Workers State? Pull the other one (2009)

From the November 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

How could anyone have seriously argued that the workers ruled in Russia?

Incredible as it might seem millions believed that Russia under Stalin and his successors was some sort of “Workers State”. Most – those in and around the official “Communist” parties – thought it was a workers’ paradise, socialism even. A minority – the Trotskyists – wanted to have their cake and eat it: to claim credit for what they saw as Russia’s achievements but to repudiate the things they didn’t like. They called it a “degenerate Workers State”. One of these was the Belgian journalist and academic, Ernest Mandel (1923-1995), a biography of whom by Jan Willem Stutje Ernest Mandel, A Rebel’s Dream Deferred has just been published in English translation by Verso.

“Workers State” is a bit of a contradiction in terms, but if it is to mean anything it would have to mean that the workers controlled the state; which could only be done through some democratic mechanism. But the workers never controlled the state in Russia. Within a few years of the Bolsheviks seizing power in November 1917 they had suppressed all other parties and established a one-party dictatorship. While he was a member of the government Trotsky justified the description “Workers State” by arguing that the Bolshevik Party, which controlled the state, was the party of the workers who therefore controlled the state through it. When, however, he and his followers were banned too he could no longer use that argument. So, in the Revolution Betrayed (1936) he came up with another: that Russia was still a “Workers State” because most industry was nationalised, there was central planning and a state monopoly of foreign trade. This, despite his admission that state power was actually controlled by a privileged “bureaucracy” and his producing statistics to show that the workers were badly off and oppressed

This argument was so absurd that it soon aroused criticism within the ranks of his own followers. Some refused to described a state in which the workers were oppressed and powerless as a “Workers State”. They disagreed about what to call it – some saw it as a new exploitative class society, others as “state capitalism” – but agreed that it wasn’t any kind of “Workers State”, not even a degenerate one. Trotsky stuck to his “degenerate Workers State” theory till one of its agents assassinated him in 1940.

Mandel had become a Trotskyist while still a teenager and during the war took part in underground Trotskyist activity in Belgium where his family lived. He was caught in 1944 and spent the remainder of the war in labour camps in Germany. After the war he emerged as one of the leaders of the Trotskyist “Fourth International”. One of the photos in this book is of a meeting of six leaders of this organisation in Paris in 1948. Of the six two had or came to regard Russia as state-capitalist. But not Mandel. He stuck to Trotsky’s dogma, and even extended it, describing the puppet regimes Russia set up in eastern Europe as “deformed Workers States”.

Dogma
In 1969, in a polemic against Michael Kidron, of the International Socialism group of Trotskyists (later the SWP) who argued that Russia was state capitalist, Mandel wrote:

“Ever since social-democratic opponents of the Russian October revolution hatched the theory of ‘capitalism’ continuing to exist in the Soviet Union, supporters of that theory have been faced with a difficult choice. Either they consider that Russian ‘capitalism’ has all the basic features of classic capitalism as analysed by Marx, to start with generalized commodity production, and that it also shows all the basic contradictions of capitalism, including capitalist crisis of overproduction— and then they have a hard time discovering evidence for this. Or they admit the obvious fact that most of these features are absent from the Soviet economy, and they then have to contend that these features are not ‘basic’ to capitalism anyhow, which in the last analysis only means exploitation of wage-labour by ‘accumulators’.” (The Inconsistencies of State Capitalism, p. 11).

As a matter of fact the social and economic system in Russia did exhibit the basic features of capitalism: minority control of the means of production (via nationalisation); generalised commodity production (i.e. generalised production for sale and the use of money); the accumulated of capital valued in money out of profits; and, in particular, yes, the exploitation of wage-labour by those who monopolised the means of production. Of course there were differences from what Mandel called here “classic” capitalism, due to the specific circumstances under which the system had come into being and developed which had resulted in a hugely increased economic role for the state. Hence state capitalism. In any event, even if Mandel’s narrow definition of capitalism as private enterprise is accepted, that would not make Russia into any kind of “Workers State”, only some new form of exploitative class society.

Disappointment
After discussing the “increasing rights for factory managers” then being granted as part of economic reforms introduced by the Russian government, Mandel declared:

“We are therefore convinced that capitalism could be restored in the Soviet Union or in any Eastern European country only after breaking the fierce resistance of the working class. ( …) Given the present constellation of social forces, both nationally and internationally, we think it very unlikely that this resistance could actually be broken under these conditions, and that capitalism could be restored either in the Soviet Union, or in Yugoslavia, or in any other bureaucratically degenerated or deformed workers' state.” (p. 16)

When this happened (and we, neither, saw this happening within twenty years) the working class put up no resistance to the transition from state capitalism to a more “classic” type of capitalism. Clearly, they did not share the same illusion as Mandel about Russia and its satellites being some sort of workers’ regime and so worth defending. Because Mandel and his Fourth International did believe the workers would resist, they placed great hope in the outcome of events in eastern Europe in the 1980s, trying to establish Trotskyist cells there. According to Stutje, they had some rather limited success in Poland and Czechoslovakia. But the outcome – a full return to “classic” capitalism rather than a regenerated “Workers State” – must have been a great disappointment. In fact, reading between the lines of this biography, Mandel never seems to have recovered from it.

Earlier Mandel had offered his expert advice as an economists to one of the “deformed Workers States” – Cuba when Che Guevara was Minister of Industry between 1961 and 1964. He visited Cuba a number of times and supported Guevara’s view that enterprises should be financed by direct grants from the central government and not be instructed to balance the books from their own activities. In other words, he was in favour of a much more centralised form of state capitalism than existed (or was eventually adopted).

Having said this, when it came to writing about “classic” capitalism Mandel was not too bad. In his Marxist Economic Theory (1962 in French, 1968 in English translation) he set out to show, on the basis of contemporary facts (and not just on the facts from the 1850s and 1860s that Marx had used), how Marx’s analysis of capitalism was still valid. The English hardback edition was divided into two volumes, the first of which, dealing with Marx’s theories, can still be recommended (the second part, dealing with the theories of Lenin and Trotsky and the nature of Russian society relapsed into Trotskyist scholasticism). His introductions to the Penguin edition of the three volumes of Capital are also good, as is his short pamphlet An Introduction to Marxist Economic Theory, even though it introduces the dubious concept of “neo-capitalism”, which he later called “late capitalism”.

Duplicity
Politically, Mandel was a dyed-in-the-wool Trotskyist, explaining every working class failure by a lack of the right leadership, i.e. of a Trotskyist vanguard. He also practised the dishonest Trotskyist tactic of “entryism”, joining the reformist Belgian “Socialist” Party in 1951, with a view to winning a leftwing following which he hoped to lead out of the party to form an open Trotskyist vanguard party. He achieved some success, even rising to be for a short while the editor of the BSP’s daily paper, Le Peuple. He lost this post when another paper he helped edit, La Gauche, criticised the party’s leadership. La Gauche advocated “structural reforms” of capitalism, basically the nationalisation of the holding companies which dominated the Belgian economy. This was popular amongst many workers in the coal, steel and manufacturing industries of the French-speaking part of Belgium, and Mandel managed to get the support of some of the union leaders and local politicians there.

According to Stutje, it was not until 1961 that Mandel told one of the trade union leaders that he was a Trotskyist:

“Until now Mandel had always kept quiet about his membership of the Fourth International. Now it was time to break the silence. He went to Yerna’s office and confessed to his bewildered friend, ‘I need to tell you the truth. I am a member of the Fourth International.’ Yerna was disappointed that his comrade had not trusted him sooner” (pp. 80-1).

In the end, as later with Militant in Britain, the inevitable happened. In 1964 Mandel and his followers were booted out of the BSP. In a letter to Ken Coates (then a fellow Trotskyist, later a Labour MEP) that year he told him: “A left wing had been built in the Socialist Party from 1961 on, accompanied by an autonomous, clandestine Trotskyist core group” (emphasis added).
According to Stutje,

“The question of when, where and how to leave the SP was clearly on the agenda from the early 1960s. Mandel had only wanted to make sure they left with a substantial group – and by that he meant thousands” (p. 85).

