Weakness of Nuclear Disarmament Campaign (1958)

From the August 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many rank and file adherents of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, associated with which are Cannon Collins, Donald Soper, Michael Foot and others believe that they are opposed on principle to nuclear weapons. They might be interested to know the reply which was made to a reader of the Socialist Standard who was seeking an “official and authoritative" reply to the undernoted question, from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. The question was:—

"Is it the policy of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament at the next general election to advise their supporters to vote only for a completely anti-nuclear weapon candidate no matter to which party he or she belongs and to abstain in the absence of such a candidate? ”

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament replied in a letter dated June 27th, 1958, signed by Peggy Duff, the C.N.D. Organising Secretary:—

"It is not the policy of the Campaign to advise supporters to vote only for a completely anti-nuclear weapon candidate because we feel each individual must make their decision alone, according to the circumstances in the area in which they live. To do as suggested in many areas would result in the return of a candidate much more opposed to the Campaign than the alternative.”

To put it very charitably, this attitude is certainly not one of principled opposition to nuclear weapons. It is a far cry from A.J. P. Taylor's wildly acclaimed suggestion at the inaugural meeting of the Campaign on February17th this year in Central Hall, Westminster, that politicians who supported the nuclear “deterrent" policy should be branded as “ Murderers! "

It is said by a number of people in the movement itself that some Labour Party politicians are discreetly attempting to use for their own ends the indignation of those who are appalled at the prospects of nuclear warfare and the insidious dangers of fall-out from weapon tests.

Here we see the difference between the approach of the S.P.G.B. to the problem of war and the approach of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. The Socialist Party of Great Britain sees that war happens because of the way the civilian life of the world is carried on, the capitalist system of production and distribution, with its rivalries between the nations for markets, sources of raw materials and the control of trade routes and strategic points.

We hold, therefore, that the only road to peace is through altering the structure of society from capitalism to Socialism. This requires that a majority shall become convinced of the need for Socialism and democratically take organised political action to abolish capitalism and establish Socialism in its place.

It follows that the Socialist Party is opposed on principle and completely to all who help to keep capitalism going (which includes helping to keep war going). Therefore, the S.P.G.B. opposes the candidates of capitalism, Tory, Liberal. Labour, Communist, or whatever label they may be.

On the other hand there are those who say they are opposed on principle to nuclear weapons, but who do not recognise that capitalism is bound to go on producing wan, large or small.

They think that by concentrating on this particular kind of weapon (regardless of bacteriological, chemical or any other known or secret weapons) they can gain time for more rational political policies to be instituted before the radio-active poisoning of plant and animal life or the destruction of civilisation makes politics redundant.

But when it comes to applying their principle in a practical way they find themselves involved in giving support to electoral candidates who do not share their principle. In face of past experience of such attitudes what can they really hope to achieve by this?

We hope that this short article will stimulate those in the Campaign to write to us so that fruitful discussion of the whole problem of war and nuclear tests may ensue.

B.

Party News Briefs (1958)

Party News from the August 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

Visit to America tad Canada. Plans are being made by our Comrades in the West for an extensive tour for Comrade D’Arcy when he flies to America at the end of August, where he will be a delegate from our Party to the Annual Conference of the World Socialist Party at Boston. Without doubt he will have a very interesting trip if Comrade Gilmac’s experiences last year are anything to go by. It is hoped that Comrade D’Arcy will be able to send an interim report for inclusion in the September Socialist Standard.

* * *

Wickford Branch is in future to be known as Basildon Branch—full details are given in the Directory on the back page.

* * *

Mitcham Discussion Group has now been established and is holding regular meetings on the fourth Thursday in each month. In addition, lectures are being held on August 14th and September 11th—details elsewhere in this issue.

* * * .

Bloomsbury Branch is arranging to hold discussions on the first Thursday in each month at Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, W.C.l. The first, on September 4th, at 8.30 p.m., is on Crises. Comrade Hardy will open the discussion.

Phyllis Howard

50 Years Ago: What is Meant by Education (1958)

The 50 Years Ago column from the August 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

Doe education necessarily mean a knowledge of the higher mathematics, Greek and chemistry? No! Education, from the Socialist point of view, is a recognition of that class antagonism prevalent in society today, and a consciousness that the workers as a class must combine in opposition to the capitalist class and its supporters for the purpose of taking, holding and controlling the political machine, and subsequently the means of life in their own interest.

The full recognition of this basic principle of Socialist propaganda and of the uncompromising action necessary to the attainment of the above object is absolutely essential from our point of view, and the moment the individual unit of society recognises this and acts accordingly, he is, from the Socialist viewpoint, educated.

Unless the workers are educated in this sense all efforts at emancipation will be as futile as those already attempted. And this is why  they cannot emancipate themselves until they are educated.”

The administration of education at present lies in the hands of the capitalist class, who will take care that only those subjects tending to keep the workers in subjection, and to make them more efficient producers, shall be taught

(From the Socialist Standard, August, 1908.)

You have it all wrong! (1958)

From the August 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

For the well-being of the people of these islands the S.P.G.B. advocates:—

Unemployment!

Abolition of the Dole!

Abolition of Old Age Pensions!

Abolition of Maternity Benefits!

Disbanding of Trade Unions!

Although the declaration of principles is printed in every publication we issue, the S.P.G.B. receives numerous requests to declare itself, to put forward constructive and concrete proposals instead of destructive attacks on all the other political parties. These, therefore, are some of our aims put in a “concrete” manner. Our reasons for pursuing such a policy follow—a policy which we believe will further the well-being of the working class; not only of this country but of the whole world.

Our object is Socialism: A social system under which the means of production and distribution are commonly owned. With common ownership it naturally follows that there can be no employers and no employees; therefore no employment, i.e., unemployment Socialists are surprised how workers who consider themselves “fly” continue to fall for this employment racket. Workers, to whom it would be impossible to sell “a gold brick” or Trafalgar Square, are still sold this greatest of all confidence tricks. On going to work the boss provides one with a desk or machine and pays for only part of the work done. Were a shop assistant to give short change, the injured party would swiftly take steps to rectify it but under capitalism not only do die injured parties tolerate this system of short-changing, but even support it by voting for political parties which will perpetuate the system. People who allow themselves to be swindled acquire the just title of “suckers.”

