Answers to correspondents. (1928)

From the September 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

A. Cullington (Hackney): We use the quotations from “Forward” against the I.L.P. because it is no way contradictory to I.L.P. general policy. The fact that it is a privately-owned paper is no point, because all I.L.P. papers, including the “New Leader,” are privately-owned.

We reject the quotations from Fred Henderson’s book because it is in complete conflict with the object and programme of the I.L.P.—and that’s that !

Notice to correspondents. 

Correspondence intended for publication must be written on one side of the paper only, and name and address (not necessarily for publication) must accompany all communications.

In view of our limited space all communications should be as brief as possible.

A Look Round. (1928)

From the September 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Bishop on Slums.

We have often stated that the housing “problem” is insoluble within Capitalism. After the Lord Mayor’s Show comes the Bishop of Ripon. Saith he :—

“At the present rate of progress new generations will be born and will die in the existing slums. Before the present slums are abolished new insanitary areas will have come into being.” (Nineteenth Century and after Magazine—June.)

Likewise the Daily Chronicle, August 8th, 1928 :—

“The centre point of the housing problem today is not that of building new houses, but of building houses in which the working-class can afford to live.”

This, according to the Bishop, is equivalent to saying that at the present rate of Capitalist “progress,” some of us will not be able to afford to live even in the slums. But the Bishop and the Chronicle reckon on the assumption that you will remain blind to your own interests for ever. See to it now. The price of our pamphlet “Socialism” is two pence, it gives the remedy for housing, and all the poverty problems of the working class.

A Rest Cure.

“For Society jaded after the fatigues of the season, Goodwood is at once a rest cure and a tonic, for the fine air of the Downs is marvelously invigorating.” (“Evening Standard,” 30/7/28.)

Poor dears ! how tiring! they need a change ! Apparently others, too, have been jaded with the fatigues of “looking for work,” for in the same paper we read that at Bethnal Green “2,000 unemployed besiege a workhouse.” These contrasts obtrude everywhere. The Daily News, July 12th, 1928, tells us in heavy headlines of EIGHT MILLION PEOPLE ON POVERTY LINE—LUXURY TRADES BOOMING. This latter condition, is what is termed in our masters’ press, “Our improving Trade,” “National Prosperity,” and so on. Any attempt to alter such arrangements is heralded as a threat on the life of the “Nation,” “Public,” or “Community.” For all such terms issuing from Capitalist sources, read Capitalist or Parasite Class.

A Capitalist Admission.

“The root cause of the present suspicions and antagonisms lies in the separation of those interested in industry into the two classes of capital-owning profit takers, and ownerless weekly wage earners.”

This admission comes from a high-class Capitalist business publication (Business Organisation, June). At the same time it is interesting to compare one of the latest publications of the Labour Party. They tell us :—

“The workers are not a class, they are the nation. Talk of the class war is obsolete.” (Labour Encyclopaedia, Vol. I, p. 117.)

The correct and scientific point of view we have given in every issue of the Socialist Standard since we were an organisation. It will be found on the back page, paragraphs one and two, of our principles.

Liberal Insanity.

The Liberal Party possesses some wonderful minds. Think of the mental strain involved, and the disturbance of the grey matter, in putting this lot over :—

“In the long run the cure for unemployment must be found in expanding opportunities for natural work. . . . ” (Sir John Simon, “Manchester Guardian,” 30/7/28.)

This, mind you, in an age when, through privately-owned wealth, we must restrict its output and compel millions to cease production. The learned Liberal after years of office and opportunity, can propose nothing better than an aggravation of the causes, Capitalism remaining unchanged. Read the following carefully, and then reflect upon the ease with which we could produce wealth to-day if the needs of the producers, and not the Capitalist’s profits, were the object of production :—

“At the end of the 15th Century a peasant could provision his family for a twelvemonth by fifteen weeks of ordinary work. An artisan could achieve the same result in ten weeks.” (Six centuries of work and wages, p. 389, Thorold Rogers).

W. E. MacHaffie

Letter: The Transition Period. (1928)

Letter to the Editors from the September 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Fred Montague, M.P., replies to our Criticism.

48, Lucerne Road, Highbury Park, N.5.

August 10, 1928.

To the Editorial Board, the Socialist Standard.

Dear Sirs,

As the next issue of The Social Democrat will be almost entirely a Conference number and it will be impossible for me to comment until later, perhaps you will be able to give me space for a few words upon your interesting statement.

(1) It is true that I hold a fundamentally different view, whether false or not. I do believe that Capitalism in its later stages represents a transition period. Slavery and Feudalism did in similar stages. I fail to see in what way this view conflicts with Marx.

The conception of society as an organism in process of modification does not seem to me to be unphilosophical or contrary to fact. To be Socialists, least of all to belong to the working-class, whether Socialist or not, is not to be outside existing society because Capitalism has not yet come to its natural demise. Workers are this society, and will not be able to make another until economic conditions are ready.

(2) How can it be said that the Capitalist class are in control of political machinery and the armed forces except by consent of the working-class? The workers have political power, and who but the workers compose the armed forces. Why use language reminiscent of “Bastille” psychology and characteristic of the slave complex ? It is unreal rubbish.

(3) I agree that when there is a Socialist majority of an effective kind (remembering that bare majorities can have only bare power) the transition will assume a different character. Of course. But I reject the notion that (apart from possible revolutionary upheaval which, in itself, would be merely political, could not create Socialism by magic, and would probably come, if at all, prematurely) there is some inevitable break of continuity, because the workers vote one way instead of another.

(4) Your reply to Mr. Phillips (par. 3) seems to me to give the S.P.G.B. case away. If Capitalists, for the sake of avoiding “industrial and administrative chaos,” will refrain from blocking the way to Socialism whilst the transition period is taking place after the workers elect a Socialist majority to Parliament, why assume that everything done now to avoid industrial and administrative chaos must necessarily block the way?

(5) A period of transformation means a period, short or long, where one form of society exists in diminishing area side by side with another form in ascending area. A Socialist Government would have to admit the dual fact and legislate for economic stability. The fault of your analogy about Krupps and about war administration is that in those cases there was no change of Capitalist economic machinery or control. You will agree.

The only (though important) difference that crosses on ballot papers will make to economic evolution is that, for the first time the workers will take charge of the evolutionary process and direct existing collectivist tendencies into definitely Socialist channels. Well, we all want that. The difference between us is that you regard the advent of a Socialist Government as an entirely new economic departure, whilst I consider that the conscious awakening of the workers will be, like birth, a stage of existence, not origin in vacuo. I do not believe in special creation.

(6) In answer to Mr. Phillips you say the Capitalists are not prepared to pay any price. That is as true now as it will be when Parliament has a majority of Socialists. They are beginning not to pay the price of competition. They will not pay the price of social services that are not “profitable.” They will let the nation “buy” industries that have ceased to “pay.” All very accurate.

But if a national railroad service is necessary and Capitalists cannot and will not deliver the goods, what is there unsocialistic about nationalising the railways? Is it that national taxation will be burdened with interest on the bonds? Since when has it been “Socialistic” to hold that taxation matters to the workers? I am not interested in Nationalisation on the ground that it will “pay,” but on the ground that, since “Rationalisation” is the only alternative I prefer to have economic machinery in the hands of the Parliament you and I want the workers to control.

Why should not Nationalisation benefit the workers under Capitalism? Unless you hold that the “Iron Law” is a cast-iron law, and wages don’t matter, whose is the fault if public servants of the working-class are not better paid and more secure? I know many cases in the municipal form of the principle where the workers are better off. On the other hand, if no workers can be better off they cannot be worse off, for a real iron law must be pretty rigid at both ends. In which case Nationalisation cannot injure the workers.

(7) Nationalisation, you say, will cause unemployment. More efficiency, less work. Three cheers for inefficiency ! Is that Socialist policy? Good God, does the absence of Nationalisation in the coal industry “find work”? If keeping the workers employed in non-efficient Capitalist concerns instead of setting unemployed men to work to produce new wealth for their own consumption and new demand-power in the nation is Socialist, I have been at sea all my life. Can you say that workers could not insist upon the latter being done and might it not be done before your financial secretary or ours gets buried in the subscriptions of the working class? If not, why not?