In the event, the main trade union leader he had relied on went off at a tangent and embraced Walloon (i.e. French-speaker) nationalism and Mandel left with a few hundred only. But a new bandwagon soon came along – student unrest – and he was able to jump on that, influencing student leaders such as Alain Krivine in France, Tariq Ali in Britain (both of whom became Trotskyists) and, to a lesser extent, Rudi Dutschke in Germany (who didn’t but, like Daniel Cohn-Bendit, eventually joined the Greens). Tariq Ali, though no longer a Trotskyist but still an admirer of Mandel, has written the foreword to Stutje’s biography.
Mandel was perfectly aware of what socialism really was as he had written in his polemic with Kidron:

“[S]ocialism means a classless society. It therefore presupposes not only the suppression of private property of the means of production, henceforth managed in a planned way by the associate producers themselves, but it also calls for a level of development of the productive forces which makes possible the withering away of commodity production, of money, and of the state.” (p. 17)

According to him, however, the productive forces had not yet reached the necessary level of development, so socialism was not an immediate possibility. Only a new society – based on nationalisation, planning and a state monopoly of foreign trade – was. He called it “transitional society” but it would only have been a form of state capitalism and state capitalism is not, as the experience of Russia in the last century showed, a step towards socialism. It turned out to be, in the joke circulating towards the end of the regime, “the longest route between capitalism and capitalism”.

Adam Buick

No logic (2003)

Book Review from the May 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fences and Windows. By Naomi Klein. Flamingo, 2002.

The protests in Seattle, London, Genoa and many other places between 1999 and 2001 gave rise not just to labels such as J18 but also to a widespread movement known variously as anti-corporate, anti-globalisation and even anti-capitalist. Naomi Klein's book No Logo came to be seen as a manifesto for this movement, and Klein herself as a spokesperson for it, despite her protestations to the contrary on both counts. No Logo (on which see the Socialist Standard for December 2000 and August 2001) chronicled the rise of massive global companies such as Nike and McDonalds, and of resistance to them. Klein's latest book is explicitly not a follow-up to her earlier work, though inevitably it deals with similar issues.

Fences and Windows consists of a selection of Klein's journalism and speeches, mainly from 2000 and 2001, and this is both its strength and its weakness. It gains immediacy from having been written in the midst or the aftermath of demos, protests and large-scale discussions, but lacks any overall theme or coherence. Nevertheless, a number of topics that it deals with can be singled out. The fences of the title are the (literal and metaphorical) barriers that prevent people from protesting, from using various resources and from gaining access to education and so on. And the windows are the various kinds of opposition, from mass efforts at direct democracy to landless Brazilian farmers cutting down fences around unused land.

A chapter written in Prague is interesting for what it reveals of the views of many young Czechs. They see both capitalism and “communism” (read: state capitalism) as centralising power in the hands of a few and of treating people as less than fully human. The issue is not whether the state or multinationals are in power, but of how power is distributed. As argued in other pieces, poor countries are required to follow the economic rules laid down by the rich – who then disregard them themselves when they see fit. Post 9/11, even Canada has been forced by the US to toughen security at its borders, and give up a great deal of control over them to US security officials.

The power-holders have of course not just sat idly by while the protesters make their protests. As a way to avoid the objectors, they have moved some of their meetings to virtually inaccessible places. More worryingly, protest and dissent have themselves been criminalised, with police violence becoming more or less the norm, with prominent resisters being arrested on trumped-up charges and so kept out of the way during demonstrations, and with all civil disobedience being equated with violence. (This has become worse since the invasion of Iraq, especially in the US, with any protest regarded as helping “the nation's enemies”.)

The final section of the book turns to positive proposals. A chapter entitled “Limits of Political Parties” attacks the New Democratic Party, Canada's nearest equivalent of the Labour Party (Klein is herself Canadian, and this piece originally appeared in a Toronto newspaper). Klein notes that the most socially excluded parts of Canada's population support “an idea entirely absent from the mainstream left: a deep distrust of the state”. While the NDP advocates strong interventionist central government, a true left-wing party should “articulate a different vision, one founded on local democracy and sustainable economic development”. The last chapter proposes a merger of two forces, international anti-globalisation activists and community-based organizations.

But there is still no real picture of a society to replace capitalism, or of what the real implications of local democracy and sustainability might be. These cannot be valued or implemented in a world divided along the lines of class and nation, where profit is the priority. A thoroughgoing change to a world without classes, nations, governments or profit is needed. Sadly, Klein and the rest of the anti-globalisation movement, despite the sincerity and effectiveness of much of their critique of capitalism, have taken the first steps but have yet to see through to the genuine alternative.

Paul Bennett

Cooking the Books: Spot the difference (2009)

The Cooking the Books column from the July 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

The British National Party has an economic policy? Apparently, and it's not just send all non-white people (and Poles) back to where they came from and give their jobs to British workers. Their manifesto for last month's European elections said:

“All the old parties are in the pockets of the banks and big business. Lab-Lib-Con all pretend to be worried about job losses but have allowed globalisation to destroy jobs and drag down wages . . . We will protect British jobs from cut-throat foreign competition and put British workers first – every time!”

How they propose to do this can be found on their website:

“Globalisation has caused the export of jobs and industries to the Far East, and has brought ruin and unemployment to British industries and the communities who depend on them. Accordingly, the BNP calls for the selective exclusion of foreign-made goods from British markets and the reduction of foreign imports. We will ensure that our manufactured goods are, wherever possible, produced in British factories, employing British workers. When this is done, unemployment in this country will be brought to an end and secure, well-paid employment will flourish.” (http://bnp.org.uk/tag/bnp-economic-policy/)

That's easier said than done. Basically, it's a proposal to try to isolate capitalist Britain from the world market. But this couldn't be done without making things worse.
It is naïve to assume that if a British government imposed a "selective exclusion of foreign-made goods", i.e. protectionism, the governments of other capitalist countries would just take this lying down. They would adopt similar measures aimed at selectively excluding British, i.e. for them "foreign", imports. British manufacturing exports would be bound to suffer. Unemployment would return (if it ever disappeared) and "secure, well-paid employment" would wither not flourish.
The BNP was not the only party to advocate such a pie-in-the-sky policy as a supposed way to secure jobs and end unemployment. Here is what the No2EU list, led by Bob Crow of the RMT union and supported by the Communist Party of Britain (Morning Star) and the ex-Militant Tendency Trotskyists:

“Nation states with the right to self-determination and their governments are the only institutions that can control the movement of big capital and clip the wings of the trans-national corporations and banks. . . . To revitalise the economy, Britain must return to creating wealth based especially in manufacturing, hi-tech and trade across the world . . . To return to an economy based on manufacturing requires massive investment and where appropriate protection of home industries. It is the only way to ensure jobs and a decent safe future for the peoples of Britain.” (http://www.no2eu.com/economiccrisis.html)

They don’t explain any more than the BNP where the profitable market for these extra manufacturing goods is to come from. They, too, dream of a national capitalism permanently providing high wages and steady jobs.
No wonder the groups that made up No2EU refuse to debate with the BNP. When it comes to economic policy, it wouldn't be much of a debate as they wouldn't find much to disagree about, especially as the BNP also advocates "the renationalisation of monopoly utilities and services, compensating only individual investors and pension funds". We, on the other hand, are prepared to debate against both of them (together if need be, to save time) and put the socialist case that, as capitalism is already a world system, there are no national solutions to the problems it causes for workers and that the only answer is go forward to world-wide socialism not back to the Nation State.

For more on the BNP, see:

From the July 2009 Socialist Standard, 'Who's afraid of the BNP?'

The death of ideas? (2001)

From the July 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the Sunday before polling-day, in his Letter From America, Alistair Cooke commented on the General Election by recalling the time, when against the odds, he correctly predicted a victory for conservatism. This was in 1970 when Wilson, who was expected to win, lost to Heath. Coming up to date Cooke again predicted a victory for conservatism but not for the Conservative Party under Hague. This was to be a victory for the conservatism of the Labour Party under Blair. Cooke has not been the only one to notice that leading politicians are more or less interchangeable. When the Labour Party sought to discredit Hague with a poster showing him with a Margaret Thatcher wig, the Economist replied by showing Blair with a similar Thatcher make-over. In his talk, Cooke described Blair as a “rightist liberal” and it is true that Thatcher, Hague and Blair have more in common than they have against each other.

