The man on the flying trapeze (1975)

From issue number 2 (1975) of The Western Socialist

A chronic(le) expounder of "simpleminded" politics tells it like it is not!

Charles McCabe is a newspaper Journalist who writes a dally column for the San Francisco Chronicle. He is widely regarded around these parts as a liquor drinking philosopher; a commentator upon man’s many foibles, his failures and his successes, but an Omar Khayyam he is not. A wiseacre yes, and when in his cups a savant of no mean regard.

Now Mr. McCabe Is one of those high-wire journalists, who is able — so it would seem — to oscillate effortlessly from problem to problem, subject to subject, without so much as even a casual glance at the danger below. Or even regard for the accuracy of his undoubted mental gymnastics. He is, to boot, a latter day Cassandra. A self-proclaimed Humanist, a Liberal-Anarchist, going along with J. S. Mill who “argues not only for political freedom but social freedom, not only against the tyranny of the majority but also against the social tyranny of prevailing conventions and opinions.” So he says.

So last Monday’s (1/27/75) sermon to the “laity” (McCabe’s term) was no less tendentious than most if not all of Mr. McCabe’s intellectual carousing.

Friendship vs. Politics

It seems that Mr. Alistair Cooke, who is well known on both sides of the Atlantic (whereas Mr. McCabe only this side) in a recent talk to the BBC made this observation : “To be close only to people who share your own political views and prejudices is not only a terrible restriction on the world of friendship, but is a denial of life itself, since life itself is a good deal larger and richer and more complicated than politics.”

Now no one but a myopic wombat would deny that life without friendship would indeed be a very sad mess of pottage. But for Alistair Cooke to claim that life as we now experience it is larger than politics and more complicated to boot, is a proposition of another vintage.

However, as I have said before, Mr. McCabe is no slouch, and if the wind is in the right direction, he will dribble niftily along any old intellectual tightrope, not only not caring whether it sags in the middle — and this one certainly does — but proclaiming his unqualified support with Alistair Cooke’s statement with the following unctuous observation: “A well-put statement as nearly all of Mr. Cooke's are, and one very near to my heart, as nearly all of Mr. Cooke’s sentiments are.”

Mr. McCabe then goes on to compound Mr. Cooke's naivete with the sure-fire prerogative of the ignorant by proclaiming “My politics are, in fact, rather simpleminded. I’m against all well-intentioned kindnesses to others, apart from the essential kindness of letting them do their own thing within the framework of laws against hurting, killing and stealing.’’ (Wanna bet!)

In support for this muddled-thinking, Mr. McCabe (who is also a name-dropper) drags in poor old Mrs. Patrick Campbell’s trite remark about homosexuals “It doesn’t matter what you do in the bedroom as long as you don’t do it in the street and frighten the horses.’’ The irrelevance of this quote by Mr. McCabe, in relation to the substance of his article, would make Mrs. Campbell and the horses whinny in their graves.

The milk and water approach to human affairs as evinced by Mr. McCabe is touching, and no doubt would get a lot of votes from most sections of a befuddled populace! it is therefore pertinent to ask of Mr. McCabe whether his sentimental approach to violence, killing and stealing would motivate an advocacy against the laws in favour of the appropriation by the capitalist class of the surplus wealth produced by the working class, because it is this particular situation that at base causes the hurting, killing and stealing which Mr. McCabe tells us he finds so objectionable. And also if Mr. McCabe felt so disposed to crusade against capitalism would the columns of the San Francisco Chronicle still be available to him?

Politics Bigger Than He Thinks

Mr. McCabe expresses the view in his column that “politics is but a part of the full life and not so damned big part at that.” Is that so? Let him read the San Francisco Chronicle, for which he writes, and see how much space is allocated to that which is supposed to constitute the full life! Unless he is referring, of course, to the Society Columns.

The blood and guts of the situation is that our whole existence today is dominated by economics, and politics is the stock in trade, the tools we use to deal with the problems spawned from a particular economic predicament—that of poverty amidst plenty.

Capitalism is the society that has long since overcome all of the main problems of production to the extent that all human life could adequately be sustained: its failure, however, lies in its inability to distribute these goods and services which it so obviously hasn’t the power to do. Distribution in capitalist society demands the repository of the market place and the possession of money. The latter presupposes the former.

With the exception of the capitalist class most of us are quarantined to live out our lives on a wage packet. Capitalism’s problem is to dispose of the surplus wealth produced by the working class, for which they do not get paid. If society were able to have free access to this surplus wealth, not only would we then be able to live the full life, but It would mean the end of politics as well.

Politics, political activity, is that function that lays claims to the various opposing interests between (1) rival sections of the capitalist class, primarily over the vexing question of taxation — who shall pay what to whom and how much, and (2) between rival national capitalists the world over. Over the question of markets; cheap or cheaper sources of raw materials; trade routes and spheres for investment; warfare, internecine warfare, is the scenario which politics has to deal with and in the process whole countries are decimated, and many, many more live in constant deprivation. If after this “ball game” there is anything left over to live the “full life” perhaps Mr. Alistair Cooke would care to comment on it, and Mr. Charles McCabe would care to drool about it.

Harry Hamme

The assassination of art (1975)

From issue number 1 (1975) of The Western Socialist

In a democratic society, art is politics in the widest sense, a celebration of common values which sweep away the old and clears the way for the new needs of man.

Victor Jara, Chilean play producer, singer guitarist, was a supporter of the Allende regime. In the military coup that followed he was assassinated on 15th September 1973. They broke his guitar fingers before breaking his spine. Bullets were then shot into his body.

He is one more addition to the many creative people in history who have become too dangerous to live. For the arts are not amusements, ornamental skills, diversions, comforts for tired businessmen or social polish for the pretentious. At least, not to the men who wield political power. The arts communicate and communication is the most potent force for progress and change.

History is full of the power of the arts, not the overt expression of dissatisfaction nor the blatant clarion call to rise and fight but the uniquely potent expression of ideas which show that man is ready for change. Art is a barometer and a celebration, a mirror to the emotional and intellectual development of man. The artist says, “This is man, how he feels, how we feel,” and once said, it can never be repealed. The ideas catch fire in the minds of men, not because they are new and logical but because they express clearly what people feel but cannot quite themselves make known.