One point more. I was not a recruiting agent. I did not ask other people to do even what I thought it proper to do myself.

Yours sincerely,

F. Montague.

Our Reply

(1) Mr. Montague says that “Capitalism” in its later stages represents a transition period,” and he writes of Capitalism’s “natural demise.” This view conflicts both with fact and with the Marxian view of social development. Capitalism, administratively and socially, has always been adjusting itself to developments of new productive methods, and the rise of new sections of the Capitalist class, but this is not transition to Socialism. Capitalism, with ever new adjustments, will go on indefinitely unless and until the working-class decide to terminate it. Waiting for Capitalism to “come to its natural demise” and in the meantime assisting the Capitalists to reform Capitalism is not work for Socialists.

(2) Mr. Montague dismisses as “unreal rubbish” the notion “that the Capitalist class are in control …. except by consent of the working-class.”

This is interesting, but has nothing to do with our case.

Mr. Montague knows perfectly well that we have never denied that the workers consent to Capitalist control and vote for Capitalism at each election.

The point of importance (and this Mr. Montague conveniently ignores) is that the Capitalists are in control, and therefore the reforms they introduce are Capitalist remedies for Capitalist problems.

(3) The very definite break of continuity after the workers gain control for Socialism will be that, for the first time, an attack will be made on the private property basis of Capitalism.

Was there not a definite break of continuity in the Southern States of the U.S.A. when slavery was made illegal and replaced by wage-labour?

(4) We have not said that everything done by the Capitalist class “must necessarily block the way” to Socialism. What we have said is that while the Capitalist class are in control they will decide what shall and shall not be done. The pressure of their system, not the pleadings of “Labour” representatives, compels them to actions which sometimes work out to our benefit as well as theirs.

(5) It has already been pointed out that Socialism is international, and the conception of Socialism and Capitalism existing in “areas” “side by side,” is quite foreign to Socialism.

If the change over from the production of munitions to the production of machinery can be carried out by the workers under Capitalism, we still fail to see why similar transformations should present special difficulty after the workers are in control. Mr. Montague fails to enlighten us.

We quite agree that the awakening of the workers is a gradual process, but their conquest of power is equally obviously a definite new departure.

(6) We asked Mr. Montague to defend his support of Nationalisation, which he agreed is “only another form of Capitalism.” Our opposition was stated to be on the ground that “it will not benefit the workers under Capitalism.” Instead of showing that the workers would be better off under Nationalisation, Mr. Montague first says that he prefers to have “economic machinery in the hands of the Parliament you and I want the workers to control”—but the point is that the workers at present do not control Parliament, and the proposition Mr. Montague has to defend is the advocacy of State-ownership by a Parliament in control of Capitalist parties.

He then uses the flimsy argument that he knows some municipal employees who are “better off.” As he gives no particulars, nor any explanation of his basis of comparison, no answer is possible. I would, however, refer him to the explicit statement of the Civil Service Industrial Court which last year arbitrated on Post Office wages, that it accepted the principle of basing wage rates on those paid in outside industry.

Lastly, does Mr. Montague really think that we ought to support any reform the Capitalists choose to advocate, provided it is not positively harmful to the workers? If Nationalisation leaves the workers no better and no worse off than now, that is a sufficient reason not to waste efforts on it; efforts which might be devoted to the achievement of Socialism.

(7) Mr. Montague asks if “inefficiency” is Socialist policy. It is not. Have we ever said it was?

What he persistently fails to recognise is that the economic evils of the working-class are due to their wage-slave position in Capitalist society. Mr. Montague misleads the workers by persuading them to believe that Nationalisation will solve their problems. Our alternative to advocating either private or State Capitalism is to advocate Socialism. Mr. Montague’s alternative to advocating private Capitalism is advocating State Capitalism, coupled with such nonsense as “setting unemployed men to work to produce new wealth for their own consumption,” as if such a thing were possible with the Capitalist class still in control of the means of production.

Edgar Hardcastle

The plain case for Socialism. (1928)

From the September 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

THE WORKERS CONDITIONS TO-DAY.

“Eight Million People on Poverty Line”—so runs the headline of a column in the Daily News for July 12th. An unemployed army that is steadily growing and is now nearly a million and a half; a coal-mining industry that is declining and turning its workers out to starve; a railway industry that is alleged to be on the down grade and has drawn from the Rt. Hon. J. H. Thomas the remark :

The railway situation to-day is worse than ever it was before, and I am gravely apprehensive about it. (Daily News, 2/7/28.)

Which remarks he backed up by recommending the railway workers to accept a 2½ per cent. reduction off their wages.

Ten thousand harvesters required for Canada (sixteen hours a day of real hard work) and tens of thousands apply for the jobs—some walking hundreds of miles, some getting out of sick beds, old men weakly pretending they are young, weaklings laying claim to lustihood, and all just for the chance of bread and butter.

But, we are told, we can’t do without capital, and evils such as these are necessary in order that society shall continue to “progress.”

THE EMPLOYERS’ “SOLUTION.”

How the capitalist looks at the situation is suggested by the remarks of Mr. William Wallace, at the Conference of Quaker Employers last April, where he said :

Capital should have a minimum wage, and in addition, a premium for the risk run. The worker should have a statutory minimum wage and the management a sufficient remuneration to secure the kind of management required. The surplus should then be used, firstly, to raise the minimum wage to the human needs basis, and, after that, it might be desirable to go on to profit-sharing or other means of distribution, such as pensions, superannuation, etc. (Italics ours)—Daily News, 14/4/28.

It will be seen that in the eyes of the Quaker the first essential is an adequate return for capital. He is willing to allow, as a secondary question, a minimum wage to the workers—but less than required to meet human needs. If, however, there is any surplus he is agreeable that a portion of it shall be used to raise the minimum wage to meet human needs !

If we take the above as a representative example of the Capitalist outlook (and remember the Quaker has a name as a “good” employer !) then all the bulk of the workers can hope for when in work is a wage less than what will meet human needs. As employment is a fluctuating quantity and the machine steadily encroaches upon the available jobs, each worker risks increasing periods of unemployment. How is he to get over these periods with no chance of savings to fall back upon? The answer, of course, is semi-starvation on the dole—for those that can qualify !

WHAT CAPITALISM HAS DONE FOR YOU.

In the days when human society was young no such troubles beset the people— starvation through unemployment was not known. It is a product of Capitalism and Capitalism cannot cure the disease without risking its continued existence. There is really only one cure and that cure involves the extinction of capitalism as such, for it strikes at the root of both unemployment and capitalism—the private ownership of the means of production.

The solution to the unemployment problem is so simple that once grasped it seems extraordinary that one has not seen it before. At the outset one may ask, “How can people be workless when the earth abounds in fruitfulness and there are hungry mouths to fill”? Surely the situation is ridiculous and forces one to see that there must be something fundamentally wrong with the method of production and distribution that is now in use. No amount of deep economic argument or highflown philosophical phrases can get over or explain away facts so simple as this.

If the bulk of a nation must endure poverty and know little of the pleasures of life in order that “Science, progress and Capitalism” shall flourish, then surely the sufferers must, sometime, put the question, “Why not shatter the whole thing to bits and relapse into barbarism” where conditions of this kind were unknown. The essence of the argument in favour of carrying on as at present simply signifies the providing of leisure, enjoyment, “progress” and the rest for a privileged few at the expense of the many.

WHAT IS THE PRESENT SYSTEM?

Fortunately, however, there is no need either to shatter society to bits, or to relapse into barbarism, in order to remove the evils that exist.

The hungry man looks into the baker’s shop but durst not take his fill.—Why? Because somebody else owns the goods. The unemployed man looks wistfully through the window at the whirring machinery, but durst not take his place at a machine.—Why? Because somebody else owns the factory and all that is in it. This brings us down at once to the root of the problem.

