Scandinavian Fairy Tales: The Worker's Paradise (1956)

From the July 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

In any country where a Labour Party is out of power it is natural that its propaganda should include glowing accounts of the success a Labour Government is supposed to be having somewhere else. Between the wars when the Tories governed here, Labour Party and I.L.P. supporters were inspired by pamphlets describing the alleged glories of Labour rule in Australia, Austria. Germany. France or Spain and whenever the British Labour Party has been in office similar propaganda went on in overseas countries where the local equivalent of the Labour Party was the opposition. Since the 1951 election, when Attlee was defeated, the centre of interest for Labour Party supporters has shifted to Denmark and Sweden. We have been told what a magnificent "Welfare State" they have, how the extremes of riches and poverty have been abolished, and how well they manage relationships between employers and workers. For a long time Denmark and Sweden were running pretty close for favour in British Labour circles, but with Denmark undoubtedly a short way ahead

Something Rotten in the State of Denmark

Then suddenly the lead passed to Sweden and not at all because of the visit to that country of the British Royal Family. The reason was that happy, Labour-governed, Welfare State Denmark suddenly erupted and threw its admirers into consternation. Here is a brief account from the Scandinavian correspondent of the Economist (28 April, 1956):—

  “The series of strikes, which for four weeks threatened to paralyse the country's economy, were only checked when the Folketing [Parliament], after a stormy all-night session, passed an act giving the official mediator's proposals the force of law. These proposals, which satisfied only a small part of the workers' original demands, had been accepted by 74 per cent. of the Employers' Federation but rejected, albeit by a narrow majority, by the Federation of Trade Unions. Had these positions been reversed the Social Democrat government would have felt itself on firmer ground. Its reluctant intervention was greeted by a 24-hour general strike, and a countrywide wave of protest demonstrations. In Copenhagen a crowd of 100,000 strong demonstrated before the Parliament, brought traffic to a standstill, and called for the Prime Minister's resignation. Demonstrations in Odense stopped buses and overturned cars. At Aalborg, a policeman died after being struck by a missile. Rioting dockers at Esberg attempted to throw the cargo of a British merchant ship into the harbour. In the large centres throughout Denmark the police made numerous arrests."

There is much more in the Economist's account about the troubles in the Danish paradise and although for the moment the workers have been forced by the drastic action of the Labour Government to return to work with a 3 per cent. wage increase instead of the 20 per cent. they claimed, the Economist says:—

 “there is a deep malaise beneath the surface which may well lead to fresh outbreaks," and among the workers “there is a widespread feeling that the Social Democrat government has betrayed its own supporters.”

This is dismaying to the British Labour Party because the Danish Social Democrats have a policy identical with their own. But the real betrayal in Denmark, as among Labour supporters everywhere, is that they betrayed themselves in ever supposing that the Labour policy of trying to make capitalism work beneficially can be a success.

In Sweden, too

Now Sweden has the limelight and Mr. Paul Andersen, formerly Paris correspondent of the Observer, in a broadcast reproduced in the Listener (31 May, 1956), describes that country as “the Egalitarian Paradise,” “the world’s most perfect Welfare State.” Of course his picture of Sweden as a land of equality is far from true and indeed his own account gives a little evidence of its inaccuracy. For example he tells both of “a modest-priced if most luxuriously decorated, communal canteen, but also a Vaellihgby branch of one of Stockholm's most expensive restaurants.” And while the rich can eat “for about £3 a head, lobster thermidor, washed down with Chamberlin '47. In the self-service canteen you will also sit in near luxury comfort behind glass walls and find three hot dishes at about 2s. each . . .” In short, Sweden, like every other country whatever the party label of its government caters for the rich and for the poor. Indeed Mr. Andersen does not really mean equality of wealth distribution but "greatest possible equality of its distribution.” We know how great a difference that can mean for we have so often heard Britain described in similar .terms.

There were things about Sweden that Mr. Andersen did not say. He did not mention unemployment of 4.3% at the end of 1955, about four times the percentage in this country, or the 158,000 who received Public Poor Relief during 1953 (latest figures available). And his broadcast ended on a curious note. He says he asked “an old and famous Swedish Socialist ” if everybody is happy “in this gilded germ-free egalitarian paradise.” The gentleman in question (who, from other quoted remarks, is no more a Socialist than any other of the muddled-headed believers in Labour-governed capitalism) “told me firmly, 'No,’ and added, 'of course I shouldn't tell you, but it’s the truth. Life seems to have become empty and void of purpose.”

He went on to explain that because life in Sweden now lacks tension “people replace the normal fears and tensions of the normal battle of life by artificial fears and by personal tensions—by neurosis.”

The broadcaster capped this with the following:— 

“ . . . the most surprising fact, perhaps, of the most advanced Welfare State in being, is that last year’s figures of suicides exceeded the annual toll of fatal road casualties.” 

Mr. Andersen and his Swedish friend who believe that people commit suicide because they have no tensions and fears to make them unhappy can hardly be congratulated on their insight. It might help them to correct their judgment if they looked across the frontier into Denmark and recalled that the same kind of nonsense about industrial and social harmony was related of that country—until the sudden explosion of industrial strife proved how wrong it was. And it is a curious oversight that no mention was made in the broadcast of the fierce and costly struggle to build up the Swedish paradise into a militarily powerful state competent to be an effective factor in another war. Only a very superficial observer of the modern world of war-ready Powers could suppose it possible that the people of Sweden (or of any other country) are really free from the universal dread of possible atomic annihilation.

Edgar Hardcastle

Capitalism 1956 (1956)

From the July 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

The political parties which seek election on a programme of reforms, i.e., the Conservative, Labour, Communist and the now disappearing Liberal parties, all claim though some of them would deny it, that there is nothing basically wrong with capitalism; nothing that cannot be remedied without abolishing the wages system and establishing a classless society. Thus all that it is necessary for workers to do is to follow the right “leaders,” put their trust in promises and, given time, all would be well.

All of these parties have said and continue to say that the hardships and problems with which workers are plagued throughout their lives can be solved given the right leadership and the right policy.

The so-called Communist Party with its changing “cults” of worship is particularly hypocritical in this respect because its members are Communists in name only; obviously no party which believes that COMMUNISM (the abolition of the wages system, common ownership of the means of production and free access to wealth) is the ONLY answer to poverty, housing problems, wars and unemployment would advocate reforms and try to solve these problems within capitalism.

By the time this article is read, another series of Borough Council elections will have been held and workers will tragically once again have voted for the politicians who run the system that robs them.

Once again all the afore-mentioned parties have all promised the same things and childishly blamed one another for past failures in bringing the same “houses for the homeless,” “food for the hungry,” “pensions galore” and “better roads,” etc., as have been promised for many elections past.

One thing that should be glaringly obvious by now is that if any of them had ever redeemed their past promises there would be no need to keep coming back for re-election to do the same thing. This should clearly show to any thinking worker the utter futility of voting for any of them unless you want more in the future of what you have had in the past and if you do, then one could hardly call that thinking

We wish here to pin-point just two of the problems of capitalism, and we have taken, for purposes of illustration, examples of each problem, one at home and one abroad. The idea is to show the worldwide nature of capitalism and its problems and also the world-wide nature of the only solution, SOCIALISM.

First let us look at the housing problem. It is quite obvious from the start that the whole approach of the Socialist Party of Great Britain is very different from and opposed to that of the afore-mentioned parties of capitalism.

We recognise that Prince Rainier and his bride, along with the rest of the class of parasites to which they belong, will not be found in Battersea flat hunting. Shortage of proper housing accommodation is essentially a working class problem and the reason that workers go without adequate housing is the same reason why they go without a great deal of the other things THEY produce; NOT because there is a shortage but because they cannot afford them—they have only very limited access to goods and services of all kinds because they do not own the fruits of their labour they only get WAGES—part payment.