Cooke also related these similarities to politics in America where there has been a similar obliteration of differences between the Republicans and Democrats. Both in the United States and Britain ideas and principles seem to have disappeared from the mainstream of public debate. This is being described as a time of “post-ideological politics”, or, perhaps more commonly, as the view that “all politicians are the same”.

And this was confirmed by the spokespeople of the three main parties who addressed the issues of the election not so much as people with differing ideas about the kind of world we should be living in but merely as accountants arguing over ways of managing the economy. The big questions were “should we have more tax or less tax”. “How can we make the system more efficient?” “How can we reduce tax and still spend more on health, education and the police.” The public view of politicians is already low. They are often seen as careerists and opportunists or even as liars and sleaze merchants. But with all the questions about how best to run the economy and the petty managerial differences that were blown up around them they have added to their dubious reputations by also becoming utterly boring. Never was politics less inspired.

Tweedledum and Tweedledee
However, it is wrong to see all this as the death of political ideas. The fact that politicians have become mere state functionaries means they have come to share the same ideas. These assume a continuation of the status quo. During the election, it was massively agreed by all the main parties that whoever won or lost, the future would be capitalist business as usual. And whilst it has become common for politicians to be depicted in the image of Tweedledum and Tweedledee, what we don't see is very much analysis pointing to the reasons why this has come about. It is mainly because governments have to react to economic conditions over which they have little control and these pressures take no account of the aspirations different governments may have.

This economic framework within which governments have to act, which severely limits their political options and so tends to cast them in the same mould, was acknowledged by Tony Blair himself when he returned to Downing Street the day after polling day. He spoke of the challenge facing Britain in confronting “the forces of global competition and technological change”.

The capitalist system has swept aside the traditional ways of life of different countries and has grown to become a world-wide structure. This has happened in large part under Labour and Social Democratic governments. Part of the job of these governments has been to protect property rights, to manage the developing system of exploitation in a smooth and stable way, and to ensure that key services such as education and infrastructures are suitably developed so that within the patterns of national and international trade the economy performs as efficiently as possible.

Always striving for profit the system staggers along, subject to volatile market conditions and moving in an unpredictable way between growth, stagnation and severe slump. It is also subject to the conflicting claims of wages and profits and the need of governments to spend taxes on essential services, dole, pensions and the maintenance of armed forces and police, etc. Within this inherently chaotic system with governments reacting to conditions instead of creating them, short of extreme crisis there is little scope for running it in radically different ways. So its political managers are reduced to arguing out differences which are mostly minor or sham, about how best to spend the money that comes to them, depending on their luck with the economy.

And those who set out to change society through winning political power and reforms have had to accept what was always inevitable, that reformism is a graveyard for such hopes. This happens not because reforms have never made a difference to the way the system works. For anyone wishing to bring about a new and better world, reformism requires a pact with the devil where the forming of a government means being sucked into running the system. This is what has happened to the Labour Party. It has fallen victim to a corrupting process in which the allurements of government power have ruled out any realistic sense of what can be done with such power. As a consequence, the Labour Party not only accepts the capitalist system but it is now fully committed to managing its continued development.

Ritual of voting and blaming
But although the electorate are doing it in decreasing numbers, the ritual of voting one lot in and afterwards blaming them for failure and replacing them with carbon copies, is futile. In part this results from living in a society dominated by vested interests with immense power. This produces a culture of cynicism and blame in which an alienated population feel they have no real powers to bring about change. But the fact remains that in most developed countries governments are in office by consent and this brings responsibility back to the majority of people to do more than just vote and blame. They have to realise where their true interests lie, do their own thinking and act on their own behalf. For this, people have to re-engage with the battle of ideas. Despite the misunderstanding and distortion that confuses political debate, especially about what is meant by socialism, there is a clear contrast between the ideas that support the capitalist system and their political opposite, socialism.
Some of the language used by Conservatives or New Labour politicians may sound different. Conservatives may claim to uphold the best and most enduring values from the past, speak of the virtues and freedoms of economic individualism, and the merits of life in a property-owning democracy. From the mouth of Tony Blair we hear the aim of social equality expressed as “equality of opportunity” where “everyone gets their chance to fulfil their true potential” in a “meritocratic nation”. But in both cases the language expresses a shared support for the capitalist system whilst putting a gloss on an anti-social society that cannot work in the interests of the majority of people.

The reality behind the gloss is class ownership of all the means of producing goods and all resources. It means markets and profit deciding what can be done, a widening gap between rich and poor and the certainty that most people throughout the world will continue to live in poverty. It means the shackling of all the powers of human labour to exploitation and private gain. This is the out-dated world and the ideas that justify it that Labour, Tory and other reformist politicians now hold in common.
These should be contrasted with socialist ideas which emphasise and aim to build upon one human ability which is universal. This is the ability of every person to co-operate with others in a world-wide community of interests. Beyond the world of class divisions and its sub-divisions of colour, religion and nationalism, socialists uphold the ideas of unity, emphasising what we all have in common, and how on a basis of common ownership, democratic control and production solely for needs, we could release all that is best in the human make-up for the benefit of ourselves as individuals and others.

It is the ideas of capitalism that are dead because they have nowhere to go and represent an ideology that is incapable of being developed as principles for a better world. But the ideas of socialism are rooted in the constant need of all people to live in peace with each other and to co-operate in creating a life of material security. For this reason they will remain indispensable not just for clarifying the nature of problems but for setting out the only way to solve them.

Pieter Lawrence

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain 125

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 125th of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 1551 friends!

Recent blogs:

Capitalism or Socialism?

A Man Before His Time - Gerrard Winstanley

The Myth of Soviet “Socialism”

Quote for the week:

"Money is a new form of slavery, which differs from the old form of slavery only in its impersonality, its annihilation of all humane relations with the slave." Leo Tolstoy, What to do?, 1887.

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain

Smash Cash (2004)

From the June 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following article was originally published in 1968 in issue 17 of the counter-culture magazine, Oz.

At the time of writing its author, David Ramsay Steele, was a member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. This transcript is taken from the June 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard, which was a special issue given over to marking the hundredth anniversary of the SPGB.

400BC: Hey all you thirsty people, though you've got no money, come to the water. Buy corn without money and eat. Buy wine without money and milk without price. (Isaiah).

1652: There shall be no buying and selling . . . If any man or family want grain or other provisions, they may go to the storehouse and fetch without money. (Gerrard Winstantley).

1968: The Abolition of Money. The abolition of pay housing, pay
media, pay transportation, pay food, pay education, pay clothing, pay medical help and pay toilets. A society which works towards and actively promotes the concept of "full unemployment" . . . (Yippie election leaflet).

Abolition of Money! Down through the ages this wild and visionary slogan has been whispered by a subversive few. Ever since human beings discovered cash, they have hated it and tried to rid themselves of it whilst their own actions have kept it alive. In this respect, money is like syphilis.

Today the whisper has become a shout though still the shout of a tiny minority. Tomorrow it will be the roar of the crowd, the major topic of discussion in every pub and coffee house, factory and office.

The abolition of money is an ancient dream, the most radical demand of every social revolution for centuries past. We must not suppose that it is therefore destined to remain a Utopia, that the wheel will simply turn full circle once more. Today there is an entirely new element in the situation: Plenty.

All previous societies have been rationed societies, based on scarcity of food, clothing and shelter. The modern world is also a society of scarcity, but with a difference. Today's shortages are unnecessary; today's scarcity is artificial. More than that: scarcity achieved at the expense of strenuous effort, ingenious organization and the most sophisticated planning.

The world is haunted by a spectre the spectre of Abundance. Only by planned waste and destruction on a colossal scale can the terrifying threat of Plenty be averted.