George Bernard Shaw provocatively said that art is propaganda. It is this but far more. In a democratic society, art is politics in the widest sense, a celebration of common values which sweeps away the old and clears the way for the new needs of man.

This does not mean that artists are consciously political in the modern use of the term. In fact, the moment an art becomes consciously political, it usually ceases to be art. The pamphleteer is not an artist because he knows rationally exactly what he wants to say before saying it. He may express new values but they are communicated on a mechanically logical level. There is no bridge of feeling between the old and the new for the mass of the people, still struggling to understand their own feelings, to make the crossing. Art does not lead the needs of man; it expresses them and man, whose evolution is on a social and economic level rather than a physical one, can develop further because he then knows clearly where he is. He recognizes as his the values expressed by the artist.

But some artists do not communicate in their own time. They may lead the way for other artists to follow but they themselves may be a little too far ahead of their time. These artists are sometimes called “important” as distinct from “great”, the universally recognized artists who signify a whole epoch or “celebrate” a common feeling.

Both kinds of artists can be dangerous to the established powers but the “important” artists are more easily destroyed than the “great” ones. They are less supported, less recognized and their deaths provoke less reaction.

The Un-American Activities Committee could not destroy Charles Chaplin or Arthur Miller nor could the Soviets destroy Yevtushenko but artists with less recognition, ahead of their time and people, are frequently destroyed in the power struggles of the world.

President Allende did not have the control of the Chilean parliament or of the army and his own political programme did not have the understanding of the peasants. He was supported as a leader and all this suggests that he was not really the spokesman for the people. The intellectuals and artists who supported him were therefore not truly representative of the people; they were a little before their time. Victor Jara died because his death meant a delay in his ideas developing among the people. Had he been expressing true national feelings, his martyrdom would have been too dangerous because of the possible reaction. More importantly, his martyrdom would have been irrelevant because his values would already be held by the majority of people anyway.

Throughout the world, the fate of the Allende administration has been hailed by the left and the right wings as an illustration that a majority of people cannot change society by democratic and constitutional methods. In actual fact it merely illustrates the futility of a vanguard group trying to lead an ignorant mass of followers into a change which the majority do not understand. When you can destroy a leader and destroy a cause, destroying a leader is obviously the best solution.

A second moral can be drawn. We must learn to respect and protect our artists whatever their political opinions. A society which neglects them is destroying its capacity to change.

Mark Fury, 

S. P. of New Zealand

Voice From The Back: Spaced out (2001)

The Voice From The Back Column from the June 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Spaced out

The US multi-millionaire Dennis Tito returned to earth on 6 May after his trip on a Russian space flight. He paid about $20 million dollars for the privilege; well American capitalists have got to do something with the surplus value that they have extracted from the working class. The awful thing is that while he was away in space for a week the capital that he has invested in the exploitation of the working class made him even richer than he was when he left the planet earth. As he is estimated to have a fortune of $200 million at present that is bloody rich. If every capitalist in the world was given a one way ticket into space, it would make no difference to the wealth produced on this planet, it would of course cut the consumption of wealth quite considerably.

Is democracy ghastly?

The Trade Union movement, in one of its worst moves ever, assisted in the development of the Labour Party. The outcome of that decision is that former railway workers, coal miners and factory hands are calling themselves Lords, dining at the Savoy and discussing the merits of Bollinger ’57 champagne. And are the legions of present and former Labour MPs grateful for the soft living they procured with the help of the TUs? Not a bit of it.

“Teachers unions should end the “ghastly ritual” of their Easter Conferences because they turn off would-be recruits, the chairman of the Commons education committee said last night. Labour MP Barry Sheerman said he was dismayed by the behaviour of some delegates at the National Union of Teachers’ conference in Cardiff, who jeered and held up placards when education secretary, David Blunkett, addressed them.” Guardian 17 April.

Art for cash’s sake

The art world was excited by the re-emergence of a “lost” painting of Claude Monet entitled Haystacks, Last Rays of the Sun. It is a painting that has not been seen in public since 1895. It goes under the hammer at Southeby’s next month and is expected to fetch £5 million. So where has this masterpiece been for over a hundred years? In private hands, where its various owners have kept it safe from the prying eyes of the great unwashed. This is not an unusual fate for artistic works. The very rich, and quite often the very stupid, hoard them under lock and key, often not even looking at them for years on end. These are the people Wilde described as “knowing the price of everything but the value of nothing”. Inside a socialist society all works of art will be available for the public to enjoy, not for millionaires to store in vaults.

Strange bedfellows

The news from Scotland that the Socialist Workers Party will cease to exist and that its 272 members will transfer to the Scottish Socialist Party illustrates the complete lack of principles of both parties. The SSP stand for an independent Scotland, the SWP in the past have always ridiculed this as narrow nationalism. We predict that a battle for supremacy between these two Leninist factions will probably break out in the future. They have certain views in common though. They are opposed to the concept of a class-less, trade-less, money-less society and of course see themselves as the self-appointed leaders of a working class too stupid to get socialism for themselves for “five hundred years”. A plague on both their houses.

Slaughter of the innocents

Capitalism is an awful social system, the old, the infirm and the handicapped are particularly unfortunate recipients of its competitive uncaring nature, but a recent report by the United Nations Children’s Fund shows how terrible is the fate of many children inside capitalism:

“Two million children have been killed by conflict over the last 10 years; 12 million children have been made homeless; six million children have been injured or disabled. Of the world’s 40 million displaced, 20 million are children. Up to 10,000 children each year are killed by landmines” Observer, 6 May.

Situations vacant

From the majestic mountains and glens of Scotland we are delighted to inform our readers of the wonderful career opportunities that are available in Tony Blair’s modern, cool Britannia. “Grouse Beaters wanted. Male and female accommodation. Meals provided. Apply in writing to the Head-keeper, Corrybrough Estate, Tomatin, Inverness-shire IV13 7XY” Herald, 8 May. “Accommodation” AND “meals provided” – Wow! “Near Utopian conditions for the lower orders, your Lordship.” For how long are we going to let these arrogant swine get away with these insults?