In this wondrous era of H-power, automation and universal “plenty” we read in the South London Press (April 27th, 1956) that “Battersea’s 3,000 housing applicants have no earthly chance of ever getting housed by the Borough.” This sad information comes from a London County Councillor, Douglas Rayment, who, as a Conservative Party politician, has the impudence to say “Too many people sit back and wait for us to do something for them, instead of stirring themselves;”

Was it not the Conservative Party whose Election Platform was based upon, among other things, the assertion that they could solve the housing problem?.

Does not the Conservative Party at ALL elections issue reform programmes of what they are going to do for people who, having voted Conservative, can “sit back” and have the world brought to them on a platter?

The despairing and apathetic attitude of workers is part of the fruits of their having blindly voted for people who promise them things.

The Councillor and some of his colleagues go on to explain that “nearly all new housing in the Borough would go to people moved from slums,” and, of the paltry 246 homes to be built in the “next five years” in “Winstanly Ward, only three go to housing applicants.”

We are told of course that the L.C.C. is not to blame, nor is the Borough Council; it is the fault “of the central planning authority in not allowing sufficient density.” It seems from this that the only thing which stops the L.C.C. and the Borough Council from packing dwellings (as they are aptly called) closer together and piling MORE people into file SAME space, is the central planning authority.

The point which all of these lamentable runners of capitalism miss, when trying to pardon their failure to run capitalism in the interests of the exploited majority, is that in their lying programmes they never say : “We will house you if slum dwellers do not move in from outside,” or “We will solve the housing problem if materials are cheap enough for workers to afford the rents,” “ or “We will bring peace unless war comes, prosperity, unless a slump comes and full employment unless unemployment sets in.” Could it be that to tell workers the truth before polling would be dangerous to their chances of election?

The second problem at which we will glance has had a great deal said and written about it, namely that of RACE. We have ourselves published a 78 page pamphlet on this matter which explodes the false theories of biological superiorities and other such prejudices. It analyses the whole problem from the Socialist point of view and goes into the subject with much greater detail than space permits here. We need only mention one incident as an illustration.

In what is boasted as the most “advanced” country in the world where a lot of shouting is done about “constitutions,” “citizens’ rights,” “freedom” and so on, a case is reported in the Daily Express (April 25th, 1956) of backward and ignorant conduct. The case being that of the segregation of negroes on ’buses in Montgomery, Alabama.

The facts as reported by the above newspaper indicate some “13 states with tough segregation laws” and a Police Commissioner, Sellers, who is a member of the so-called “White Citizens Council.” The Supreme Court having ruled that segregation on ’buses must end. this man said: “As far as I am concerned this damn thing applies to South Carolina only.” He threatened “to arrest any passenger who mixes with the opposite race.”

Of course to carry this threat out would be impossible if the “advanced” individual in question had to define the terms “opposite race” and give evidence that would hold water before he went any further.

It is of particular interest to note that although this threat was made by the chief of police, the ’bus company, despite the fact that the threat also applied to ’bus “drivers who permitted racial mixing on their ’buses,” sided with the Supreme Court ruling and told their employees they need no longer “give front seats to whites and rear seats to negroes.”'

We can understand the tenderheartedness of the *bus company; they were merely responding in the way Capitalists normally do when their gold coffers have been hit. The 50,000 negroes of Montgomery have boycotted the ’buses since last December and this has lost the company “over £1,000 daily.” The negroes, however, are keeping up their boycott “ until the confusion is ended.”

As Socialists we would say the action of the negroes in resisting this callous inequality is the only dignified and praiseworthy thing in the whole sordid and degrading affair.

The most tragic observation of all is not only that members of the working class should behave one to another in such a way, resenting skin colours of fellow members of their own exploited class while their common enemies, the exploiting Capitalist class, live on their backs, but that the move away from segregation came from outside and not from within the states concerned. Unfortunately, the ignorance of the economic forces at work within capitalism, from which this conduct springs, cannot be banished merely by the Supreme Court making rulings although to whatever degree events turn against segregation it is a healthier sign than its unchallenged continuation.

It will finally only be when workers turn to SOCIALISM that they will cease to be a prey to nationalist or racial prejudice of one variety or another, because only then will they no longer see themselves as one with their respective NATIONAL ruling class, but will see that their real oneness lies in union with the wage slaves all over the world, geography, sex and so-called race making no difference. We would conclude by saying that the “education” machine of capitalism whose function it is to turn out obedient, efficient wage slaves will never direct its efforts towards Socialism, but the hard facts of life and the common problems which universally smite all workers will direct their interest our way.

Meanwhile the politicians will go on with their “better world” promises and we for our part will go on vigorously advocating the abolition of the nightmare, which these hirelings seek to preserve, and its replacement by Socialism—the world of the social equality of all men and women of the world, of one community of interest based on holding the means of living in common, and production entirely and literally for use.

Harry Baldwin

The Passing Show: Cat out of the bag (1956)

The Passing Show Column from the July 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

Cat out of the bag

Upton Sinclair once wrote that “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 should 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 protea 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 put profit before principle, but it is not often that a politician as eminent as Sir Anthony confirms it so explicitly.

Hobson’s Choice

Do Socialists support self-determination? As the term is used now, they do not. Self-determination now means freedom for the workers to decide which group of Capitalists will exploit them. Socialists stand for a world in which there will be no exploitation, and in which, as a result, there will be no artificial division of the world into competing and warring states. No group will use war or terrorism as a means to gain independence, for not only will every country be independent, every individual will be independent too. There will be no foreigners under Socialism. The human beings of the world will freely participate in one voluntary society, because in that way will they best satisfy their needs.

Prophets of Doom

Whatever the condition of the country—whether there is war or peace, boom or slump—one factor, according to what we are told, remains constant and unchanged. It is this: if there are wage increases, disaster will overwhelm us all. Repeated warnings are poured out over the years by representatives of the ruling class: we must win the war, or we must reconstruct the country after the war, or we must defeat foreign competition. The use of “we,” incidentally begs the question; these problems are problems of the ruling class, although, of course, the Capitalists will (and do) solve their problems more easily by fooling the workers into giving their support to the drive for war-supplies, or the drive {or exports, or what-have-you.

Mr. MacMillan joins the chorus:

“At first our main competitors—Germany and Japan—were out of the race. Now they were coming along very fast. We must not relax; on the contrary, we must make even greater efforts. . . . Another round of wage increases such as there had been in the past two years would be disastrous. (The Times, 26.5.56.).

The jest of the situation is this. The workers ask for wage-increases, not in the main to increase their share of the goods they produce (and thus reduce the amount of surplus value which is filched from them), but merely in order to maintain their present standards of living in face of constantly rising prices. And what makes prices rise? One of the main causes is that the amount of currency in circulation is continually being increased. And who has the chief say in deciding whether the amount of currency shall be increased? Mr. MacMillan! So Mr. MacMillan is in the position of berating the workers for actions which he himself has forced them into.

Honesty takes a back seat

The soap-and-detergent war among the three or four giant concerns which dominate the market for these goods continues. Each firm has three or more runners in the race, and the attention of the consumer is continually being assaulted by advertisements on the printed page, on hoardings, on the television screen and elsewhere, each claiming that product “A” (or “B,” or “C”) washes clothes cleaner than any of the others. All these allegations cannot be true. In a race it is just possible that all the competitors will arrive at the winning post at the same time; but it is impossible for each of the entrants in one race to beat all the others. But what do Capitalist concerns care for truth?

The sales of one product are boosted by means of a particularly shrewd trick. With each packet of this soap-powder is given—free!—a new duster. Buyers naturally assume they are getting more for their money than they did before this device was introduced. But in fact they get less. For the duster is placed inside the packet, thereby reducing the amount of soap-powder inside it. And the manufacturer saves more on the soap-powder than he has to pay for the scrap of cloth which constitutes the “free" duster.