Money means rationing. It is only useful when there are shortages to be rationed. No one can buy or sell air: it's free because there is plenty of it around. Food, clothing, shelter and entertainment should be free as air. But the means of rationing scarcity themselves keep the scarcity in existence. The only excuse for money is that there is not enough wealth to go round but it is the money system which makes sure there cannot be enough to go round. By abolishing money we create the conditions where money is unnecessary.

If we made a list of all those occupations which would be unnecessary in a Moneyless World, jobs people now have to do which are entirely useless from a human point of view, we might begin as follows: Customs officer, Security guard, Locksmith, Wages clerk, Tax assessor, Advertising man, Stockbroker, Insurance agent, Ticket puncher, Salesman, Accountant, Slot machine emptier, Industrial spy, Bank manager, before we realized the magnitude of what was involved. And these are merely the jobs which are wholly and utterly useless. Nearly all occupations involve something to do with costing or selling. Now we should see that the phrase "Abolition of Money" is just shorthand for immense, sweeping, root and branch changes in society. The abolition of money means the abolition of wages and profits, nations and frontiers, armies and prisons. It means that all work will be entirely voluntary.

Of course, the itemizing of those jobs which are financial does not end the catalogue of waste. Apart from astronomical sums spent on the Space Race, and the well known scandal of huge arms production, we have to realise that all production is carried on purely for profit. The profit motive often runs completely counter to human need. 'Built-in obsolescence' (planned shoddiness), the restrictive effects of the patents system, the waste of effort through duplication of activities by competing firms or nations these are just a few of the ways in which profits cause waste.

What this amounts to is that ninety per cent (a conservative estimate) of effort expended by human beings today is entirely pointless, does not the slightest bit of good to anybody. So it is quite ridiculous to talk about "how to make sure people work if they're not paid for it". If less than ten per cent of the population worked, and the other ninety per cent stayed at home watching telly, we'd be no worse off than we are now.

But there would be no need for them to watch telly all the time, because without the profit system work could be made enjoyable. Playing tennis, writing poems or climbing mountains are not essentially any more enjoyable than building houses, growing food or programming computors. The only reason we think of some things as 'leisure' and others as 'work' is because we get used to doing some things because we want to and others because we have to. Prostitutes despise love. We are all prostitutes. In a Moneyless World work would be recreation and art. That work which is unavoidably unhealthy or unpleasant, such as coalmining, would be automated immediately. Needless to say, the only reason these things aren't done by machines at present is because it is considered more important to lower the costs of the employer than to lower the unhappiness of his slaves.

The money system is obsolete and antihuman. So what should we do about it? In years to come, with the increasing education and increasing misery of modern life, together with growing plenty, we can expect the Abolition of Money to be treated more and more as a serious issue, to be inserted into more and more heads. The great mass of individuals will first ridicule, then dare to imagine (Fantasy is the first act of rebellion Freud), then overthrow.

In the meantime, as well as propagating the notion of a Moneyless World, those of us who see its necessity have a responsibility to sort our own ideas out, in order that we may present an intelligible and principled case. We must stop thinking of the Moneyless World as an 'ultimate aim' with no effect upon our actions now. We must realise that the Abolition of Money is THE immediate demand. A practical proposition and an urgent necessity not something to be vaguely 'worked towards'.

Unfortunately those who want the Moneyless World frequently wade in a mire of mystification. Above all it is necessary to understand the workings of this society, capitalist society (Moscow, Washington and Peking are all in the same boat) if we are to know how to destroy it.

For example there is a commonly held view that Automation is going to settle all our worries, that money will expire automatically as part of a "natural process of evolution". This is quite wrong. As pointed out above, this society only automates to increase profits and for no other reason. Employers even take machines out and put workers back in if they find that labour-power is cheaper. Any gain from automation these days is more than cancelled out by the waste explosion. Do not imagine that the slight increases in living standards of the last twenty years are the beginning of a smooth transition to Abundance. Another huge world slump is approaching.

A different illusion, also popular, is that cash can be abolished by example, by opening giveaway shops or by starting small moneyless communities which are parasitical upon the main body of society. These experiments accomplish little. Those people, for instance, who open stores to give and receive books without payment, face a predictable result: a large stock of lousy books.

These projects stem partly from a belief that we need to prove something. Relax. We don't need to prove anything. The defenders of this insane society, it is they who stand accused, they who have to supply the arguments arguments for poverty and enslavement in a world of Plethora!

All theoretical constructions which relate to wages, prices, profits and taxes are ghosts from the past, as absurdly outdated as the quibbles about how many angels could dance on the point of a needle. 'Incomes policy' is irrelevant we want the abolition of incomes. "Fighting crime" is irrelevant we want the abolition of the law. 'Workers' control' is irrelevant we want the abolition of 'workers'. 'Black Power' is irrelevant we want the abolition of power over people. 'The national interest' is irrelevantwe want the abolition of nations.

And let no one raise the banal cry: what are you going to put in their place? As though we would say to a research scientist: "And when you've cured Cancer, what are you going to put in its place?"

Then there is the myth of the small-scale. We cannot go back to being peasants and we should not want to. Keeping several thousand million people alive on this planet necessitates railways, oil wells, steel mills. Only by intricate organization and large-scale productive techniques can we maintain our Abundance. Do not be afraid of machines. It is not machines which enslave, but Capital, in whose service machines are employed. McLuhan represents the beginning of the New Consciousness of man-made artifacts. Computors are warm and cuddly creatures. We will have a beautiful time with them.

Many of the worst errors which retard the development of the New Consciousness, the Consciousness of Plenty, are to be found in Herbert Lomas' piece on "The Workless Society" in International Times 43. This at least has the merit that someone is putting forward a case for the removal of money in specific terms. Unfortunately, they are specific non-starters.

According to Herbert Lomas, a political party is to be formed which will take power and proceed as follows. Useless workers in industry will be gradually be laid off and paid for not working. The process will be extended until money can be abolished. In the meantime, those being paid for doing nothing will do what they like. To begin with many of them might play Bingo; eventually more and more would aim at higher things.

What is wrong with this projection? Many things, but chiefly two. First, it fails to take account of the systematic nature of society. Second, it assumes that present-day society exhibits a harmony of interests.

In the first place, Lomas says: "Why are these people working? They are not working for the sake of production, for the truth is that if they were removed production could be increased beyond measure". He concludes that they are working because of their attitudes, the attitudes of their employers, the attitudes of the rest of society. But the fact of the matter is that these workers are working for the sake of production not the production of goods but the production of profits. The reason why things are "made with great ingenuity to wear out" is not because of the attitudes of the people involved. The management may think it's criminal but they are paid to optimize profits. If they produced razor blades to last for centuries, the firm would go broke. It is not the attitudes which are crucial, but economic interests. If a teetotaller owns shares in a brewery, it does not make booze less potent.

Which brings us to the second point. Today's world is a jungle of conflicting vested interests. The Abolition of Money will represent the liberation of slaves, yes but also the dispossession of masters, i.e. the employing class. We cannot view the government as an impartial panel which looks after the best interests of everybody; it is an instrument used by one set of people to oppress another.

On one point Herbert Lomas is correct. The movement for the Abolition of Money must be political, because when we destroy money we destroy the basis of the power of our rulers. They are unlikely to take kindly to this, so we must organize politically to remove them.

For the moment though, what is needed is more discussion and more understanding. We must be confident that the movement will grow. We must think, argue, and think again but never lose consciousness of the one, simple, astounding fact: Plenty is here. The Moneyless World is not an ultimate millennium. We need it now.

David Ramsay Steele, OZ, 1968.

Greasy Pole: TV Debates - much ado about nothing (2009)

The Greasy Pole column from the November 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

If the general election is to go down in history it will not be through encouraging any prospects for the vital revolutionary, invigoratingly therapeutic society – but for the leaders of the tedious, outworn and discredited parties surprising everyone by agreeing to display their reactionary absurdity in a televised confrontation. That is, supposing the debates ever happen; there is likely to be some time before the election and a mass of obstacles to be negotiated before the leaders' agreement has any meaning. There is, to begin with, the likelihood that the idea sprang from their panic, which convinced them that they had nothing to lose. For Gordon Brown there is the fear that the exposure of New Labour's blundering chaos will lead to their practically disappearing come polling day. David Cameron will be anxious that his gamble on trying to replace his party's Thatcherite reputation as the Nasty Party with one for being Caring Conservatives may not come off in time. And Nick Clegg must be suffering anxiety about the fate of his pose as the real alternative way or running capitalism – with the unasked-for help of Vince Cable – and the effect of any failure on his ambition to make him the new brand of British politics. A crisis on any one of these could fatally undermine the debates.