Enlightened self-interest

When 39 drug firms dropped their case against South Africa importing cheaper anti-Aids drugs, it was hailed as a victory for humanity over profit. It wasn’t that simple though, because the firms had only bowed to public opinion when it seemed that the import of cheaper drugs into Africa seemed inevitable. The South African government have refused to provide retroviral drugs through the public health system despite this apparent victory. The London-based mining giant Anglo-American is now negotiating with an Indian pharmaceutical company to purchase cheap Aids drugs for its HIV-positive workers in South Africa. An altruistic gesture by big business? Not quite. “Businesses say the pandemic will have a devastating effect on the economy, and research has shown that providing workers with drugs is cheaper than paying for absenteeism, loss of productivity, hospital treatment, funerals, and replacing and retraining staff” Herald, 7 May.

Editorial: Join the protest (2001)

Editorial from the June 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

With the electoral circus in full swing the parties have been competing with one another in a seemingly endless round of pledges, promises, scare stories and counter claims. And the longer this circus goes on, the less interest most voters show in it. The news media openly spends more time telling us about “the election” itself – its stratagems and ruses – than about the policies on offer from any of the parties. It is hardly surprising given the paucity of the products on show.

The election is carried out as if the two main protagonists are marketing agencies selling two superficially different (but nevertheless fundamentally identical) management teams. The tools of their trade are the typical marketing techniques employed by corporate business everywhere – “spin”, “positioning” in relation to key target sectors, junk mail and cold calling of those in a targeted market niche, all refracted through the magnifying glass of the “focus group”.

Is it any wonder the electorate react with a cold shrug of apathy? The only time the campaign thus far has come to life was when a manager from one of the competing teams hit an egg-wielding farmer’s boy on the campaign trail in North Wales. Nothing of any significance happened and no great issues were debated as a result but it provided a spectacle for a society that thrives on periodic spectacular events to relieve the boredom and passivity.

Who wants to endlessly discuss whether there’s a £20 billion hole in one of the team’s tax and spending plans or whether the other team will abolish the ceiling on the upper rate of National Insurance contributions when we can watch Thumper give the Yokel a left-arm jab on the nightly news? All the arguments are just froth, of course, anyway – how many can (hand on heart) say that they are definitely always better off under one type of management team rather than the other? Very few and they’re usually the ones with money enough not to care too much either way.

For the rest of us – the majority who struggle along from week to week while the people with real money in society get even more money and the politicians play their games to distract our attention from it – it’s one long yawn. A nagging irrelevance that won’t go away. An advertising war in which we are the collateral damage.

But something interesting is happening if you look hard enough. The serfs in this giant political soap suds war are revolting. Fewer than ever wish to take sides between the teams on offer and the near-identical brands they are promoting. In recent elections for the European parliament, local government and parliamentary by-elections increasing numbers of voters are signalling that they’ve had enough. They’re staying at home, sitting on their hands.

This is an encouraging sign, but is one which is of itself a reflection of the passive mentality today’s market-driven consumer society promotes and which the political process encourages. Far better would be a positive refusal to line up behind the teams on offer, a refusal to join in their pointless games. In other words, a protest.

As socialists, we write in this journal as people who wish to help change the world in a positive direction, not get our bums on seats of ministerial cars of play lap-dog to the rich (and getting richer). So in this election we call on the “silent majority”, unhappy – and even disgusted – by the performance of the clowns in this political circus, to protest by spoiling their ballot papers. In so doing they will be taking part in the democratic forum yet at the same time withdrawing their consent from those who would rule over them in the name of wealth for the few and tedium for the rest of us.

Where no candidate standing for the one genuine alternative to the present system – a world socialist society of free access to available wealth – is on offer in this election, socialists and those in general agreement with our cause will be writing “WORLD SOCIALISM” across our ballot papers.

So our voice will be heard. We will not allow it to be stifled under a welter of mindless political psychobabble. And the more people who agree with us and do the same, the louder the voice and the more effective the protest against the whole ridiculous charade currently being played out before us in the name of our interests.

World view: What causes world poverty? (2001)

From the June 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

The World Development Organisation claims that the policies of governments and multinational businesses cause poverty. Are they right?

“The world has the wealth and means to end poverty. Yet nearly half of the world’s population live on less than £1.40 a day And over 11 million children will die from poverty-related illness this year alone, read the leaflet that fell out of a recent issue of the New Internationalist. This particular leaflet, entitled “Isn’t it time we tackled the causes of poverty?” was issued by an organisation called the World Development Movement but it could have come from any of the numerous other campaigning charities in this field.

What they say is true – the world does have the wealth and means to end poverty – and, yes, it is more than time that we tackled the causes (or rather the cause) of poverty.

So what causes world poverty? Clearly, this is the key question since if you don’t get the answer right, you’re not going to get the solution right either.

According to the WDM, what causes world poverty are the policies currently pursued by governments and multinational companies:

“Policies of governments and companies are keeping people poor. Policies that ensure global trade benefits the rich, not the poor – the three richest men in the world are wealthier than the 48 poorest countries combined. Policies that give increasing power to multinational companies – for every £1 of aid going into poor countries, multinationals take 66p of profits out. The powerful are exploiting the poor to make bigger and bigger profits.”

The WDM’s solution to the problem of world poverty follows logically from this analysis that it is “the policies of governments and companies” that is the cause:

“We lobby decision makers to change the policies that keep people poor.”

They claim that this can work, if enough pressure is brought to bear:

“In rich countries like Britain, decisions are made which can make or break the lives of the poor. We can influence those decisions. That’s why our actions matter so much. Together we can be powerful and win change for the world’s poor.”

Is this true? Is world poverty caused by the mistaken policies of governments and multinationals? Can lobbying and campaigning get these policies changed?

As socialists, we have to say that the answer to both questions is “no”. Governments don’t pursue policies that put profits before poor people because they have chosen to do this rather than chosen not to. Nor have they given in to pressure from the rich and powerful to pursue policies that favour them. They don’t have any choice in the matter, because they are not in control of things.