Money being a convenient means of measuring property, in a society where all wealth is communally owned, it would automatically fall into disuse. The dole, therefore, would also become obsolete. If certain articles were to be over-produced the workers in those industries would not be penalised for having worked too hard and forced to eke out an existence on the pittance the Government deems fit until the glut had been absorbed. Rather, they would still be able to enjoy the fruits of general production which they would have undoubtedly earned.

Similarly, Old Age Pensions and Maternity Benefits would pass into history, so that when workers decided that their advancing years no longer rendered them capable of doing their job satisfactorily, they, too, would not be deprived of access to the necessities of life, but could spend “the twilight of their lives” (as the reformists like to call it) without fear or worry. Under Socialism couples wanting children would not be oppressed with worry about being able to afford them.

Trade Unions are the defensive weapon in the arsenal of the working class. The offensive weapon, the vote, is grossly misused and the Trade Unions are far from fulfilling their role.

With the advent of Socialism Trade Unions will no longer be required. There will be no wages to fight over or redundancy to worry about and their function will be ended.

Thus it will be seen that our proposals, at first sight Utopian to those whose minds have been conditioned by “the Welfare State,” in fact would be a boon to all mankind. This new social system can be obtained—provided YOU, the reader, understand it and want it. The S.P.G.B. is available to be used by you. Don’t delay its employment longer than necessary.

'Essig'

Sting in the Tail: Summits of impotence (1995)

The Sting in the Tail column from the August 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Summits of impotence

Here, John, did you see that the G7 leaders had another Summit up in Nova Scotia? They tackled some very big international problems like how to increase world trade, save the environment, tilings like that.

Well, OK, it’s true that they fell-out a lot because they all put their own economic and political interests first, but be fair, John, the Americans couldn’t let Japan import all its luxury cars into the States without opening up its own home market, could they? And Helmut Kohl had to give John Major a bollocking for agreeing that Shell could dump Brent Spar in the Atlantic, because that was very unpopular in Germany.

But the good news is that they’ll all be putting their heads together again next year at a Summit on unemployment! No, John, must admit I didn't know they’ve already had two Summits on that last year and came up with Sweet Fanny Adams, but d’you really think that the only result of them putting their heads together will be an exchange of dandruff?

Asking for it

"How they distrusted and for the most part disliked him, yet clung to him. lie was the only possible leader . . . It was true, of course, that [he] was an electioneering asset. In the constituencies his appearance was much admired. Women especially found him impressive."

This could be a summary of what many Labour Party members feel about Tony Blair, but the leader in question was Ramsay MacDonald in 1930 and the quotation is from Malcolm Muggcridge’s book The Thirties.

No doubt many in the Labour Party distrust and dislike Blair, They know he can treat them how he likes and this was painfully obvious when, having won the vote to change Clause Four at the special conference in April. He said “Now, about the party’s name,” and when they gasped in horrified anticipation, added “it stays as it is.”

How they must have squirmed at being so openly toyed with, but those who need a leader must accept being led, even when it is by the nose.

Relative surplus value

A letter in the Guardian (12 June) aired a familiar complaint. The writer cited a prediction made by an American scientist many years ago that computers would eventually do much of humanity’s work and also reduce working hours. He then contrasted this with today’s “long working hours culture” plus the growth of unemployment and asked “what went wrong?”

That American scientist was not alone in making ill-founded predictions about what technology’s advance would bring. There were, for example, TV programmes like Tomorrow's World which had robots doing everything, even the housework, and leaving us all to lead lives of leisure.

None of these crystal-gazers understood that capitalism isn’t concerned with reducing work but only with reducing COSTS in order to boost profits, and it does this, not through idealistic work-sharing, but by simply dumping as many workers as possible and screwing more work out of those who remain.

It stands to reason

One of the daftest economic theories around is that the economy can be “talked into” recession. Only a few years ago the Director General of the Institute of Directors blamed the “Jeremiah voices” who he claimed were guilty of this.

Now the Institute of Chartered Surveyors has criticised Professor Doug Wood for his recent prediction that house prices would stay low for the next twenty years. The ICS branded this as “a self-fulfilling prophesy” which, they said, had caused house prices to fall even further.

How, then, do they explain the fact that for years building societies and estate agents have been talking-up house prices without this having the slightest effect? If it were so easy for “Jeremiah voices” to talk the economy or any market into recession then it should be just as easy for the super-optimists to talk it back out again.

The exploitation party

All rent, interest and profit is derived from the surplus value that the working class produce. The difference between the wealth the worker produces and what she or he receives in the form of a wage or salary' constitutes this surplus value.

This is true throughout the world. It is true whatever political party is currently running the capitalist system. So it is with some interest that socialists look at what the British labour Party plan to do if they form the next government.

Under the headline “Labour Unveils Its Economic Blueprint” the Labour Shadow Chancellor let us know what is in store for us in the event of Labour forming the next government.

"Mr Brown said the strategy would aim to increase savings and investment. Wages would have to rise by less than productivity" (Independent, 28 June).

So there you have it, fellow' workers. The Labour Party wants to increase the surplus value wrung from our hides.

Bon voyage!

Did you know that the aircraft on which we travel may well contain inferior parts which could cause them to crash? Such crashes have already occurred and Panorama (BBC1, 12 June) revealed that there is an extremely lucrative, world-wide trade in counterfeit and even scrapped parts.

The airlines and the civil aviation authorities deny this, but Panorama proved that counterfeit parts backed by false documents are rife in the airline industry, and one American counterfeiter described US government inspection as “a joke”.

All of this is hardly new because a similar TV programme a few years ago showed that not only fake parts are available but so are major assemblies such as entire undercarriages made from inferior materials.

Why does this happen? Well, the genuine parts are expensive because of the high specifications involved, and capitalism will always provide both motive and opportunity for money to be made no matter the consequences. Flying to the Med or Florida for your hols this year? Safe journey!

