Post-modern guru (2009)

Book Review from the January 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Goodbye Mr Socialism. Radical Politics in the 21st Century. Antonio Negri with Raf Scelsi. Serpents Tail Press, London, 2008

The Italian intellectual, Toni Negri, who was once sentenced to jail in Italy for giving a theoretical defence of urban terrorism, is highly regarded in some circles. The blurb on the back of this book describes him as “one of the world’s leading experts on Marxism” and as “a guru of the post-modern Left”. He may well be the latter but is certainly not the former.

The opening chapter is a surprisingly indulgent justification of some of the things that happened in Stalin’s Russia, even if this is part of the “Mr Socialism” to which he is saying good bye in this transcript of a question and answer session with another Italian intellectual. The other part is the whole idea of the factory proletariat, organised in trade unions and left wing political parties, as the agent of social change:

“the epoch of wages is finished and that the struggle has moved from the level of a fight between capital and labour regarding the wage, to a fight between the multitude and the State around the income of citizenship.”

The “income of citizenship” is a clumsy translation of what is more usually called a “Basic Income” or, by the Green Party, a “Citizen’s Income”, defined in a lexicon at the end of the book as:

“a monetary payment distributed at regular intervals to all those who enjoy citizenship and residency for a certain period of time, which allows a minumum dignity of life . . . It is paid to those of working age, for the period that goes from the end of obligatory schooling to pension age or death.”

Negri supports this as he sees the demand for it as “a refusal of work and of the wage relationship”. If introduced other than as some tinkering with the tax and benefits system it would indeed undermine the economic compulsion to go out and work for an employer; which of course (apart from its cost) is why it is never going to happen under capitalism. In any event, as a goal, it is a poor substitute for “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”.

Negri does, however, have a point when he criticises those who look only to the factory proletariat as the agent of social change. This is only a section of the working class properly so-called and, in the developed capitalist parts of the world, is now less than 50 percent of the workforce. But, in placing his hopes in those with knowledge skills involved in non-material work (the “cognitariat” as he calls them) he would seem to be making the same mistake of wanting to rely on a section only of the working class.

Surely the point is that social change has to be up to the class of wage and salary workers as a whole, not just one section. Or perhaps this is what Negri means by the “multitude”, which, if it is, comes across in English as a rather derogatory term to describe all those forced by economic necessity to sell their mental and physical energies for a wage or salary.

Adam Buick

Casino Capitalism: Inefficient and Irrational (2011)

From the November 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Even supporters of capitalism can see this – at least some of the time.

One of the trends of political reporting in recent years has been to announce the odds being given by bookies of a particular outcome of an election.  On the face of it, this makes a lot of sense.  Punters will use the information they have to hand to gauge the mood of the electorate and risk their money.  The fact that many of them do so separately should draw out the “wisdom of the crowd” and provide the best analysis short of the actual vote itself.  Of course, this face value isn’t the whole story:  candidates may try boosting themselves by encouraging supporters to bet on them; large-scale betting syndicates may skew the odds through their betting patterns; punters may follow the crowd and bet on the short odds, hoping for a win; some people may just place a flutter without caring if they win or lose. Which is why we don’t decide elections based on the bookies odds alone, and wait till the actual vote.

Some people, though, think that that is a good way to organise producing and distributing what we need.  There was an idea, with considerable traction in academic and official circles, called the Efficient Markets Hypothesis, which held, as a recent UN report puts it, ‘that all publicly available information is immediately reflected in prices. In its strong form, the EMH contends that even private information – available only to individual market participants – is reflected in the price through the effects of the transactions of the persons in possession of the information.’ (Link.). In short, it holds that market prices (particularly stock market prices) are always right, and we shouldn’t try and second guess the market.  Almost no-one, in the aftermath of the financial crisis, seriously puts this case forward any more – although a few bitter-enders maintain it was the state failing to leave it to markets that caused the crisis; and doubtless a new version will appear if the economy returns to steady growth.

The UN report, Price formation in financialized commodity markets: the role of information, delivers an academic coup de grace to that idea.  It analyses recent trends in food markets, with a view to explaining their apparent volatility.  It finds ‘market participants also make trading decisions based on factors that are totally unrelated to the respective commodity, such as portfolio considerations, or they may be following a trend.’  It explains this by identifying a difference between commodity markets (trying to profitably get goods to where they are needed) and financial investment (which is about maintaining a portfolio of investments and following a pattern of earnings, irrespective of the goods/outcomes involved).  When this latter predominates, then, they note, rational use of information goes out of the window:

‘In an environment of herd behaviour there are limits to arbitrage. Acting against the majority, even if justified by fundamentals, may result in large losses, often of borrowed money. It may therefore be rational for market participants to ignore their own information and follow the trend. This is what many financial players do by default, basing their trading decisions purely on the behaviour of price series (algorithmic trading), which can lead to a commodity price bubble.’  

That is, it becomes harmful to act on good information against the flow of the market.  A “weight of money” effect can come into play.  If, for example, an investor commits a large sum of money relative to the market, and then faces liquidity constraints. This may push market prices in the wrong direction. In particular, since many investors rely on computer programs to organise their trades, there is a risk of re-enforcing herd behaviour due to the fact that the software is following the same set of algorithms and programmed responses: like an evolutionary ecology lacking diversity, it may work well for a while, but a small change in the environment could see everyone killed off.  