Rows
Meanwhile it is not only TV soap addicts who wonder why viewing time should be allocated to the debates when there is already face-to-face confrontation in Prime Minister's Questions. Can there, it may be asked, be anything more, anything different, to be said about trying to tame and administer this strife-torn, repressive society? One response might be that anyone devoted to the ructions of Coronation Street would find much to divert them in the weekly posturing and screeching in the Commons. But witnessing at first hand the behaviour of our law-makers at their work may be encouraging them to, in more than one sense, switch off. Which would mean the wastage of all the meticulously detailed preparation being poured into the debates – the jockeying and the intrigue, the anguished rows about who will speak when, who will moderate, be in the audience, decide where everyone sits, winds up the discussion...it will be more than just a matter of assuaging some massive egos. Then there will be the analyses, with all parties claiming to have won the debate even if they lost the vote. A lot of this will revolve around the hope, by each participant, for the kind of seminal exchanges in debates between the candidates in previous US Presidential Elections which were widely supposed to have crucially affected the result.

Kennedy vs Nixon
The first example of this was in 1960, when Kennedy ran for the Democrats against Richard Nixon – both of them hardened, ruthless political operators with a suitably determined machine looking after them. In the first of four debates, watched by 80 million people, Nixon took part although he was still recovering after hospital treatment for an infected knee injury. His appearance – weary, sick and pale – was made worse by his refusal to wear the usual make-up, which drew attention to his facial stubble. He seemed shifty and hesitant so that Kennedy, whose image was rested, fresh and healthy, impressed the millions of voters who preferred leaders who looked like that.

The following debates were not so damaging to Nixon and in any case it was doubtful whether his sorry appearance had any crucial effect on the election because Kennedy won by the smallest of margins – 0.1 per cent of the vote – and even at that there was strong evidence of fraud in Texas – where Vice Presidential candidate Lyndon Johnson held sway – and Illinois where Mayor Richard Daley could always get the vote out by hook or by crook. In any case Nixon, stubble and all, eventually bounced back, winning the Presidency in 1968 and then, emphatically, in 1972 until his being sucked down into the Watergate affair exposed how shallow and saleable are what our leaders like to call their morals.

Carter vs Reagan
Another, less startling, example was in the election of 1980 when Ronald Reagan presented as a relaxed and fluent ex-film actor (albeit mainly in B movies) against the anguished born-again christian President Carter. Reagan took to the debates like – well, like any seasoned Hollywood star. The media loved it when he dismissed Carter's attack on his record of voting, as Governor of California, against Medicare and Social Security benefits, with the contemptuous phrase “There you go again!” Reagan ran away with the election, with nearly 10 per cent more than Carter of the popular vote. This was called the “Reagan Revolution”, which ran into the following election and to some extent carried George H.W. Bush into the White House in 1988.

The debates, in America and here, are intended to promote the idea that leaders are crucially significant and that workers should vote for them and not for what they and their parties represent, in denial of the real experience which points to the leaders' impotence in face of the inexorable demands of capitalism. So when the debates are staged here we cannot look forward to anything more constructive, nor even interesting, than the customary, tedious drone in feeble response to the system's persistent crises. It may be that some wretched participant will try to wriggle out of a particularly difficult question by imitating the Reagan approach – Brown satirising Cameron covering his ineptitude in assumed sincerity; or Cameron raising a laugh with Brown's memories of being brought up as a son of the manse; or both of them savaging Clegg's ambition to be treated as more than a querulous upstart. In doleful times it might get us chuckling, amid our contempt for the exhausted excuses which, even now, are probably being written into the script.

Ivan

Pollution and profits

From the Socialist Courier blog

Every vote seeking politician in the world waxes elequent about the urgent need for a curb to be placed on global emmisions. They fly hither and thither across the world addressing congresses about their deep concern for the planet's future. Behind these vote catching antics however lies a more pressing problem - how to compete against international rivals in obtaining a larger share of the profits. At a recent meeting in Singapore those politician showed where their real priorities lie:

"A key element of the international plan to address climate change is in jeopardy after several of the most powerful nations failed to confirm a previous commitment to halve gas emissions by 2050. The Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) forum, which includes the US, China, Japan and Russia deleted their commitment from the final version of the official communiqué issued after a two-day meeting in Singapore. ...Most climate scientists believe that a 50 per cent reduction in global emissions by 2050 is the minimum needed to have a chance of avoiding catastrophic change." (London Times, 16 November)

For national governments to reduce industrial pollution would be economic suicide. Their costs would go up and they would not be able to compete with other nations that had not reduced their pollution. Inside capitalism in the battle between less pollution or more profits there is only one winner.

Richard Donnelly

Pathfinders: Socialism in the Space Age (2007)

The Pathfinders Column from the October 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anyone over the age of forty-five will remember very clearly two things from their school days. One was the moon landings. The other was the clear and certain knowledge that whatever it was that killed off the dinosaurs would remain eternally one of life’s unanswerable mysteries.

When in 1980 the geologists Luis and Walter Alvarez discovered a thin layer of iridium stretching from Italy to Colorado, dated to a period corresponding to the great extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period, some 65 million years ago, they knew something pretty severe must have happened. Iridium lies deep in the core of the Earth, and is only found on the surface as a result of asteroid strikes. This one, they reasoned, must have been a humdinger, but where was the crater? Something that big couldn’t just erode away. Eventually, it was found, under the sea, off the coast of Mexico, a hole so big it must have taken a meteorite roughly the size of Brighton to create it, about 23 square miles.

Recently on a socialist discussion list, someone referred to the ‘failed experiment’ that was the dinosaurs. Failed perhaps in the sense that they are dead and we are not, but let homo sapiens survive and prosper as a race eight hundred times longer than we have so far managed before we can claim to equal their success. And the chances are, on current performance, we won’t get anywhere near.

The power-elites in capitalism are as keenly aware as benighted commoners just how vulnerable the Earth is to a giant meteor strike, and while the next close pass by a large lump of rock is still thirty years away, are even now debating what to do about it. For, even if the impossible happened and the capitalists worked out some ingenious way to stop destroying the planet themselves, there’s no accounting for the vagaries of chance in outer space.

October 4 2007 marks the 50th anniversary of the launch of the Russian satellite Sputnik 1, the first venture of humanity into space. A few more efforts, a dead dog, some nasty accidents and a few dead astronauts later, the world was dazzled by the budget-busting glory of the Kennedy administration in putting a man on the moon, putting one over on the Russians, and fixing the global gaze skyward instead of at Vietnam. Previous generations had lived through the stone age, the bronze age, the iron age, the steam age and the Tupperware age, but anybody alive in 1968 and watching the silver men on screen pogoing in slo-mo on the surface of the moon would have sworn they were living in the space age. The future was bright. Humanity was on the threshold of the stars.

But what a disappointment it all turned out to be. For once, the geometric acceleration of science seemed to falter. After the Apollo missions, there was no more. The moon was forgotten. Mars remained beyond reach. The engineers all retired, and took their knowledge with them. The stars seemed further away then ever, twinkling in cold amusement at humanity’s punctured hubris.

Sure, the world sent out a lot of probes, some of which didn’t crash, malfunction or get lost, and many fascinating pictures and much interesting knowledge was gained. But the two Big Questions remained unanswered. First: Is there anybody out there? And second: Even if there isn’t, can we get off this rock before it blows?