World Review: Poor Health Wanganui (1995)

From the August 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

One can’t help but notice the supreme irony surrounding the name of the Wanganui area Crown Health Enterprise (CHE)—Good Health Wanganui. Good Health Wanganui is in very bad health having just had the hard word that it has too high a level of service compared to other CHEs around the country and therefore will have its funding slashed. Two hundred and forty-six jobs will be lost from the beleaguered CHE along with 30 percent reduction in some surgery over the next three years in order to "break even". The Dominion (13 June) reported:

“‘Other services would also be downgraded because the Government believed the crown health enterprise had been providing more services than necessary’, chief executive Ron Janes said yesterday.

'The situation is utterly disappointing,’ Mr Janes said. To have the spare capacity to be able to help those in need and not use it is bad enough. But to also shed that capacity so it will not be there when future policies show more vision is worse.’"

Janes must have been rapped over the knuckles for telling the truth as his first statement was followed later with a less critical statement, after a phone call from the CHE Minister Paul East's office.

The Dominion continues in the same article:

“The salaried Medical Specialists Association said more cuts were pending, with plans to contract out support services such as x-rays, pharmacy and laboratories, while references to reducing the cost of continuing care for the elderly to market level and promptly discharging new mothers were ominous."

On the same day, the Evening Post carried a report that the

"Hutt Valley Health CHE will have to severely cut back or close several services over the next two years because of proposed funding cuts.

The cuts are coming because the Government had told CHE it will stop funding to cover deficits by 1997. That means hospitals will have to make do with funds provided by RHAs (Regional Health Authorities). CHEs say those funds are inadequate to meet growing demand for services."

Since the dose of "free market" restructuring given to the old Area Health Boards by the National government, things have been going from bad to worse. Now after being split into autonomous competing companies, Crown Health Enterprises are run on strict business lines, where running out of budget is a final thing. CHEs contract out various services such as catering and cleaning but still must survive on the vote of money from the state via RHAs. CHEs are in direct competition for resources and supplies.

Recently the CHE in Lower Hutt ran out of budget for operating theatres three-quarters of the way through the year. The remaining three months without money meant an idle theatre but still a large and growing waiting list for operations. That’s not to say that the waiting lists were much smaller under the previous regime, but that restricted state funding has become more obvious.

Getting the chop

Various CHEs have been in the media recently for turfing patients—mainly elderly—out on the street in the wintry dead of night in the interest of cold-blooded efficiency. Also patients have been abruptly discharged supposedly because there is nothing seriously wrong with them, despite protestations and then promptly dropping dead. Funding restrictions have meant that the over-70s are no longer receiving certain operations such as knee replacements and in one very highly publicised case a man who needed kidney dialysis was refused and left to die. Doctors are forced to make life-and-death decisions because of the absence of sufficient funds, and the elderly are the first to get the chop, in keeping with the system that sees workers as economic units, rather than as human beings. Elderly workers are regarded as having too many miles on the clock and are too expensive to maintain.

Have no doubt in your mind that the capitalists’ idea of the perfect worker is one who remains healthy all their working life, works hard to the day they are put on the scrapheap and promptly drops dead thereby releasing the capitalist class from having to fund their hospital repairs and pay for their dotage. This is not necessarily because the capitalists are heartless cruel people but because the logic of a competitive system of society which has a fundamental need to accumulate capital at all costs for survival.

The Returned Services Association (RSA), well-known as being a bastion of conservatism recently criticised the government’s treatment of the aged citing as examples:

• There had been no catch-up in pensions for the elderly despite a thaw after the three-year freeze. Meanwhile, the cost of living had risen markedly, leaving many senior citizens on or below the poverty line.
• Medical and elective surgical treatment for many had been put on hold as waiting lists grew longer, with operating theatres closed for part of the year as funding allocations were used up. Asset-testing meant assets were required to be used to pay for full-time care in rest homes often causing the long-saved-for family home to be sold-up and unable to be passed to the next generation.

It is interesting in this connection to note that the old much debated topic of Euthanasia has popped up again with a private member’s bill named "Death with Dignity” being introduced in the New Zealand parliament and recently the Northern Territories of Australia passing a bill allowing voluntary Euthanasia under certain circumstances.

No doubt a few wealthy members of society like the thought of workers topping themselves to eliminate the expensive care needed to attend to the terminally-sick. Undeniably, there are certain aspects of Euthanasia that are humane, but in a system of society like capitalism, it is open to abuse, to service those who would benefit from reduced state expenditure.

The Evening Post (1 June) reported that:

"the government has told public hospitals to increase profit by restricting surgery and other services, says the Medical Association.

Chairman Dennis Pezaro said a letter from the Ministers of Health, Crown Health Enterprises and Finance to country's 23 CHEs showed the health reforms were a 'sham'. . . . This means hospitals must not do more operations than they have been paid for . . . Since die health reforms, surgical waiting lists have increased by about 30 percent to 80,000 despite hospitals increasing the number of operations."

According to Health Minister, Jenny Shipley:

"the reason for the instructions was to prevent the problem with the previous area health board system, where hospitals ran up large debts doing uncontraced non-urgent work and then sent the bill to the taxpayer."

So why does the government show so much concern to "the taxpayer” while at the same time is practically oblivious to the needs of many workers in desperate financial situations, the unemployed, the sick, and families struggling to survive on low income? The answer is both simple and complex. Complex because of the mythology surrounding capitalism; simple because the answer is that it is in effect the capitalist class that ultimately pays the burden of taxes, including PAYE and GST. which are a charge on profit, rent and interest for the services provided by the state.

Obviously, the less tax charged by the state, the more profit left over for reinvestment and consumption by the owners of capital, or allowing them to remain competitive in the face of competition in depressed markets. You didn’t really think that you were going to benefit from promised tax cuts did you? There are a hundred ways of skinning a cat, and the claw-back of the extra take-home pay is relatively easy in times of high unemployment (look how easy it was to make the public servants put up with many years of no pay increase while inflation reduced what they could buy with their frozen wages).

In New Zealand, health represents over 10 percent of total government expenditure, and is the second largest single government expense next to social welfare (25 percent); which is why both are under attack. This is happening worldwide; governments around the world are attacking social welfare, trying to reduce the infrastructural costs to capital, in order to remain competitive in an ever more competitive market. Is this a spiralling effect? Yes. But of course reducing expenditure can have negative effects when taken too far, as needed workers become unproductive because of ill-health, broken marriages, poverty-driven social disintegration, crime etc.—but just how bad can it get? Do you want to wait around and find out? Or do you want to do something about it while you can? It’s a choice between roll-over-and-die, or stand-up-and-be-counted—counted for your active support for free access; no money, voluntary labour; no employment, democratic administration; no government.