The right attitude to the job

Mr. James Crawford is a paid trade union official—he is President of the National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives. Recently he decided he would be serving his members' interests best by giving some advice to the boss on how to become popular with the workers. In a speech to the Annual Conference of the Advertising Association recently he declared:

  “In British advertisements, the top executive—if he is not depicted as a harassed old man on the point of breaking down with an executive neurosis or ulcer—is at any rate seen to be a pretty smooth and leisurely type. This sort of thing builds up a mythical picture of the ‘boss’ in the minds of average employees, and is only a few points better than the Communist cartoonist’s picture of a gross, top-hatted, cigar-smoking Satan, with his tail curling menacingly round his striped trousers. In American advertisements, the executive is much younger, much healthier, and has much more the appearance of a man who actually does some work. At times he is actually seen with his coat off, not sitting at a desk, but talking to the men on the job.” (World’s Press News, 18.5.56.).

Mr. Crawford said the advertising profession should “help create among people at work the right attitude to the job." Mr. Crawtord is chairman of the Productivity Council, which has the task of increasing output. The ruling class has a high opinion of the “responsibility” and "common sense" of the majority of trade union leaders in this country; its confidence is evidently not misplaced in Mr. Crawford.

Life is grim, and life is earnest

From the Sunday Express, 154-56:

“Lady Portsmouth’s daughters, Lady Phillipa, 18. and Lady Jane Wallop, 17, economise at their coming-out cocktail party next week by serving Spanish champagne—about five shillings a bottle cheaper than French non-vintage.”

But don’t send round the hat yet. This isn't a permanent measure. “For their dance next month, which will probably be attended by Princess Alexandra, the champagne will be best French vintage."

These upper-class parties are so much trouble that one wonders why anyone bothers to give them. In the Sunday Express of June 10th we find: 

"Lady Crosfield is again having difficulty in planning her annual pre-Wimbledon tennis party. . . . This year she finds that she has picked on the same day as the Garter ceremony at Windsor. ‘It is too late to alter my date, so I shall have no royalty here,' she says."

Life is full of tribulations, Lady Crosfield. But don’t worry—you’ll probably survive this one.

Alwyn Edgar.

U-Mania (1956)

From the July 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

This writer, who calls the second part of dinner “afters” and proposes to go on doing so, is faced with a new menace. All his life the genteel alternative has been “sweet” or “dessert”: now, suddenly, it is “pudding.” Solid or fluid, wet or dry, pancake, pastry, blancmange or rhubarb, “pudding” is to be its name. “Pudding” is “U.”

So is “vegetables,” but “greens” is non-U. Having “luncheon” is U, but “dinner”—except at night—is non-U. Saying “goodbye” is U, “bye-bye” non-U. Putting the milk in the tea is U, the tea in the milk non-U. To telephone from one’s house is U, ’phoning from home non-U.

“U” stands for Upper-Class, “non-U” non-Upper-Class is phraseology and etiquette. The terms were first used by Professor Alan Ross, of Birmingham University in an article on “Linguistic Class-Indicators in Present-Day English” which was reprinted (having first appeared in a scholarly Finnish, paper) in Encounter. They were popularized by The Observer and the Sunday Express, the leading agent and authority being Miss Nancy Mitford, the novelist.

What are the arbiters? By whose decree, what protocol or final judgment, is a word or a gimmick U or otherwise? One line of approach is suggested by a recent headline in the Evening Standard: GULLS EGGS, STRAWBERRIES HURLED AT PARTY: A DEBUTANT IS HIT IN THE EYE. Debutants are U; undoubtedly this was a U-party. The authentic U-touch, however, seems to be the hurling of gulls’ eggs and strawberries. Hurling most things is just vulgar: BLACK PUDDINGS, KIPPERS HURLED AT PARTY: PLASTERER HIT IN THE EYE would be non-U from start to finish.

Miss Mitford told Picture Post in an interview published on May 12th that “money has nothing to do with being U,” but that is incomplete and therefore misleading. It is clear enough that people may be rich (“wealthy” is non-U) and not be U (the Grace Kelly wedding was “very non-U,” she said); it is equally clear, however, that nobody can be poor and U at the same time. Think of the cost in gulls’ eggs and strawberries.

The real clue lies in the fact that, however silly and pointless the U-craze sounds, it isn’t a craze and it isn’t pointless. The speech and manners of die upper class are emblems as carefully worked and as proudly displayed as their heraldic crests. The hereditary rich learn them in the nursery and the public school (Miss Mitford says she learned U from her father, Lord Redesdale). Not all the rich have it that way, however; there are always the recruits, the successful speculators and the potato-crisp millionaires.

The best, most comprehensive beginners’ book of U is at least as old as Miss Mitford. “Manners and Rules of Good Society, by a Member of the Aristocracy,” came out early in this century, and is still being reprinted. The chapter-headings tell their own tale: Introductions, Paying Calls, Precedency, Garden-Parties, Shaking Hands, Luncheons and 41 others. Here you find U-pronundation: Blythe to be said Bly, Kerr Kar, Heathcote Hethcut and Montgomery Mungummery. As the author says in his preface:

 “A solecism may be perhaps in itself but a trifling matter, but in the eyes of society at large it assumes proportions of a magnified aspect, and reflects most disadvantageously upon the one by whom it is committed; the direct inference being, that to be guilty of a solecism argues the offender to be unused to society, and consequently not on an equal footing with it."

Thus, some people talk to establish their meaning and others to establish their status. That is why some modes of speech are thought better than others. Cockney, Liverpool and Newcastle dialects are not really looked-down on for philological reasons (some expressions like “gorn” and “orf,” are standard Cockney, and are also standard upper-class); the real point is that they are working-class idioms.

Does that explain the U-cult? Of itself, no. But there are lots of people who don’t belong to the upper section but like others to think they do. Frank Richards’s schoolboy stories, which were nine-tenths snobbery, made great fun of the fat boy’s boast of “Bunter Court,” "an establishment that, seen close at hand, diminished to a semi-detached villa in Surrey.” And that is very near an all-too-common truth. Fancy calling a three-foot-wide passage “the hall!” Many people do. Fancy calling 12 feet square of living space “the lounge”—but they do.

The prop of the myth of “middle-class life” is its imitation of upper-class life. Not surprisingly, the upper class does not like it. The sham Tudor villas, the grained front doors, the imitation leather and the rest, are sneered at. Rather unfair of the upper class, because they can afford the real things, of course. Nevertheless, they are in fact expressing resentment of the infringement of their patents. “ U ” is for upper-class; its antithesis, “non-U,” means—as the Picture Post article put it— “dreadfully middle-class.”

“Linguistic class-indicators” therefore are continually changing, and Miss Mitford and Professor Ross have virtually sponsored a new guide to them. The sad thing is that the eager suburbs have already lapped up a great deal of it so as to keep abreast in being O.K. socially. It is not the U-cult that is foolish—propertied classes seek every means to distinguish themselves from the rest—but the existence of the economic division which produces such things.

In the last ten years the people who are pleased to call themselves “middle-class’’—teachers, parsons, civil servants and all—have pleaded their poverty perhaps more strongly than anyone; that is, they have demonstrated for all to see that their problems and interests are just the same as those of all the others who have to go to work for a living. And at just the same time, they have turned the passage into the hall, the settee into the sofa, Ralph into Rafe and the lavatory into the toilet in the hope that nobody will suspect the truth.

The upper class have at least one unassailable comeback. To try to be U is . . . definitely non-U.

Robert Barltrop

Recent events in Russia (1956)

Party News from the July 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

Report of Meeting at Denison House

As was reported briefly in the May issue of the Socialist Standard a successful meeting to put the Socialist estimate of recent changes in the situation in Russia was held at short notice at the Denison House Hall.

Two speakers stated the Party viewpoint. Comrade D'Arcy devoted his attention mainly to consideration of the international aspect of the question.

Comrade Young dealt chiefly with the Communist Party in this country.

Unfortunately, the raucous and rowdy elements who have been noticed around the Party platform at Hyde Park recently were conspicuous by their absence, preferring not to avail themselves of the opportunity to state the C. P. case inside the hall.

