades). He is reported to have said (Sunday Times, 20-5-51) that each nationalised board should have at its head "a Socialist of unquestionable integrity with a deep-rooted conviction of the correctness Socialist policy.” It is symbolic of the widespread misuse of the word “Socialist” that a trade union leader can talk in apparent seriousness of an industry run on wage-labour and profit-making lines having a “ Socialist ” at its head.

Due Reward

Another quotation from the same paper illustrates again the gap between the private- and state-capitalist parties and the Socialist Party. The Rt. Hon. Richard Law, M.P., reviewing a book by Mr. George Goyder which advocates a change in company law “to make management explicitly responsible to the worker, the community and the state, as well as to the shareholder” (whatever that may mean) can go on to say that under such a system “the absent shareholder will get his due reward, but no more.” Those who want state intervention, those who want laissez-faire, all join in agreeing that there is such a thing as a “due reward" for a shareholder, and yet the Labour Party is still regularly called the Socialist Party.

Six of One

Recently there was a military parade in Prague past President Gottwald and Marshal Konev. Reviewing his armed forces, the President said that “the creation of a strong and efficient army and people's militia was in no way contrary to the purposes of peace. He said the stronger Czechoslovakia defence forces became the stronger would be the world peace front.” (News Chronicle, 7-5-51).

And Half-a-dozen of the other

On the other side of the Iron Curtain, in Yorkshire, we find Mr. Strachey saying that “we must push on with our defence programme. He was convinced that every new division of the Army, squadron of the R.A.F. and ship of the Navy which we could make available increased the chance of keeping the peace. And to keep the peace, to prevent a third world war, was the supreme object of all our endeavours.” (Observer, 20-5-51.)

Preserve Them From War

Another adherent of the curious theory that the best way to keep the peace is to produce more weapons of war is President Truman.

The News Chronicle (25-5-51) tells us that "in a memorable message sent to the Capitol, and at a press conference just before the message was read to Congress, the President set forth in simple and moving words a majestic aim that lies behind the policy the U.S. government is pursuing. It is to bring about peaceful conditions in which 'the century in which we live could become the brightest man has yet known on earth.’ ”

How are we going to bring about peaceful conditions? Why, by getting Congress “to vote another £3,000 millions to give free countries throughout most of the world weapons, raw materials, machinery and other aid to preserve them from war and conquest.”

Consoling Ourselves

Continuing the campaign to persuade the public that atom-bombs are not so bad after all, the Times leader-column recalls that a hundred years ago it used the phrase “perhaps the most terrible implement of destruction ever delivered into the human hand,” to describe the latest repeating pistol brought to this country by Samuel Colt. It goes on comfortingly to say that “to-day, surrounded by more formidable weapons, we may perhaps be forgiven for consoling ourselves with the realisation that in other ages, too, men have stood in awe of their own inventions” and remarks that “the man who had visions of blazing his way to glory with a smoking gun in each hand soon found how elusive a stationary target at fifteen paces could be.” (29-5-51)

The implied comparison between the atom-bomb and the Colt revolver, and the hint that the former may fall short of expectations as the latter did, is unworthy of the Times. Exactly how elusive would a modern city be when faced with a raid by a fleet of jet-bombers, or bv guided missiles? How elusive were Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the already out-of-date bombers used in the now old-fashioned year of 1945?

Not very.

Lord High Admiral

Spare a thought for Mr. Bernard Le Strange. Hereditary Lord High Admiral of the Wash. Finding himself in debt, he agreed last May to live on only £10 a week until his debts were paid off; and he moved “to an inexpensive harbour-front hotel” in St. Helier, Jersey. Now his creditors have been paid off, and Mr. Le Strange will doubtless be able to resume a manner of life more fitting to his station. But it is an interesting commentary on Mr. Le Strange's normal standard of life that a year living on the sea-front in Jersey with an income of £10 a week represents the crash which follows a financial crisis.

Drinks on the House

Another figure who claims our sympathy this month is the Lord Mayor of London. The Sunday Express (20-5-51) remarks on his princely hospitality. Apparently he has an allowance of £12,500 a year— £250 a week; but the Express envisages him having to pay an extra £20,000—£400 a week—for the entertaining he is doing during the current year.

Who said the rich had been almost destroyed by the tax-collector?

Alwyn Edgar

A Reader's Criticism Answered (1951)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

Eltham, S.E.9

London.

6/6/1951

Sir,

For some time I have listened to your speakers at Lincoln's Inn Fields and have read your magazine. Although I disagree with your point of view, I have noted that your meetings and your columns give a generous amount of time and space to opponents' criticism. I submit the following letter to the Socialist Standard in the hope that you will accord it a reply.