A recent report by the UK Government Office for Science, entitled "The Future of Computer Trading in Financial Markets” identifies:

‘three main mechanisms that may lead to instability when financial markets involve significant proportions of CBT [Computer Based Trading]: nonlinear sensitivities to change (where small changes can have very big effects), incomplete information (where some agents in the market have more, or more accurate, knowledge than others), and internal “endogenous” risks based on feedback loops within the system.’ (Link.)  

They also, though, find that computer-based trading is more efficient than human trading.  That may be, as another study has shown, that human traders do not behave in a rational manner at all.  According to Der Spiegel a study at the University of St. Gallen has found traders behave in a reckless manner:  

‘the bankers weren’t aiming for higher winnings than their comparison group. Instead they were more interested in achieving a competitive advantage. Instead of taking a sober and businesslike approach to reaching the highest profit, “it was most important to the traders to get more than their opponents.(…) And they spent a lot of energy trying to damage their opponents.’ (Link.)

Rather than behaving like parts of a rational algorithm, they behave like primates in a status competition. In either case, whether it is computer or primate driven, the financial markets, according to the UN report, have expanded massively into the food production process.  Its authors speculate that this may be attributable to the 2000 financial crisis (the collapse of the dot.com bubble after the Asian Tigers wobble) as investors sought to find a new safer profitable place to put their money.  In other words, the real world need of human beings to eat became subsumed to a (virtual) game of profit making ever more divorced from reality.

The important thing about all these reports is the emphasis they put on the flow of information in the production process.  As the UN report notes:

‘There is ample information on physical commodity markets, but it is not easy to obtain in a systematic way. A number of sources provide the same information, but in different formats. It therefore takes time and expertise to find out which are the most useful, relevant and reliable sources of information required for a specific commodity. Even from a single source the multiplicity of information products can make it rather cumbersome to access the targeted information. The various sources of information include official sources, such as international organizations and study groups, organizations specializing in specific commodities or groups of commodities, and governments of countries which are key players in the commodity markets, such as Australia and the United States, as well as private sources. In many cases, even from official sources, the information is not publicly available and can be accessed only against payment.’

This, in part, illustrates what a simple idea socialism is: that that information about production and stocks will be opened up and consciously shared.  It doesn’t require complex mathematics, or the invention of the new way of doing things, but a framework allowing the opening up and provision of information currently hidden behind and distorted by the operations of the financial market and indeed of the whole market system.  The brains of mathematicians currently behind the computer trading programs could be put to use finding creative and useful ways of enabling the free information to find its way to the hands of those who need to organise producing and distributing what we need.  Socialism will not be the result of advances in computing, but it could certainly benefit.  Even aggressive bankers will see that they would benefit: after all, many of their jobs are now being mechanised away.  We can see to it that getting food for everyone isn’t a gamble. It’s what might be called the Efficient Non-Market Hypothesis.

Pik Smeet

Obituary: Eddie Critchfield (2007)

Obituary from the August 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Eddie Critchfield died, a few months short of his eightieth birthday, on June 18. He was suffering from a multiple failure of his vital organs – the result of heart disease, first diagnosed when he was 16, which had resulted from rheumatic fever brought on by spending his nights during the Blitz in the garden Anderson shelter.

Through a rigorous regime of nature cure he succeeded in controlling the disease so that he was able to lead a full and active life, which included a lot of hard work for Socialism. He joined the Ealing Branch of the Socialist Party in June 1947, having left the Labour Party when he realised that it offered nothing more than another way of running capitalism. Ealing was a large, vibrant branch, which needed all of Eddie’s talents for meticulous efficiency when he took over the job of branch secretary.

Alongside that work he also spoke on the party’s outdoor platform, he was a branch delegate at Annual Conferences and Autumn Delegate Meetings and he was an editorial member of the Socialist Standard Production Committee. For a time he wrote the monthly Passing Show column and contributed articles – for example on homosexual law reform and the first research to link smoking to lung and heart disease – to the Socialist Standard. He was, in fact, a more skilful and effective writer than he gave himself credit for.

In a Branch which took pride in its high sales of the Socialist Standard Eddie was a successful canvasser. A gifted mimic, he could have us rolling in our seats in the pub afterwards, with his acting the part of perplexed people he had asked, on their own doorstep, to consider a different way of looking at society and how it must be changed for the better. At the same time he built up a solid, enduring base of regular sales.

With age and illness he dropped out of Socialist activity, although from his hospital bed he would rage about capitalism and the cynicism of Blair and the other tricksters. He devoted much of his time to a local amateur dramatics group. A great many people, saddened by his death, remember him for his warmth and humanity.

The Right to be Homeless (2007)

 From the August 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

“A homeless man who argued that begging is a form of free speech – after he was arrested for asking a policeman for a dollar in a New York suburb – has won his case” (Scotsman, 1 June).

We trust then that this magnanimous, if overdue, change of heart in capitalist legislation is not restricted to the homeless and that, as Anatole France would have pointed out, the rich also may presumably be homeless and beg in the streets for a dollar.

Socialism is — on the face of it at least — attractive to many: the apparent principles of “fairness”, or looking after everyone in the community (rather just number one) have broad appeal of course. But that is often insufficient to outweigh what many consider to be the main downsides to socialism. Prime amongst the perceived disadvantages of a socialist society is the idea that socialism is an inefficient way to produce wealth. In contrast, the market system portrays itself as a dynamic, productive and creative mechanism. By incentivising the inventors, the entrepreneurs and the risk-takers (so the fairy-tale goes) capitalism liberates human beings to work harder and smarter, producing more wealth and more choice.