Even so, there were the usual individuals who heard for the first time that the Russian Government borrows vast sums upon which it regularly pays 4% interest

Comrade D'Arcy quoted from the election speeches of Kruschev, Bulganin and Molotov (delivered in 1955) to show that they were still eulogising Stalin a year after his death.

He further drew attention to the impact of the international economic situation on Russian affairs. He thought that the renunciation of Stalin and the appeals for co-existence were the reflection of the Moscow Government's need for a larger share of world trade. The economic development of Russia would be bound to produce its political counterpart. The growth of the working class in that country would make it more difficult to run by simple police state methods.

Several amusing instances were given by the second speaker of the ludicrous position of the British Communist Party throughout the years. After quoting the Daily Worker to show that the articles on the death of Stalin were completely repudiated two years later, the speaker gave examples of the antics of the Communists resulting from their lack of principles. Supporting the Labour Party in 1924—opposing it in 1929—supporting it in 1940 and 1945, supporting the war, opposing it—supporting it.

Calling on the unemployed to march to die military barracks at Burnley and fraternise with the soldiers, only to find them empty, and converted into slum property.

With reference to the so-called “day-to-day” struggle, the speaker read two extracts, one from the Daily Worker and one from the Workers Weekly. 

“Many times we light-mindedly call for strike action without the semblance of preparation having been made, so that in some districts, when workers see our comrades, they are apt to say, 'Hullo, what are we to strike for to-day?’ "—Daily Worker,  January 25th, 1932.

“ The unemployed have done all they can, and the Government know it. They have tramped through the rain in endless processions. They have gone in mass deputations to the Guardians.

They have attended innumerable meetings and have been told to be “solid.” They have marched to London enduring terrific hardships. All this has led nowhere.— Workers Weekly, February 10th, 1923. (Italics ours.)

Both speakers emphasised the repeated declaration of the Socialist Party that the fundamental mistake of the Bolsheviks was their illusion of minority action.

Socialism can only be majority action.—Democracy.

As a result their policies resulted in increasing disaster, throwing “Communists” in this country into even greater confusion and panic.

Numerous questions were answered and an interesting discussion took place in which various points of view were expressed. One contributor thought there might be a likelihood of a genuine democratic advance in Russia due to working class maturity.

Others questioned this view, asking for evidence for the statement that there had been any real change there, seeing in the "new Party line" just one more adroit manoeuvre.

A request was also made for still further consideration of this aspect of the business, which some thought inadequately dealt with by the meeting.

Editorial: Who will switch on the lights for the Electricians? (1956)

Editorial from the July 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Electrical Trades Union has been having a spot of bother about its Executive’s gift of £20 to a fund to provide legal aid for Cypriots arrested under Emergency Regulations. Much heat was generated in the dispute between members who disapproved and others who approved—much heat but no light Outsiders soon joined in, including the Sunday Express (10 June, 1956) with a demand for the curbing of the power of the E.T.U.; defenders of British Colonialism who call the Cypriots “terrorists,” and opponents who call them “Patriots”; and critics of the “Communist” officials of the ET.U. The latter defended their action on the ground, among others, that it is right and proper for a trade union to come to the aid of other trade unionists when denied a “fair trial.” Nothing wrong with this of course but one wonders if it extended to the numerous Russian workers now admitted to have been “framed” under the Stalin regime.

In the public controversy much excitement centred round the alleged Communism of the ET.U. officials and the merits of the Cypriot movement against British rule but as is usual on such occasions the working class and Socialist viewpoints were not heard.

There is no evidence whatever that the officials of the E.T.U. who acted as spokesmen in the affair are interested in Communism, and abundant evidence to the contrary. Members or sympathisers of the Communist Party they may be, but this long ago ceased to mean an interest in Communism. What it now implies is a muddle-headed belief that State Capitalism is the same as Socialism or Communism, and that this is a fine thing provided it is administered by the Russian Communist Party not by the British Labour Party. If the E.T.U. officials had been supporters of Communism they would be internationalists and opponents of State Capitalism everywhere. They would be trying to convince the electricians that Russian State Capitalism is no more deserving of working class support than is the Electricity Board in Britain, that is not at all, and that the growing competition of Russia in world markets is no more a matter for congratulation by British or Russian workers than is American conquest of markets a matter for congratulation by American workers. They would be trying to get misguided workers in Britain, Cyprus and everywhere else, to recognise that Nationalist movements are of use only to the Capitalists and do nothing but harm to the workers of the world. A united trade union movement acting internationally to further working class interests against all the governments of capitalism and all the employers, everywhere, would achieve something for the workers, which no Nationalist movement ever did.

Unable to point to positive benefits to the workers through support of Nationalist movements their propagandists often take refuge in the vague abstraction that movements for national independence are in favour of “freedom” and should therefore receive the approval of "lovers of freedom.” The one freedom Socialists are interested in, freedom from capitalism, is opposed by nationalists but even within the framework of capitalism the identification of Nationalism with libertarian ideas is false. Every Nationalist movement of modern times has built itself up on the directly opposite doctrine, that of forcing unwilling or indifferent people to support it in the last resort at the point of the gun. No Nationalist movement is ever content to let people freely choose; always the resort is to force. Cyprus is no exception in presenting the spectacle of Cypriot Patriots shooting other Cypriots for choosing not to support the independence movement. And the long history of sentimental movements by "friends of freedom” to help Nationalists gain their independence has been littered with the examples of "ex- prisoners turned jailers,” of national groups, having gained independence, turning to suppress some other group. And so it will go on while capitalism lasts.

Socialists therefore do not support Nationalist movements and do not support the efforts of other Capitalist groups to suppress Nationalist movements. Instead Socialists try to induce the workers to recognize their interest in Socialism and in the internationalism that goes with it, in opposition to Capitalism and its tool, Nationalism.

Psychology and Socialism (1956)

From the July 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

The famous thinkers of modern times are easily named and their realms identified: Darwin for evolution, Einstein for relativity and so on. That is as far as it goes for most of us, and it is much less easy to be aware of their influence on everyday life and thought. There is no doubt, however, of the influence of Sigmund Freud, whose birth-centenary was celebrated recently. “Ego,” “inhibition" and “unconscious" are words in daily use; people as a matter of course comment on others' behaviour in terms of complexes and subconscious wishes.

In a television programme on May 13th, eminent men testified to Freud's influence in many fields of thought. “All anthropology today assumes the Freudian view of human character," said Professor Blackburn. "Through the teaching of Freud we are forced to pay attention to the personality of the delinquent. . . rather than what he has done," said Professor Sprott. Cyril Connolly spoke of the Freudian inroad on literature—“we’re all still reading from it"—and another speaker quoted the Catholic Charles Baudouin: "Modern man cannot conceive of himself without Freud."

Anniversary tributes are always lavish, of course. Nevertheless, there can be no question of the part psychological theory and psychiatrical practice have come to play in modern life. The classic doctrines remain their basis. Freud himself, with his emphasis on "the Unconscious," the mass of repressed thought and memory, is pre-eminent His one-time followers, Jung and Adler, proposed other driving-forces of behaviour for Freud's sexuality: for Adler it was power-striving, for Jung "the Libido," a generalized force giving rise to all creative activity. In the study of conscious thought, the Behaviourists led by Pavlov and Watson have stated and exemplified the doctrine of the conditioned reflex, which was described by Bertrand Russell in "The Scientific Outlook" as “ the basis of learning, of what the older psychologists called the ‘association of ideas,' of the understanding of language, of habit, and of practically everything in behaviour that is due to experience."

In addition to these two main schools, there are several branches of psychology dealing with specific aspects of behaviour. For example, there are the "investigators of intelligence" whose conclusions still hold sway in the educational world and their tests applied as measures of innate abilities. Many others, too: group behaviour, leadership, art, crime, all have come in the psychologists' orbit.