You state that the solution of war and unemployment is the establishment of Socialism; that a majority of people who understand and desire socialism will send delegates to the various parliaments and thus abolish capitalism. Let us examine these propositions. The capitalist world comprises highly developed industrial countries who control undeveloped lands. The imperialists extract raw materials cheaply from these colonial countries and sell the manufactured commodity on international markets. Now, if you agree that industrialization brings about the following changes— (i) develops the political structure and (ii) awakens the newly formed proletariat to an appreciation of the class struggle, you must agree to the following—that the unindustrialised East (and other underdeveloped places) are not yet in possession of parliamentary institutions comparable to those possessed by countries such as Britain. Are Socialists to wait therefore, until these countries are fully industrialized and thus are in possession of machinery to vote capitalism out of existence? Are we to stoically endure future wars as these former markets contract and eventually disappear? Perhaps however you take the view that it is sufficient for the established industrialized countries to play a leading part in a world Socialist revolution. If so, surely coercion will be required to educate the teeming millions of the East to Socialism? After all, they comprise the majority of the world's population and presumably will continue to provide huge quantities of raw materials for themselves and the remainder of any future socialist society. This latter question must be rather tricky for you, as I understand that any coercive action would negate one of your party's principles which affects Asians and the like as well as other working people—the principle being that people "must understand and desire Socialism." In short, it seems to me that you are taking the highly mechanistic view, that as world capitalism develops unevenly, the workers in those developed sections are obliged to wait for the others to "catch up." This is an undialectical approach and shows the unsocialist attitude of submitting oneself to blind capitalist forces.

The S.P.G.B. interprets history on the basis of historical materialism. In my view you interpret correctly, the struggle of classes since primitive communism. Your speakers observe that all through the ages the exploiters have been forcibly overthrown by the exploited. This development of the class structure is significant in one respect. The hall-mark of change has been force. Tell me please the position in 20th century capitalism? All armed conflicts at the moment—such as Korea, Indo-China, Malaya, etc., are explained by your party as being clashes between dominant Imperialisms—East and West. Am I seriously to understand that for the first time in history, the exploiting class (capitalist) is facing no serious resistance from the exploited masses? That all fighting is a result of the ambitions of rival capitalist camps? If that is so then the future is indeed black for the world's workers. All they have to represent them in the political arenas it would seem, are a few tiny ‘‘Socialist Parties." Parties who blithely believe that the capitalist class is obliged to submit to the verdict of the ballot box. What makes you think that the parliamentary institutions (which were designed in the first place to administer capitalism) are adequate for the Socialist Revolution? No, history has proven that parasitical classes cling viciously to power and if ever they see their position slipping, they shed their veneer of “objective morality" and viciously suppress any popular movement. The S.P.G.B. states that political parties are—broadly speaking—based on class interests, and that the S.P.G.B. is the only party in this country which represents the working class. Logically it follows that all other political parties in this country represent sections of the capitalist class (except the C.P. whom you allege represents the “Russian capitalist class.") Surely then your statement that this is a democratic country falls rather flat. All means of propaganda are capitalist owned. Our democratic state never mentions your numerous debates in its press and never allotted you broadcasting time at the last general election. Perhaps the explanation is that our ruling class is afraid of the S.P.G.B. (who steadfastly fight for the workers' cause) for one of your speakers made this remark the other day—"Ever since the inception of the S.P.G.B. it has been attacked by the capitalist press.” Can you produce evidence—e.g., extracts from cuttings (of which you must be proud) to prove this? I do not think somehow that you will be able to produce this evidence, for it is my considered opinion that the capitalist class does not feel strongly about you—they do not know of your existence. I wonder why you have not gained appreciable strength in your existence of over 40 years? I do not think that numbers are necessarily a criterion of the veracity of a case, but I do suggest that something must be radically incorrect in your attitude. From your platforms you have been insistent that it does not require brains for a worker to become a Socialist. Yet for years you have attracted only minute support from .the British working class. It cannot be that our intelligent proletariat have enjoyed great rewards from powerful British capitalism. They have not. Two holocausts and years of depression and misery! What then, hamstrings you as the years march by? 1 think the main reason is your refusal to emerge from your ivory tower. Your theories are unassailable as a reflection of universal desire but they are divorced from things as they are. Let me illustrate. I have asked your speakers questions as to the class significance of the Korean situation, rearmament and other contemporary events. Your reply has been something like this:—
 