Dave Tildesley,

World Socialist Party of New Zealand

Press Exposure: Oo dun it? (1995)

The Press Exposure column from the August 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

"It's The Sun Wot Won It" was how Rupert Murdoch’s finest, in a page one full-frontal, analysed John Major's victory in the 1992 general election. This was the latest in the Sun's history of brilliantly impactful headlines—cheeky, in words of one syllable, hitting you in the eye will a roll-your-own, crude concept of something which you might otherwise regards as serious.

That front page said a great deal about how vulnerable the working class are to inducements to grievously abuse their power to make urgent fundamental changes in society. It also contributed to the delusion.So persistent among the press, that it can influence—even decide—the outcome of elections. This delusion must profoundly boost the egos of the press barons and the editors and the cynical hacks who write up those items and compose those artistically misleading headlines. Perhaps that is what encourages people like Murdoch and Conrad Black, and before them Robert Maxwell, to shell out millions to buy the papers.

There are, however, obvious flaws in this concept. To begin with, the press in this country overwhelmingly supports the Conservative Party so if the voters always voted as the papers advised the Tories would never lose any by-elections and there would never have been any Labour governments to pick up where the Conservatives had left off and Winston Churchill may well still be prime minister. Not that it would matter if he were, except to the morticians, because the notion that the lives of people who have to work for their living are affected in any significant way by which party they elect to try to control capitalism is just another of those stories in the papers which should not be believed.

On your bike

The most recent example of the news papers kidding themselves that they control large political issues was in the fight for the leadership of the Tory Party though this time they were primarily attempting to influence the rather small electorate of Tory MPs. The greater— and certainly the more popular—part of the Tory press were firmly opposed to Major. The Sun, wot done it for Major in 1992, has now decided that he "has loser written all over him. He is damaged goods". A screaming page one headline drove home the point that Tebbit had come out against Major: "On Your Bike, John." The front page of the Daily Mail was devoted to a cartoon of a sinking liner—the Torytanic—and the advice: “Time To Ditch the Captain." In what preens itself as the quality press the Times and the Daily Telegraph were keen for a change, with the Telegraph condemning Major as unlikely to alter his policies so "as to give the Tories a realistic prospect of winning a general election". There is no equivalent in elections to the Trades Description Act, but if there were disgruntled voters would have had grounds of complaint about this apparent exposure as an incompetent wimp of the man the press were urging us to vote for so recently.

Only the Daily Star, the Daily Express ("the voice of reason in a cacophony of extremist nonsense") and the Financial Times supported Major but their combined circulation is little more than half that of the Sun by itself. So it turned out that the press campaign had little effect on what is surrealistically known as the most sophisticated electorate in the world. (Anyone who has observed Honourable members prancing and preening before the electoral hoi polloi in the lobby or behaving like empty-headed disruptives in the House must wonder why they call themselves sophisticated, but never mind.). Although the Tories voted to keep Major there were enough who did not support him to make a significant body of irritants which must be eager to exploit his problems in the future, with or without the approval of the press.

Losers

What decides how an MP votes in a leadership election is whether the leader is a vote-winner or a loser. That was why the Tories ditched Heath and then Thatcher. The voters did not reject Thatcher, she had led the Tories to victory in three successive elections but by 1990 enough MPs were convinced that the Iron Lady was corrosive of their majorities to overthrow her. She said it was a funny old world and she wept real tears as she left DowningStreet but someone should have told her that this was politics. If the Tory press had been asked they might well have wanted to keep Thatcher, who had seen off Callaghan and Foot and Kinnock not to mention General Galtieri and a few hundred Argentinean sailors on the Bclgrano. But reality—the Tory confidence that they are the great election winning machine—intruded in the persons of the men in grey suits and, whatever the papers said, her time had come.

However loud the Tory papers screamed, Major won because he was the safer bet while Redwood could not reassure enough Tory MPs that their majorities would endure and flourish with him as leader. It was, in other words, not the papers but the MPs—fearful, ambitious, calculating—wot done it. 

Ivan

These Foolish Things: Nuclear capability—is power (1995)

The Scavenger column from the August 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nuclear capability—is power

China has tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile, diplomats said yesterday, marking another crucial step towards superpower status for the country amid mounting American and Asian concern over its future geopolitical rôle. Coming two weeks after China’s May 15 nuclear test, the new missile is believed capable of reaching the US west coast, and most of Europe. China’s new 0.3 megaton nuclear warhead is expected to become operational next year, Pentagon sources said. (Guardian, 1 June.)

Don't you just love being in control?

Brian Mawhinney, the Transport Secretary, personally vetoed the publication of recent research which shows that children from low-income families and of ethnic origin are most likely to be involved in road accidents. The deaths and serious injuries of children are still rising in spite of an overall downward trend in deaths against an increase in traffic.

Surprise, surprise

“. . . the Labour Party has embraced the need for a ‘dynamic market economy’ in its new statement of values.

The question for voters when they next go to the polls is which of the main parties can oversee British capitalism most effectively.” Richard Thomas and Larry- Elliott (Finance Guardian, 1 April).

Ruling class priorities

“In 1913 Great Britain was at the height of her power and dominion. One-third of the surface of the globe—and three-quarters of all the ships that sailed the oceans—flew the Union Jack.

And the provision in the budget for the Royal navy was 11 times that for the social services.

Eighty years on, these figures are almost reversed. The Navy can draw on less than one-twelfth of the amount dispensed in ‘benefits’. . . we have got into a position where single mothers now get £5.29 billions (far more, in case anyone is interested, that the cost of Trident in the same year).”, Alan Clark, Mail on Sunday, 11 June).

Market forces

There will be no cod left in the North Sea within five years as a result of a political failure to deal with the problem of overfishing, Mark Tasker a British delegate to the North Sea Protection Conference, said yesterday, (Guardian, 8 June).

Class war casualties

The number of industrial accidents in the West Midlands has soared during the past year.

New figures released by the Health and Safety Executive show that the number of major accidents reported throughout the West Midlands jumped by more than 70 percent to 1,088 during the last year, {Evening Mail, 28 April).