Taking the whole of society broadly, in almost every country the situation is as follows : The great bulk of the wealth in existence is produced by working people receiving wages in return for the energies they expend. This wealth and the workshops, raw material, and land involved in its production, are owned by vast companies representing’ mainly a relatively small group of shareholders who do not obtain their living by working, but live on the dividends they get from the companies. These companies naturally aim at providing as much dividends as possible and to this end only keep their factories running as fully and as long as profit (in the long run, of course) comes to them. They, therefore, take advantage of the aid of science in the way of providing machinery and organisation that reduces the staff that need be employed for producing a given quantity of goods. The net result is a steady decrease in the relative number of work people employed and consequent increase of unemployment.

ECONOMIC EVOLUTION.

Hundreds of years ago slavery came into existence because man’s power to produce reached a point where one man was able to produce in a day of labour a quantity of goods (or services) greater in value than what was needed to keep him for the day— he produced more than his keep. At that time this robbery was plain for every eye to see because the oppression was direct and open. In later times, for instance in Rome at the time of its imperial greatness, it was plain that the vast mass of slaves produced, not only all that kept them, but also a huge extra quantity that enabled the Patrician slave-holders to live luxuriously and distribute gratuitous feasts for the angry but poor freemen when they became restive. Since those days the means to produce a given quantity of goods with a less and less expenditure of human energy have made mighty strides, until we have reached a time when millions can be kept well nourished for employment in the work of destroying wealth, in a quantity and at a rapidity that is astounding-—as in the war that finished, ten years ago. Just pause for a moment and ponder over the fact that every single shell that burst over any front represented in value hundreds of square meals. Multiply the number that burst by the value of the guns, the equiping of the armies, and the value of the fortifications, buildings and the like destroyed and you will get some vague idea what present society, with its crippling methods of wasteful production, can afford to waste in the matter of wealth and still live. During the last month armies of soldiers, fleets of warships, and armies of aeroplanes have been engaged in costly manoeuvres—all waste of wealth and human energy. Ponder a little more and you will realise how easy it would be to fill every empty stomach, clothe every ragged body and house every starveling, if all the energy employed wastefully were spent on work connected with the production of what is necessary to meet the needs of all. Socialism implies this.

Gilmac.

(To be continued).

World View: The sinking of the Kursk (2000)

From the October 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

At 10.31am on Saturday August 12, a rocket-propelled torpedo on a Russian submarine misfired during the launch routine, and its highly volatile fuel exploded. A desperate effort was then made by surviving crew members to bring the damaged and endangered vessel to the surface. But just two and one quarter minutes later, a second catastrophic blast with a force of two tons of TNT blew the bow apart when the torpedo warhead detonated, and sea water plunged in. That massive explosion sent the Kursk to the bed of the Barents Sea, where it had been participating in summer exercises.

This, according to American spying activities, appears to be what happened. But while that Saturday morning brought the end for all on board, for relatives, friends and a news-aware Russian working class, it was to become the beginning of a tragic drama of common solidarity, and a striking demonstration of the power of a largely unrestricted post-Soviet media.

For families of Kursk submariners, energetic media probing of the tragedy exposed official deceit, misinformation and confusion. After two days of silence, the navy said there had been a “malfunction”. That the Kursk had “descended voluntarily”. That “contact with the crew had been established”. That “everyone on board is alive”. That a “foreign” submarine caused a collision. Perhaps worst of all, relatives and the public were led to believe that the Russian navy was making serious attempts to save any survivors by sending down their own submersible rescue craft. But it transpired that this was futile from the outset, because deep-sea divers were essential to help guide this craft by hand over the Kursk’s rescue hatch so the mini-sub could properly lock on to it, and the cash-strapped navy had disbanded all these specially trained diving teams.

Four days were lost before Putin asked for outside help, and days more before it arrived. Even an agonising wait by sailors’ families to learn whether or not their own fathers, brothers and sons were on board the Kursk only ended when the tabloid newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda published the names, after bribing a high-ranking navy officer with 18,000 roubles (£450) for the list stamped “Top Secret”. There was also public anger that president Putin remained on holiday in Sochi on the Black Sea, while loved ones were imagined to be struggling for air as the submarine’s oxygen ran out.

The reality was that the huge onboard explosion killed most of the Kursk’s crew quickly, though it is possible some survived a short while longer in the stern, before the entire submarine became flooded due to structural damage making watertightness impossible. The pressure of deep water outside the submarine would have caused more blast energy to be directed internally, causing increased hull and bulkhead damage.

To make matters worse for Putin—who won the presidential election by portraying himself as a revitalising strongman who would improve Russia’s armed forces, crack down on crime and restore stability—August brought not only the Kursk’s sinking. A terrorist bomb exploded beforehand in Moscow killing 12 and maiming dozens. And afterwards, the capital’s prestigious Ostankino television tower caught fire, disrupting the viewing habits of ten million Muscovites. These events together, and Russian journalists’ recent ability to comment freely no doubt account for much of the media’s fierce and sustained criticism of the President, but many were already unhappy with the leader because of a crackdown on media organisations which had followed negative comments about Russian fighting in Chechnya—something which damaged the government during the last such war.

Furthermore, some media barons and business tycoons no longer see eye to eye with Putin, and may be concerned that a politician they empowered and made their puppet, just might harbour a notion to sever his strings. Putin has sought to blame the “oligarchs” for the Kursk tragedy, accusing them of having robbed “the army, navy and the country blind”. If the public, who already despise the super-rich businessmen, can be led to believe that their greed has crippled and endangered the armed forces, then Putin will have scapegoats, popular and military support, and the power to exert more control over privatised assets at the very least. Perhaps even order a change of ownership if so inclined.

Orgy of self-enrichment

In the eight years since Russia followed Western advice from free market touts to establish a private banking system and start privatising the state assets, a small number of people with links to officialdom became phenomenally rich. During Boris Yeltsin’s early years in power, they were preoccupied with making money. But as the 1996 presidential election approached, Russia’s new capitalists grew fearful that their orgy of self-enrichment might end. The “Communist” party candidate had a real chance of winning, so they poured money into both Yeltsin’s campaign and an anti-“Communist” media offensive, and successfully got their man into the Kremlin. When Yeltsin was coming to the end of his reign, and was intent on protecting himself and his family’s sizeable amount of grasped wealth, he had to choose both a loyalist successor and someone acceptable to the nabobs.

Enter Vladimir Putin, who hours after becoming Prime Minister was asked by the Kommersant newspaper about his relationship with the asset-owning rich, and replied “I have never quarreled with any of the oligarchs”. Clearly, someone who knew where real power then lay, and who he had to curry favour with in order to improve his career prospects. But having achieved presidential power, Putin has sought to strengthen the Russian state and reassert Kremlin control of its 89 regions and republics, where nepotism, corruption and crime abound.

One of his first decrees ordered the resurrection of compulsory military training. More money has been promised to the armed forces. He has expressed admiration of the KGB, and last August appointed a former KGB colonel as Prime Minister. He recently unveiled a plaque honouring Russia’s war heroes which had Stalin’s name listed foremost. A commemorative coin bearing Stalin’s face has also been issued, and a new bust of the Soviet tyrant is planned for Russia’s main war memorial. This increased militarisation of society, tributes to authoritarianism, centralising of power, bonding with military chiefs and tendency to see others as being either state or anti-state—just as in the USSR era when everything was categorised as Soviet or anti-Soviet—might mean President Putin has a desire to return to Stalinist-style oppressive rule. If so, the power and privileges presently enjoyed by the oligarchs could shift Putin’s way, as he and his own associates became the next capitalist elite.

But is there not a contradiction between Putin’s expressed detest of the oligarchs, and his simultaneous commitment to improve the armed forces? After all, just whose valuable assets and territory is the Russian military defending and favouring these days? Which brings us to why armed forces and their barbaric weaponry even exist in a supposedly civilised intelligence-valued twenty-first century. It is because, just as governments compete economically to help their own nation’s businesses (keeping wages, taxes and welfare low, weakening trade unions etc), so they must compete militaristically, if they are to avoid others obtaining easy commercial advantages through armed intimidation and attack. Hence, 500 odd submarines from different countries lurk and stealthily traverse the world’s oceans today.

Training for tomorrow’s wars

What were those “exercises” the Kursk was taking part in actually for, if not training to fight tomorrow’s wars which today’s capitalism make a serious possibility? It is true that by strengthening the armed forces, Putin can also gain some electoral advantage from nationalistic prestige and pride engendered in the population, but the overriding purpose of military units and armaments is to assist the possessors of productive assets. Witness Uncle Sam’s ability to inflict the greatest level of death and destruction of all, which has meant that American capital can—does get—what it wants in the global market.