More than anything else, psychology is an attempt at a solution, and before there is a solution you must have a problem. Freud's theories grew out of his own clinical research into cases of hysteria and neurasthenia; the existence of a study of the mind implies the growth of mental and emotional disorder in the modern world. True, there were disordered minds before modern times—Shakespeare wrote about them, Nero seems a clear case of paranoia—and before the statistics. Nevertheless,  there is no question of the tremendous growth of such illness in the twentieth century. No big hospital today is without its staff of psychiatrists.

The central theme of Freudian psychology is the supposition of an unconscious mind, receiving the impressions of experience and shaping, like an unseen hand, the acts and motives of conscious life. "The unconscious," wrote Trotter in Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War, "is the realm of all the experiences, memories, impulses and inclinations which during the subject's life have been condemned by the standards of the conscious, have proved incompatible with it and have therefore been outlawed from it. This banishment in no way deprives these excluded mental processes of their energy, and they constantly influence the feelings and behaviour of the subject. So strict, however, is the guard between them and the conscious that they are never allowed to pass the barrier between one sphere and the other except in disguised and fantastically distorted forms by which their true meaning is closely concealed."

That is all very well as far as it goes. There is nothing far-fetched in the idea of a fantasy-life as a source of conflict and frustration and ultimately illness; indeed, it is only too recognizable. The converts to religion are seeking stability and assurance which ordinary life does not give them; the film-star and speedway worshippers, the tough novel addicts are only snatching at secondhand emotional satisfactions. If one grants, however, that fear, guilt and unhappiness may be rooted in the subconscious, there is still the fact that the subconscious and the conscious both are rooted in society. Consciousness of itself has no meaning: man, the social animal, has only social consciousness.

To some extent psychiatrists, are compelled to recognize this. A good deal of their work amounts to rehabilitation rather than anything else—finding different jobs, recommending for re-housing and so on. This writer once saw the line of waiting patients for psychiatric treatment in a London hospital: written over them, as plain as the marks of a physical beating, were the signs of poverty and care and the fact that what they really needed most was an extra ten pounds a week apiece. That is why generally psychiatrists are as impotent as most other therapists, trying to cure the complaint without removing its cause.

It is a mistake to brush off the question of psychiatry as an amusing vogue for idle rich people or a refuge for nuts and ninnies. The first suggestion was tested in America a few years ago by two Yale investigators who grouped all the mental cases in one city—New Haven—according to income and social background. By far the greatest proportion (36.8 per cent.) came from the bottom group of unskilled poorly-paid workers with incomplete elementary education. To debunk psychiatry does not explain why currently one person in twenty in America or one in sixteen in Britain is finding his way to a mental hospital at some time or other—to say nothing of the aspirin addicts.

Our complex, class-divided society imposes a thousand and one repressions on its people, from the material discomforts which turn lively girls into nagging wives to the ulcerating strain of city life and the loneliness of the crowd. Fear is ubiquitous in modern life: not man's sensible fear of physical danger, but a multitude of small relations of it. The insecurity from which no-one is free means perpetual fear of losing one’s job, of illness, of being unable to pay the instalments, of dropping places in the contemporary caste-race called “standards of living." The case was stated very well in a broadcast on Crime Comics and the American Way of Life by Irving Sarnoff, in March last year:

"Unfortunately, not every American can get more. Unfortunately, too, the very process of striving after more, by foul means or fair, pits person against person in an endless struggle. For those who cannot show constant increments, the struggle is especially bitter. . . . Paradoxically, success is so often dependent upon the masking of the very antagonisms engendered by the struggle, that we are required to wear an armour of good humour, compliance, duplicity and detachment. Nevertheless, the inner anger remains and finds devious outlets in psychosomatic complaints, insanity, divorce and crime."

Only it isn't exclusively American, of course. And to all of that may be added the host of petty anxieties reflected in present-day advertising, the basis of which seems to be that you can sell most of a thing by making people afraid to be without it. Thus, the accent is on fear of not getting on; of leaving one's family unsupported; of the social and sexual consequences of off-white shirts, perspiration and strong breath.

This is perhaps the appropriate point to refer to the Behaviourists. Pavlov’s and Watson's experiments are so well known as to need little description. Show a dog food, and its mouth waters; ring a bell at the same time, and eventually its mouth waters at the sound of the bell; unless its cerebral hemispheres have been removed.

Or have a child play with a white rat; scare the child with a bang, and soon it fears the rat. The possibilities for manipulating behaviour were so extensive, in fact, as to lead to the conclusion that thought itself was but the inward expression of conditioned reflexes. Watson wrote: "States of consciousness provide no objective data that admits of scientific examination, nor can the behaviourists find any evidence for mental existence of any kind."

Conditioned reflexes are recognizable enough in the modern world. See them in the woman's magazine adulation of royalty; the wartime hatred of the other side; the emotional stirrings to a hymn or a military band; the advertisements for every washing-powder. And the fact is that the Behaviourists discovered nothing in the laboratory that others have not found out empirically. Bernard Shaw, as acute at some times as he was silly at others, is recorded as having said when Pavlov’s treatise was first published: "If the fellow had come to me I could have given him that information in less than 25 seconds without tormenting a single dog."

It was probably true. Advertizing and salesmanship practise as a matter of course what Behaviourism preaches as a matter of theory (and other departments of psychology too. The magazines of popular psychology invoke Freud and Jung, but their material is the sell-more-and-get-on doctrine of How to Win Friends and Influence People). The Behaviourists' conclusions about the nature of thought conclude only how little is yet known about thought. The brain and nervous system have been charted, the parts named which are associated with some mental processes—and that is virtually all.

K. S. Lashley, after a long series of experiments, could say no more than "the learning process and the retention of habit are not dependent on any finely localised structural changes within the cerebral cortex" and “the mechanisms of integration are to be sought in the dynamic relations among the parts of the nervous system rather than in details of structural differentiation." And again, of his findings from mutilating the brains of rats: "Such facts can only be interpreted as indicating the existence of some dynamic function of the cortex which is not differentiated in respect to single capacities, but is generally effective for a number to which identical neural elements cannot be ascribed." These, from Lashley's “Brain Mechanisms and Intelligence," are among the most positive statements made on thought and habit, and they are so tentative as to be almost speculative.

One aspect of psychology certainly should not be overlooked. Whatever knowledge of individual and collective behaviour has been gained is used to further the interests of the ruling class: to tame the recalcitrant and choose the efficient worker, to boost morale in wartime and help productivity in the factory. The social psychology of industry is a product of the last 80 years, the era of relative surplus-value—when exploitation has taken the form of squeezing and cajoling more out of the worker in a shorter working day.

That psychology has thrown side-lights on human behaviour is true, though the evidence suggests that the same would have been forthcoming from other sources. It raises questions—but fails to answer them. Freud saw that 19th century civilization was bad for people, but he offered no alternative. The psycho-therapist deals with introspection, with repression, tension and anxiety as personal conditions when in reality they are social conditions. Individual mental illnesses may be cured in the same way as one man’s ulcer may be excised—and the way of living which produces thousands more remain.

A million acts of charity point to but do not remedy an economic condition of poverty. Similarly, psychology underlines but offers no solution to a problem of society. The answer cannot lie in “adjustment” for individuals: is it to be adjustment to a rotten society? The only real solution lies in changing the structure of society itself.

Robert Barltrop

50 Years Ago: A Working Man’s Education (1956)

The 50 Years Ago column from the July 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is difficult to see what connection the present “Education” Bill or the outcry regarding it has with education itself. Indeed, the frothy struggle for religious domination almost completely obscures the really important matter beneath.

Most people do not distinguish between education proper and the mere imparting of information, but the distinction is vital. To educate is not to merely pack the brain with facts or cut and dried formulae, but is to bring out the powers of the mind, to train the faculties for the reception and use of life’s present experience and of the knowledge handed down from the past; to prepare the mind for the first-hand gathering of knowledge, and the co-ordination and right use of it.