The only problem with this superficially-appealing narrative is that capitalism is not in fact geared to the production of wealth per se, but rather is tailored to the production of profit, a very different thing. What is the evidence for this, and why is it an important distinction?

On 11 July the new Prime Minister Gordon Brown unveiled plans to try and encourage the house-building sector to . . .  (wait for it) . . .  build more houses. Now you may think that housebuilders would need little encouragement to build houses. That after all is what they do – that’s what it says on the label. But apparently not. The UK homebuilding sector is already under investigation from the Office of Fair Trading because – bafflingly – they seem unable (or unwilling) to build sufficient homes.

Perhaps there is an innocent explanation for this. Are there maybe far too many houses in the UK for the number of people? Is it the case that the population of the UK all live in comfortable, spacious, well-heated and refurbished houses? Is there no demand for new housing?

Needless to say, this is not the case. Millions of houses are sub-standard in terms of structural safety, condition, dampness, insulation ratings, degree of weather tightness (REF). Some 2,000 people sleep rough each night in the UK and in Scotland alone there are 30,000 homeless “households” with 3,000 children and pregnant mothers housed in B&B temporary accommodation. House repossessions in the UK are rocketing, currently approaching 400 per day.

So what’s happened? Why has the market failed? Why has the magical driving force of demand not triggered increased supply in this sector?

The reason is that inside a market-based system of buying and selling, wealth is not produced to meet human needs of the entire population, but instead to meet the profit expectations of the minority who monopolise ownership and control of the means of producing wealth (in this case, the housebuilding employers). For many years now it has been in their interest to keep the brake on the rate of releases of houses to the market, as this helps keep the price up: better to make 30 percent profit selling one house at £200,000, than make 20 percent profit on two houses at £150,000. And of course every plot of land they build on is one less house they can sell in the future, and the housebuilders don’t see the price falling in years to come.

In the ideal theoretical market – beloved of the apologists of capitalism – this shouldn’t happen. But in the real world, the housebuilders are far from being independent economic agents, and can be more co-operative than competitive. This isn’t a one-off, peculiar to the housing market. In fact there isn’t a single market that is unaffected by this phenomenon. Despite the government bluster, there is little they can do to “correct” the market.

Capitalism liberates nothing. The market system itself creates nothing beyond profit and misery, and will routinely stifle or sacrifice productivity for profitability. The ideological claims for capitalism as being an efficient system just don’t stand up to any sort of examination, with endemic inefficiency and wastage inherent. And attempts of governments to “correct” or regulate the market are usually cosmetic, partial and powerless in the face of the iron law of profitability.

To return to the item at the start of this piece, the good news is that at least it would appear that the homeless are indeed now permitted (under Human Rights legislation) to beg. However the man in question (Eric Hoffstead) didn’t have much opportunity to celebrate his legal victory – apparently he was imprisoned for a separate trespassing charge. Maybe we now need to try and make trespassing a “human right”?

Brian Gardner

Cooking the Books: Going for Growth (2012)

The Cooking the Books column from the September 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

When Mervyn King announced on 8 July that the Bank of England was predicting zero growth for 2012, Chancellor George Osborne pledged that the government would now devote a 110 per cent effort to creating growth. But how?

Growth is defined as an increase in Gross National Product (GNP). This is made up of three things: business investment, government expenditure and consumer spending. So, in theory, growth could be brought about by increasing any of these. In practice, however, it can only come about through an increase in business investment. This is because this is what drives the capitalist economy, but it only takes place in the pursuit of profit. When it contracts or stagnates this is a sign that profitability has fallen. Growth won’t take place again till this is reversed.

When there is a slump the obvious solution seems to be to increase consumption by giving people more money to spend. Keynes wasn’t so naïve but he did provide an economic theory that justified doing this. So it is fair to say that the Keynesian solution to a slump is that the government should intervene to increase both its own spending and consumer demand.

When this was last tried in Britain by the Labour governments of the 1970s it didn’t work, but merely led to “stagflation”, i.e. rising prices but no growth. The then Labour Prime Minister, James Callaghan, had to confess at the 1976 Labour Party Conference:

“We used to think that you could just spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you, in all candour, that that option no longer exists and that in so far as it ever did exist, it only worked on each occasion since the war by injecting bigger doses of inflation into the economy, followed by higher levels of unemployment” (Times, 29 September 1976).

The fallacy behind this policy, still advocated by Labour left wingers and the Green Party, is that it assumes that capitalism is an economic system geared to meeting paying consumer demand whereas it is in fact an economic system geared to making profits to accumulate as capital. Profits are the key to growth not government and consumer demand.

In a slump there is a fall in consumer demand but this is a consequence of an increase in unemployment due to a fall in profitable investments. This is why government action to increase demand does not work. Only an improvement in profit prospects, leading to an increase in business investment, will bring about an inevitably gradual exit from a slump. Various things that happen in a slump help to bring this about. Lower wages, lower interest rates, a fall in the value of fixed assets and the elimination of unprofitable firms all help to restore profitability. So does a reduction in taxes. In fact, insofar as a government does not decrease its spending and so taxes to finance it, this can prolong a slump.

To apply Keynesian remedies in a slump could even make things worse. Not that the present government has any intention of doing this. They can pledge to “go for growth” as much as they like but unless profits recover there will be no growth.

World Food Resources . . . the Myth of Shortage (1977)

From the January 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Six years ago the Socialist Standard told its readers : “the world has, and has had for some time now, the natural, industrial and human resources to provide for the needs of all its people” (July 1970).