As for the Kursk, much press comment concentrated on how, after becoming a basket-case economy, Russia now has very little money to safely maintain its armed forces or decommission the growing armada of rusting nuclear submarines lying in ports of the Kola peninsula in north-west Russia. But this implies that much more cash would improve things. But is having a greater number of efficient nuclear warships in service, ready to deliver mass murder when so ordered, and enriched uranium from old sub reactors recycled into new nuclear weaponry, really a better situation? Far better to remove what brings about these killing machines and the instructions to use them.

However Putin rules in the future, the Russian people will continue to suffer from exploitation, poverty, deprivation, early deaths and assorted other troubles—including further dead sailors, soldiers and pilots. They and their weaponry only exist because there is minority ownership and control of manufacturing, utilities, natural resources and the like. What a few possess—and benefit greatly from—they wish to defend, capitalise on and add to through intimidation, and violent force if necessary. Hence, the reason murderous vessels like the Kursk come to be made. So when Admiral Vyacheslav Popov, commander of the Northern Fleet, said “I will strive all my life to look in the eyes of the man who caused this tragedy” (Independent, 23 August), he need only locate and peer into the nearest mirror, for as a military leader acting together with others in maintaining minority possession of productive property, he certainly carries some of the blame.

Because there are groups of these capitalists all over the world, there are groups of armed forces all over the world, and populations are encouraged to see one another as “us” and “them”, or “the enemy”. One day, you have John Spellar, Britain’s armed forces minister, saying that “we” are sending a rescue vehicle to the Barents Sea because Britons “are delighted to be able to assist in trying to save sailors from an awful fate and one that is of concern to all right thinking people all around the world” (Guardian, 17 August). Another day, another year, and “us” and “them” may be unleashing great death and destruction upon each other. Surely it is “of concern to all right thinking people” that we avoid that particular “awful fate”?

So we can, by disempowering all the presidents, the admirals, the generals, the ministers, the tycoons and any other minority who wants ownership and control of resources and people, choosing instead to possess and run these means of living ourselves. No more propertied class. No more leaders. No more us and them. No more Kursks.

Max Hess

A war to end all hooliganism (2000)

TV Review from the October 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

After several months of being “forced” to listen to the radio (and listening to such insane people as the rabid woman guest on Five Live saying England has a hooligan problem because we haven’t had a war and that the hooligans would be the first to enlist because they’d enjoy a good ol’ war) because the TV rental firm repossessed my box (“Thank you DER”, to employ their ad soundbite!), I have finally got hold of a TV and video on hire purchase.

Thank God! Now I don’t have to spend endless, boring hours talking to friends, painting and reading books. I can switch on and zap. Homer Simpson is right, you know—the remote is a true technical marvel.

I didn’t watch a lot of it when the other firm (not DER) delivered it. I had too much time to spend on moving all my furniture—firstly to make room for the house altar, and secondly, to position my chairs in the correct direction and make sure my plants and art didn’t block guests’ views of it.

After programming the cable channels in, I flicked through to see if all was OK. I watched bits and pieces of all manner of thing. On CNN a debate was taking place on child soldiers. (I wonder if they are hooligans? I always though they didn’t have the money to go and see a game, let alone buy a football.) Apparently they are abducted by the militias, grow up accepting violence as normal, and in peacetime they have trouble re-entering society: they are mentally unfit for anything and have no education to speak of. A UN man said he was working to make sure all countries have a minimum age of 18 for servicemen—how comforting, and philanthropic.

Zap! I caught a scene from the American Civil War soap North and South. One of the characters (Patrick Swayzee) is a slave owner. His friend is a Yankee capitalist—socialists can’t help chuckle at the man’s name: Hazard. Apparently they are friends, although they end up fighting each other (in the two armies). The Confederate looks at the diabolical conditions capitalist Hazard’s workers endure in the factory. “At least they are free—they can go where they want,” says our erstwhile Yankee. Quite. Capitalism needs this “freedom” to operate: you can work for a capitalist or choose to starve.

Zap! At last I can catch up on Eastenders. I see Nick Cotton has a son. He was caught trying to steal money from Dot’s purse by Mark. “Like father, like son,” says our fruit-and-veg philosopher. In 1987 “Between the Lines” was attacked in a dishonest article by the People newspaper, because we called Eastenders a morality play with a distorted view of what our class is like. Fifteen years on and it is still moralising: Nick’s son is “born evil”, and is it right to let Ethel end her life when her cancer is too painful to bear?

Zap! It was awful listening to the Republican Conference on Five Live’s Up All Night show; seeing and hearing it in glorious Technicolor was nauseating. Visions of Nazi rallies sprang to mind—people screaming in adulation at their “strong man”.

Zap! Zap! Zap! I saw Teletubbies in German, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and Turkish. At least I know how to say: “Time for Tubby bye-bye” in several languages now. I could complain but, then, when I was a kid TV had Happy Days and The Magic Roundabout. I watched the Fonz whilst my old man followed the adventures of “Boing” Zebedee—probably to com to grips with his 60’s acid flashbacks.

Zap! Ah-something good: Woody Allen’s Radio Days film. After that, turned on my radio and listened to Brian Alexander’s show and Up All Night, whilst flicking through a book I was given, The Biology of Art, which studies how Homo sapiens’s need for art developed, through a comparative study of chimpanzees’ paintings.

But no doubt I shall be tuned in tomorrow to see if Mel will forgive Steve and to cry when Ethel snuffs it. Anything else would be boring, wouldn’t it?

Graham C. Taylor

Letter: Internet revolution (2000)

Letter to the Editors from the October 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Internet revolution

Dear Editors,

I found the series on the Internet earlier this year (Socialist Standard, Jan-Apr) thought-provoking. I think Paddy missed out some points which are worth making. I’d like to hear other’s thoughts on these.

Fellow workers ought to read the series in conjunction with section one of the Communist Manifesto by K. Marx, since the points I am making derive mainly from this “idea association”.

At the recent Tokyo G7 meeting, there was a fair amount of talk about putting the African continent online. Some might be cynical and say this is just Sony’s way of creating a market for its computer section. However it should also be viewed as essential for the smooth running of African capitalism—they have to, are forced to, adopt the new technology. (“The bourgeoisie creates a world in its own image.”)

In order to win its political dominance the capitalist class had to enlist the working class in the battle against feudalist reaction. The Manifesto noted that capitalism creates its own gravediggers: the proletariat. It concentrated the workers into great cities, allowing our class to come into close contact. By using the workers in its politics, the capitalists are also unwittingly making workers think politically. They educate our class.

By pushing for parliamentary democracy the capitalists had also to give in to a demand of the workers: the vote—a weapon which the workers can use for their own interests at such a time as when they are no longer under the influence of capitalism’s sweet talk.

The internet is essential to the global capitalist system. But it, too, is a weapon the workers have acquired. Workers in Denmark can talk to workers in Canada, etc, etc.

The Internet will lead to a structural change; how big it will be is something we shall have to wait and see. Home-working may lead to a breakdown in social alienation—workers will begin to form communities again akin to feudal society. In Volume Two of Capital, Marx discusses the time in which capital circulates; whilst it is in circulation it cannot be realised—hence the growth of banks, etc which are the “middlemen” who reduce that time, and have become capitalists in their own right. The non-productive workers (bank clerks, who are also exploited like productive workers) may begin to find their position threatened by the advance in technology, and soon to swell the ever existent reserve army, along with the blue collar, whose labour is also threatened by machinery. The middlemen capitalists may also begin to be squeezed out with the advent of home banking and home shopping—capital will begin once more to be increasingly in the hands of a smaller, dwindling capitalist class.

And Communists? We disdain to hide our views! We will use the Internet to disseminate our views and create socialist party organisation. Let the bourgeoisie tremble at the prospect of an Internet revolution. Workers of the world log on!

Graham Taylor, 

Brabrand, Denmark

Big problems, but are there big solutions? (2000)

Book Review from the October 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

No, according to the author of a new book. We argue that there is: socialist revolution.