To fill children’s minds with facts and dead formulae whose inner significance is not understood may make excellent parrots, but cannot make thinkers. Such a procedure causes a one-sided, mechanical development, and leads to a taste for snippety bits. It does not enable the mind to draw useful knowledge from the facts of life; it brings about an incapacity for sustained and logical thinking, and creates a habit of mind that is eagerly receptive of superficials, but in no wise creative.

#    #    #    #

Naturally . . . we find that the quality of the worker’s instruction is traceable to the demands of the prevailing methods of wealth production. There is no necessity to the Capitalist of a mass of fully-educated, original-minded and high-spirited men as wage-slaves; they would be in the way, and far too costly. The necessities of the day demand workers who are mechanical one-sidedly developed, and eminently submissive. It is necessary to the Capitalist, not only that the workers be not taught things which may injure his domination, but also that they be trained so far and no farther; that they be disciplined in routine work, and fitted with just sufficient knowledge to do the worker’s work cheaply and fairly efficiently.

(From the Socialist Standard, July, 1906)

The Critics Criticised – Professor Popper Looks at History pt.2 (1956)

Book Review from the July 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Continued from the June Issue)

Mr. Popper’s own evaluation of history can hardly claim any scientific pretentions. In the main he largely garbles the anti-Christian Nietzsche’s “power drive theory of history.” With Mr. Popper this power drive reveals itself in the history of political power which, he says, “has been elevated into world history.” This political power drive theory is explained by Mr. Popper as the impulse to worship or be worshipped. He repeats Schopenhauer that man’s besetting sin is making power synonymous with success. This worship of power it seems is due to fear (p. 272) although (same page) he appears to have changed his mind and made the power drive one of instinct which in that case makes him a Bertrand Russell adherent. This, then, is Mr. Popper’s theoretical contribution to the understanding of our times. One might add in passing that to grasp the significance of political power or any aspect of social power lies not in assumptions about some neurotic impulse or instinct but in an analysis of the historical conditions and social formations which explain not only the nature of political power but why different societies have thrown up different forms of political organisations. When this is done the power drive theory of history becomes supernumerary.

Mr. Popper has quite mistaken notions as to what constitutes history. For him, technocracy, political power, historical records, etc., are history. In fact they are not history, but the outcome of history. History itself is the story of man—not this man or that man but socially organised man in pursuit of his ends under given and determinate conditions. Since the passing of primitive society the pursuit of these ends has taken place via the agency of social groups whose aims and interests have been conflicting ones. It is by an examination of these social productive relations—the economic factor—that we reveal the rise and fall of institutions, traditions, politics, ideologies and other cultural phenomena and thus allow a theory of historical causation to become possible.

Marxism is an attempt then to show the prime causal factors in the evolution of human society. In spite of Mr Popper’s efforts to show that Marxism believes there are mysterious impersonal forces in history which shape man’s destiny, it is no more mysterious than other evolutionary concepts which seek to account for development in other fields.

Men make history Marxists contend and what some men have made, other men can understand. In this way history becomes an intelligible process and the past capable of being reconstructed by the same pattern of enquiry which marks other fields of scientific investigation. In the light of this, Mr. Popper’s remarks that men have only faked history seems more than a little foolish.

Mr. Popper is unoriginal enough to seek to be original and daring and too often succeeds in being merely dull and pretentious. He plays to the gallery by announcing that all the history which exists, i.e., our history of the great and powerful, is a shallow comedy. He brings in the usual gods whose function it is apparently to mock at human affairs and they indulge in the conventional guffaws at our expense. At other times he converts the comedy into crude melodrama by assuring us that the history which is advertised as the history of mankind is but the history of international crime and mass murder (p. 270).

Mr. Popper’s views on history seem to waver between a cloak and dagger conspiracy and another version of the fall of man. Neither of them can validly explain the actual evolution of human society: Why it has pointed in a determinate direction, viz., primitive society, slavery, feudalism, capitalism. And why in that order.

In spite of the nonsense talked about by Mr. Popper, Isaiah Berlin and others, that “historic inevitability” is another name for an automatic impersonal force which supposedly operates in history, Marx’s views on history were sharp and clear. Human effort and struggle he held were the means which brought about the historically determined. He never sought to make history a mystery. Indeed he claimed that history had no greater reality than that which could be discovered by the analysis of actual historical events. While unlike Hegel he never believed that history was the outcome of logic and reason, he nevertheless believed that it could be rationally explained.

Marx had then a view point on history. He did not believe it could be explained by abstractions like power drives or impulses. Nor it might be added by spirit, nature or some economic first cause. For Marx history had no purpose which was not the purpose of man. No goals which are not human goals. It is men who will to do things. But what men will is always contramenious with elements in the social situation which are unwilled. Because society is a continuous process, men always find themselves in a set of conditions which is given. It is these conditions which give the scope and set the stamp on particular social aims and goals. When and whether they will be effectively realised will depend upon the objective possibilities within the social situation. It is true for instance that Socialism must be willed by men but it is not until a particular set of social relations namely capitalism, appear, can there arise the objective means for Socialism to be realised. Marx’s theory of historic causation explains then why men in different historic phases seek to achieve certain ends and what have been the nature of the circumstances which have allowed them to succeed —or fail. Critics of Marx have seized upon the term “objective” conditions, isolated it from its context and then accused Marx of propounding a prime mover on economic first cause which propel men along some predetermined path. Mr. Popper is an incorrigible exponent of this type of distortion.

It has already been noted that Mr. Popper’s conception of history, i.e., the story of power politics, technocracy, historical records, etc., is not history, even though each of them has a history, and even when he presents them as history he converts them into a masquerade of power drives and neurotic impulses. Because Mr. Popper denies there is any valid continuity, any causal connection in social development, he asserts it is only we who live in the present, who can change things not something called history. Almost a century before Marx had said: “Things cannot remain that way, they must become different and we human beings must make them different.” Indeed the whole purpose of Marx’s teaching was that only by understanding capitalism and acting upon that understanding would we be effective in changing it to something better.

Mr. Popper wants something better. He refers vaguely to the need of justice, democracy, equality, without any real reference to the social context. His own assertion that something called historicism alias Marxism sees men as pawns in some inevitable cosmic evolution which ignores their personal aims and attitudes, renders politics null and void, and allows “the social scientists to say what shall or shall not be done,” is a sheer invention on his part. He refers innocuously to the brotherhood of man but he has no serious quarrel with the present set up. He fails to recognise that the removal of class privilege based on productive ownership must be the indispensable and elementary step for achieving that “brotherhood.”

Ted Wilmott

(To be continued)

Inflation and Deflation (1956)

From the July 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

“In so far as the payments balance one another, money functions only ideally as money of account, as a measure of value. In so far as actual payments have to be made, money does not serve as a circulating medium, as a mere transient agent in the interchange of products, but as the individual incarnation of social labour, as the independent form of existence of exchange value, as the universal commodity. This contradiction comes to a head in those phases of industrial and commercial crises which are known as monetary crises. Such a crises occurs only where the ever-lengthening chain of payments, and an artificial system of settling them, has been fully developed. Whenever there is a general and extensive disturbance of this mechanism, no matter what its cause, money becomes suddenly and immediately transformed, from its merely ideal shape of money of account, into hard cash. Profane commodities can no longer replace it. The use-value of commodities becomes valueless, and their value vanishes in the presence of its own independent form. On the eve of the crisis, the bourgeois, with self-sufficiency that springs from intoxicating prosperity, declares money to be a vain imagination. Commodities alone are money. But now the cry is everywhere: money alone is a commodity. As the hart pants after fresh water, so pants his soul after money, the only wealth.”  

(‘Capital” pages 154-155, chapter 3, on “Money or the Circulation of Commodities.” Kerr edition.)