Capitalism invests in space research the same way it gambles on the rest of science, by backing every horse in the race, sure at least that one of them will come in eventually, bringing with it untold new knowledge and wisdom (aka big bucks and even bigger bucks). It isn’t really interested in existential anxieties about being alone in the universe, but when it comes to advanced communications and especially the military capability of peering into everybody else’s back yard, then filling the orbital paths with beeping space junk seems a superb notion. More ambitiously, the possibility of colonising other planets offers an unparalleled alibi for recklessly destroying your own. Space Capitalism: a sort of galactic venereal disease.

Meanwhile, George Bush’s Kennedy-like attempt to swivel the eyes of America away from Iraq and up to Mars is unlikely to outlive his incumbency. The cost of a manned mission is just too ludicrous, the risk (in lives but, more to the point, in credibility) not worth the gamble, and the scientific returns probably insignificant, given no conclusive sign so far of any organic material on that almost certainly dead planet.

Some scientists, playing a dubious numbers game, have famously calculated that the probability of there not being intelligent life out there, given the billions of galaxies, is virtually zero. Others have responded by calculating the probability of us ever having contact with any of these lifeforms, given the brain-shreddingly large space-time distances involved, as being also virtually zero. Capitalist Earth, being uncontrollably in the grip of a mindless and suicidal orgy of self-destruction, would love to find some comfort and company out there, feeling as it does that the prospects of life down here are diminishing like sand through an hourglass.

But what of a socialist Earth? Suppose that humanity has a moment of sanity and takes its affairs in order by abolishing capitalism before it’s too late, what then? Obviously expeditions to Enceladus would be somewhat down the priority list at first, as issues like food, water and shelter took the lead. But would a socialist world eventually develop a space programme? Perhaps so, if by then the depradations of capitalism had reduced the planet to an unsalvageable toxic tar-pit from which we had no choice but to escape. Hopefully though, we will have taken control of our common abode and our common responsibility much earlier than that. Then, living as free custodians of a newly green and pleasant planet, we may not feel such anxieties about our cosmic isolation, but in fact bask pleasurably in our unique biological identities and our uniquely fulfilling way of life. Children, though, will always gaze at the stars and wonder what is out there. Socialists may debate whether they could or should ever ‘export’ socialism to the cosmos. They might also, perhaps more pertinently, wonder when some of the cosmos is likely to pay a visit here. Among its other priorities, socialist Earth would be wise to remember what happened to the dinosaurs, and make contingency plans for the next Brighton rock.

Paddy Shannon

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain 124

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 124th of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 1547 friends!

Recent blogs:

Out of control

Conspiraloons

Free is cheaper

Quote for the week:

"Irrespective of the uniforms we wore, we were all victims." Harry Patch, WWI Veteran.

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain

Cooking the Books: Out of control (2009)

The Cooking the Books column from the November 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some people are looking to China as the motor that will pull world capitalism out of its current slump. This ignores the fact that China’s double-digit rates of growth were led by exports, in large part to America and Europe. When these parts of the world entered the slump China, too, was affected. As the London Times reported last year (17 October):

“In the northern Chinese port of Quinhuandao, a dark mountain formed by nearly nine million tonnes of surplus coal soars from the dockside. By the end of the next week, the famous storage area – a dirty barometer of Chinese industrial demand – could be completely full of unwanted fossil fuel . . . [T]hose swelling piles of surplus coal, which is used for most of China’s electricity generation, indicate falls in demand for energy, a key measure of economic activity.”

In response the Chinese government decided to try to spend its way out. Some 4 trillion (a million million) yuan of stimulus money was injected into the economy, mainly in the form of lending by the State banks. But things didn’t turn out as planned. Most of the money was used to expand productive capacity without regard for the chances of selling the extra output (though some seems to have gone to fund a property and stock exchange bubble). In an article headlined “Beijing moves to halt growth juggernaut as supply starts to run away from demand” (1 October), Times Asia business correspondent, Leo Lewis, reported:

“China's State Council calculates that the impact of this year's 140 billion yuan (£13 billion) investment spree in steel mills will be to lift overall national production capacity some 40 per cent above the country's entire annual demand. The same dynamics reportedly apply to cement ( . . .) The astronomical levels of corporate investment, warn senior economists, place the booming Chinese economy at increased risk of a sudden collapse in growth.”

So, the brakes are being applied:

“The Government of China has launched an attack on overcapacity in its heavy industries with a series of stinging curbs on new factories, smelting plants and port-building projects. (…) In the absence of such controls, said the statement from the Chinese Cabinet, ‘it will be hard to prevent vicious market competition and to increase economic benefits, and this could result in facility closures, layoffs and increases in banks' bad assets.’”

It’s the same old story of headlong capitalist expansion, financed in this case by government funding, leading in the end to overcapacity and overproduction in relation to market demand. The Chinese government’s attempt to spend its way out of the slump is risking the very thing they were trying to overcome: “a sudden collapse in growth”.

Which goes to show that governments can’t control the way capitalism works and that, if they try, the chances are they’ll make things worse. Capitalism is an uncontrollable economic system that gets its way in the end, one way or the other.

To buy, or not to buy? (2002)

From the April 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

A hundred people go into a supermarket, stick all the things they need in their trolleys, and at the checkout the cashier asks each one: “Do you want to pay or take these for free?” Given that choice, how many would choose to hand over payment? Five? Three? Less? Anyone claiming most would opt to part with their money is clearly an idiot.

Of course, under capitalism, the choice not to pay for goods and services produced by waged employment does not exist. The store's shareholders pay for their supermarkets' construction, rents, electricity, products on the shelves, adverts, employees' incomes etc, and they want back their costs plus as much profit as the market will allow. The same goes for other businesses.

That people will avoid paying for their needs, given the choice, is obvious. Money matters, and if you can freely choose to go home with a week's shopping buckshee with no chance of any retribution whatsoever, who wouldn't? What about when you're expected to pay, but avoid doing so?

The record industry's recent efforts to prevent people obtaining free singles and albums by shutting down Napster's pioneering internet file-sharing facility, while introducing new paid-for music services, has so far failed miserably. Those denied free digital downloads from Napster have instead switched to more elusive net services like Gnutella, Aimster and Morpheus, and saved their money.

For defying society's laws, millions are called “pirates”, “thieves” and “cheats”. Accusations that big record companies also engage in thievery by cheating workers and music fans to grossly reward big shareholders can be ignored since this piracy is “legitimate” within today's economic system. Eventually, business measures, state legislation and enforcement in defence of capitalist property rights, markets and profits will probably crush this determined “dot.communism”.

Fare dodging, TV licence shunning, vehicle tax evasion. If people can get away without paying, they will. But why merely settle for endless conflict, just occasionally 'getting away' from restrictive and iniquitous laws unbeatable as long as capitalism exists, or alternatively compliantly paying up zombie-style, when we possess the power to be rid of them permanently?

If we want and enjoy having goods and services for free, there's only one obstacle – capitalism. If we choose to replace it with socialism, free access to whatever we need becomes reality. People don't have to buy goods and services when they directly own and control the means of producing them. Analogously, by collectively owning the bakery you own the bread, cakes and biscuits too, with the unrestricted ability to produce as much as is required.

Would people work co-operatively to produce the goods and services this moneyless free-access socialist society needed, in a similar way that a hundred million or so internet users are presently working together to provide and share free music? Or, conscious of the differences between the capitalist present and a socialist future, would they choose to continue working and living within the money-wages-profit system, where incomes for most are insufficient to meet needs; involve a longer, harder, exploitative working week just so profits can be extracted from labour to sate the owning class's greed and selfishness; involve constant annoyance, time-wasting and worry from money-related mortgages, debts, bills, income tax returns, welfare benefit form filling, price comparing, insurance selecting, utility switching, queuing to pay, burglaries, car thefts etc; inadequate health care and public transport; environmental destruction and pollution; endless food scandals; political sleaze; terrorism and warfare?

The choice is as difficult as deciding whether to pay or not at a supermarket checkout

Max Hess

The Myth of Soviet “Socialism” (2009)

From the November 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

An analysis from Russia makes many of the points we do.

On all sides we hear it said that “after 1917 a Marxist utopia was realised in our country,” that we had a “communist regime” or “socialist state,” that “we were building socialism and communism,” and so on. This makes it essential for us to grasp the true essence of Marxism, to understand what socialism and communism are.