William Morris, the 19th-century poet, designer and Socialist agitator, is now relatively well-known and is much admired. It has to be said, however, that this is more for his design and crafts work than for his socialist ideas. Even so, that he was a revolutionary socialist in the tradition of what might be called “Anglo-Marxism” or “impossibilism” is now more widely understood, thanks to the writings of Florence Boos and Nicholas Salmon, as opposed to the earlier work of writers linked to the so-called Communist Party who tried to make Morris out to be a proto-Leninist.

Most of those who are interested in Morris’s political ideas don’t really agree with his approach, though few are prepared to spell out where and why they think he was wrong. An exception is Labour Party member John Payne in his recent book Journey Up The Thames. William Morris and Modern England. Although this is mainly a travel book on the towns and villages of the Thames Valley today on the basis of the astute observation that “Utopia for Morris was a real place—England”—or more exactly, South East England on a summer’s day—Payne gives it a political dimension by declaring right at the start that he is also going to “try to demonstrate ways in which Morris was wrong—both in his predictions about the future and in the political positions he adopted in the 1880s and 1890s”.

Payne summarises Morris’s views, not entirely inaccurately, as:

• “that capitalism cannot be tamed, only overthrown, and that any other approach was a diversion from the ‘real task'” (p. 143).
• “that the function of a socialist party is to ‘make socialists’ and that anything short of that was a waste of time and effort” (p. 40).
• “that ‘the change’ (the overthrow of capitalism) can only be achieved by violent conflict and upheaval” (p. 20).

Payne’s counter-argument is that capitalism has been tamed to a certain extent thanks to the Labour Party operating through Parliament and local councils and to the work of trade unions and other such bodies; that “revolutions more often produce dystopia rather than utopia”; that “there are big problems ( . . . ) but there are no longer big solutions”, i. e. that socialism as a “big solution” is no longer on the agenda.

If socialism, and so making socialists for getting it, is not on the agenda, what is?

“At a local level, and in loose alliances at national and international level, people will do what they can to mitigate the worst effects of human kind’s enemies: greed, militarism, global capitalism, disease, ethnic tensions, global warming and environmental degradation.

People have to function at the level that seems real to them, where they think they may be able to produce small, local changes, even if they have no picture of what the sum of their small, local solutions might look like.”

So it’s come to this. Not only is the idea of any alternative society to capitalism abandoned, but so even is trying to achieve one by reformist political action at national level. Instead, all we are offered is a species of sub-reformism: little local attempts to mitigate things without any vision of where you’re trying to get to, exclusively defensive actions without end.

It’s pathetic stuff, but the conventional wisdom today amongst the sort of people who only a generation ago were thinking in terms of a big solution (even if more often than not the wrong one). But, with the collapse of state-capitalist Russia and the transformation of Labour into New Labour, in one or other of which they placed their hopes, they’ve had the stuffing knocked out of them. Unfortunately, the resulting disillusionment and pessimism which they have spread has made it more difficult to get the case for socialism, as indeed a “big solution”, across. But we can’t believe that many of those involved in these petty, sub-reformist struggles won’t eventually come to realise the utter inadequacy of endlessly trying to merely stop things getting worse.

Revolution

Morris did indeed envisage that the changeover to socialism would involve some degree of violence—he introduces this into his description on how socialism came to be established in News from Nowhere—but this was never the essence of what he meant by “revolution”, and Payne is being misleading in suggesting that Morris was advocating violence as a socialist tactic as opposed to expecting the violence to be started by those opposed to the socialist revolution.

Morris was quite clear what he meant by “revolution”. As he put it in the opening paragraph of his How We Live and How We Might Live:

“The word Revolution, which we Socialists are so often forced to use, has a terrible sound in most people’s ears, even when we have explained to them that it does not necessarily mean a change accompanied by riot and all kinds of violence, and cannot mean a change made mechanically and in the teeth of opinion by a group of men who have somehow managed to seize on the executive power for the moment. Even when we explain that we use the word revolution in its etymological sense, and mean by it a change in the basis of society, people are scared at the idea of such a vast change, and beg that you will speak of reform and not revolution. As, however, we Socialists do not at all mean by our word revolution what these worthy people mean by their word reform, I can’t help thinking that it would be a mistake to use it, whatever projects we might conceal beneath its harmless envelope. So we will stick to our word, which means a change in the basis of society.”

This is exactly our definition too. “Revolution” means a change in the basis of society, irrespective of whether or not this happens to involve violence. It also implies that this change will be fairly rapid rather than a prolonged, gradual one, so that terms such as “overthrow” and “upheaval” are not out of place. It’s our view in fact that, these days, the socialist revolution could be carried out more or less peacefully, with a socialist-minded majority using existing elective institutions to win control of political power and employing this to overthrow capitalism. In other words, we don’t see Morris’s description in News from Nowhere of how socialism came to be established as a likely scenario today.

But do revolutions tend to lead to dystopia rather than utopia? This was certainly the experience of the Russian revolution but this was never the sort of revolution we (or Morris) advocated. It was a political revolution that led to a social revolution—a change in the basis of society—but from feudalism to capitalism via a prolonged period of state capitalism rather than from capitalism to socialism. Since this was only a change from one class society to another it could be, and was, carried out by a minority some of whose members became the new ruling class. Indeed dystopia, rather than the utopia the minority revolutionaries originally promised.

We, however, would reject that this has any relevance to the sort of revolution we have (and Morris had) in mind. We’re talking about a majority revolution from class society to classless society, not about a minority revolution from one class society to another. Unfortunately for us, these latter type of revolutions described themselves as “socialist” and it is their failure to bring about the equality associated with the word “socialism” that has led people like Payne to conclude that there is no “big solution” and indeed that trying to achieve one can only make things worse.

But to say that we shouldn’t seek a “big solution” but only “small, local changes” is in effect to accept that there is no alternative to capitalism. This is because capitalism is a big—a world-wide—system and, as Payne admits, causes big problems. Any alternative to it—any solution to these problems—must therefore be “big” too, global in both senses—world-wide and a total new system.

If you reject this analysis then you are accepting that we cannot get rid of capitalism and that the best we can expect is to mitigate its effects a little. It is because we refuse to accept this defeatist conclusion that we say that Morris’s policy of making socialists is still the most constructive activity that those who want a better world should engage in at the present time. Fight to save your local beauty spot if you like, but don’t accept that that’s all that can be done.

Adam Buick

50 Years Ago: Leopold (2000)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The recent disturbances in Belgium over the return of King Leopold provide a good illustration of how the Communists and Social Democrats waste their time. The Daily Worker (4-8-50) praised the leaders of “this historic movement,” or at any rate the Communists among them. After Leopold returned, said the article, “it took the Belgian working class just five minutes to get angry and five days to get organised.” It applauds the “working class unity” that was attained; it describes the strikes, the riots and the processions, and talks about “this great class battle.” And it leads up to the triumphant conclusion when Leopold agreed to hand over his powers to his son Baudouin—though it blames the Social Democrats for not having insisted on his complete abdication.

When all the shouting and the shooting was over, what had happened? Before the agitation against the king, the Belgian workers were being exploited by the Belgian owners under the nominal presidency of someone called Leopold; after the agitation, the Belgian workers were being exploited under the nominal presidency of someone called Baudouin. Which makes a lot of difference. And yet to obtain such an insignificant change, the “Left-wing” parties strained all their energies, and three men who were following the lead of these parties were shot by the police at Grace-Berieur. The three men were called “martyrs,” and the name is just; the men were martyrs to the ideas of those “leaders” of the working class who, instead of encouraging the workers to understand and bring about encouraging the workers to understand the bring about Socialism, spend all their time in noisy pursuit of aims which in the end bring no benefit at all to the workers.

(From “‘Passing Comments”, Socialist Standard, October 1950)

Czechoslovakia ten years ago (1978)

From the August 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Czechoslovakia, as its unwieldy name suggests, was one of the artificial “nation-States” set up after the First World War, containing within its borders not only people whose mother-tongue was Czech or Slovak but considerable minorities speaking Hungarian, Polish, German and Ukrainian. These last two minorities provided the excuse, before the war, for parts of Czechoslovakia to be annexed by Germany (since restored) and, after the war, for parts to be annexed by Russia (where they still are today).

A mere glance at the map of Europe shows why, for strategic reasons, Czechoslovakia could never hope to pursue an independent foreign policy for any length of time. One end of the country points into the middle of Germany, the other (even more prominently on pre-war maps) into Russia. The victorious powers in the First World War who had set up Czechoslovakia in 1919 agreed twenty years later, at Munich, that it should form part of the German sphere of influence. After the war, at Yalta, it was agreed that it should be transferred to the Russian sphere, where it has been since the Stalinist coup d’etat in 1948, a position which was dramatically re-asserted ten years ago this month when Russian tanks rolled into the streets of Prague.

The Russian re-invasion of Czechoslovakia was motivated mainly by strategic considerations, the fear that the political changes begun by the Dubcek government would get out of hand and lead to Czechoslovakia trying to break away from the Russian empire.

Dubcek had succeeded Novotny, a hard-line Stalinist, as the leader of the Czechoslovak Communist Party in January 1968 as part of a process in which the “liberals” in the Party triumphed over the “conservatives”. The sort of state capitalist regime which exists in Russia and East Europe is based on a State monopoly over the means of production, but where the State is itself monopolised by a privileged group who thus own and control the means of production just as much as the more traditional capitalist class of Western countries.

This state capitalist ruling class monopolises the means of production as a class, but within it there are various groups with their own sectional interests such as the military, Party and managerial bureaucracies. In the classic Stalinist model, power is firmly in the hands of the Party bureaucracy — people as often as not originally from working-class backgrounds, who are basically politicians without technical qualifications; they make policy and it is to them that the military and managerial bureaucracies are subordinated. But because factory managers and other technocrats are also generally obliged to be members of the Party, conflicts of sectional interest within the state capitalist ruling class express themselves as conflicts inside the Party.

In Czechoslovakia the election of Dubcek as Party leader, and the “Prague Spring” which followed with the relaxation of censorship and talk of “socialism ( = state capitalism) with a human face”, represented the victory of the managerial section of the ruling class over the more strictly party-political section. The overcentralized state capitalism of the Stalin era, in which all decisions were taken centrally by the Party bureaucracy and industrial managers had merely to execute them was beginning to become inefficient even in Russia itself and various experiments in decentralization and so-called “market socialism” (an absurd contradiction in terms since socialism necessarily involves the disappearance of the market) were made. It was the implementation of such measures that in Czechoslovakia gave the managerial bureaucracy a certain degree of independence and allowed them to mount a challenge against and eventually oust the Stalinist old guard.

The Dubcek period in Czechoslovakia, then, represented the coming to power of a different section of the capitalist ruling class: the managers as opposed to the politicians. Some people were quite frank that this was what it was all about. The present writer recalls a Czech tourist at one of our meetings in Hyde Park in the summer of 1968 who somewhat arrogantly declared that Dubcek represented the end of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” by which he meant the end of “stupid workers”, i.e. political leaders from a working-class background) giving orders to more educated managers and technocrats like his father.

The programme of the triumphant Dubcek wing of the Czechoslovak Communist Party was essentially an extension of “market socialism”. This would have involved a further relaxation of centralized planning and more competition between enterprises for sales and profits. Enterprises were to be given the right to hire and fire, so turning the “hidden unemployment” (over manning) associated with the old system into an open reserve army of labour. There was even talk of enterprises being allowed to raise money by issuing bonds which would be traded centrally on a revived stock exchange! Ota Šik, the theorist of all this, now recognises, in exile, that the old system was a form of State capitalism but fails to realise that his “market socialism” was even more recognisably a form of capitalism.

Together with this economic liberalisation was to go a political liberalisation. Censorship in the newspapers, on the radio and television and in the arts was relaxed; the powers of the police were reduced. Here, as opposed to the economic reforms, was something from which the working class might have benefited. For freedom of discussion is the ideal, even indispensable, condition for the development of socialist ideas since it is only out of a full and frank discussion of their experiences under capitalism that the working class can come to acquire the majority socialist understanding necessary before capitalism can be replaced by Socialism. In the spring of 1968 a small, tentative step was taken in Czechoslovakia in a direction which might have led to the limited political democracy such as exists in Western countries, with its relative freedom of speech, more than one political party, collective bargaining between trade unions and employers, etc.

It was precisely a fear that such a system might eventually lead strategically-important Czechoslovakia out of the Soviet bloc that led the Russian ruling class to decide to send its troops in to overthrow Dubcek and install the puppet regime under Husak which is still in power today. The Dubcek regime itself had never suggested leaving the Soviet bloc (they had learnt the lesson of Czechoslovakia’s brief history: that it can’t have an independent foreign policy but must be dominated either by Germany or by Russia), but, as far as the Russian ruling class were concerned, this was no guarantee as to what, with the advent of a measure of political democracy, some future Czech government might try to do.

Socialists are naturally concerned about whether or not political democracy exists under capitalism. For the existence of some political democracy, limited and distorted though it must be by the class structure of capitalism, is central to our case for the peaceful propagation of socialist ideas culminating in the peaceful establishment of Socialism by democratic political action based on majority socialist understanding.

The Dubcek regime represented a section of the state capitalist ruling class and would have proved to be just as anti-working class as the previous Stalinist governments of Czechoslovakia. So no tears needed to be shed for it. But this split in the ruling class was beginning to allow workers in Czechoslovakia (just as had happened in Western Europe in the 19th century) a certain freedom to manoeuvre, both on the political and industrial fields and the continuation of this process might have led to a situation in which the open propagation of socialist ideas in Czechoslovakia became possible.

Adam Buick

Time and chance (1978)

From the August 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

If the lights are observed burning late in Number Ten nowadays, there is no reason to be worried about the Prime Minister suffering from insomnia. More likely he is sitting up with his advisers, juggling with the slide rule, metronome and egg-timer, trying to decide the date of the next general election.

There is, as usual, no lack of advice for him in this, from all those political hacks who earn their living writing clever columns in the newspapers, largely designed to show how basically easy it is to run British capitalism without all those tiresome crises and upheavals. But the timing of an election is more than a game; if the big parties need any encouragement to take it seriously they need only remember how Wilson lost power in 1970. When that campaign opened there was a pretty widespread assumption that the Labour Party was going to win and that the election was little more than a short break in Wilson’s administering the affairs of the British capitalist class. When they were defeated it was put down to a miscalculation in timing by Wilson, largely to do with some unfavourable trade figures which were published a few days before the poll.

The implication of this excuse was that, had those figures come out a couple of weeks later we might never had endured the Heath style of running capitalism. It enabled the politicians to ignore the possibility that Labour might have lost because of their record — their attacks on working class living standards, their support for the napalming Americans in Vietnam, their racist immigration laws, their whole dismal performance of fumbling through one crisis after another.

If this is remembered by Callaghan, he will be weighing up several factors, hoping that if Wilson did make a mistake he will not make it again. Some of the more recent by-election results may have given him some hope that, punch-drunk though they may be, Labour voters still have enough strength to bounce back off the ropes.

Then there are the official statistics, which regularly jerk out of the Treasury, the Department of Employment and so on, which are supposed to tell us how British capitalism is doing compared to its rivals. We have already mentioned the trading figures; there are others which tell how many of us are queueing up for dole money, how much we are paying in the shop for the necessities of life, how successful the government has been in its efforts to hold down our wages, by how much they have inflated the currency.

Workers are usually impressed by these figures, regarding them as something like the temperature chart at the end of a patient’s bed, except that the illness is in this case treated as if it were the patient’s own fault. But if Callaghan also thinks they are important, he is at once faced with a problem; he is dealing with the unpredictable.

No government is able to foretell the prosperity or the failure of its industries. They may guess and perhaps sometimes be right — which will allow them to claim special powers — but it all rests upon the market, which itself is anarchic and uncontrollable. Of course, when a government is able to publish figures which are seen as hopeful — falling unemployment or lower prices for example — Chancellors are quick to claim credit for them. It is only when the statistics tell a different story — when the jobless are increasing or prices spiraling — that governments take refuge in the excuse that they have been hit by the equivalent of a snowstorm in August.

But if the markets — which means the economy — of capitalism were controllable and could be predicted then most of capitalism’s problems would not exist. It would also mean that a lot of economic experts — perhaps even a Chancellor of the Exchequer or two — would be redundant, which many people might consider a small price to pay for such relief.

Meanwhile, as he is wrestling with the unpredictability of capitalism, the Prime Minister must also be keeping an eye on his calendar, aware that we are approaching the conference season. These events can sometimes be useful propaganda exercises to a party anxious to hide its record (although the miners’ conference, with its threat of a repeat of the 1973 confrontation with the Heath government was, at face value, anything but reassuring to the Labour government). There was a time when members of the Labour Party may have thought that their party conference mattered and that if they took policy decisions there they would be written into a Labour government’s programme.

There could be no other explanation for all the effort which went into those conferences, which voted for unilateral nuclear disarmament, or Clause Four, or for something equally unrealistic. But after the celebration of their victory in the vote, the delegates were confronted with the fact — by Attlee, Gaitskell, Wilson — that Labour governments run capitalism as it has to be run — in the interests of the ruling class — and that this would not be affected by woolly minded resolutions from over excited delegates. In the practical world of capitalist government promise is one thing; performance is another.

There have been many such examples of Labour conferences being an embarrassment to their leaders in the hunt for votes. Callaghan will be hoping that there will be no repetition this year (he is, after all, acting with considerable dispatch in the matter of Labour campaigning for the abolition of hunting, not on the grounds that he hates foxes but that such a proposal is likely to lose Labour votes in crucial seats) and that the party will be able to hold a rousing event glittering with promises for the future. He may gain inspiration from the performance of Harold Wilson, at his first conference as leader in 1963, when he dazzled the assembly with his talk about the good life waiting for us in the technological revolution. It quite made the conference forget Labour’s record in office, their electoral humiliations and their internal disputes.

The Tories need have no fear on this score since their conferences are, almost without exception, hearty affairs with one leader after another stepping up to enthuse the faithful and to pretend that the microdot differences between them and the Labour Party are worth getting passionate about. Rarely is the boat rocked; everyone is given an ovation because the Tories love to clap and cheer. It is almost as if, after a long muscle-wasting illness, they have been advised by their doctors to get a little exercise about the hands and forearms.

While Callaghan is musing on these factors, timing his effort like a jockey waiting for the right moment to run for the winning post, few people are likely to be asking why he is so concerned. The simple answer, that Labour is hoping to get some advantage in terms of votes if they get the timing right, does not go far enough. After all, if Labour government is so good for us, should there not be millions of grateful workers ready to vote for another dose of it, no matter when the election happens?

We might do well to approach this question from another angle. The importance attached to the timing of an election implies that the voters will change their minds over a very short period (in the case of 1970, the argument runs, over just a few days) in response to some event or piece of information. Now what sort of influence is needed, to bring such a change about? We have already seen that the trade figures are supposed to have that effect. Another might be a political event — Powell’s advice, in 1974, to vote Labour is one. Another was the sudden change in the Russian leadership in 1964, which came during the general elections here and which had Wilson worriedly claiming to know Kosygin well and to be able to talk to him man to man. What could be more appealing, to a working class concerned that their masters’ interests should be adequately represented in the conference chamber?

Which brings us to the crucial point. Accepting that votes are influenced by the timing of an election, what sort of vote is it which acts in that way? What level of consciousness does it suggest, behind the swinging vote? A worker who is impressed by a set of figures about capitalism’s trade, or by a change in the dictatorship in another capitalist power, sufficiently to change his vote is clearly not about to use that vote to its full power; he is not about to use it to overthrow capitalism. He is voting in ignorance of his class standing, his exploitation and of the essentially anarchic and inhuman operation of capitalist society.

In that political ignorance he is open to any persuasion. He will vote Labour because his dad always did, or Conservative because he has moved to a semi in the suburbs. He will experience, and grow angry and frustrated under, the pressures of capitalism and he may change from one capitalist party to another in desperation that each cannot possibly be worse than the other. A kitten chases its tail to better effect.

A voter who thinks like that may well be susceptible to the skills of timing, which are supposed to be part of the top politician’s essential equipment. If there are enough such voters it may be worth Callaghan’s while to fix polling day so that it might bring in a bigger vote for Labour. But what is the end of it all? Such an appeal is to the politically unconscious; it is a deception, an invitation to trust blindly in leadership when all the evidence is that this is futility. As long as this attitude holds sway, capitalism will continue with its problems, its degradations and its repressed and frustrated workers.

There is at present little attraction for the working class in the appeal to reach out for something better, for an understanding of capitalism and of what it does to us all, of the cynicism of its politics. When the political parties of capitalism set out to manipulate the voters—with promises, flattery or the strategy of timing — they are expressing a contempt for the workers which, sadly, may be somewhere near realistic. The working class should resent this and determine to act for themselves. And this resolution should get through to Callaghan and his like so that in their preoccupation with fixing a date when we are to vote they begin to hear a far disturbance, and know that the bell is beginning to toll for them and for all they represent.

Ivan

State capitalism and the Russian dissidents (1978)

From the August 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

According to Andrei Sakharov, a leading Russian dissident, the view that Russia is state capitalist is fairly widespread there:

In my opinion, contemporary Soviet society can be concisely characterised as a society based on state capitalism; that is, a system differing from contemporary capitalism of the Western type by virtue of complete nationalization, a Party-State monopoly of economic affairs—and therefore in culture, ideology, and other basic aspects of life. This opinion is apparently shared by a great many people abroad and in the USSR—although in most cases the latter of course do not voice it (My Country and the World, p. 14)

To call Russia state capitalist is to reject the claim of the Russian leaders to have established a classless egalitarian society. That there is no social equality in Russia is evident to any impartial observer. Even a superficial glance at Russian society will reveal that the mass of the people are poor and at the same time have no say whatsoever in the way society is run. On the other hand, the group which does take the key economic and political decisions can be seen to enjoy considerable material privileges too. The term “state capitalism” however conveys not only that a situation of social inequality exists in Russia but also that the society has a definite class structure and, like capitalism everywhere else, is based on the exploitation of the working class.

The Soviet oppositionists do in fact give us a fairly detailed picture of the class structure of Russia. In 1969 there appeared a samizdat document Time Does Not Wait written by two authors using the pseudonyms Zorin and Alexeyev. Here we read:

The Party and government leaders not only possess total political power but also have at their disposal the entire economy. State ownership of the means of production and the centralized planning system mean that all the budget figures, all the surplus products created by the people’s labour, are disposed of collectively by a closed circle of people, according to each one’s rank. Here the nomenclature appears as a form of property. In reality this is a single state-monopoly trust in which positions and posts are equivalent to the ownership of shares, (translated for the Socialist Standard by C. S.)

So the ruling class is here seen as the select group wielding, on the basis of the State monopoly of the means of production, complete economic and political power and is identified with the “nomenclatura” which is thus a legally-recognised hierarchical corporation collectively exploiting the surplus labour of the Russian people.

The “nomenclatura” is a list of posts, appointment to which is the prerogative of the Party. All the leading posts in national and local government figure in the “nomenclatura” and nearly all are filled by members of the Party. The “nomenclatura”, then, in so far as it is a list of posts the ruling Party itself considers it should fill in order to maintain its control is a reasonable enough starting point for defining the Russian ruling class. We say starting point because there are others not strictly in the “nomenclatura” who would also need to be considered part of any ruling class; the full-time bureaucracy of the Party itself for instance.