Yet this December, as usual, the bleeding-hearts business, big charities like War on Want, Oxfam, Help the Aged etc. will be appealing to you for cash to help feed the starving millions. Their ad-men will portray the usual appalling and pitiable near-skeletons of Asia and Africa, and advise you that a mere 25p will adequately feed a family for a week. Apart from advertising the evident failure of the soup- kitchen dole to solve the hunger problem, they are reminding us that capitalism can only try to alleviate, never eliminate hunger.

Many people still believe that hunger is caused today by over-population and that if there were fewer people in the world, then, and only then, could they be adequately fed. This is not so. In the first place, the resources and technology exist now to feed the world’s population many times over. Second, even if the population did decrease substantially, there would still be a hunger problem, since hunger like homelessness is essentially an economic problem, a poverty problem.

American food and agriculture experts, writing in the September issue of The Scientific American, stress again and again that there is no technical reason why we should not enormously increase food production. The factors which prevent or retard this increase are social, political and economic.

“There are two components to the solution of the food problem: increased production of food primarily in the developing countries, and widespread increases in family incomes, particularly among the poor . . . People can buy food if they have money, but hungry people do not have money—in the developing countries or in the U.S. or wherever else people are hungry.” (Sterling Wortman, Scientific American p.35)

Writing about American agriculture, which by means of high capital inputs has enormously increased the potential of its labour force, Earl O. Heady calculates: “If international organizations or a single world organization could establish institutions that would make added output from American agriculture available to the world’s hungry, and if the effort could he made economic for American farmers, the US could increase its agricultural output and exports by a substantial amount . . . The US has a considerable reserve of land that could be planted to crops if it were profitable to do so. The latest available census data show that in 1969 the nation had 422 million acres of cropland, of which only 333 million acres were devoted to crops: the remainder was given over to pasture or lay fallow. . . .  If just the unused cropland were now converted to crops, if water were utilized efficiently and if all proved new technologies were adopted, by 1985 the nation could fully meet all domestic demand and still increase its exports of grain by 183 per cent over the record average level between 1972 and 1974. Specifically, corn exports could be increased by 228 per cent, wheat exports by 57 per cent and soybean exports by 363 per cent”, (pp. 126-7, our italics).

The reason agricultural output is not increased substantially is basically an economic one. The hungry have no money to buy food at existing prices, so they do not constitute a market. Under capitalism food is a commodity and commodities are only produced when there is an effective economic demand. People feeling hungry is not the same thing as “economic demand for food”.

Finally, W. David Hopper concludes his assessment of agriculture in developing countries by asserting that: “the world’s food problem does not arise from any physical limitation on potential output or any danger of unduly stressing the ‘environment’. The limitations on abundance are to be found in the social and political structures of nations and in the economic relations among them. The unexploited global resource is there, between Cancer and Capricorn. The successful husbandry of that resource depends on the will and the actions of men” (p. 205).

In the last thirty years there have been two major developments in arable agriculture. First, the application of fertilizers and the development of pesticides, which have boosted yields, especially in conjunction with improved irrigation. Then, the “green revolution”, based on irrigation, fertilizers and the use of new, improved varieties of rice and wheat developed by plant-breeding establishments. This has resulted in phenomenal increases in yield.

However water-control requires huge capital investment maintained over a long period. Also fertilizers and pesticides are very expensive luxuries for Third World farmers. The small farmer—and in India 25 per cent of farmers have less than 5 acres of land, and even the landlords typically own only 10 acres, worked by three or four tenants and their families—finds he cannot afford the new seed varieties and continues to use the old varieties. Thus in Third World countries the poverty of the rural population retards the development of modern agricultural techniques, and at the same time their failure to use these techniques perpetuates their poverty.

Roger Revelle estimates the capital cost for developing modern techniques in India at around 1,000 dollars per hectare. From this he projects an estimate for Asia, Latin America and Africa over a 25-year period at more than 30 billion dollars per annum. Feeding the starving millions would require an enormous capital investment totalling more than 700 billion dollars. Too much, say the governments of the world.

But capitalism has neglected the enormous potential of Third World countries. Land, water and sunlight are there in abundance. But India and other Third World countries concentrated on the development of heavy industry. They built up the cities at the expense of the countryside. Capital was directed to steel, mining, engineering and consumer industries. And when domestic agriculture, starved of capital investment, failed to deliver the goods, the US were all too quick to give food aid.

This “aid” was probably more helpful to the donor country than to the recipients in the long term. The former were delighted to find an “economic demand” for grain which might otherwise have had to be disposed of less profitably (in silos, at the bottom of the sea or simply ploughed under). But the provision of these vast quantities of grain helped to depress the price of locally produced food. So the Third World farmers were unable to expect a high price in famine years to compensate for lower prices in other years. Thus dependence on food aid has acted to retard the development in India and other Third World countries of an indigenous agriculture based on a high and continued capital investment in water-control, fertilizer and improved seed varieties. The policy of dependence on North America’s bread-basket is in the interests of the industrial sector in the developing countries: keeping food cheap is one way of preventing wages from rising.

Thus the food problem in Third World countries derives from he conflict of interests between the industrial capitalists and the rural proprietors. The consequence is summed up by Hopper: “Keeping food cheap to appease urban consumers often leads to policies that destroy the economic incentive for modernizing farms . . . The food generosity of the industrial countries, whether in their own self-interest (disposing of food surpluses) or under the mantle of alleged distributive justice, has probably done more to sap the vitality of agricultural development in the developing world than any other single factor. Food aid not only has dulled the political will to develop agriculture but also, by augmenting domestic production with grain grown abroad, has kept local prices at levels that destroy incentives for indigenous farmers” (p. 203).