From a scientific – in particular, Marxist – point of view, communism (or socialism, as Marx and Engels rarely distinguished between these two concepts) means an absolutely free society of universal equality and abundance, in which all people work – more precisely, seek self-realisation – voluntarily, in accordance with their abilities and inclinations, and receives goods in accordance with their needs.

This is the second stage, the phase of socialism or communism (or communism, strictly speaking). The first stage (or, more rarely, socialism in the narrow sense) means almost the same, with the sole difference that there is still some connection between how much labour an able-bodied person has given society and the quantity of goods that he or she receives.

But for Marx and Engels, as a rule, the words “socialism” and “communism” were synonyms.

And so, socialism or communism is the complete liberation of each person and all humanity from any form of exploitation and oppression! The government of people is replaced by the administration of things. The absence of any state power over people!

Socialism in a single country?
Marx and Engels categorically denied the possibility of establishing socialism or communism in a single country or in a few countries. They even denied the possibility of the sustained victory or success of a workers’ revolution in a single country – let alone in a backward or not very developed country. For a whole number of serious reasons.

Let us start with the fact that such concepts as “socialism” or “communism” are absolutely incompatible with the concept of “the state.” For a real Marxist, the very idea of a “socialist” or “communist” state is empty nonsense, the height of absurdity.

Of course, so long as another, hostile system exists, especially if it dominates the greater part of the planet, there can be no question of the state dying out. Let us imagine a state in which a workers’ revolution takes place but is not soon followed by a world revolution. That state is forced to compete with other states in the surrounding world in the accumulation of armaments, heavy industry, and so on.

But competitive accumulation – of capital, in the final analysis – runs counter to the popular need to give priority to consumption. It prevents expansion of the conquests of the revolution and makes it necessary to preserve the state. Giving priority to consumption would require abolishing a fundamental feature of capitalist society – accumulation for the sake of accumulation. For this two conditions are needed: workers’ self-management (working people themselves taking control of production) and the elimination of national borders (that is, of competition on a world scale). The latter also requires abolition of the state.

From the elementary foundations of Marxism it follows that such phenomena as commodity-money relations and the law of value are absolutely incompatible with socialism. For capitalism, according to Marx and Engels, has two chief defining defects. First, goods have to be produced as commodities (for sale), in the form of commodities, thereby giving social relations a fetishized, mercantile character. Second, the basic purpose of production is the extraction of surplus value, which is the source of the exploitation of man by man.

It is self-evident that money and the state can only die out together. Commodity-money relations cannot exist in the absence of state structures. For money is backed up by the assets of the state bank. Given commodity production, competition, the necessity for each state to compete economically with other states, a common measure of some sort is needed to calibrate inputs and outputs in comparison with other countries. Therefore, prices inevitably exist so that records can be kept of value. Finally, some way is needed to monitor the effectiveness of economic activity.

In order to realise the specifically capitalist tendency of accumulation for the sake of accumulation, two things are necessary. First, workers must be alienated from the means of production and from the results of their labour. Second, there must be competition between capitalists. In the absence of workers’ revolution on a global scale, the pursuit of surplus labour in the world as a whole inevitably thwarts any attempt to establish socialism, even if it is undertaken in a highly developed and wealthy region.

Socialism – a world system
Thus, socialism or communism can only be a world system. In this respect it resembles capitalism, which also arises at the international level, becoming a world system as it expands to absorb the pre-capitalist periphery. According to Marx, capitalism is characterised by the concentration of the means of production in the hands of a few, the organization of labour as social labour, and the creation of a world market. In principle, two world systems cannot exist simultaneously.

“Dictatorship of the proletariat”
For a long time the Bolsheviks justified their dictatorship by calling it “the dictatorship of the proletariat.” Marx used this term to mean not dictatorship as a repressive political regime but social dominance of the working people as a counterweight to the exploiters (while they still exist) – a workers’ semi-state. He put forward this idea in opposition to the idea, popular in his day, of the dictatorship of revolutionary leaders.

The democratic power of the working class, the conquest of true, broad democracy, and not the power of any leaders – that was and is the meaning of “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Undoubtedly, such a regime is not socialism. It is still capitalism, although of a milder and more democratic variety.

The Bolshevik party dictatorship
The Bolshevik party dictatorship has its origins in the upheaval of 1917. After the fall of the autocracy, Russia won great democratic freedoms and became (for a short time) the most democratic state in the world. However, the provisional government failed to act. It did not begin peace negotiations and made no attempt to get out of the war. It did not embark on agrarian reform. It took no measures against the forces of reaction. The people got neither peace nor bread nor land. What is more, despite all the rights and freedoms, strong democratic institutions (apart, perhaps, from the Soviets) were not created in the country. Thus, there was nothing surprising about the Bolshevik takeover. A reactionary military dictatorship was also a real possibility at the time.

The Bolshevik regime claimed the mantle of a workers’ state. However, in a workers’ state (more precisely, semi-state) there would have been the broadest freedom and human rights, with political power exercised democratically through Soviets, trade unions and competing political parties.

The actual situation, alas, was nothing like this. Political power was exercised mainly through a dictatorship of the Bolshevik party and vanguard, with all forms of democracy restricted from the very first months. Yes, in the early years there were progressive, humane laws in various spheres. (To what extent they were observed is another question.) But the main trends were negative: further curtailment of democratic rights and freedoms, consolidation of the one-party system, secret police repression even within the ruling party, formation of a hierarchy of officials appointed from above.

Stalin’s industrial revolution
The Stalinist faction, which in 1925 had introduced the anti-Marxist conception of “building socialism in a single country,” gained full control by the end of the 1920s. The chief concern of the ruling group was now the forging of a “great power”; this required expansion of the industrial base through unrestrained exploitation of the working people – for the sake, above all, of successful competition with the outside world, with foreign states. In practice, this meant the rapid accumulation of capital.

By the 1930s the authoritarian state had evolved into a totalitarian state. It was precisely at this period that the gap between the higher-ups and the masses deepened into an abyss. By means of so-called “collectivisation” the peasants were either, in essence, enserfed or driven from the soil and turned into a reserve labour force for industry. (Those who managed to get to the cities became, as a rule, hired workers.) Repression intensified, filling the rapidly expanding Gulag with prisoners.

During the first five-year plan, real wages declined by at least half, while the working day lengthened. Thus, the living standard of the absolute majority of the population fell substantially and exploitation sharply increased.

The Stalin regime was totalitarian state capitalism with significant elements of serfdom and slavery (which weakened but did not disappear even after the tyrant’s death). In practice, it accomplished an industrial revolution – that is, the accelerated accumulation of capital. To a large extent, this was primitive accumulation. We find pertinent parallels between industrialisation under Stalin and the path followed by Japan from the bourgeois “Meiji revolution” to World War Two. There too, capital grew rapidly. There too, despotic methods were used to modernise the economy, create an industrial base and strengthen military might, with the state playing a major role.
Thus, both under Stalin and later we had in Russia a right-wing dictatorship with a state monopoly over the economy. Stalinism is a broader concept than the Stalin regime. In the USSR, the Stalinist era lasted from the late 1920s until the collapse of the “Soviet” “socialist” system in 1991 (with various changes and modifications, of course).

Bureaucratic state capitalism
Stalinism is bureaucratic state capitalism. The bulk of direct producers did not own means of production and so were forced to sell their labour power to the real owner of those means of production – a special group called the nomenklatura. The members of this group belonged to a hierarchically organized system for the appropriation and distribution of surplus value. The ruling class of the Soviet Union was therefore a state bourgeoisie. It was an exploiting class that through the possession of state power owned the means of production, the whole of the so-called “national economy.”

In this way the traditional ultra-conservative status quo was re-established and the Russian Empire restored.

For several decades, both under Stalin and after his death, the ruling class or state bourgeoisie governed the country through a powerful and ramified bureaucratic apparatus. They relied on the age-old traditions of the Russian Empire and out of inertia continued to make formal and hypocritical use of pseudo-socialist, pseudo-communist, pseudo-left and pseudo-Marxist slogans. Such slogans were a convenient means of masking their real aims and playing on the sincere faith of many people, both inside the country and abroad.