Just an ordinary ruler

The Princess of Wales wants her son to be given as normal an upbringing as possible. She will be delighted, therefore, that Prince William has passed his entrance examination for Eton and, like every other normal boy in Britain, will soon be hurrying to his lessons in a black morning coat, white shirt and waistcoat. There will be ten pupils in most of his classes.

Economic oppression

More then 700,000 people have lost their homes since the repossession crisis began in 1990.

The Scavenger

B&Q bargain of the week — Dignity Stripper (1995)

The A Word in Your Ear column from the August 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

The case of Phil Cheeseman, who was sacked by B&Q for refusing to participate in early morning team exercises and chants at their Luton superstore, has received rather less media coverage than O.J. Simpson. As a sign of the times it is worthy of the closest scrutiny; from the newspaper, Luton/Bedfordshire on Sunday came the news of Mr Cheeseman’s sad failure to live up to his employer’s requirements:

" 'I was really excited when 1 got the job because it was my first permanent employment in four years,' said Phil, 'but from day two they had us singing and dancing and chanting a silly rhyme. They even played party games like bobbing apples, standing on chairs and jigsaws. I was as a customer advisor but I never actually spoke to a customer. ’ But B&Q general manager Craig Higgins said he believed ‘passionately ’ in the unusual training methods . . . ‘We need to perpetuate a real spirit of teamwork . . . Not every game is a success— apple dunking wasn’t, ’ he conceded, adding that Wednesday morning’s game of human machines was a good example of a successful game. ‘Each department was asked to produce a human machine with each person being a moving part in that machine—one department was a clock, another a vending machine, another a typewriter, and one a forklift truck . . . We finish off with aerobics—the admin department has formed a group called the Adminettes— and then do the store chant.' "

The report on Cheeseman’s dismissal for “not being a team player’’ mentioned that there were 3,000 applicants for the 250 jobs in the new superstore. Making them jump through hoops would have been the easy option.

Now, this is the point. As a wage slave you can expect little in the way of luxurious comfort and less in the way of security. But there is a third aspect of decent life which you can expect to be stripped of also: Dignity. It’s a precious resource and it’s fast going out of fashion. From beggars on the pavements to shop workers forced to chant like Maoist victims of re-education, there is a distinct sense of noses being rubbed in the dirt.

The stinking service ethos is now everywhere. When once surly counter-staff would yawn in your face and sneer at the faceless buyer as if they half expected you to have to show them a ration book before you could purchase your kippers, now well-trained smiley-servants wearing silly hats and inane badges greet us all as “customers” and pretend to care whether we are having a nice day. In the USA this phoney insanity has reached its nadir, with almost every restaurant filled with slave-like waitresses (more often than not working to pay for their university tuition fees so that they can learn “Business Management”) who recite the entire menu, including “today’s specials”, while pouring iced water for you, helping you to take off your coat and panting for a few-dollars tip. It’s enough to put anyone with an ounce of self-respect and a controllable hunger right off their nosh.

Once on an aeroplane about to land in New York, the stewardess (or sky skivvy) urged us all to get on our feet and do a quick work-out to prepare us for our arrival. A few Japanese complied, thinking it was Federal Law, and the Californians present participated with the zeal of cull members. I asked for a whisky and contemplated opening the window for a spot of fresh air. The thought of a few hundred on-the-spot joggers being sucked out over New Jersey made the landing feel smoother.

They can take everything away from you, the bosses can. With their money and power they can leave you for dead. They can repossess your home and make your children go hungry and deny you paid work and force you to queue up for a state hand-out and blow you up in their wars and pollute the very air that you must breathe to live. All of this they can do with impunity—as long as they are allowed to by the majority.

But no lousy little manager is going to take away my self-respect. The agonies of destitution would be preferable. Phil Cheeseman, whoever he may be, did right to tell them to stuff their human-machine games and company chants up where the sun doesn’t shine. Being “done” by exploiting idlers is bad enough, but expecting us to Do-It-Ourselves, whistling while we work at selling their shoddy crap, is the final nail in the DIY coffin of our dignity.

Steve Coleman

50 Years Ago: The 1945 Election (1995)

The 50 Years Ago column from the August 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Election Campaign is over and the votes have been cast. For the first time in the history of this country a party of working men and women has put forward a delegate for parliament on one issue alone—to capture the powers of government for the sole purpose of dispossessing the capitalist class of their ownership of the means of production and establishing Socialism in place of the present social order. At our meetings we stressed the fact that voters who were not in favour of this sweeping revolution should not vote for our delegate. We also stressed our opposition to reform policies and pointed out that we could do nothing for the workers; that Socialism was something the workers must accomplish themselves, understanding what they were after and using the Socialist Party as their instrument for this purpose. Our opponents at North Paddington were the Tory and Labour parties.

North Paddington Election

The Voting Figures were as follows:- 

Macfarlane (Labour)      16,638 

Bracken (Conservative) 10,093 

Groves (S.P.G.B.)               472

(From an article in Socialist Standard,
 August 1945)

Letter: Fragmented and Inchoate Project (1995)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fragmented and Inchoate Project

Dear Editors,

One of the greatest obstacles for me in accepting the kind of socialism advocated by the Socialist Party was its attitudes towards partial ameliorative reforms, which I found illogical, believing that any improvement in immediate conditions should be promoted vigorously and urgently. Why not fight for better workers’ rights, a better health service, transport, a right to work, freedom of association, a right to welfare, strong charitable institutions? All these seem like good causes worth defending.

However, I am changing my mind. I am beginning to see not only that the fight for partial reforms represents a fragmented and inchoate project in which the various claims to resources are actually made to clash with each other, but that the struggle for “rights” and "freedoms” as we perceive them in a capitalist society is distorted by the language of the market economy, it is invested with what Marx called the ideological superstructure— a set of ideas charged with the function of protecting the existing organism, by leading people astray into misguided, or even damaging, avenues of protest.

So it is, that, in an atomised and isolated way, individuals support various charities, pressure groups and unions. The historical precursors to these groups are what Marx called the Utopian socialists, a group of unconnected thinkers spanning the 18th and 19th centuries who railed against the emerging barbarism and inhumanity of international capitalism. These philosophers and economists, mostly either English or French, were a great influence on Marx himself. The difference is that Marx’s analysis of capitalism is on a deeper level than any of his predecessors; for his aim was not, for instance, to accept the "right” of the displaced labourer to the benefits of humane parish support, but more profoundly to reject the premise that human labour must turn to the capitalist for favours of charity, when the employer deems him surplus to the requirements of profit. Marx argued that "rights" and “freedoms" were determined by the material forces of production, and for him the point was not to assent to these forces—but to change them.

It seems to me that Marx was exactly right The way capitalist epigones appropriated the terms "freedom" and right, only admits of social justice within a narrow circle permitted by market forces. Marx’s scientific socialism amounts to a critique of the idea that social justice ensues from the proper disbursement to labour for the pain of labour; for Marx rejects the idea of the equation between labour and pain, and on the contrary shows that the expressive exertion of brain and muscle is at the centre of human beings’ existence. By absorbing the assumption that man has by nature an aversion to the exercise of his faculties, the Utopians conceded an axiomatic assumption of the capitalist system they strove to revise, and they were therefore limited to a kind of partial, extenuated reformism which was doomed to be ineffective. These palliative reforms are the basis of the fragmentary struggles we see today in the field of social justice.

In short, the Utopians (Hodgskin, Thompson, Gray and Bray) sought decent wages for workers, that is, a fair rate of exchange for the value by which the labourer enhanced the product. Marx’s analysis is far more profound; for him, the evil does not lie so much in the poor rate of exchange of labour, but in the very nature of exchange, which converts man as an active social and productive being into an instrument of profit by means of which man is not kept industrious and happy, but on the contrary unwillingly unproductive and unfulfilled.

Norman Armstrong, 

Glasgow

Virgin on the Ridiculous (1995)

TV Review from the August 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Channel Four has recently been showing a season of horror films, and viewers could have been forgiven for thinking that the kind of torture exhibited in Witness: True Love Waits (4 July, 9pm) was an entirely new addition to the horror genre. The action centred on Nashville, Tennessee, where the devotees of the local Baptist churches have taken to insisting that their children take vows of celibacy until they marry. Much of the documentary was taken up with film of local church “leaders" instructing teenage children in what is, and is not, permissible behaviour before marriage according to the “Holy Scriptures". Teenage girls were advised to spend six months "finding Jesus" before entering into any sort of relationship with the opposite sex whatsoever, and after this period of holy probation, only talking, holding hands and some forms of dancing were deemed permissible.

And were the teenagers happy with this state of affairs? Were they buggery. Most were torn between guilt at offending Jesus before descending into hell for all eternity, and expressing their natural sexual inclinations in a healthy manner. The boys were sad and guilt-ridden, the girls either brainwashed automatons or tearful would-be rebels. Most demonstrated signs of what is commonly called neurosis. One teenager was so deliriously happy with her lot that, when asked to recant her past sexual indiscretions before the church, she spent the entire time sobbing her heart out, barely able to speak the guilty words that were tearing her apart. After the ordeal, she ran back into the congregation to the arms of her parents, looking for consolation from the twisted mentalities that were so intent on making her life a misery. She probably had nowhere else to run.

Truly, what bastards these Christians can be, like most fundamentalist religious fanatics. Brainwashing, manipulation and humiliation were the techniques used to get the right result for Jesus and that was only the public face of it. Without a doubt, True Love Waits was one of the most terrifying programmes seen on television this year, and should have been compulsive viewing for anyone toying with the ideas of any of the barmy god-squad outfits that infest modern capitalism. It was a truly disgusting sight to see slick twenty-something preachers feeding guilt on a plate to vulnerable teenagers. "No touching below the neck! No 'dirty talk’ and certainly no passing of bodily fluids!" Verily, the devil's liquids are everywhere and are not to be trifled with until couples are “united in Christ".

Good News

Despite all this nonsense there was some good news. For despite the attractions of the "community" of church, with its friendships. singing and sense of common purpose, there were doubts. Oh yes, big doubts, and the flock were forever in need of shepherding away from the green grass of Satan's meadows. Straying from the path seemed quite common, and the leaders always needed to be on hand to quell any misgivings or slap wrists (mind you, we weren’t told of their views on masturbation but can guess).

In one ceremony reminiscent of Nazi Germany, the young believers were encouraged to bring the Devil's Music to church and burn their tapes and records in front of the congregation. To put it mildly, most looked less than ecstatic at the thought, and one girl said that secular music played such an important role in her life that she wouldn’t. Some eventually turned up with bags of old tapes to destroy, but most did so with what was visibly no enthusiasm for the project These were, in truth, the sort of people who were manipulated into burning Beatles' records in the sixties when John Lennon made his famous remark about the Beatles being "bigger than Jesus". However, most modern Bible-bashers should care to remember that the fuss soon died down when American teenagers realised that Lennon wrote better lyrics than Jesus and could play the guitar as well.

What True Love Waits showed was what history demonstrates all the time. Religious indoctrination can never be wholly successful for the very reason that much of it is so evidently at odds with human instinct. Primarily the instincts to love, to play, and to have sexual intercourse for the sheer pleasure of it which characterise the human species. The turnover of adherents to Evangelical and Baptist churches seems to be even greater than that for those mind-numbing Trotskyist groupings, and it is not surprising.

Of course, even a broken clock is right twice every twenty-four hours and not absolutely everything in the Christian creed is wrong, just most of it. Indeed, if the teenage church-goers of America care to take one piece of advice from the Bible it might be "go forth and multiply", an adage which, in a slightly different context, should be directed at their religious manipulators and tormentors too.

Dave Perrin

On Behalf of Capitalist Industry (1995)

Book Review from the August 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Reform & Reconstruction: Britain after the War, 1945-51 by Stephen Brooke
 (Manchester University Press. 
£12.99.)

Last month, being the 50th anniversary of the election of the post-war Labour government, was bound to see a spate of articles, books, and TV programmes on this. This book is one of them. Aimed primarily at history students, it is a collection of contemporary documents with an accompanying commentary.

At that time the Labour Party still used to proclaim that its ultimate aim was Socialism. Its manifesto for the 1945 election Let Us Face the Future declared: "the Labour Party is a Socialist Party, and proud of it. Its ultimate purpose at home is the establishment of the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain".