We can sum up the conclusions reached from studying the facts and figures presented in The Scientific American, briefly, as supporting the Socialist case that it is the capitalist economic system that prevents farmers from growing enough food for every man, woman and child on this planet. The land is there, much of it unused, capable of feeding more than twelve times the world’s present population. That is the estimate given by Robert S. Loomis on page 105.

Capitalism has developed all the productive techniques necessary for production for abundance. But the capitalist economic system can only produce in response to economic demand and the prospect of a profit is a sine qua non, in farming as in every other sphere of capitalist production. The farmers must have “incentives” — and Oxfam pictures of starving children do not amount to an incentive.

The begging bowl is not just a symbol of the charities: it is a symbol of the misery and want in many forms endured by the poor. It is the hallmark of the most productive economic system man has ever developed. The stark contrast between the starving millions on the one hand and the enormous potential for food production on the other hand emphasizes the need to end commodity production. We have developed social production, with global cooperation we can make use of the techniques for increasing food output. Socialism can make this possible: only Socialism can release our productive potential and make the begging bowl a museum curiosity.

Charmian Skelton

Obituary: W. Griffiths (1977)

Obituary from the March 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

We recently learned with regret of the death of this veteran member. S. Goldstein writes:

It came as a great shock to me. I had for some time thought that if a loyal and consistent comrade is needed in East London to help revitalize that area with Socialist propaganda. Griffiths is that person. Alas, our comrade died only three or four Sundays after I last spoke to him at the Hackney Library. He had borrowed two books on Marx and, on encountering me, showed them to me and displayed rapt attention to conversation about them.

Comrade Griffiths had joined the SPGB in 1929, about two years before I joined. We were both in the East London branch, and he became a member of Hackney branch later. I would run into him in all kinds of places — getting a bus from Hackney Baths, at Whipps Cross (he told me his sister lived nearby) and on Sunday mornings in Club Row market. He would invariably acquaint me with all that was going on, and he was sympathetic whenever I expressed personal difficulties to him. He was never falsch to me.

His genuineness arose not only from his character but from an absolute intellectual conviction that, the sneers of renegades notwithstanding, the party in which we met — the SPGB — was the only party for the working class. As long as I live I shall remember him with respect and affection.

Solomon Goldstein

It can be done! (1977)

Party News from the March 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the Westminster Branch social just before Christmas, the voice of the secretary boomed out above the convivial din: “A madman among us, finding we have Socialist Standards unsold this month, is going to put up the platform in Hyde Park on Christmas Day, Boxing Day and the day after, and has dragooned his two young sons as sellers”.

George II (not present at the social): “Mad, is he? I wish he would bite mein other generals”. Comrades, two young non-members sold 200 Socialist Standards. Food for thought?

L. E. Weidberg

Northern Propaganda Tour (1977)

Party News from the April 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

New Branch Formed

In the last week of February a group of London members toured West Yorkshire and Lancashire and, with the help of local members, staged five indoor meetings with great success.

The first two meetings were held in Bradford, at the University and the Textile Hall: the subjects were "Introducing the SPGB” and "Socialism Yes — Labour No!” There were good-sized audiences for both. At the second one several vociferous opponents from left-wing groups and the Labour Party were present. Our Central Organizer wrote in his report: “The way in which the speaker dealt with them left me in no doubt that this meeting was one of the finest I have ever attended.”

On the following days meetings were held in Bolton and at Keele University. Both roused considerable interest. We have several members in the Stoke and Keele area, and there are good prospects of a discussion group and further activity there.

The final meeting of the tour was at the Crown Hotel in Manchester. Because of the size of the audience, the landlord turned customers into another bar to provide a larger room. While it may be too early to start talking about the reconstitution of a branch in Manchester, members round the city are doing a lot of useful work. We look forward to hearing more from there before long.

It was a hectic five days, covering 800 miles, and a tonic to the members who went as well as the local members. The specially stimulating outcome is the formation of a new branch of the Party, to be known as the West Yorkshire Branch. Details of its meetings can be found on the Directory page; Socialist Standard readers in that area, take note!

Nationalism—an enemy of the workers (1977)

From the May 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

The nation state was created as the political unit for capitalism in a series of changes which began four or five hundred years ago. It was accompanied by the growth of national consciousness. People were half encouraged and half forced to identify themselves with the countries they lived in, not simply in a territorial sense but as “subjects”. The national myths appeared — Saint George and his ilk, the idea of special traditions and virtues which other countries did not have. In a remarkably short space of time each nation produced its exclusive dedication to “my country, right or wrong”, and has sustained it as an active force into the present day.

The overt symbols of nationalism — flags, slogans and silly songs — are by no means the only ones. Because it is made a general outlook, it intrudes in almost all fields and pervades the upbringing of the young. At random from boyhood can be recalled the cigarette cards which showed British wild flowers, birds and butterflies (as if foreigners were, rightly, denied such beauties); the Scout game called “British Bulldog” in which the players battered one another in increasing numbers (native durability and grit); the depiction in comic-books and school-books alike of other nations as “types” comic or villainous, or both. And the casual pejoratives incorporated in everyday speech—“double Dutch” for incomprehensibility, “French” for whatever smacked of indecency, “Chinese torture” for diabolical and unjustly-inflicted suffering.