The capitalists are arguing amongst themselves—it is no concern of the workers to interfere in the mechanism of capitalism—a plague on all their houses. It seems that a Socialist must not smear his hands with the capitalist garbage heap. There can be no appreciable reform within capitalism and so for a good many years we must have periodic blood-letting. No support for disarmament proposals as this would compromise you. No, let us subjugate ourselves to the crazy workings of capitalism. The workers must realise that there can be no interference with capitalism from within; the worker must go through successive hells before Socialism is established. What impotence! As a test of your attitude to current events, please answer me this. Obviously you believe in the women's right to vote since that is an aspect of democracy. What support therefore did you give in the Socialist Standard—in past years of course—to the Suffragette movement. I suppose as it was inspired and led by leisured women, you ignored it or condemned it as useless capitalist reformism?

I have never fully understood your attitude in the last war. I agree that basically it was a conflict over the division of surplus value but is it not true that although the terms fascism and democracy were only facades of rival capitalisms they had significance for the workers? Do you not agree that Democracy is a more favourable basis for Socialist propaganda than fascism? Socialists did not fight The obvious conclusion is that you are not prepared to defend a principle which at least maintains your existence. Or are you so sanguine that you can watch the smashing of workers organisations and then snuggle cosily down in your pages of musty Marx? You deny that you are pacifists and assert that your refusal was based on scientific socialist principles—not on a basis of confused idealism. I am rather vague regarding these “scientific” principles. Do I understand that under certain conditions Socialists would participate in organised fighting? If so, tell me when—bearing in mind that the abolition of capitalism will be achieved by the ballot box and not the bullet. If on the other hand, you will not fight under any circumstances then I suggest that for practical purposes, you are in the same boat as the pacifists even though your supporting theories are different.

In conclusion. This letter has been a long one and if the Editor is kind enough to publish it, may 1 say this. The S.P.G.B., in my opinion is idealist and academic but it is refreshing in its approach and must be congratulated on providing food for thought to all thinking people.

K. J. Johnson.

Reply:

By the time the reader has got to this point he will have read our critic's very lengthy letter and will appreciate the difficulty of answering it without taking up a whole issue of this journal. Along with a dozen specific questions he makes other dozens of mostly inaccurate assumptions about the S.P.G.B. case, interwoven with scores of assertions of his own. most of them unsupported by evidence.

We will however do our best to sort out the main points and answer them.

Industrialisation and the growth of the Socialist Movement

He first rehashes a question that has been answered times without number, one that was flung at the S.P.G.B. in its earliest days. It is that some countries are more developed industrially than others.

“Are Socialists to wait therefore, until these countries are fully industrialised and thus are in possession of machinery to vote capitalism out of existence?"

Those who give themselves sleepless nights over this imaginary dilemma do so because they have failed to notice what goes on in the world. Firstly the emergence of backward countries as industrially developed capitalist powers does not depend on their own unaided slow rate of growth, but is speeded up by making use of experience and materials and technique of the more advanced countries. It can be extraordinarily rapid, as witness the emergence of Japan half a century ago, and of India in more recent years (complete with "machinery to vote capitalism out of existence"!) Secondly the Socialist movement does not grow at the same rate as industrialisation, so that the supposed difficulty of large Socialist movements in some countries held back by small Socialist movements in others is a myth. And of course our critic knows this very well, for elsewhere in his letter he refers to the "few tiny Socialist parties'' in the industrially advanced countries. So the true position is not that the "few tiny Socialist parties" in the advanced countries are waiting for the benighted masses in Asia, but that the few Socialists in all countries are patiently working to win over the masses in all countries. What rightly concerns the S.P.G.B. is the political backwardness of the mass of the workers here in industrial Britain.

Thirdly, just as capitalist production methods exercise influence in all countries and enable the backward to advance rapidly, so also the experience already gained by Socialists in the advanced countries enables the Socialists in the developing countries to progress more rapidly than they would if in isolation.

When our critic can show us Socialist movements of great numerical strength in some countries side by side with small movements in others it will be time to consider this purely fanciful objection to the Socialist case.

Capitalism’s War's

Scattered through the letter are various remarks and questions about war. Early in the letter we are asked “Are we to stoically endure future wars as those former markets contract and eventually disappear?"