Of course this “socialism" was in reality a species of state capitalism under which, unlike in Russia, democratic political forms were to be retained. Nevertheless, Labour politicians, intellectuals and activists did see the nationalisation and welfare measures of the new government as “building up the Socialist economic system" (G.D.H. Cole) and "progress towards the Socialist Commonwealth" (Michael Young).

A more realistic interpretation of what was going on was that certain basic industries, essential to the economic property of capitalist industry as a whole, were taken over and run by the state on behalf of the rest of capitalist industry. Naturally these state industries were run on purely capitalist lines, as was soon recognised by the workers in them. According to one study that appeared in 1948:

"when the hoardings were put up in the colliery yards, declaring, 'This colliery belongs to the National Coal Board and is managed on behalf of the People’, the men responded fiercely, but only for a fortnight. The miners worked harder, were more co-operative and the attendance was better, but this only lasted a fortnight, and this spirit never came back".

As to the welfare measures, these too made sense in purely capitalist terms. There was an acute labour shortage after the war, so some concessions had to be made to the working class but these could be expected to pay for themselves in that a more healthy workforce that didn’t have to worry so much as to what would happen to them if they fell ill or were injured or became unemployed or old would be a more productive, and so a more profitable, workforce.

In short, far from representing progress towards some socialist goal, the measures passed by the post-war Labour government were measures that stabilised and consolidated capitalism. In any even, they only proved to be temporary in historical terms and have now been almost completely undone in the different capitalist economic conditions of the 80s and 90s.

Adam Buick

Why the need for Conscription? (1995)

Book Review from the August 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

On Human Nature by Edward O. Wilson (Penguin. £7.99.)

First published in 1978, this book is now available in paperback. Wilson is one of the leading proponents of the school of thought known as socio-biology. which he defines as “the scientific study of the biological basis of all forms of social behaviour in all kinds of organisms, including man." The crucial word here is ‘social’: no-one would deny that human characteristics such as walking on two legs have a biological basis, but the question is how much of the behaviour that might appear to be learned is actually inherited with our genes. The basic claim of socio-biologists is that Darwin’s mechanism of evolution through natural selection can be extended to explaining social behaviour. Darwin argued that properties (such as bigger brains) which enabled individuals to survive and reproduce more than others would inevitably spread at the cost of less advantageous variants. Socio-biology says that human socio-cultural behaviour is equally influenced by evolution, and that since for all but a few thousand years humans have lived as hunter-gatherers, the traits that were useful in such a way of life still dominate.

To take a particular example which is relevant to the case for Socialism, Wilson argues that humans are innately aggressive. In the jargon he employs, this becomes: "human beings have a marked hereditary disposition to aggressive behaviour". The evidence cited for this is that warfare has been endemic to every form of human society. Hunter- gatherers supposedly relied on warfare to defend territory and resources, so people predisposed to aggression would have had more chance of surviving and so passing on their "aggressive" genes to their offspring than other more pacific individuals. Human aggression is then seen as not simply an animal instinct, but a result of an evolution that has predisposed us to divide other people into friend and foe, to be suspicious of the actions of strangers and to solve conflict by means of aggression. War can supposedly be avoided by inculcating cross-cutting loyalties in people, so that any simple “them- us" distinction is invalid.

However, a broader look at hunter-gatherer society might, in contrast, suggest that we are genetically adapted to live in egalitarian non-market societies (not that socialists would make such a claim). There are many characteristics of hunter-gatherer societies that Wilson ignores, and that would suggest a very different picture of human beings. In any case, the argument for the innateness of aggression falls at the fact that the overwhelming majority of people don't take part in war, and that those who do usually have to be conscripted or otherwise forced to do so. And under capitalism, war is not caused by a dislike of strangers but by straightforward economic motives, motives which are in the interests only of a small ruling class, not of the majority of the population. If "Human beings are strongly predisposed to respond with unreasoning hatred to external threats", as Wilson claims, then this will be no problem in a society which is not based on such threats or competition. Even if Wilson’s explanation for aggressive behaviour were correct (and it isn’t), this would be no argument against Socialism.

Wilson describes Marxism as “socio-biology without biology.", though he does not expand on this cryptic statement The political nature of his claims is revealed more clearly in his dogmatic declaration that the anarchist society proposed by Bakunin is "biologically impossible”, but again he does not expand on this. Leaving aside the question of the kind of society that Bakunin actually advocated, the implication that a society without government is unachievable is simply nonsense. What socio-biology cannot come to grips with is the fact that human nature enables us to learn and adapt, and so transcend the limitations placed on all other creatures by their genetic endowment.

Paul Bennett

Russia: Land of High Profits. (1930)

Book Review from the September 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The Soviet Union Year-Book, 1930.” Publishers: George Allen & Unwin, Ltd. 7s. 6d.

The Soviet Union Year-Book, compiled and edited by A. A. Santalov and Louis Segal, Ph.D., M.A., is published “to provide business and public men with a reliable information on the economic and political life of the U.S.S.R.” It contains in its 670 pages accurate and detailed information from official sources on all the chief aspects of Russian economic and political life. For business men seeking trade connections, and for those who wish to combat the double campaign of misrepresentation which is carried on by the ignorant and prejudiced in the ranks of capitalist parties on the one hand and the ranks of the communist party on the other it is an indispensable work of reference.

It is not possible here to describe fully the range which is covered. It must suffice to indicate some of the facts and figures which will be useful to the Socialist student of Soviet affairs.

Production and foreign trade.

Much space is devoted to the growth of trade and production. Agricultural production in 1928-29 was 4 per cent. above that in 1913, and in 1932-33 it is planned to reach 59 per cent. above the 1913 level (page 92). Industrial production in 1928-29 was 73 per cent. above 1913 level, and in 1931-32 will reach 166 per cent. above that level (page 94).

Exports in 1928-29 were valued at 877 million roubles, as compared with 1,520 million in 1913. Imports in 1928-29 were valued at 836 million roubles, as compared with 1,374 million in 1913 (page 289). It is planned to increase exports to over 2,000 million roubles in 1932-33, and imports to over 1,705 million. In 1909-13 agricultural exports represented 70 per cent. of the total exports, and industrial exports 30 per cent. In 1932-33 the proportions will be equal, if the plan matures (page 291).