Governments operate within the framework of an economic system, and the current economic system – capitalism, to give it a name – is based on wealth being produced for sale on a market with a view to profit and on the competitive pressures of the market dictating that these profits be accumulated in the form of more and more capital invested to make yet further profits.

The aim of production under capitalism is not to satisfy people’s needs but to accumulate profits. This is not a policy choice but an economic necessity imposed by the operation of impersonal and uncontrollable economic laws which governments have to abide by, unless they want to risk making things worse by provoking an economic crisis and stagnation in the area they rule over.

In short, governments put profits before poor people because they are obliged to by the impersonal workings of world market forces, not out of choice. The same goes, even more forcefully, for capitalist corporations. Their whole purpose is to make a profit on the capital invested in their businesses so that their shareholders can benefit. That’s the nature of the beast, and we can’t imagine that the World Development Movement is really so naïve as to believe that private companies, whether national or multinational, could pursue any other policy than to maximise their profits.

Classic reformist mistake

The WDM and the other campaigning charities are making, on the world level, the same classic reformist mistake that used to be made at national level: blaming policies pursued by governments rather than the economic system, and so seeing the solution as changing the government or even just its policies rather than changing the economic system. Not just in Britain but in many other countries too, governments have been changed but the policies involving putting profits before people continued just as they did under the old government that openly upheld the status quo.

So, to be frank, campaigning charities like the WDM have got no chance at all of getting governments, and even less multinational companies, to change their practice of putting profits before people. And it is not because they believe merely in lobbying that dooms them to failure; not even the most violent street demonstrations can bring about a change in this practice. As long as the international capitalist system continues to exist, its economic laws will operate to put profits before people, and governments will have no choice but to dance to this tune.

But what are the alternative policies that the WDM and the others would like governments and companies to pursue? The WDM don’t go into details in their leaflet but you can find out if you return their cut-off coupon. But this is not really necessary as another leaflet that fell out of the New Internationalist provides the answer. Issued by Christian Aid, and entitled “Trade for Life” it claims that “every day trade rules keep millions in poverty and a few in riches”:

“Trade affects almost everybody on earth. Over the centuries it has become an increasingly powerful international force. But it is being manipulated by rich countries and companies to suit their interests. Poor people are missing out on the opportunities trade could bring. They are forced to continue living in poverty, sacrificing their lives and livelihoods for others to get rich.”

But if the current “rules” governing trade are the cause, then the solution, logically, is to change the rules, and this is precisely the declared aim of the “Trade for Life” campaign:

“With new rules, trade could become one of the greatest solutions to global poverty. Trade has the power to create jobs, improve healthcare and benefit people’s lives and livelihoods. The Trade for Life campaign calls for a major overhaul of the rules that run the international trading system.”

Trade – the buying and selling of goods and services – should not be confused with the physical transportation of goods and services from one part of the world to another to be used there. The two are not the same, though trade usually involves the latter. In fact, it is precisely because there is trade – and not mere transportation – that goods and services are not distributed today to people according to their needs.

Trade is buying and selling, and this means markets and that goods and services are only produced to be sold on some market with a view to making a profit. It means that production is carried on not to satisfy people’s needs, but to satisfy only paying needs, i.e. needs backed up by what pro-capitalist economists call “effective demand”. In short, it means the application of the economic principle of “can’t pay, can’t have”.

It is because the millions of people living in absolute poverty, who organisations like the WDM and Christian Aid are rightly concerned about, do not have any money, or not enough money, that their needs are not met: they don’t constitute a market, or only an insufficiently profitable market. Because their demand for decent food, clothing, shelter, healthcare and sanitation is “ineffective”, trade and the international trading system ignore them. No change in the rules of international trade is going to change this since it is the “international trading system” itself (aka the world market, aka capitalism) that is the cause.

What is required is not a reform of this system such as demanded by the World Development Movement, Christian Aid and the others, but its abolition and its replacement by one in which the Earth’s resources become the common heritage of all humanity. Only on this basis can these resources be mobilised to eradicate world poverty and ensure a decent life for every man, woman and child on the planet. Yes, the world does have the wealth and means to end world poverty. And, yes, it is high time we tackled the problem.

Adam Buick

Nightmare on Downing Street (2001)

From the June 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Having no discernible agenda much different from the Tories, Labour are reduced to negative campaigning to try and win their second term. Their latest poster displays the post-modern ironic kitsch typifying their approach to politics: “the Tories present Economic Disaster II” it brays in mock movie-poster fashion, with Michael Portillo as Mr. Boom, and William Hague as Mr. Bust, in a Reservoir Dogs pastiche. Labour, the party that for nearly twenty-odd years was stifled by Tory-inspired memories of the Winter of Discontent, is now more than happy to return the favour upon them, and to strive to become the party of “economic competence”.

Labour has consistently proclaimed economic stability to be the core aim of their economic policy; as the sound-bite has it: “No return to boom and bust”. What this means, in effect, is the end of the expansionary economic policy attempted by previous Labour administrations. Instead of using state power to try to influence basic conditions of the market, such as interest rates, investment levels and currency values, they are now intent upon holding the economic playing field level. The intention behind this ‘stability policy’ is that firms can plan and invest ahead in a stable environment, thus eventually overcoming Britain’s investment gap. To justify their change of direction, they pointed out (in their 1999 budget) that high inflation typically hits the poorest in a way not overcome by rise in incomes or employment rates.

The core of their stability programme was the independence of the Bank of England from day-to-day political control. Without interest rate levels being under direct political control, politicians can act as though the “economic levers” of capitalism are not in their hands, in a true laissez-faire fashion. So if something goes wrong they are not necessarily to blame and can plead that they are powerless to turn the situation around anyway (which is true enough).

Nevertheless, the Bank of England does not in reality have an entirely free hand and many of the parameters within which it operates are set by the government itself . For instance, after its independence was granted the Bank was given strict instructions to implement its monetary policies in such a way as to make a strict target of annual increases in the price level of 2.5 percent achievable.

The reasoning behind having a stable rate of price increases per annum is that it allows investors (and more particularly lenders, who can lose out badly through inflation) to plan their operations and investment strategies with greater certainty; in turn this encourages people from oversees to invest their finance capital in Britain. It also allows for the appearance of market discipline in the economy to the effect that industry cannot rely on government intervention to bale them out of economic problems.