Voice From The Back: Blood money (1999)

The Voice From The Back Column from the November 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blood money 

The international arms bazaar has always been a dirty if highly lucrative trade. And Britain, despite the hypocritical stance currently adopted by the Foreign Office, has never been slow to sell lethal hardware to warring foreigners if the price was right . . . To that end, the Ministry of Defence’s commercial offshoot, Defence Export Services Organisation, produced a global survey in 1998—the year after Labour came to power—identifying existing and potential customers and their future requirements. While paying lip-service to New Labour’s stated aim of “ethical arms exports”, the strategic survey rules out few of the world’s rogue states as possible clients. Libya, Syria and Iraq are still not welcome. For the moment at least. Chile, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, all of which have appalling human rights records, are well quoted . . . Malaysia is another client. It has cash aplenty and it serves as a counterbalance to Indonesia. The arms race allows the UK to quite literally make a killing and keep some kind of bloody order in its perceived spheres of influence. The Herald, 9 September.

A plague on both your houses 

The truth is, both superpowers have decided to embark on a biological weapons arms race with incalculable consequences. The Russians, accomplished cheats on biological warfare disarmament, have been pursuing offensive research on smallpox for years. The Americans, who know only too well of this Russian deception, feel obliged to pursue defensive measures. But compounding the mutual suspicions is one essential truth in the grim world of plague wars research—the line between defensive and offensive is invisible. Western Australian, 19 June.

A fair day’s cop-out 

This year, the Bunbury [Australia] RSL is proud to honour the men of the Merchant Marines who served their countries so well during the world wars. It is sadly true to say that they have not received the recognition and thanks that has accrued to the members of the military forces that relied so much on their efforts. The men of the British Merchant Navy (30,000 of whom fell victim to the U-boats between 1939 and 1945, the majority drowned or killed by exposure in the cruel northern oceans) were quite as certainly front-line warriors as the guardsmen and fighter pilots to whom they ferried the necessities of combat. Neither they nor their Australian, American, Dutch, Norwegian or Greek fellow mariners wore uniform and few have any memorial . . . under British law, when a ship was sunk, the obligation of the shipowner to pay the crew’s wages went with it. Bunbury Herald, 20 April 1998.

Counting our blessings 

In Britain, the richest 10 percent enjoy, on average, seven times the income of the poorest 10 percent; in Russia the difference is 40-fold, with devastating effects on people’s health. Guardian, 18 August.

Divide and rule 

One of communism’s greatest paradoxes was its attitude towards the workers. The official doctrine held them as the ruling class. However, in daily life they were treated with contempt and were the victims of numerous abuses. It took the events of August 1980 to shatter the false image of the workers and show their true nature as people willing to fight for the freedoms and rights of workers and of the whole of society. Following that experience, the bond of co-operation between the intelligentsia and the working class was born. It was exactly that bond that gave great power to the Solidarity movement . . . The death knell of this bond came in the form of the collapse of the communist system and more specifically the extremely liberal method of reforming the economy. Very quickly these reforms brought on great financial disparities. To some extent this stratification could not have been avoided in a market economy, but in Poland these changes became so extreme that they ruined the former social cohesion. Over 90 percent of society living quite modestly will continue to pay taxes at an unchanged level. Meanwhile, the tiny group of the most affluent will see their taxes fall by 4 percent from 40 to 36 percent. The effects of the decrease in budgetary intake will be felt by those earning the least . . . Solidarity’s great drama is that 10 years after its triumph it takes care of the wealthiest few and has truncheons and rubber bullets for those who demand bread and work. Wprost Weekly (Polish language paper), 4 July.

Food: why we don’t get the best (1999)

From the November 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Food matters to everyone. People have been led to revolt if unable to obtain enough. But quality, rather than quantity, is just as important. Politicians, their profit-chasing overlords and the marketplace that unites them, are attracting unfavourable scrutiny after successive well-publicised poisonings, adulterations, scams and animal abuse cases. 

Following salmonella, E. coli, BSE and a spate of more recent food scandals, people are unsurprisingly alarmed over just what they are eating and just what can be done to ensure meals are safe. Here are just four disturbing news reports of late which emerged in less than one week: 

The [Pesticide Safety Directorate] working party on pesticide residues found that some of the largest retailers, including Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Safeway, sold produce that had levels of pesticides above the maximum residues limit, including illegal growth regulators and known carcinogens (Guardian, 17 September). 

Food hygiene inspectors from the European Commission are to start an urgent investigation into standards in French rendering plants following allegations that untreated water, blood and discharges from animal carcasses, and sewage have been used in making poultry and pig feed. The Commission and the French government have been anxious to play down the accusation for fear of sparking a new European food crisis . . . The common factor in this summer’s crises has been manufacturers’ failure to maintain hygiene standards in the highly competitive food industry (Guardian, 18 August) 

Children who eat fishfingers are being fed ‘undesirable’ levels of two of the world’s most feared poisons, reveals an official report. Dioxins and PCBs—believed to cause cancer and have ‘gender bending’ effects—were found by Government researchers in all the samples of fishfingers bought in different supermarkets. Higher levels were found in the fresh fish on sale, particularly in oily fish such as herring which the Government has been urging people to eat for health reasons . . . Despite the fears, the Government has decided against issuing any warnings when the research—the first of its kind by the Agriculture Ministry—was published quietly in August on an official website (Daily Mail, 20 September). 

Belgium yesterday warned the EU that tests carried out on meat for export . . . show that livestock reared on farms near industrial plants carries higher levels of dioxin contamination . . . Belgium’s food crisis in May caused consumer panic after the revelation that animal feed had been contaminated by potentially cancer-causing dioxins at a food plant in Flanders which allegedly mixed motor oil with fats to bind the feed . . . the Belgian crisis of confidence in food safety worsened yesterday after revelations that sewerage sludge had been mixed into fodder, as in France . . . sludge from toilets and showers, water from slaughterhouses and cleaning products had got into the food chain (Guardian, 22 September). 

The September 18 “highly competitive food industry” reference says it all, and should enlighten concerned shoppers to the total incompatibility between access to continuously high-quality comestibles and competitive production for financial gain, due to market forces always tending to value profits ahead of excellence. 

There will never be a time when most people become wealthy enough to buy only the very best, since while competitive production exists so, too, will competitive employment. And with competing employers, driven by those same market forces to hold down wages and salaries (and taxes that provide welfare benefits) so as to favour profits and stay in businesses, there will always exist a great many working and non-working people with limited incomes who nevertheless must purchase sustenance. This section will vary in size according to the needs of capital. 

Official DSS figures released in February showed that, after deducting housing costs, no fewer than 14.1 million people had below half the average income. While food producers are going to be keen to obtain this poorly-paid group’s money, competition to grab a greater market share by supplying the least expensive food means there will be an ever-present pressure to minimise quality, because superior ingredients, more thorough procedures, better trained employees, etc all cost more. Include today’s international intensification of competitiveness through deregulation and the steady removal of tariffs, trade barriers and subsidies in pursuit of a correctly functioning global market, and the seemingly endless appalling procession of scandalous headlines becomes perfectly clear. 

Uncompetitive regulations 

The Blair Government knows that inferior and dangerous food means antagonistic voters; a situation to be earnestly avoided. Labour certainly doesn’t want to end up like the former Belgium government of Jean-Luc Dehaene—booted out of office largely due to carcinogenic dioxin at up to 700 times permitted “acceptable limits” being found in eggs, chickens and then pigs, just weeks before a general election. So what’s their approach? A proposed “independent” Food Standards Agency. 

The FSA proposal emerged not long after Blair came to power. Large retail firms and manufacturing interests were soon applying pressure, insisting the agency be made less regulatory. Then businesses caused the agency to remain on the drawing board longer by complaining that the FSA should not be funded through levies on their food outlets. And despite the BSE catastrophe under Tory rule, the Ministry of Agriculture—which former minister Edwina Currie said “had long ago set itself up as a trade union for producers”-was once again siding with the food industry. Yum, yum: prole food Yum, yum: prole food. 

There is to be publication of an annual report from the Working Party on Pesticide Residues, who will have a small number of food samples tested, and name retailers selling produce with residues above the “maximum residue limit”, and identify the goods concerned. However, this can be nothing more than a show to dispel the public crisis of confidence in food. 