If none of these is very sinister in itself, all produce a condition of mind. Moreover, the other nations all have their own equivalent versions. Each country has its popular account of history which would be startling to people who have learned the rival views: transposing victories and defeats and presenting saintly heroes as infamous rogues. A recent German work showed Queen Victoria not as a dotty old lady, which is sentimentality tolerable in Britain, but as a drunkard. The nearest thing to a foreign account of history that can be read in English is a Roman Catholic textbook, where a good many episodes appear altogether different.

The fiercest jingo nationalism today is to be seen in the new nations. In crude militaristic and patriotic preaching the Tory Party in Britain is almost outclassed by the Russian and Chinese governments; and their language is echoed in turn by the leaders of the “third world” countries. Clamouring for a place in the capitalist world, these new ruling classes vie for whatever gives prestige and is good for business. At the same time, they have to impress the natives with the importance of nationality: history is rewritten, “alien” defined and condemned.

The Social System
Before the nation-state, partisanship was related to small-scale economic interests. Wars were fought between cities, tribes and the proprietors of rival domains. The peasant population took part only to the extent that it was tempted or compelled to. The armies and mailed knights of the Middle Ages were mostly mercenaries — an outstanding example was the Janissaries of the Turkish Sultans: as youthful captives from Christian provinces they had no attachments to the Muslim empire, but they nevertheless provided its military strength for several centuries.

Capitalism has existed as a fully-developed system for two hundred years. Before that, for another two hundred years, the growing capitalist class struggled — consciously — towards political power. Commodity production forced the nation-state into being, on the lines of good-sized geographical units in which the powers of government were to legalize private ownership and ensure the freedom of the commodity. Capitalism means the ownership by a single class of all the means of producing and distributing wealth, and the directing of all activity to the single end of sale at a profit.

This was the end of barons, domain-holders and twopenny princes (though, development being uneven, some of them held on until the 1914-18 war). But the rise of capitalism meant also the creation of a vast single class of non-owners: the “free” working class, with its own commodity labour-power to sell, and indeed unable to survive as persons in any other way. On one hand the working class was (and remains) doomed to insecurity and varying degrees of poverty by the economic laws of capitalism. On the other, production for market in a world of nation-states has led inexorably to national and international crises and to wars on a different scale from any in previous history.

It is a world-wide system into which more and more regions and peoples have been drawn swiftly throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. In each one, that class division and the associated problems have been reproduced because they make the organic structure of capitalism. This is the fundamental issue in modern society — yet it is obscured by the banners of nationalism. It can be seen as a test for those who say they believe in Socialism. When the choice has to be made, do they declare for the working class or “the nation”? In all the wars of this century the world’s social democrats and “radicals” have chosen the latter without hesitation. In the present economic crisis they are all talking about getting “the country” out of trouble. It is logical, because they support capitalism.

Frauds of Nationalism
The Germans were hated and caricatured in Britain before 1914 because they were rivals in trade. Through nationalist eyes all other nations are different from “us” and actual or potential rivals. Every event is in some sense a contest, demonstrating that one’s own side is better than some or all of its rivals. “Our” country is superior to all the others in art, literature, sports, military power, inventiveness, the character and physical beauty of its inhabitants, climate, scenery and cooking—and must remain so. Plenty of working people hold this belief; “my country, right or wrong” was parodied by G. K. Chesterton as “my mother, drunk or sober”.

The political claims of nationalism build on this. They argue that the problems of workers in a given country will be solved, and a golden age for them begin, by recovering or enlarging the country’s supremacy. This is the promise of nationalist leaders in new countries, and is also being made by the Scots Nationalists with reference to the oilfields off the Scottish coast.

Unfortunately there is not a shred of evidence that this could be or has ever been so. In The Other America, published in Britain as a Penguin Special in 1963, Michael Harrington investigated the assumptions of Galbraith’s The Affluent Society. Using figures from the Bureau of Labour Statistics, he estimated that the poor—families with “inadequate housing, medicine, food and opportunity”—numbered between forty and fifty millions, or between 20 and 25 per cent of the population of the United States. “As technology has boomed, their share in prosperity has decreased.” The period when Britain was industrially and commercially supreme was also the time of Marx’s indictment of capitalism, of Engels' Condition of the Working Class, of horrifying reports by reformers like Chadwick and Booth.

Nationality is an accident, and national causes are frequently accidents too. In February this year The Guardian published reports on a possible “trade war” between the EEC and Japan. On 8th February it said the Japanese Prime Minister was “strongly inclined to draw parallels” with the 1930s, and went on: “Last week he gave warning that efforts to restrict Japan’s export flow could create the same chaotic conditions that led to World War Two. If there was a ‘trade war’, as he predicted, the blame would be with Britain and every other country contemplating limits on Japanese imports." It must have been surprising to many to learn that, if war with Germany had not broken out in 1939, war with Japan was on the cards.

A further example is Namibia, which is due to become an independent state in 1978. The present collection of tribes and ethnic groups are about to become Namibians; they will have a flag and a national anthem, and the nationalist “ours” will centre on diamonds—it is one of the richest parts of Africa in minerals.

Whose ?
“Ours” is the deceitful word in nationalist propaganda the world over. In a newly developed country, nationalism is the demand of native capitalists to exploit the workers and peasants lest somebody else should do it and have the profits. What kind of “ours” is being talked about? In Britain and other industrialized countries workers talk about “our” trade, “our” reserves, “our” jobs allegedly taken by immigrants. They are not. They are all at the disposal of those who own the means of living. The worker has no claim on them: he owns nothing but his labour-power.