Thatcherite legacy

It is not only this apparent aversion to inflation that Labour has carried over from the Thatcherite Tory policies of the past: attempts to trim the size of the state also feature as a central plank of their policy. To this end the size of the civil service continues to fall – from 431,000 in 1989, to 358,800 staff in 1999 (although some of this reduction has occurred due to civil servants being “hived-off” to Public Finance Initiative (PFI) firms, and thus continuing in place, just not on the government books).

It is noticeable that another continuation of Tory economic management – and thus a break with Labours past – appears to be in the area of state subsidies. According to the Office for National Statistics, subsidies under the Tories, in their final year, amounted to £6,124,000 whereas in the first year of Labour they fell to £4,870,000. By 1999 they only rose £5,758,000. This picture is slightly complicated by Europe, since agriculture will have received subsidies directly from the EU, and Britain received some £434,000,000 in European Social Fund subsidies in 1999 too. Since these funds don’t come directly from the British government they don’t add to the total for state subsidies.

But Labour has still managed to reduce subsidies and has done so in part in the same manner in which it with taxation – by use of ‘Tax Credits’ and alterations to taxation structures to provide incentives or confer advantages. A recent example is the Motorola plant in Scotland which is threatening closure: the government in an attempt to help keep it open has offered to send Treasury officials help it assess its current financial operations so that it can benefit to the fullest possible extent from the existing tax structure. This type of action allows the government to direct funds towards firms it wants to support without breaking European competition/subsidy rules, and without appearing to fund ailing firms from the taxpayers’ purse. Likewise, they also offered Credit Guarantees to Cammell Laird, in an attempt to use state backing to enable private capital to keep the firm afloat.

Instead of intervening in the economy by legal and state powers, Labour has chosen instead to take a “mediating” rôle. Their main action has been to use ‘good offices’ to try and resolve economic problems without direct and overt intervention. Their rôle in the Rover/BMW deal typifies this well. Although they did not offer to use state cash or power, they discussed alternatives with all the parties, and used public statements to pressurise them where necessary. This is why they cried foul when Corus sacked its workforce without talking to the government first. Their aim all along has been to give the appearance of representing the “public interest”, without actually and actively interfering in the operations of the market economy.

Partly, this reflects the central regard they have for the rôle of competition within the economy. This was typified by their passing of the Competition Act, and the renaming of the Monopolies and Mergers Commission as the Competition Commission. The investigation by the Commission into the operations of key supermarket chains is an example of the governments aptitude for using behind the scenes pressure to influence major economic actors.

Their reasoning for encouraging competition is that it increases economic efficiency, and promotes productivity. Instead of macro-economic control of the sort they attempted in the past they have turned instead to supply-side microeconomic measures where the engine for economic action and growth is seen as the individual firm and workplace. Their fervent hope is that through increasing the efficiency of business through competition , market discipline will enable firms to close the productivity gap with such near competitors as France and Germany, making Britain an attractive place for investors and so help further domestic economic expansion. Their policies are thus geared around actively encouraging competition and providing the “right environment” for businesses to grow and provide jobs.

The other main plank of their productivity policy has been education. By improving the skills on offer from workers to the employers they hoped to enable Britain to increase productivity through highly skilled labour. So far this aspect of their policy has been highly compromised by the shortage of teachers especially in key subjects like Maths and the sciences. Teaching numbers have fallen dramatically from 857,000 in 1990 to 730,900 in 2000 which has meant that despite increasing spending on education there have been minimal returns so far. In turn their main response has been to move the academic goalposts and also to try and use bullying tactics to increase the productivity of the existing teaching staff.

Despite some “local difficulties” so far the Labour government has benefited from a relatively buoyant world economy and their economic intervention has been just of a sufficient order for them to be able to claim some sort of rôle in this apparent “success”. As the economic slowdown closes in on them though, their second term is likely to show what they are really made of when it comes to the hard choice of laissez-faire free-market capitalism as opposed to the active state interventionism of their corporatist past.

Whatever the outcome, their current billboard poster of Hague and Portillo is seriously misleading for by labelling the Tories an “Economic Disaster II” waiting to happen, they disguise the fact that there can be only one economic disaster, “Capitalism: the disaster continues”, an epic for which they have been as responsible as anyone else.

Moreover, with turnout at the election expected to be the lowest in modern political history perhaps the working class are now beginning to see what socialists have been claiming over decades: that none of the small-time crooks from either gang vying for a starring rôle in this particular film can make any fundamental difference to the plot.

Pik Smeet

News: Questions of the day

From the June 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Questions of the day

As a socialist party we are actively involved in the work of urging the working class to ask themselves questions about their present living arrangements. One of the questions we need to ask ourselves is why we are all working so hard, when it is so blatantly unnecessary given the potential of today’s technology. A list of these socialist questions was asked by Tracey Chapman in her song Why? One of the most tragic is: Why do babies starve when there’s enough food to feed the world?

Why do babies starve when there’s enough food to feed the world?

Why do babies starve when there’s enough food to feed the world?

Are babies really starving? Is there really enough food to feed the world? These stories are not something socialists make up. They are facts about the world we live in. The Daily Monitor of Addis Ababa, for example, recently reported that Ethiopia has too little food to feed its people, but too much food for its farmers to stay in business.

Because farmers had plenty of grain, competition bought the price of food down. This made what the paper called consumers (as if they’re a different class to the producers) “happy”, it said. But the paper was subsequently surprised to discover that, as it turned out, this was no great thing after all. “Market forces played their foul game,” they said. Farmers were not earning enough from the sale of their commodity to pay off their loans for fertilisers and seed.

“When rich countries overproduce, their governments buy up the product and dump it in the ocean – or they just donate it to needy countries, which destabilises their struggling economies. When a poor country overproduces, it’s left with piles of rotting food in a hungry land,” the paper said.

The best that even the most radical commentators can do in such a situation is wring their hands in despair, for it seems to them a really insoluble contradiction. For us, however, the solution lies with ourselves and our own struggles to assert our needs, including the need to eat the food that we, as a class, produce. The framework for a successful conclusion to these struggles – for bread, and for roses – is the social ownership of what is socially produced. As long as food is produced for sale on the market, rather than directly for eating, there can be no lasting solution to the problem of hunger in the Third World.