High Rates of interest and profit.

The Concession Companies make staggering profits out of the exploitation of the Russian workers. In 1926-27 the average profit was 81 per cent. on the capital invested by them.

In 1927-28 it was 96 per cent. (see page 208). What a harsh reality after the dreams of the visionaries for whom Russia was to serve as a model to the Western world. One of the Bolshevik slogans of 1917 was “Down with the foreign bondholders.” They were duly “downed” and the National Debts repudiated. The Soviet Government has just repeated its willingness to resume part of the old National Debt obligations, but in the meantime the foreign bondholders have given place to “home” bondholders – a distinction without a difference from the stand point of the Russian workers.

A rapidly increasing percentage of the total revenue of the Government is raised by means of additions to the new National Debt. In 1927-28 the percentage was 0.5; in 1928-29 it was 8.6 per cent., and in 1929-30 it will be 11.5 per cent. (page 397).

On October 1st, 1925, the new National Debt stood at 367 million roubles (£36 million). On October 1st, 1929, it was 2,595 million roubles (£259 million) (see page 398). It is at the present moment nearly 3,000 million (£300 million), and it is planned to increase it to £500 or £600 million in the next year or two.

The amount raised by means of loans during the one year 1929-30 reached the total of 1,335 million roubles (page 391). In the same year the Government spent 450 million roubles on payments to the new investing class who have invested their money in Russian industry through the Russian Central Government. Interest rates are very high; up to 12 per cent.

Other avenues of investment for Russia’s propertied class are the co-operatives. Hundreds of millions of roubles are invested in that way (see pages 226 and 621).

All these forms of investment, in the National Debt, in the co-operatives, and in the trading concerns, etc., are forms of exploitation of the Russian workers They, like the workers everywhere, carry on their backs a class of property owners, receiving incomes from property ownership.

The very high rate of interest which rules in Russia owing to slowness with which foreign investors enter the Russian money markets, may serve to explain why the Russian Government, or certain influential groups behind it, continues without any tangible result to finance Communist parties abroad. Investors inside Russia would naturally not want the interest rates to fall from 10 per cent. or 12 per cent. to 4 per cent. or 5 per cent., and an obvious method of preventing this would be to play upon the fears of foreign Governments and investors, and thus save themselves from unwelcome competitors.

Excess profits tax.

As in this country, the income tax in Russia is a graduated one, there being five categories. In each of them provision is made for different rates of tax on ranges of income from under 1,000 roubles a year up to 24,000 roubles and over (page 402).

The fifth grade applies to those whose incomes are derived from “ownership of industrial and trading enterprises, from money investments, dividends on shares, etc.” (page 402), also incomes from “rent” (page 401).

Then, in addition to the income tax, there is an excess profits tax for those companies whose yearly profits exceed a standard which is described as the “normal profits” (page 405).

It is this economic organisation, possessing all the usual features of exploitation (rent, interest, and profit, a working class, and a property owning class, a stock exchange, etc.), which the Communist parties describe as “Socialism”!

Wages and unemployment. 

The average money wages in 1928-29 was 892 roubles (£89, or about 34s. 6d. a week(page 453).

The worker’s output is increasing at a greater rate than his wages. Under the five-year plan the “productivity of labour in the end of the five-year period will be doubled and real wages are to show an increase of 70 per cent.” (p. 97)

(Information about the inequalities of wages and salaries was given on The Socialist Standard for December, 1929)

The number of unemployed in 1924-25 was 848,000; in 1926-27, 1,353,000; and on January 1st 1930, 1,310,000 (page 454).

The amount paid out in unemployment insurance in 1928-29 was 111,500,000 roubles. This works at about 80 to 90 roubles a year for each unemployed person (on the basis of 1,300,000 unemployed). This, in English coinage, is about £8 10s. a year, or 3s. 3d. a week. The trade unions also pay unemployment benefit to their members from 3 to 18 roubles a month, say from 1s. 6d. to 9s. a week. Although the unemployed are exempt from the obligation to pay rent, or charges for lighting, water and transport, it would seem that they do not have a very pleasant time. Is this what our communists have in mind when they ask the Government here to give the unemployed “full maintenance”?

Inheritance.

As in other capitalist countries inheritance of property is recognised in Russia. “Soviet law recognises the right of inheritance, irrespective of the amount involved” (page 498).

As in this country, it is subject to an inheritance tax (page 405). The tax rises from 5 per cent. on the first 2,000 roubles (£200) up to 90 per cent. on that part between 200,000 and 500,000 roubles (£20,000 to £50,000).

The Communist Party. 

The membership of the Communist Party on July 1st, 1922, was 1,554,012 which represented 184 in every 10,000 of the adult population, or 1 in 54 (page 565).

The number of new members enrolled in 5½ years from 1924 to June, 1929, was 1,408,742. The number expelled in the same period were 128,460.

On July 1st, 1929, the party was composed as follows: – workers, 724,115; peasants, 200,452; employees, etc., 629,327. Women form 13.5 per cent. of the whole membership (page 566).

Education.

In December, 1926 (the last available figures) illiterates had been reduced considerably, but still represented 433 per 1,000 of the whole population (page 462)

The expenditure on education by the Central Government is under 3 per cent. of its total expenditure (page 462).

It is less than the amount spent on army and navy (page 389).

Hopes and facts.

In the first section of the “Constitution of the U.S.S.R.,” passed in 1923, Russia is depicted in the following rosy terms: –

“Here – in the camp of Socialism –are mutual confidence and peace, national freedom and equality, and dwelling together in peace and brotherly collaboration of peoples” (see page 1).

The facts given in this Year-Book sufficiently illustrates how illusory the communist dreams have been. Like many pious hopes embodied in the official documents and constitutions of the rest of the capitalist world these phrases have no relation whatever to the actual facts. Russian capitalism, although administered by the Communist Party dictatorship, reproduces almost down to the last detail the paraphernalia of the capitalist world as we know it here.

The lesson of it is the one we have tried to drive home for so many years, that it is not possible for a minority to impose socialism upon a majority who are hostile or indifferent; nor is it possible to remedy backward economic development by means of fine-sounding but ineffective decrees, issued by dictators.

Edgar Hardcastle