The working class have no country. By persuading workers that they have a stake in “the nation”, capitalism obtains their support at critical times. What they should bear in mind is that the nation-state is the political institution of the capitalist system: its raison d'être is to keep the working class propertyless. Nationalism can do nothing for the workers except confirm or worsen their position. Pleasure in a locality or its culture has nothing to do with the matter; it is a reasonable sentiment on which nationalist fraud builds, but which capitalism will destroy without compunction.

There is a different affinity to recognize. This is the identity of interest of all those who live by selling their labour-power. The working class is worldwide, and as members of it become conscious of the nature of capitalist society and their position in it, they open the way to a different social organization based on common ownership. Just as capitalism has produced a world of nations in conflict, Socialism will mean the end of nationalities and frontiers—and classes. What will bring it into being is you thinking for yourself instead of letting them think for you.

Robert Barltop

Lab-Lib: A rabble (1977)

From the May 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is an old saying that if you lie down with a dog you get up with fleas. No doubt it has dawned on the leaders of the Liberal Party that the idea of projecting themselves as an alternative government to the Labourites and Tories is a non-starter. With thirteen MPs and a discredited minority government, their only way to power is through the side door.

With no ideas to put to the working class, the only alternative to a future in the political wilderness and possible extinction was to do a deal. But, such are the fortunes of opportunism and reformism, they could be cutting their own throats either way. The price they will inevitably pay for “dealing" will be to forfeit the phoney image they have built up over twenty or thirty years — that they had distinctive policies and independent ideas. For them to line up openly with one of the parties they have claimed to be so different from can only lose the support of those who had turned to them, having despaired of the other two.

In an effort to have his cake and eat it Mr. Steel, the Liberal leader, sought to pose as champion of the motorist and pledged himself to vote against Budget increases in petrol prices and road tax. He argued that these increases fell outside the arrangement, and as there had been no consultation on them the Liberals were free to vote against them. After the by-election massacre at Stetchford the motorist did not seem to matter so much. A more urgent need instantly asserted itself: avoiding a General Election, with the threat of annihilation. The great and courageous leader had to find a way out while still trying to sound plausible, at least to the gullible. So he discovered that the increases in motoring costs would not be voted on as a separate resolution in Parliament, but would be tied to other proposals; so it might be best to let the thirteen Liberals make up their own minds, and lead from behind.

The Labour Government are like drowning men desperately clutching at anything in the agony of their disastrous attempt at running capitalism. Having repeatedly declared against coalition, they turned to the Liberals to survive. The one-time “firebrand” of the Left, Michael Foot, will solemnly sit down each week in consultation with the Liberals to keep his mob in power a little longer, unless the whole thing blows up in their faces. Then they will blame each other and fail back on any feeble excuse to try to save their political hides. There is no expediency too shabby for any of them.

The IMG, WRP, IS and the CP, who urged workers to vote Labour and now go round muttering demands for “socialist policies”, get the policies of the Labour Party which they voted for. The policies which these Lefties hold to be Socialist are in fact just as useless and reformist as those of the Labour Party.

When Mr. Steel claims that his deal with the Government will mean no more nationalization in this session of Parliament, is he really silly enough to believe he is saving capitalism? Is he unaware that his own Party, when in power, carried out Acts of nationalization? He only displays his ignorance if he thinks a Labour Government represents any threat to capitalism, or that nationalization has anything to do with Socialism. It is a shame that questions like these never occur to people like Robin Day during those boring mock-interviews on television, like the one on polling day for Stetchford. But of course they would not keep their cushy jobs for long if they did.

Mrs. Thatcher and her Tory tribesmen can get as indignant as they like, but under Heath in 1974 they were quite willing to talk coalition with the Liberals. The readiness of the Liberals to co-operate with either of the “major” Parties, shows how little there is of fundamental difference between any of them. In fact, Steel said it is his belief that people “will find the artificial Party battles irrelevant to the problems of the day” (Guardian, 24th March). It is the parties that are irrelevant, Mr. Steel. The problems arise out of capitalist society, and you are all dedicated to its preservation.

For the Tories Mrs. Thatcher said: “We believe in capitalism and democracy”. What about the other combinations, Mrs. Thatcher? Capitalism and war? Capitalism and poverty? Capitalism and crises? Capitalism and unemployment? Even Callaghan said in the same report: “I would not like to guarantee that the decline in unemployment will continue in the next few months”. None of them can guarantee anything. But while the system lasts the misery and political trading it has always produced will continue.

Enoch Powell pledged not to bring the Labour Government down and abstained on the crucial vote of confidence. Callaghan and Co. had been just as prepared to deal with the Ulster Unionists as they were with the Liberals. Just to show that they all have the same priorities, seven Liberals voted against cuts in war potentials in the first vote after the deal.

The working class trust any of them at the expense of their own interests. Apart from war-time coalitions when Tories, Labourites and Liberals joined forces with “Communist” support to pull capitalism’s chestnuts out of the fire, there have been deals between the Labour Party and the Liberals from the very early days of the Labour Party. The 1924 Labour Government was voted into office on Liberal votes. As early as 1910 there were electoral “arrangements” between these two reformist Parties.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain has one objective, Socialism. This can only be achieved when a majority of the working class reject the squalid expediencies of opportunist politics.