News: Scrounging on the state (2001)

From the June 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Scrounging on the state

Newspapers like the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph delight in reporting on “state scroungers”. This usually turns out to be some unemployed worker claiming unemployment money while doing a bit of part-time work on the side. Or horror of horrors, an unmarried mother claiming benefit while her boyfriend stays overnight some weekend. Such unprincipled behaviour is guaranteed to get Fleet Street into a frenzy of indignation. “State-aided fornication” or “benefit scroungers” are denounced by the righteous indignation of hacks who never report that the capitalist class live off the unpaid labour of the working class. Any fiddles that the working class might get up to fade into insignificance beside the quite legal state handouts to the owning class, as reported in the Observer, 20 May:

“The Duke of Westminster – Britain’s richest man, with estimated wealth of £4 billion has received £3m in taxpayers money to help boost his farms profits. The Duke, who owns a 6,200-acre arable farm neat Chester, has been enjoying around £300,000 a year in state handouts over the past decade through European subsidies… It was once disclosed that Princess Anne received about £400,000 in subsidies for farming at Gatcombe Park estate in Gloucester. Her former husband, Captain Mark Phillips, once admitted that these subsidies amounted to 90 percent of the farm’s profits, but Buckingham Palace would not provide up-to-date figures.”

Mad as all this seems, the complete craziness of capitalism is summed up by the news that the Duke of Westminster was getting hand-outs of “£150,000 a year for growing 1,400 acres of wheat, and almost £150,000 for growing 1,400 acres of oil seed and barley. He is also receiving, more than £30,000 from taxpayers for not growing anything on 390 acres of ‘set aside’ hand.”

News: Down on the farm (2001)

From the June 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Down on the farm

Capitalism, when viewed from the perspective of human needs, is a crazy social system. We can have building workers unemployed whilst people go without decent housing and wonderful technological advances that could produce all the food, clothing and shelter needed for all of humanity in a clean, healthy environment – yet this technology is used to poison the rivers, lakes and oceans of tire world, because of the profit motive of capitalism. The latest piece of madness to emerge from the insane asylum that is capitalism is reported in the New Scientist online News:

“A Canadian farmer must pay Monsanto for the genetically modified crops found growing in his fields, even if the seeds blew there from neighbouring fields and he never intended to grow them in the first place, a federal court ruled last week. Basically, the judge is saying that it doesn’t matter how it got into your field, it’s Monsantos property. “But how does a farmer know if he’s got a genetically altered seed that belongs to Monsanto?” asks the farmer Percy Schmeiser of Bruno, Saskatchewan. The decision is an important one for Monsanto, which says it has to stop farmers stealing its property. Farmers in Canada and the US must sign agreements with Monsanto saying they will buy new GM seed each year instead of saving seeds new from the previous year’s harvest.”

What will the profit motive do with GM food?

Monsanto has made great play of how their disease resistant seeds would help to produce more food for the starving “Third World”. How wonderful it would all he for the farmers of Africa and Asia. However, they failed to highlight the contracts that US and Canadian farmers must sign about buying new seed each season. The same contracts would have to be signed in Africa and Asia. Every technological advance that human ingenuity devises is distorted by the profit motive.

News: Socialist imprisoned in Kenya (2001)

From the June 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of our members in Kenya was imprisoned last year for holding a meeting in a member’s house. Police descended on the house on 18 August demanding a licence for such a meeting as required (in their view) by law – although the law says nothing as such about holding meetings in a private residence (which is why they did not apply for a licence). Our comrade was sentenced to 6 months without the option of a fine. It took his wife a month to find out where he was jailed – it was the Nairobi Short Sentence Prison – and she had to bribe officials to find out. His relatives likewise had to bribe the prison warders now and then to ensure his stay was reasonably satisfactory. On his release on 12 December he sought to negotiate with the editor of a top newspaper to publicise his plight. This was refused but a brief reference to his time in prison was mentioned in the Watchman column of The West Winge Sunday Nation (17 December) but no mention was made of the reason why he was imprisoned. Our member has pointed that to try to obtain any documentation from the prison authorities would be “courting trouble”. Prisons in Kenya operate in secrecy and committal warrants are the property of the government.

Letter: Religion (2001)

Letter to the Editors from the June 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Religion

Dear Editors,

We feel compelled to write regarding a recent and heated debate in the letters page of our local newspaper between an exponent of World Socialism and a Christian.

We became interested in the SPGB after attending last year’s May Day anti-capitalist protest in Manchester. After reading SPGB literature and several copies of the Socialist Standard, we have come to agree with the basis of the World Socialist viewpoint. However, we do not agree with the movement’s stance regarding religion. We are not Christian, indeed we do not identify totally with any faith. Although we understand that religion can be destructive and used for social control, this does not, in our opinion, validate your intolerance towards people’s faith.

Speaking personally, our acceptance of socialism grew from the application of our spiritual beliefs derived from both Eastern and Western religious traditions. Without this we would be resigned to the ubiquitous apathy we see in our peers.

We find it insulting to suggest that those who develop a sense of righteousness and compassion through religious belief are not more than puppets. We feel that by over-emphasising Marx’s attitudes towards religion the SPGB is failing to address the issue: the abolition of capitalism. It can hardly be argued that institutionalised religion in the UK continues to provide “pie in the sky when you die” for the average worker. Instead, we find solace in the millions of Ecstasy tablets taken and innumerable pints downed in our life-for-the-weekend mentality.

Surely then, the SPGB should be tackling social apathy and capitalist ideologies rather than distracting and belittling itself with slanging matches. Many people contacting our local paper confused World Socialism with state capitalism. This major misunderstanding went largely uncorrected, lost in a puerile and futile argument over religion.

The rejection of religion does not feature in the SPGB’s declaration of principles, and therefore we consider it to be beside the point. Only when World Socialism focuses all its energy in educating the people of the world in viable alternatives to capitalism will it be fulfilling its objectives.

Tony Curry & Rachel Pass, 

Morecambe, Lancs.

Reply: 

Actually, we are not mere God-killers and religion-bashers. We leave that to the National Secular Society. Our main aim is to propagate socialist ideas in place of existing authoritarian and irrational ideas that help maintain capitalism. This involves us combating those ideas such as racism, nationalism, the idea that we need leaders, must have armies, need money, and also religion.

The position we take up on religion is rather well summed up in the summary of Marx’s views that the Christian Alistair MacIntyre gives in his book Marxism and Christianity:

“According to Marx, religion has a dual role to play. Throughout the history of class society religion performs two essential functions: it buttresses the established order by sanctifying it and by suggesting that the political order is somehow ordained by divine authority, and it consoles the oppressed exploited by offering them in heaven what they are denied upon earth. At the same time, by holding before them a vision of what they are denied, religion plays at least partly a progressive role in that it gives the common people some idea of what a better order would be. But when it becomes possible to realize that better order upon earth in the form of communism, then religion becomes wholly reactionary, for it distracts men from establishing a now possible good society on earth by still turning their eyes towards heaven. Its sanctification of the existing social order makes it a counter-revolutionary force. Thus in the course of building a communist society, the Marxist must fight religion because it will, inevitably stand in his path. But in a communist society there will be no need to persecute religion, for its essential functions will have disappeared. There will, no longer be an exploiting class, nor will the common people stand in need of religious consolations,. Religion itself will disappear of its own accord without persecution” (Chapter 7).

Editors.

Letter: Anarchists’ corner (2001)

Letter to the Editors from the June 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anarchists’ corner

Dear Editors,

Thank you for reviewing Against Parliament, for Anarchism in the April Socialist Standard. I appreciate the thoughtfulness shown in the review: as much as we wish to express the ideas of anarchist communism in our propaganda, I believe it is equally valuable to see what reaction we get from people with other perspectives, to help us hone our ideas further.

As regards the omission of the Socialist Party from the pamphlet, I would say that that was an error on our part, and in particular myself as overall co-ordinator/editor. I did not write the section on the Far Left, but feel now that I should have asked the comrade who did to contribute something on the Socialist Party as well, as I acknowledge that your interpretation of Marxism does separate you from the kind of parties/sects normally grouped under the Far Left umbrella, particularly in the rôle you see for Parliament. Hopefully we will be able to produce a revised version of the pamphlet at some point in the future, and can then include some discussion of the Socialist Party’s views.

Adrian, 

pp Anarchist Federation, London E1

Letter: State surplus (2001)

Letter to the Editors from the June 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

State surplus

Dear Editors,

Due to a computer problem, I suspect, my letter in the May Socialist Standard read 12 instead of 2. This gave the careful reader the impression that profit represents over 90 percent of surplus value. Perhaps in Karl Marx’s day this might have been true. But not today; that’s for sure.

Why your response to my letter failed to point out that the political state in this age of massive reformism represents the biggest portion of surplus value is noteworthy,. My guess is that it has something to do with clause 6 of your Declaration of Principles and the need of a transition period (not in the Trotskyist sense) in which a good SPGB “dictatorship of the proletariat” would come into power.

If you now are going to openly advocate a dictatorship of the proletariat, then the issue of surplus value is crucial. To shrug it off as “pedantic” and not the important is scary.

Thomas Alpine, 

Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA

Reply: 

You are right that today a large portion (we don’t know about the biggest portion) of surplus value goes to the state via taxes, which all ultimately fall on capitalist employers and other property owners. But we don’t see what this has got to do with us advocating that workers should take political action to establish socialism. Perhaps you mistakenly think that we are advocating some SPGB government that would keep the state in being and still siphon off surplus value from the workers. But there’s no need to be scared. We advocate that the state should be abolished just as soon as socialism (common ownership and democratic control of the means of production) has been established, which can be done very rapidly once a majority has decided that it wants this and organises itself democratically to bring it about. Once this has been done, then the socialist political party (i.e. the working class organised democratically and politically for socialism) will also be disbanded.

Editors.

Feeble attack (2001)

From the June 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Attac France is another group who think they can tackle poverty. Is their answer any better to the World Development Movement’s?

The vice-president of Attac France, Susan George, addressed a public meeting on 27 March in my hometown of Aarhus, Denmark, attended by several hundred people. Attac was founded just under three years ago in France and professes to be an anti-capitalist movement. The acronym “Attac” stands for “Association pour une Taxation des transactions financières pour l’Aide aux Citoyens". Today it has some twenty sections around the world. An Aarhus branch was formed after the meeting was finished.

Attac has entered the popular vocabulary, especially after one of their very peaceful demonstrations, outside the Danish medicine firm Novo Nordisk. Novo was one of the companies involved in the legal action against South Africa. Novo produce AIDS medicine; due to its cost – South Africa has an HIV/AIDS epidemic – the SA government decided to import a copy medicine for medical aid. Novo were against this policy. The demonstration has the slogan: “People before profit”.

The flyer advertising the meeting already revealed that Attac is not anti-capitalist but rather anti-big business. It mentioned some of their aims: a redistribution of goods via taxation of currency speculation (the Tobin Tax) and the abolition of tax havens; better conditions for the Third World, necessarily involving the writing-off of debt; and democratic control of the market and the multinationals. None of these aims is strikingly original. There are a number of Social Democrats who share these views – and who believes those parties can be described as anti-capitalist?

The market cannot be controlled. Both inflationary policies of Keynes and the old, Eastern bloc command economics ought to be proof positive; the market simply cannot be regulated. Taking due consideration of the fact that a capitalist who has sold does not have to buy (i.e. reinvest), the market is nothing but the sum total of businesses buying and selling products, with a view to profit. Capitalist production is anarchic; this is never more obvious than at times of economic slow-turn and recession (slump). At the time of writing the Asian tech market has nigh-on crashed; America is facing a downturn; and Marks & Spencer have suspended their European operations. Capitalism runs through periodic cycles of boom-bust and back, despite Blair and Brown’s off-heard: “We will not return to the days of boom and bust.”

George was adamant “that public services are not for sale”. We might also ask what Attac’s redistribution of goods amounts to. It would seem that Attac want healthcare, etc to be state owned and funded by greater taxation of the (already taxed) capitalists. This is merely “Old Labour” policy.

Writing off Third World debt is already governments’ policy. The World Bank has a strings-attached policy on debt relief. What this reveals is that the (short-term) loss of money involved is not nearly so important as creating politically and economically stable areas for trade and investment, with future profit gains in mind. (“Debt prevents economic growth” – George.)

George’s lecture confirmed that the so-called anti-capitalist movements don’t attack capitalism as a system. George and the others single out multinationals as the baddies, as the root cause of the problems facing the workers of the world. We certainly can agree on what multinationals have done – that need not detain us. Attac, like others, base their critique of multinationals, however, on a caricature. Multinationals cannot act willy-nilly. They do have to abide by the laws in the countries where they are established as well as by international agreements. (The ultimate power in society is political power and not economic power.) Furthermore, multinationals are not immune to the economic laws of capitalism as expounded by Karl Marx in Capital. Whilst their size mean they only get a buffeting when others go to the wall, recessions do affect the Multis.

Whilst businesses are interested in shifting taxation burdens to others and do try to reduce wage claims – all of which eat into profits – it is not entirely true to state these are all they worry about. High taxation and wages are related to more developed capitalist countries, where the workers are educated and well trained. Such a workforce is more productive. Inefficient techniques and workers do not interest multinationals too much, when they have an adverse effect on profits. Capitalists seek high profits with security.

Capitalist realities

George revealed an ignorance of capitalist realities. She thought it strange that remuneration comes to capital from goods. Her explanation for financial crises was that anyone is allowed to invest anywhere in the world. Scathing remarks were saved for the WTO because “it wants to make everything a commodity”. (Fancy that! George ought to read the opening paragraph of Capital.) The word “capitalism” was hardly used; she talked of “globalisation” incessantly, and her definition of it was pretty flimsy. No mention was made of the unending rivalries between capitalists.

Attac’s ignorance of capitalism, both in the domains of economics and history is fundamentally crucial. Any political programme takes its starting point in axioms. In judging the Attac movement, and anything else, those axioms are the first things to be looked at. Attac clearly believe in the continued existence of capitalism.

Like all reformers, Attac limit themselves to attacking features which they do not like; they fail to realise that those features are due to capitalism. The Multies’ growth is a mere reflection of the growth of the global capitalist system – they aren’t anomalies. Because they fail to recognise this, Attac will not be able to eradicate inequality and poverty. Two features are at the core of capitalism – a minority own the wealth of the world, which forces the majority to sell their ability to work for a wage (and millions don’t even have jobs) and production is carried out for profit. It is true: “Capital is rewarded to the detriment of labour”, but she has drawn the wrong conclusions and ought to think about doing away with the capital-wage labour relationship altogether. Does she not know why the system is called capitalism?

How does Attac view changes occurring? They do not denigrate parliament. George stressed the need for laws, “new rules” and “political procedures”; broad coalitions should be formed; trade unions have an important rôle to play; and Attac are for “popular education towards action”. George is utterly mistaken if she thinks governments can ever work in the interests of the workers, since their policies are formed by the dictates of capitalism.

George described Attac. It was founded by people from a variety of backgrounds; the only organisation named was the French Small Farmers’ Union – Attac. She said Attac has internal democracy and that they work to get a consensus of opinions. She sent a message to those who would use Attac for their own ends: it is not permissible to use Attac as a front. This was fine, although it will do little good, since the local Trotskyist vanguard have been licking their chops and been busily promoting Attac. (These days, the Leninists are more reformist than they used to be.)

In the questions and answers session, I addressed some of Attac’s weaknesses. When I noted the Soviet Union was a state capitalist dictatorship some of the audience laughed; George, however, agreed with me – let us hope others in Attac share this view. I sold some Socialist Standards, received praise for my comments from my fellow workers, and was interviewed by national TV.

In conclusion, then Attac does not differ from other left-wing reformist groups. All they want is some nebulously-defined humane, egalitarian capitalism where business is accountable to the workers. And people call socialists utopian!

Graham C. Taylor

The political turmoil in Ukraine (2001)

From the June 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

Please see this previous post for some background information on the supposed "sympathisers" behind this scam communication below that was printed in the pages of the Standard. Sadly, these things happen.

We publish below the text of a leaflet distributed recently by a group of sympathisers in the Ukraine

Workers, Today you can see on the streets and squares of Kiev the continuation of a sharp conflict between two bourgeois clans: President Leonid Kuchma, who is mainly oriented on Russian transnational corporations in close alliance with local oligarchs, and Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko, the direct representative of the IMF and similar international financial organizations. The working class have no interest in this conflict, both groups of the bourgeois elite are equally alien to them. Only socialism is the solution of their problems, but what is real socialism?

Socialism means a global system of social organization based on:

Common Ownership – all the productive wealth of the world will belong to all the people of the world. No more transnational corporations or small businesses and therefore nobody will own the world. It will be possessed by all of its inhabitants.

Democratic Control By All – who will run socialist society? We all will. There will be no more government and governed. People will make decisions freely in their communities, in regions and globally. With the existing means of information technology and mass communication this is all possible.

Production For Use – instead of producing goods and services for sale and profit, the sole reason for production will be to satisfy needs and desires.

Free Access – a society in which everyone owns everything, decides everything and only produces anything because it is useful will be one in which all will have free access to what is produced. Money will cease to have any function. People will not work for wages or salaries, but to give what they can and take what they need.

Based on these definitions it is clear that the social system in the Soviet Union was state capitalism, not socialism. Moreover state capitalism is not a step to socialism. All of us know how much disasters state capitalism in USSR brought to workers. Therefore Leninist, Stalinist, Maoist, Trotskyist, etc slogans like “Back to USSR”, “For vanguard Leninist-type party” are not socialist and have nothing common with tasks of real socialist movement in Ukraine and the entire world.

Workers don’t have to choose between two bourgeois clans. That’s not a solution. Only a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of society as a whole – socialism – is the solution of all our problems. Capitalism does not operate in the interest of the majority, and can never be reformed so that it does. Until we finally abolish wage labour, we workers will never be free. So, our common task is the consistent and resolute struggle to establish socialism.