Can consumers turn to organic foods? Perhaps some will be able to keep paying higher prices to reduce their contamination levels (except from equally dangerous airborne chemicals). But the majority can never have high quality organic food and freedom from various other sources of pollution, because of the international competition that is an integral feature of capitalism. Britain cannot go “green” alone. The additional financial burden on capital to establish and maintain a far safer and healthier environment would result in an economic crisis in no time. Britain simply cannot impose rigorous standards on producers without increasing their costs, and in a global market, that would spell disaster for UK firms. 

Everyone concerned about avoiding dangerous and inferior produce has to ask themselves this question: “What did I vote for at election time?” Since, whenever the electorate empower yet another bunch of politicians to—unavoidably—cater to the needs of business as the priority, the very conditions that give rise to food scandals will remain in place. If different competing groups retain ownership of productive resources, they must continue exploiting those assets in the most profitable manner in order to sell and prosper from what is produced. One result? BSE and 43 people dead (that we know of), and a renewed chilling warning this September from Professor Liam Donaldson, the government’s own chief medical officer: “What is absolutely certain is that the present relatively low number of cases [of nv-CJD] should not lead anyone to conclude that the worst is over. Levels of human exposure at the height of the BSE epidemic would have been high.” 

Misuse of GM technology; pesticide-induced cancers; animal maltreatment; cover-ups; no or inadequate labelling; abysmal hygiene standards. None of these need happen. We do not have to futilely hope profit-biased governments will impose uncompetitive regulations and strict enforcement. There is another option to capitalism’s inability to deliver continuously high-quality food for all. If we all own the means of producing food, then we all own the produce, which means never buying it or having any financial restraints on its quality.

Max Hess

Letter: The Need to Control Parliament. (1932)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent (Mr. W. T. Birch, London, S.E.22) objects to what he (mistakenly) regards as our view on fighting elections.

He quotes from a publication called “From Slavery to Freedom” a passage which he gives as follows :—

(1) Of serious import is the declared policy of the S.P.G.B. organ to run candidates in non-socialist constituencies provided the money is forthcoming. This policy has possibilities too dangerous for Socialists to entertain. A Socialist elected by non-Socialists “willing to give him a chance,” or for his personality, is a party to a fraud against the working-class. Such an individual would not be an empowered delegate, but would be more unsavoury than an honest reformist.

Mr. Birch then adds his comments :—-

That this charge is correct I know, because I remember the reference in the Socialist Standard, and if my details are correct, the constituency considered was Battersea. Now it is well known that, unfortunately, only a mere handful of Socialists {I mean real revolutionary Socialists, not people who call themselves such) are to be found in any constituency. Suppose your candidate had been elected if he had run for Battersea, and there is the chance that he may have been. He certainly could not have gone to the House of Commons and said that he represented, say, 10,000 people who understood Socialism and were prepared to substitute this system for Capitalism. I repeat that your candidate might have been elected if he had run. People vote from all sorts of motives. Some are “fed-up” with their present member, others like the personality of a candidate, etc. I doubt, however, if there are enough real Socialists in the country to get a single man into Parliament, if they could be collected into one constituency.

(2) And what could the member do in the House? Put the Socialist position before the M.P.s? They already know it, and the newspapers would not publish the speech. Far better to do propaganda work outside. Under Capitalism a man can only go to the House of Commons to help to administer Capitalism, and to talk about voting on the merits and demerits of legislation introduced into a capitalistic legislative chamber is sheer reformist nonsense; and if the candidate himself were to introduce Socialistic measures (say a Bill declaring the land and everything on it and in it to be communal property) he would be doing something for which he had no real mandate from his constituents.

(3) Perhaps, however, the Socialist Party of Great Britain no longer holds such a policy. If so, it would be well to have an assurance to this effect.

(For convenience of reply we have numbered the paragraphs in Mr. Birch’s letter. – Ed., Comm.].

Reply.

(1) Mr. Birch quotes a passage referring to ourselves, and “remembers” that certain statements were made in the Socialist Standard without, however, referring to the issue in which they appeared or saying what those statements were. This is not surprising. No statements were made bearing the slightest resemblance to those ascribed to us by Mr. Birch. Anyone who reads Mr. Birch’s letter, without knowing the facts, will assume that we put forward candidates intending to get them returned on a non-Socialist programme and on non-Socialist votes. The truth is far different. What we proposed in 1928 was to do in the Parliamentary elections what from the formation of the party we had done in local elections, that is, put forward candidates for the propaganda value of that action, knowing full well that they could not possibly be elected.

Mr. Birch says that he read our statement about the candidate we proposed to put forward in Battersea. If he would consult the Socialist Standard of February, 1928, he would see that we made plain something which would be already known to every reader of the Socialist Standard, viz., that our candidate would run on the Socialist programme, seeking a mandate for the establishment of Socialism and nothing else. Yet in face of this Mr. Birch affects to believe that our candidate might have been elected by the non-Socialist majority of South Battersea electors. We can only say that we are appalled by the ignorance of electors and elections exhibited by Mr. Birch. He asks us to believe that only “personality” stands between victory and defeat for the capitalists at election times, and that electors who are in favour of capitalism are always liable when “fed-up” to vote against capitalism. Mr. Birch gives no evidence for his belief, but the matter can be quite easily tested. Will Mr. Birch give us a few instances of elections where voters who wanted capitalism voted against the various reformist candidates, and voted for candidates running simply on the Socialist programme.

And if Mr. Birch is still convinced that non-Socialists are always liable to vote for what they do not want and against what they do want, will he tell us how he proposes that we should guard against this except by our invariable precaution of putting forward a candidate simply on the Socialist programme?

One other point in the passage Mr. Birch quotes is the reference to money. Are we to understand that Mr. Birch objects to us asking our sympathisers to contribute towards the expense of carrying on the activities for which the party exists? (Having read the statement in the February, 1928, Socialist Standard, Mr. Birch will remember that the appeal was addressed to our sympathisers.)

(2) In this paragraph of his letter Mr. Birch implies his opposition to the Socialist Party of Great Britain’s policy of gaining control of Parliament. May we ask Mr. Birch in what way he imagines that Socialism can be established without the workers gaining control of Parliament and the rest of political machinery?

Mr. Birch tells us that the newspapers would not record the doings of Socialists in Parliament. How does he know this? Why does he suppose that the newspapers which already to a limited extent report our propaganda activities would cease to do so as soon as Socialists are numerous enough to win elections? And what of it, anyway? It is necessary for the workers to control the political machinery irrespective of whether the Press cares to report it.

Mr. Birch tells us that we should do propaganda work outside Parliament. Does Mr. Birch really imagine that the working class can overthrow capitalism while leaving the capitalists in control of Parliament merely by doing propaganda work outside. This is anarchism with a vengeance.

We cannot follow Mr. Birch’s statement that candidates of ours put forward for the purpose of establishing Socialism would, if elected, have “no real mandate” from the electors.

(3) In his third paragraph Mr, Birch asks if we have now abandoned the policy which he describes. If he means have we abandoned the policy of capturing the political machinerv in favour of the anarchistic policy of only doing propaganda work outside and leaving the political machinery in the hands of the capitalists, the answer is NO.

If he means our policy of fighting elections for their propaganda value even when there is only a minority of Socialists, and therefore no possibility of a Socialist candidate being elected, and if he means our policy of running candidates simply on the need to overthrow capitalism and establish Socialism through control of the political machinery, our answer is again NO !

May we recommend lo Mr. Birch that he read again the statement in the February, 1928, Socialist Standard that he read once before but has failed to remember?

Editorial Committee.

Blogger's Note:

The “From Slavery to Freedom” pamphlet quoted in the above letter was a 1932 pamphlet produced by the Socialist Propaganda League, which was an early split from the SPGB (Pre-WW1). The split centred on the WB (Upton Park) controversy. According to the SPL's wiki page, the pamphlet was reviewed in the November 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard. The review is not on the net yet  . . . but it soon will be.