Andrei Sakharov himself, in his rather naive first public pronouncement in 1968 of his differences with the Russian government entitled Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom, made a passing reference in a footnote to the view that the “nomenclatura” constituted a ruling, exploiting class enjoying material privileges:

It is sometimes suggested in the literature that the political manifestations of Stalinism represented a sort of superstructure over the economic basis of an anti-Leninist pseudo-socialism that led to the formation of a distinct class—the bureaucratic élite of those who figure on the nomeclatura lists and who appropriate the fruits of social labour by means of a whole series of officially recognised or concealed privileges (Sakharov Speaks, p. 84, changed on basis of French version)

By 1975, Sakharov, without doubt because of his experiences during the intervening period, had come to fully accept this view himself. By then he realised that he was fighting not just to change the policy of the government but against an entrenched ruling class determined to defend its power and privileges. In his book My Country and the World he writes:

Although the appropriate sociological studies either have not been carried out in our country, or have been classified as secret, it may be affirmed that as early as the 1920’s and 30’s — and definitively in post-war years—a special Party-bureaucratic stratum was formed and could be discerned. This is the nomenclatura, as its members call themselves; or the “new class”, as Milovan Djilas has named them. This élite has its own life style, its own clearly defined social status—"bosses” and "chiefs”—and its own way of talking and thinking. The nomenclatura has in fact an inalienable status, and has recently become hereditary. Thanks to a complex system of covert and overt official privileges, along with contacts, acquaintanceships, and mutual favours—and also thanks to their high salaries—these people are able to live in much better housing, and to feed and clothe themselves better (often for less money in special ‘closed’ stores or for currency certificates, or by means of trips abroad—which, under Soviet conditions, constitute the highest award for loyalty) (pp. 25-6)

Sakharov had first used the actual term “state capitalism” to describe Russia in an interview given to a Swedish radio and television correspondent in July 1973 (see Sakharov Speaks, p. 167).

One of the weaknesses of Sakharov’s analysis and that of Zorin and Alexeyev is the way they seek to show that the “nomenclatura’s” rights are legally-based and hereditary. Both Sakharov and Zorin and Alexeyev state that the “nomenclatura’s” right to a privileged situation is “inalienable” and Sakharov adds that it “has recently become hereditary”. What they have in mind is clear: a member of the “nomenclatura” who ends up on the losing side in an internal party controversy may lose his top Party or government post but he will not be thrown out of the “nomenclatura”. The members of the “anti-party group” of die-hard Stalinists (Molotov, Malenkov, Bulganin and Kaganovich) ejected from power in 1956 were all given other, though comparatively minor, posts in the “nomenclatura” and Khrushchev died a wealthy man in his own private dacha. In describing the “nomenclatura” as hereditary Sakharov no doubt has in mind the fact that children of members of the “nomenclatura” can enter, and have been entering, its ranks without any difficulty and almost automatically.

No doubt both these facts are true, but to include them as key features of the Russian ruling class is to accept a legalistic rather than a sociological definition of class and to lay yourself open to the criticism that the individual member of the "nomenclatura’s” position and privileges are not in fact legally enforceable. From a legalistic point of view, such a criticism has some validity. The members of the “nomenclatura” have no legally-recognised and legally-enforceable right either to a post in its ranks or to transmit such a post to their children. Their position may in practice be virtually permanent and it may in practice always be possible for them to get their children a post in the “nomenclatura”, but if, for some reason, they were thrown out of the “nomenclatura” or if their children were refused entry into its ranks they could not have recourse to the courts to enforce their claim.

The legalistic definition of class suggests that, to constitute a possessing class, a group must have legal property rights over the means of production including the legal right to bequeath their property to their descendants. But this is not so. Marx’s method was to judge a society not by its political or legal superstructure but by its real social relations of production. A possessing class in the Marxist sense can be discerned in any society if an empirical investigation reveals that a distinct and reasonably stable group exerts a de facto monopoly control over access to the use of the means of production. This monopoly will always (except in periods of revolutionary social change) be backed by political power and may also be legally recognised, but this latter is by no means essential. The absence of legal recognition would not negate the existence of a possessing class.

On this definition, a ruling, possessing class, as a group exerting a de facto monopoly over the means of production, has long existed in Russia. This does not mean, however, that a class of individual private property owners might not still evolve, either from the ranks of the bureaucracy or from the at present severely restricted illegal and semi-legal private entrepreneurs of Russia.

State capitalism and private capitalism

None of the Soviet oppositionists are Socialists in the Marxist sense of the term (they do not stand for the establishment of a moneyless, wageless, Stateless society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production by the whole community). So what do they stand for? What do they wish to see established in Russia in place of state capitalism?

Their key demand is for the establishment of a genuine political democracy in Russia with freedom of expression, freedom to organise in political parties and trade unions, a democratically elected parliament, etc. There can be no doubt at all that they are sincerely and courageously struggling for this aim. But since politics and economics cannot be separated it is pertinent to ask what sort of economic system they envisage, even if by default, for a democratic Russia.

Here it is hard to resist the conclusion that many of those who speak of “state-monopoly capitalism”, including Sakharov himself, are more opposed to "state-monopoly” than to “capitalism”. In a sense this is understandable in that what they are fighting against day by day is the monopoly exercised by the State in the fields of politics and ideas—the dictatorship of the leaders of the CPSU—while the term “capitalism” is not properly understood and is being used as a term to express their rejection of the claim of the CPSU leaders to have established a classless society in Russia.

However, class society in Russia has certain features in common with pre-capitalist class societies in that the privileges of the rulers—even though they derive in the end from a monopoly over the means of production—are expressed in political terms. Thus, just as in feudalism society was divided into legally-defined estates, so in Russia today society appears to be divided according to political criteria: into those in the top and middle ranks of the CPSU who, by virtue of their political status, enjoy access to the top jobs (through the “nomenclatura” system) and to the best goods and services (through exclusive shops and politically-motivated “prizes” as well as through high salaries), and into the rest of society.

This special feature of the Russian class structure has given rise to the illusion that the mere abolition of the political monopoly of the CPSU of the “nomenclatura”, of the exclusive shops and other perks would be equivalent to abolishing class privilege in Russia. But this would no more be the case than the abolition of feudal privileges established a classless society in Western Europe, as imagined by 19th century democrats.

What the abolition of these politically-derived privileges would do would be to leave no class distinction but the ownership (or non-ownership) of wealth. This is the grain of truth in the claim made by the CPSU leaders that what their opponents seek is the “restoration of capitalism” in Russia. "Restoration” is of course the wrong word since it suggests that capitalism was at one time abolished in Russia (which was never the case), but it is still true that in practice what the Russian dissidents would achieve if successful would be a transition from the existing “bureaucratic” or “state-monopoly” capitalism to a type of capitalism similar to what has emerged in the West.

Such a transition would not need to involve the complete denationalization of land and industry in Russia For, after all, a large proportion of industry in Western countries is now in the hands of the State. There is, however, a difference between Western state capitalism and Russian state capitalism in that in the West the State sector is subordinate to the private sector, whereas in Russia the state sector, the source of power and privilege for the political bureaucracy which controls it, completely dominates (but has not entirely suppressed) the private sector. The establishment of democratic political institutions in Russia would create the same sort of relationship between the private and State sectors as currently exists in the West: the nationalised industries would be run in the interests of a political bureaucracy.

But what is, or would be, the Russian private sector? There already exist in Russia today many people who are individually wealthy. Not so much those who have made money out of illegal or semi-legal private enterprise, but mainly those who. after years of privilege deriving from membership of a corporation which collectively owns and controls the means of production have amassed considerable fortunes and become wealthy individuals in their own right. But there is no legal way in which they can invest this wealth productively so it is generally hoarded in the form of dachas, precious metals and art collections. The partial denationalization of industry proposed by Sakharov in My Country and the World, as a means of weakening the “state monopoly” would provide such an outlet. For who does Sakharov think would have the money to buy the factories he proposes should be sold off? The only people who could are bureaucrats who have become individually wealthy — and others, we might add without being unfair, like Sakharov himself who became so by providing special services to the political bureaucracy in the scientific or artistic fields.

So, ironic as it might seem, the main beneficiaries of the democratic programme proposed by the Russian oppositionists would most probably be a section of the very bureaucrats they are so courageously struggling against. Which is why other dissidents like Roy Medvedev may not be entirely mistaken in expecting democratic reform in Russia to come from above, from a section of the bureaucracy itself.

This, then, is the ambiguous position of those in Russia who recognise the system there to be a state capitalism. Not being socialists, the only alternative they can offer—even if they don’t always do so explicitly—is private capitalism. The Russian oppositionists’ fight for political democracy is in effect a fight against state capitalism on behalf of private capitalism. Which is why we, as Socialists, cannot support them.

Adam Buick