The Socialist answer is simple and grim but true. Until something is done to abolish capitalism we shall have to endure capitalism's wars, stoically or otherwise. Our critic evidently thinks he knows how to escape this since he criticises us for holding it

But when we seek further enlightenment in our critic's letter we find that what in fact he has to offer to deal with the mountain of capitalism's wars is the mouse of “support for disarmament proposals." And he says, quite wrongly, that the S.P.G.B. won’t support disarmament proposals because we think this would "compromise" us. Nothing could be further from the truth. Socialists are in favour of all the capitalist powers in all the world being completely disarmed immediately, down to the last bayonet. The reason we don’t support other people’s proposals to "disarm" the whole capitalist world is firstly that we know of no such proposal (not to be confused with Russian proposals to deprive America of atom bombs, and American and British proposals to deprive Russia of tanks and submarines, etc), and secondly that the idea of joining with the political parties that stand for the continuance of capitalism and its imperialism and expecting not to have the necessary outcome of capitalism, i.e. war, is self-evidently and completely fatuous.

When we read on we find confusion worse confounded. Our critic sneers at the S.P.G.B. for bolding that a Socialist “must not smear his hands with the capitalist garbage heap,” including the garbage heap of capitalism’s wars. And he agrees that the last war was capitalist in its cause (“basically it was a conflict over the division of surplus value”). But nevertheless (having now forgotten his remark about stoicaliy enduring capitalism’s wars, he thinks we ought to have had a hand in it in order, it seems, to defend democracy against “fascism” because democracy “is a more favourable basis for Socialist propaganda.” From this we may assume that our critic himself did have a hand in that “capitalist garbage heap” May we then ask him a few questions. Having supported some "democratic” countries and the Russian Totalitarianism against the German-Italian-Japanese Totalitarianisms is our critic really satisfied that the destruction of tens of millions of lives realty did produce worthwhile results in the form of creating “a more favourable basis for Socialist propaganda,” and if he is satisfied will he give the evidence on which his satisfaction rests? And in particular will he tell us what he thinks his efforts achieved in the direction of making it possible for Socialist propaganda to be carried on legally inside Russia and the Russian Satellites?

Our own view is that reading “Musty Marx” is a for more fruitful occupation for the world’s workers than slaughtering each other in the capitalist garbage heap but we are willing to hear any other reasons for holding otherwise.

He finally asks us in what way the Socialist attitude to war, i.e. that war does not help on the Socialist movement, differs from that of the Pacifists. In brief it is the same difference as that between Socialists and all reformists including the Pacifists and our critic. We hold that the idea of keeping capitalism but reforming it to prune it of its exploitation and wars is a pathetic and dangerous illusion; and also that until the mass of the working class have been won over to Socialism it is idle futility to speculate as does our critic on ways in which a non-Socialist working class that doesn’t understand or warn Socialism could establish it

Some Other Questions

In conclusion we very briefly answer some other questions. We do not hold as our critic supposes, that "for the first time m history, the exploiting class (capitalist) is facing no serious resistance from the exploited masses.” The class straggle is continuous and cannot be suspended. The working class always react in some degree to the continuous pressure of the exploiters, It follows that we do not hold and never have held that the class struggle is confined to small groups of Socialists.

When our critic jeers at the little opportunity the S.P.G.B. has to make its voice heard in the "democratic" capitalist Press, the Radio, etc., he forgets two of his other contentions. He forgets that he wants us to support capitalism’s wars “for democracy” but now tells us that as for as we are concerned the idea that this is a democratic country “falls rather flat.” He also forgets that it was supposed to he the Socialists in the industrialised countries who were waiting for the others. Perhaps he would like to amend it and say they are waiting for us.

On “Votes for women” the S.P.G.B. held that giving support to propertied women’s campaigns for women’s votes would have added more confusion by giving credence to the suffragettes’ claims that ”women’s” interests cut across class divisions. Before women had votes (and while incidentally large numbers of men still were without votes,) the working class in this country already were in a position if they had wanted to do so to vote capitalist parties out of power.

Our critic links up the policy of reformism with the question of war. He writes, “It seems that a socialist must not smear his hands with the capitalist garbage heap. There can be so appreciable reform within capitalism and so for a good many years we must have periodic blood letting.”

He could hardly have chosen a weaker argument. We have had generations of Tory, Liberal and Labour reforms and after two world wars capitalism (including those countries under Labour reformist governments) is massing arms for a third. If reforms had any bearing on capitalism’s wars, which they haven’t, it would seem that the more reforms you have the more armaments grow and wars extend in magnitude. The truth is that if the working class could have been early dissuaded from pursuing the will of the wisp of reformism the prospect of establishing socialism and ending war would have been immeasurably nearer than it is and incidentally, the capitalists, scared by the growth of the Socialist movement would have thrown out more reforms to try to stop its growth.