Harry Baldwin

How we shall get Socialism (1977)

From the May 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Speaker! Do you seriously believe that your little party, just a few hundred, talking to this crowd in Hyde Park every Sunday, can bring about Socialism? And if it could, do you really imagine that the capitalists with the army, police etc. would allow you to do so?

★

Short answer : NO! we do not think that our small party will establish Socialism: the working class will — and YES! the capitalist class cannot prevent the working class establishing Socialism.

★

Long answer (explanation): The careful reader will observe that the question (or questions) contain a contradiction. If the small Socialist Party is the only threat to capitalism, the capitalists have nothing to worry about. But the questioner, having pre-supposed that the workers will never become Socialists, in the next breath is predicting what the capitalists will do when they have. Questioners and opponents frequently put questions in this mixed-up way.

Now the first question. To establish Socialism the majority of the electorate (who happen to be workers) have got to become Socialists. If they don’t, capitalism continues. If there is one lesson the last hundred years has taught it is, above all, that no “seizure of power”, “blind revolt” or General Strike can abolish capitalism.

The majority have got to break with social reform. This, for many workers, is quite difficult. The pioneers of Socialism, including Marx and Engels, could have had little idea of the potency of modern “social security”, which siphons off much working-class discontent and seriously retards the growth of class-consciousness. In spite of this, the fact remains that capitalism is a revolutionizing system: compelled by its very nature to organize, train and educate a revolutionary working class.

It is not true that rebellion only proceeds from destitution. On the contrary, Vance Packard in The Hidden Persuaders quotes a professor of sociology, Bernice Allen: “We have no proof that more material goods (cars, washing machines) has made anyone happier — in fact the evidence seems to point in the opposite direction’. In some cases, the more “prosperous” workers become, the more dissatisfied they are. In trying to buy off discontent the capitalist class is on a slippery slope with no return. In 1930 Franklin D. Roosevelt told the New York Bankers Guild: “We’ve got to give them bigger crumbs — to stop them taking over the table”.

How long it will take the workers in their millions to see through the reformist racket is impossible to say — except that, small though we may be, it partly depends on us. As with any idea, it has to be explained. Sheer disenchantment of itself leads nowhere but to smashing windows, rioting etc. Discontent is the rich soil of Socialist propaganda, but without the seed of Socialist theory — no new world will bloom.

It is the Socialist who provides the catalyst. It is the Socialist who makes precise the vision of a future society, to turn mere rebels into conscious revolutionaries. The Socialist transforms the miserable degrading requests of Claimants Unions for a few more pennies, or of trade unions for longer tea-breaks, into the dazzling vista of a new world. It is the Socialist who raises mere destruction of the old into construction of the new.

For the Socialist, whether many or few are immediately espousing the cause does not absolve him from the duty to put forward his proposition. The mere raising of it elevates public discussion above the saloon-bar level at which so many self-styled “experts” pitch their fallacious nostrums. “Whether we like it or not — and most of us don’t — recent events have forced us to take some interest in economics” said the Radio Times recently. Exactly! We think Socialist economics provides the answers, and to evade the responsibility of explaining it to our fellow-workers would be criminal.

Even so, this is no mere academic exercise but a matter of life and death — Socialist life or capitalist death. What the questioner does not grasp is the urgency of Socialism: without it, the crises and calamities of capitalism will continue inexorably.

As for the second part of the question: the colossal preponderance of the working class numerically today — its immense technical knowhow — and the operation of sophisticated modern productive processes — make the idea of attempts by rebellious capitalists ludicrous. What about the armed forces? They are 90 per cent. working class.

Next question!

Horatio.

SPGB Meetings (1977)

Party News from the May 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Cyril May is the sharp suited man in the middle of the picture.

Capitalism is . . . (1977)

From the June 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism is a torn garment.
A torn garment is shabby and ugly
And can no longer be worn with pride.
Good tailors don’t attempt to patch up
And match with similar cloth.
Torn garments must be discarded
And new ones produced.
You and I are the tailors of Socialism
We must discard Capitalism
That we may live with pride. 

Capitalism is a decayed wall.
A decayed wall is not safe.
Good builders don’t attempt to patch up
With new plaster on crumbling brick.
The decayed wall must be demolished
That a new wall may be built.
You and I are the builders of Socialism.
We must demolish Capitalism
That we may live in safety. 

                                                                Paul Breeze

50 Years Ago: Is a socialist policy applicable to America? (1977)

The 50 Years Ago column from the July 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

The widespread ignorance of class interests among workers in USA offers no permanent hindrance to our socialist policy. That ignorance is due to certain causes, and the lack of interest in revolutionary ideas amongst the masses is a phase which is true of every country for a time.

★ ★ ★

The comparatively recent industrial growth and commercial expansion of the USA offers one reason for the so-called ‘better conditions’ of labour. This is partly responsible for the lack of interest in social change amongst the workers there. This lack of interest, however, is not simply a reflex of ‘better’ conditions but a result of capitalist propaganda by press, priest and schoolmaster, which is more powerfully and carefully used in American life than perhaps any other country, to mould the working class millions to capitalist views. The extremely careful selection of and control over teachers in school and college to avoid any advanced political views being taught, is notorious.

★ ★ ★

The primitive and highly-organized and well-financed religious bodies of America still have a remarkably large influence in USA. These agencies of propaganda employed to keep the workers submissive, are effective because temporarily the conditions in the United States have not caused deep and lasting discontent.

(From an article by Adolph Kohn, Socialist Standard, July 1927.)