(Translated by Stefan)
Vladimir Sirotin, Moscow

First Way Marxists (2000)

Book Review from the June 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Canadian Marxists and the Search for a Third Way by Peter Campbell, McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal; Kingston, pp.303, 1999.

Peter Campbell discusses, and focuses on, the lives of four individuals—Ernest Winch, William Pritchard, Arthur Mould and Robert Russell, all of whom originally came from Britain and from religious backgrounds. The title and the phrase, "a Third Way", is something of a misnomer, as the author himself admits, writing:

"The description requires explanation, because these socialists might more accurately be called Marxists of the first way. Their guiding philosophy is to be found in the provisional rules of the International Workingmen's Association, founded in London, England, September 1864 . . ."

Campbell's definition of a Marxist, and on occasion a socialist, is somewhat more wide than ours, although less so than that of many writers and commentators. His introduction is as important, and revealing, as his four pen-portraits.

The author uses the phrase "third way" in order to differentiate his subjects—and the organisations to which they belonged—from mass social democratic parties, such as the German Social Democratic Party, and later the so-called Communist parties. In that sense, he feels that they were Marxists of a "third way", opposing the idea of leadership, and advocating mass understanding as the only way to working-class emancipation. Education was, and is, everything. "Challenging the wages system meant educating the workers, and education became the key concern of Marxists of the third way", says Campbell. "The overthrow of capitalism and the eradication of the wages system were the responsibility of the workers themselves", although in practice, education was seen as a predominately male realm, as few women in such parties as the Socialist Party of Canada became public speakers or lecturers.

Nevertheless, Campbell shows that the early "third way" socialists, and particularly members of the SPC, were largely free of sexist and racist prejudices. Indeed, their close ties to the Jewish community became very important during the general strike, in Winnipeg, in 1919. Interestingly, although socialists like Bill Pritchard came from predominately religious backgrounds, they put the scientific method to the fore, with much emphasis on evolution.

Except for Arthur Mould (of whom more later), they were not pacifists. They considered violence a possible, if not unavoidable, outcome of revolutionary change; but they argued that the more that the workers understood, the more educated they became in socialist ideas, the less likelihood there would be of violence. Bill Pritchard saw "revolutionary violence" as a sign of weakness in the working class. Says Campbell: "The assumption was that significant numbers of capitalists would see the futility of resisting a well-educated, well-organised working-class majority and go over to the winning side."

Inevitably, not all "third way" socialists remained consistent in their views or beliefs. A few joined the Communist Party; others embraced the reformism of the Social Democrat and Labour parties. And a few, like Bill Pritchard, embraced reformist politics for a few years, only to return to revolutionary socialism, and membership of the Socialist Party of Canada or the World Socialist Party of the United States, later.

Between 1910 and 1940, Ernest Winch was successively a leading member of the Social Democratic Party, secretary of the International Longshoremen's Association in British Columbia, president of the Vancouver Trades and Labour Council, for a time a member of the Socialist Party of Canada, an organiser of the Independent Labour Party, secretary and organiser of the "bogus" SPC in the early 1930s and, lastly, a Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) member of the British Columbia provincial legislature for almost twenty-five years. Yet he considered himself, and was considered by many others, to be a Marxist and defender of "third way" Marxism.

Winch was renowned for his fiery, revolutionary phraseology, defending Marxism and "scientific socialism"; yet in practice his politics led to reform, not revolution. And during the late 1920s and through much of the 1930s Winch co-operated with the Canadian Communist Party. Of him, Campbell says: "While Winch's rhetoric continued to be revolutionary, many of his thoughts were confused and contradictory."

Bill Pritchard, however, was far more consistent except for a period during the 1930s.

On 21 May 1911, he arrived in Vancouver, from England. Two days later he applied for membership of the Socialist Party of Canada, and was admitted a week later. He became an avid reader of socialist and scientific literature. From December of that year, he wrote regularly for the Western Clarion, the paper of the SPC, and was its editor from 1914 to 1917. Despite his religious background, Pritchard became a materialist and atheist "believing religion was irrational". Although not mentioned by Campbell, Pritchard was largely responsible for the SPC reprinting the SPGB pamphlet Socialism and Religion. He accepted, and propounded, the materialist conception of history, the class struggle, the labour theory of value, and the necessity for workers, in a majority and without leaders, to abolish the wages system. As Campbell notes, there was no shortcut to emancipation—"nothing less than class conscious effort and class conscious knowledge". But he was no mere theorist. He travelled over vast areas of Canada, and British Columbia in particular, speaking at SPC meetings, often under horrendous conditions. And for many years, he was actively involved in various trade and industrial unions.

This, almost inevitably, led to his arrest and imprisonment following the Winnipeg general strike of 1919. His two-day speech at the trial in January 1920 is part of Canadian working-class history. During his imprisonment, Pritchard was visited by Adolph Kohn, a member of the SPGB, who brought him three volumes of Marx's Capital, which he was able to pass through the bars to him! During this period, Bill Pritchard, unlike some of his comrades, was very critical of the Communist Party and its undemocratic tactics.

However, in 1932, Pritchard joined the recently-formed Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, and became heavily involved in its activities. In 1938, he left Canada for California. And some time later "he returned to Marxism of the third way by joining the World Socialist Party of the United States (WSPUS) a sister party of the Socialist Party of Canada". He continued to propound revolutionary socialism until his death in 1981.

Arthur Mould is, at least to his reviewer, a far less interesting figure; and whether he could be described as a Marxist "of the third way" is highly problematical.

He was never a member of the pre-1919 Socialist Party of Canada; indeed, he began as a Methodist Church lay preacher in England. He was not as well read in Marx's writings as Pritchard or even Winch. Although he was a forthright critic of organised religions, he was not opposed to religion as such. Although opposed to war, at least until the Second World War, Mould was more a pacifist and admirer of Leo Tolstoy than an opponent in the Marxist tradition of the SPC. In fact, he was particularly upset when Moses Baritz, a member of the SPGB who was speaking on behalf of the SPC, defended the use violence in a lecture on the French Revolution in 1916. At about this time, Mould became active in the Independent Labour Party, in London, Ontario. Although remaining a committed Christian, during the 1920s he became increasingly sympathetic towards the Communist Party and joined it in 1943. And in 1961, still a member of the CCP, though a critical one, Arthur Mould died.

Robert Boyd Russell was an active member of the US Socialist Party, a key figure in the Winnipeg general strike, a leading organiser of the Railway Machinists during the First World War, a ceaseless advocate of industrial unions, in which he emphasised the necessity of waging the class war from a position of strength, and an active member of the One Big Union which had been formed in the aftermath of the Winnipeg strike in 1919. He, like Pritchard, was imprisoned. In 1922 he dropped out of the Socialist Party, but continued as general secretary of the OBU and, later, editor of the OBU Bulletin following the resignation of Charles Lestor, until the OBU became part of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) in 1956. He died in 1964.

Although this reviewer has some strong reservations about some of the views expressed by Peter Campbell, this is an important book, detailing as it does, much information on the Canadian labour and socialist movement. It is well worth reading.

Peter E. Newell

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain 123

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 123rd of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 1544 friends!

Recent blogs:

Afghanistan - lying about dying

Joining the killing machine

The myth of Maastricht

Coming Events:

Funny Money - DVD followed by discussion.

Tuesday 17 November 8pm

Committee Room, Chiswick Town Hall, Heathfield Terrace W4, Chiswick

The Zeitgeist Movement

Wednesday 18 November, 8.30pm

Community Central Halls, 304 Maryhill Road, Glasgow

Discussion on The Case for Socialism

Monday 23 November, 8.30 pm

Unicorn, Church Street, Manchester City Centre

Radical Film Forum, Sundays 6pm - 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN.

29th November - Sicko

13th December - Earthlings

Quote for the week:

"Everyone who knows anything of history also knows that great social revolutions are impossible without the feminine ferment. Social progress may be measured precisely by the social position of the fair sex (plain ones included)." Karl Marx, Letter to Kugelmann, 1868.

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain