socialist-standard-2005-1213-sep

Socialist Standard September 20052

!epte%ber )**+

socialist standardwebsite/ www.worldsocialism.org

contents

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!ubs9ription @r<ers should be sent to Bhe ;ocialistCarty, DE Flapham Gigh;treet,London ;IJ KLM.

AatesNne year subscription OnormalrateP BC)Nne year subscriptionOlowQunwagedP BD8urope rate BC+ O5ir mailP4est of world B)) O5ir mailPRoluntary supporterssubscription B)* or more.FheSues payable to TBhe;ocialist Carty of Ureat Vritain’.

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Bhe neXt meeting of the8Xecutive Fommittee will beon ;aturday Z ;eptember atthe address below.Forrespondence should besent to the Ueneral ;ecretary.5ll articles, letters and noticeshould be sent to the editorialcommittee at/ Bhe ;ocialistCarty, DE Flapham Gigh street,London ;IJ KLM.telI*)* DJ)) KLCC eM%ailIspgbN2orl<so9ialis%Oorg

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Pre Qe Pll RapatistasS[reedom fighters or coffee manufacturers> Ciers Gobson looks at the?@A#cito&8a3atista&(2&Ci=2#aciDE&FacioEal9&better known as the ]apatistas.

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Qhy They Wroppe< the Ho%bs5rguably two of the greatest war crimes were the Giroshima andMagasaki atomic bombings. Vut did they really help end the war>

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aarb an< FhilosophyIhat did ârX have to say about philosophy> Ias he a philosopherat all> 5dam Vuick eXamines ârX’s philosophical stance.

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Aeligion an< the Xi%its of the !tateBhe capitalist state controls the economy, the workers and theideology of the market. Vut it can’t control religious mania.

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-API -s it Aeally the Un< of the ,Pr%e< !truggle?SIs the I45 hanging up its balaclavas for good or simply mothballingthem> 5nd what has the working class to gain from this>

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!ocialists are always cautious aboutthe term 'morality' because withinclass society it largely pertains towhat the ruling class have

established as acceptable and unacceptablebehaviour or actions or activities which areregarded as 'good' or 'bad'.

Nevertheless it is easy for Socialiststo empathise with the feeling of popularrevulsion that followed the acts of massmurder in London on 7 July. As alwayswhen guns and bombs are used as politicalweapons, the victims of the bombings inLondon were innocent and without anyinfluence over the agenda that motivatedthe murderers; they were simply peoplegoing to work.

The general feeling, from thegovernment, the Queen, the churches, themedia and the public at large is that it wasan outrage; that slaughtering innocentpeople simply because you oppose theactions of those you perceive to be theirleaders is a barbaric act that cannot bejustified by the idealism, ideology orpolitical or religious beliefs of thoseordering or carrying out such an act.

To raise the question of the war inIraq is in no way to imply sympathy withthe terrorists but it is reasonable to look atIraq and, indeed, the entire panoply ofviolence, armaments and warfare thatlatter-day capitalism generates.

The British Labour governmentlargely in obedience to the dictates of thepolitical kings of US capitalism - just like

those who ordered what is agreed werebarbaric acts in London - did co-operate inthe massive slaughter of tens of thousandsof innocent Iraqis who, rather thansupporting Saddam Hussein were,according to the Anglo-Americancoalition, the real victims of the dreadeddictator. The result of both actions, thoughnot the numbers of victims, was identical:innocent people who were wholly bereft ofany power or influence to concede to thedemands of those ordering the killingswere wantonly slaughtered.

All forms of warfare - and terrorismis a form of warfare - present the threat ofdeath to the participants whether they areprofessionals (people prepared to kill incircumstances determined by theiremployers) or serious amateurs (peopleprepared to kill for a specific cause). Ineither circumstance risk to life comeseasier to those who believe that life onEarth is a mere prelude to a life hereafter.It is a notion that gives solace to believers;making them less anxious to question theirrole in a situation that defeats rationalunderstanding. That is why governmentspromote irrational religious belief for theirarmed forces and why they providefacilities for religious rituals, make priestsand parsons officers and pay their salaries.

For the terrorist the most pressingincentive is belief in the virtue of theircause. The man or woman facing thedreadful hazards associated with terrorismhas to be morally reinforced with the idea

that their god is on their side. God asAllah, as the Great Jehovah, or whateverother identity he takes on in any of themyriad of religious beliefs, is always sternand demanding and his strictures arealways accommodating to the belligerenceengendered by the exclusivity of faith.God is indeed a vital weapon in thepsychological make-up of the terrorist; aguarantee that sacrifice will be rewardedwith eternal happiness.

A verse of an old Irish rebel songdevoted to the IRA goes:

'Upon their shield, a stainless field,the virtues blazoned bright,

'With temperance, and purity andtruth and honour dight;

'So now they stand at God's righthand Who framed their dauntless way,

'Who taught them and Who broughtthem the glory of the day!'

For someone not utterly drugged onthe belief of the inseparability of god andcause, the idea of committing suicide inorder to take the lives of other anonymouspeople is too utterly sick forcontemplation. Allah, like the ChristianGod and his rivals, is a demanding andcruel god and without him and theimagined comfort of eternal salvation, it ishard to imagine the foul practice of suicidebombing or other sort of bombing existing.

Socialist Standard September 2005 3

Aeligion an< Terroris%

UK BRANCHES &CONTACTS

LONDONCentral London branch.Corres:Richard Botterill, 21 AshwellPark, Harpenden, Herts AL5 5SG. Tel: 01582 764929email:[email protected] & 4th Mon. 7.30. Carpenters Arms,Seymour Place, W1 (near Marble Arch) Enfield and Haringey branch. Tues.8pm. Angel Community Centre,Raynham Rd, NI8. Corres: 17 DorsetRoad, N22 7SL.email:[email protected] London branch. 1st Mon.7.45pm. Head Office. 52 ClaphamHigh St, SW4 7UN. Tel: 020 76223811West London branch. 1st & 3rdTues.8pm, Chiswick Town Hall,Heathfield Terrace (Corner SuttonCourt Rd), W4. Corres: 51 GayfordRoad, London W12 9BYPimlico. C. Trinder, 24 Greenwood Ct,155 Cambridge Street, SW1 4VQ. Tel: 020 7834 8186

MIDLANDSBirmingham branch. Thur. 8pm, TheSquare Peg, Corporation Street. Tel:Ron Cook, 0121 533 1712

NORTHEASTNortheast branch. Corres: JohnBissett, 10 Scarborough Parade,Hebburn, Tyne & Wear, NE31 2AL. Tel: 0191 422 6915 email:[email protected]

NORTHWESTLancaster branch. P. Shannon, 71Coniston Road, Lancaster LA1 3NW.

email: [email protected] branch. Paul Bennett, 6Burleigh Mews, Hardy Lane, M217LB.Tel: 0161 860 7189Bolton. Tel: H. McLaughlin.01204 844589Cumbria. Brendan Cummings, 19Queen St, Millom, Cumbria LA18 4BGRochdale. Tel: R. Chadwick. 01706 522365Southeast Manchester. Enquiries:Blanche Preston, 68 Fountains Road,M32 9PH

YORKSHIREHuddersfield. Richard Rainferd, 28Armitage Rd, Armitage Bridge,Huddersfield, West Yorks, HD4 7DPHull. Keith Scholey. Tel: 01482 44651Skipton. R Cooper, 1 Caxton Garth,Threshfield, Skipton BD23 5EZ. Tel: 01756 752621

SOUTH/SOUTHEAST/SOUTHWESTBournemouth and East Dorset. PaulHannam, 12 Kestrel Close, Upton,Poole BH16 5RP. Tel: 01202 632769Brighton. Corres: c/o 52 ClaphamHigh Street, London SW4 7UNBristol. Shane Roberts, 86 High Street,Bristol BS5 6DN. Tel: 0117 9511199Cambridge. Andrew Westley, 10Marksby Close, Duxford, CambridgeCB2 4RS. Tel: 01223 570292Canterbury. Rob Cox, 4 StanhopeRoad, Deal, Kent, CT14 6ABLuton. Nick White, 59 HeywoodDrive, LU2 7LPRedruth. Harry Sowden, 5 ClarenceVillas, Redruth, Cornwall, TR15 1PB.Tel: 01209 219293

NORTHERN IRELANDBelfast. R. Montague, 151 CavehillRoad, BT15 1BL. Tel: 02890 586799

SCOTLANDEdinburgh branch.1st Thur. 8-9pm.The Quaker Hall, Victoria Terrace(above Victoria Street), Edinburgh. J. Moir. Tel: 0131 440 [email protected] website:http://geocities.com/edinburghbranch/Glasgow branch. 3rd Wednesday ofeach month at 8pm in CommunityCentral Halls, 304 Maryhill Road,Glasgow. Richard Donnelly, 112Napiershall Street, Glasgow G20 6HT.Tel: 0141 5794109 Email:[email protected]: D. Trainer, 21 Manse Street,Salcoats, KA21 5AA. Tel: 01294469994. [email protected]. Ian Ratcliffe, 16 Birkhall Ave,Wormit, Newport-on-Tay, DD6 8PX.Tel: 01328 541643West Lothian. 2nd and 4th Weds inmonth, 7.30-9.30. LanthornCommunity Centre, Kennilworth Rise,Dedridge, Livingston. Corres: MattCulbert, 53 Falcon Brae, Ladywell,Livingston, West Lothian, EH5 6UW.Tel: 01506 462359Email: [email protected]

WALESSwansea branch. 2nd Mon, 7.30pm,Unitarian Church, High Street. Corres:Geoffrey Williams, 19 Baptist WellStreet, Waun Wen, Swansea SA1 6FB.Tel: 01792 643624Cardiff and District. John James, 67Romilly Park Road, Barry CF62 6RR.Tel: 01446 405636

INTERNATIONAL CONTACTSAFRICAGambia. World of Free Access. c/o 21Dobson St, Benjul.Kenya. Patrick Ndege, PO Box 56428,NairobiUganda. Socialist Club, PO Box 217,Kabale. Email:[email protected]. Mandia Ntshakala, PO Box981, Manzini

EUROPEDenmark. Graham Taylor, Spobjervej173, DK-8220, Brabrand.Germany. Norbert. Email:[email protected] Miller. Email:[email protected]. Robert Stafford. Email:[email protected]

COMPANION PARTIESOVERSEASWorld Socialist Party of Australia.P. O. Box 1266 North Richmond 3121,Victoria, Australia.. Email:[email protected] Party of Canada/PartiSocialiste du Canada. Box 4280,Victoria B.C. V8X 3X8 Canada. Email:[email protected] Socialist Party (New Zealand)P.O. Box 1929, Auckland, NI, NewZealand. Email:[email protected] World Socialist Party of the UnitedStates P.O. Box 440247, Boston, MA02144 USA. Email:[email protected]

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!o9ialist AobotsOOOIn Rossum's Universal Robots (1921), the best workers are thecheapest ones with the fewest needs, who know only how towork, have no humanity, remember everything but think ofnothing new. In fact, they are Robots, humanoids geneticallyengineered for a life of drudgery, as the Czech word'robota' indicates. Although the concept of artificialhumans goes back much further than Capak's play,it is since his work that ideas of mechanical menand women created to serve humanity have reallytaken off, and increasingly are no longerrestricted to film, TV and literature.

Modern robots, however, have little incommon with Capak's. Bolted to the floor, they arecomputer-controlled mechanical arms capableof such tasks as painting, wedling, riveting,loading and stacking, and are seen inincreasing numbers throughout themanufacturing industry. Whether they shouldbe classed as robots is debatable, for they failutterly to resemble what we commonlyunderstand to be a robot; that is, amechanical human.

Such robots have been indevelopment for some time,particularly in Japan. ASIMO,for example, is Honda's 4-foottall humanoid robot which canwalk, run, climb stairs and respond tofifty different Japanese phrases. Sony's QRIO canconnect wirelessly to the internet and get up should itfall. And Toyota's 'Partner' robot can inflate itsmechanical lungs, purse its artificial lips and playthe trumpet (The Economist Technology 6uarter,March 12th 2005). But that's about all they cando, and as yet are a very long way from theC3POs, Datas, and Terminators of film and TV.

As we move toward socialism, and astechnology advances, it is not unlikely that asentient, humanoid robot capable of speech,thought, mobility, and invested with something

of a personality(to easecommunicationwith it and reinforce its'humanoid'characteristics), willbe created, shouldpresent trendscontinue. However,they could present

something of a problem for socialism, for in a society where allpeople are considered equal, what relationship will we have withartificial people? Will organic humans be more equal thaninorganic ones?

Naturally, science-fiction has much to say on this subject.Isaac Asimov's robots, featured in many of his short stories and

novels, are programmed to obediently serve humanity, evenanswering 'master' to humans, who often address them as

'boy'. This slave class stands in complete contrast to theruling class which robots have evolved to become inPhilip K Dick's dystopian futures, and are so lifelike that

they cannot be distinguished from human beings.Indeed, there are certain strands of evolutionarytheory which suggest that inorganic life willachieve superiority over organic life so that themachine - if machine is the right word - mayindeed become the dominant life form.

Although Marx, in The Poverty ofPhilosophy, noted that machinery 'is intended to

cheapen commodities' and 'is a means forproducing surplus value', the exploratory

dynamic of science is not alwayssuppressed by the confines andlimitations of capitalism andhumanoid robots may continue tobe developed into socialism, even

though they are hugely expensiveand as yet have no practical

applications. However, it's unlikelythat socialists would want a servant,

machine or otherwise, to see to theirneeds, for it would clearly necessitate a

master and servant relationship. And ifrobots were programmed with a

consciousness, as well as the capacity todisplay emotive behaviour, we can assume it

would be a socialist consciousness and woulddoubtless object to its servitude. If sentient humanoid

robots are going to work at all, it must be alongside usand not for us. On the other hand, we may altogether

abandon as unethical the project of replicating human life inmachine form and concentrate solely on the non-humanoidform of robot.

It seems unlikely, though, that such machines couldever perform tasks with the dexterity, creativity and joy ofhuman beings, and it may be counter-productive to investthe huge amounts of time and resources necessary tocreate phenomenally complex machines if they can only

replicate the mundane work of Capak's originals. For asocialist society, humanoid robots may be breathtakingexamples of human ingenuity, but little more.

OOOan< Aobo9hefsLife hectic> Boo much stress> Fan_t bebothered to cook> ùst go to yourdomestic organic recycler, tap in thecode for _chicken and chips_, and theappropriate molecules are eXtracted fromyour underground organic waste vaultOughP and reassembled into piping hotrosemaryaflavoured poule et fritesOyummyP. Ihat_s even better, as this_chicken_ never lived to suffer in the firstplace, vegetarians might like it too. [arafetched> Iell, bust a bit. Bhis kind ofmolecular assembly, though theoreticallypossible, is several horicons beyond thecurrent nanotechnology horicon, and atpresent only eXists as the fabulous _foodreplicator_ seen on the ;tarship8nterprise.

Iith the Vush administration_sdetermination to get humans back intospace and on their way to ârs via theInternational ;pace ;tation, one offshoot

technologyis eXploring

ways to make the food available toastronauts more interesting and variedOF2G&Sci2Etist, 5ugust EdP. ;ince foodingredients in space have to have a longshelfalife without refrigeration, thechallenge is to produce variety out of alimited repertoire. Bhe new idea is todevise a mathematical language or_grammar_ to describe different foods, andthen program a virtual food machine tosynthesise or simulate these foods out ofraw ingredients. Ihile the feasibility ofmaking such a machine compact enoughfor space flight is doubtful, with norestriction on sice or number ofingredients the landabased potential isenormous. Bhe machine could beprogrammed to develop its own recipes,perhaps by an evolutionary process, sothat unthinkably interesting new foodscould be born.

Cathfinders may sometimes givethe impression that socialism will always

take advantage of any labourasavingtechnology that capitalism happens tocome up with, but in this particular case itmay well do the opposite. Ihile the driveto automate tedious, arduous ordangerous work is clearly worthwhile,what is more Suestionable is whether wewould ever want to automate enboyablesocial practices. 8ven if a machine couldcome up with a recipe we never thoughtof, would it be worth it> In capitalism,where cutathroat competition makes thebuck more important than the bucc,speed, innovation and output are whatmatter. Fapitalism is always ruining thefun in everything, so that people begin toperceive almost any creative activity asdreary work to be avoided, or given tomachines. In socialism, with its conflationof work and play at the centre of thesocial ethic, there will be some thingspeople will always prefer to dothemselves, and for each other, withoutthe robots taking over. ;eX is definitelyone. âybe cooking is another.

Asimo - (ust wants to beloved

3RIO - more ornament than use at present


Ubtre%e >ie2sDear EditorsI was not impressed with your card handed tome on the march in Edinburgh last month[July].

Y o u rc o n n e c t i o nMake PovertyHistory withC a p i t a l i s mwas in verybad taste and Iconsider it a

disgrace. I am aware of the shortcomings ofthe present trading system and will continueto campaign for the aims of the Trade JusticeMovement of which I am a member locally.However I do not want to be associated withyour extreme views or the way you carry outyour activities.PHIL BARLOW, NOTTINGHAM

Qorl< proble%sDear Editors,Many problems are faced today mostespecially in economical and politicalspheres of life. For instance, wars, workers'strikes, corruption, riots, and many others.These most happen in developing countriesand some few developed countries and theinfluence comes direct from world powers.

The selfish ideas of the world powers,being hidden by these powers, are the rootcause of the world atrocities in pretext thatthey are fighting terrorism, endingcolonialism, fighting dictatorship amongother decisive, political and economic selfishideas.

It is a great challenge for all socialiststo pronounce and advocate for socialistprinciples without fear or frustration fromselfish politicians so that we come to save theworld from the ongoing atrocities escalatingfrom selfishness of those who only look forways of getting richer and richer at theexpense of the majority. JOSEPH BALIKUDDEMBE, KAMPALA,Uganda

!o9ialis%; s9ientifi9 andhu%anisti9Dear EditorsSince January the Pathfinders page has beena valuable addition to the Socialist Standard.In discussing socialism it recognises that weneed to be consciously working forsomething, not simply against something.

In July I argued against the idea thatvoting and democracy would be significantlyadvanced by means of new technology.After reading the August Pathfinders Irealise that my questioning of newtechnology developed within capitalism goesdeeper than that. It is a matter of someinterpretations of scientific socialismfocusing on things and humanistic socialism(as I see it) focusing on people. Don't get mewrong - I'm not against scientific socialism.I just think that Pathfinders puts too muchemphasis on things and not enough onpeople.

"If capitalism fed, clothed and lookedafter its people in peace and withoutcoercion, socialism would not be disprovedbut it would be unnecessary." There is noevidence that capitalism can be changed toadequately feed and clothe all the world'spopulation without coercion. So the ideathat it can do these things remains a doubtfulhypothesis. But even if capitalism couldchange its spots in the ways outlined, wouldthat be the end of the socialist campaign forsystem change? I think not. Socialism is notabout changes to capitalism - it is aboutreplacing capitalism with another system. Itis about a world society based on giving andtaking, not onbuying and selling.

". . . the ability to micro-produce withminimal waste and distribution costs remainsone of the most exciting innovations socialistsociety could possibly inherit." Pathfinders'fire is obviously lit by socialist methods ofproducing and distributing things. My fire islit by the prospect of socialist relationsbetween people (which will, of course, leadto changes in production, distribution, andmuch else). STAN PARKER, LONDON N3.

Canne< laughterDear Editors,Some people, including some socialists,used to get quite irritated about the way thatrecorded laughter was inserted into, firstradio, then television, shows that wentunder the generic heading of comedy. Butwe have slowly got used to this feature ofmodern life in capitalist society. It is almostuniversal now. It is applied to qualitycomedy and poor comedy; those with realaudiences and those with no possibility ofan audience at all in the location of theaction. Like antidepressant drugs, cannedlaughter is prescribed for nearly everybody.Because, let's face it, much of the time, ifyou didn't laugh, you'd cry.

Many aspects of living in thisincreasingly dysfunctional world society aremoving in the same direction. In Japan, aswell as North America and Europe shoppinghas become the diversionary avenue ofseeking feel-good factors. Clothes, to makeus feel good about our appearance; varioustypes of car, to make us comfortable aboutour status among our neighbours; healthfoods, to make us feel healthy; exotic foodsto make us feel opulent; gyms, to make usfeel confident or even superior about ourphysical fitness and sexual attractiveness.Houses, gardens, kitchens, etc., etc. Ourelectronic gadgetry, from mobile phonesand digital cameras to MP3 recorders andplayers, offer us more power to do things wehadn't even thought of and probably willnever try.

The planet is being pillaged, plunderedand polluted to make commodities for us tobuy, partly because we need them andcapital must have the flow of profit, butincreasingly in the effort to obliterate ourbasic hunger for freedom, the one thing wecannot have. Like canned laughter, thetemporary lift we get from commoditygratification is artificial, false. It hides abad joke.RON COOK, WEST BROMWICH

0.tt.rs

5

The news that the 2012 Olympic Gameshad been awarded to London sent theStock Exchange Index up to a three-yearhigh - the biggest gains in share price

were for a company that specialises in wiringsports stadia and other landmark attractions.Clearly many companies hope for an economicbonanza, especially those involved inconstruction and the hotel industry. Staging thegames may be enormously expensive, but somefirms at least will make an awful lot of money out of it. TheOlympics, after all, are only in passing about sport; they are alsoabout nationalism and, primarily, profits.

Only a small part of the income will come from ticket sales - theoverwhelming majority is from the sale of broadcasting rights andcorporate sponsorship. So important is this last point that companieswho aren't official sponsors are likely to be banned from associatingthemselves with the games in any way (Evening Standard 7 July).The government will guide an Olympics Bill through parliament,designed among other things to prevent 'ambush advertising', wherecompanies pass themselves off as somehow linked to the games,whether as sponsors or not. However ludicrous this sounds, it's notunique. The 2003 cricket World Cup in South Africa was sponsoredby Pepsi, and spectators drinking Coca-Cola were ejected from

venues; moreover, this was sanctioned by newmarketing laws introduced by the government. (InNo Logo Naomi Klein mentions an American highschool which held an official Coke Day with lotsof promotional activities, but where one studentwas suspended for going to school in a T-shirt witha Pepsi logo.) At the 2000 Olympics in Sydney,companies had to pay to use any kind of Olympicname or logo (including some that had beenestablished for years under the name of 'Olympic').

One of the principles of capitalism is that ownership ofsomething gives you exclusive rights over its use, including whether,and how, you allow others to have access to it. This applies not justto physical things such as land, oil, rivers and factories but also toideas and inventions - hence the development of patents andprotection for 'intellectual property', and the clamping down oncounterfeit and imitation goods. And, as we can now see, it also holdsfor particular names and logos, and for advertising space.

The International Olympic Committee jealously guards itscontrol over the Olympic name and advertising at the games venues.Companies who pay hefty fees for sponsorship buy the 'right' toadvertise and sell their products, to the exclusion of any directcompetitors. Just as football stadia are now named after corporations and products such as Reebok and Walkers' Crisps, and clubs do their

This @ne Qill Aun an< Aun

continued on page 18

Socialist Standard ASeptember 2005u056

The leadership of Oglaigh nah'Eireann has formally ordered anend to the armed campaign. This willtake effect from 4pm this afternoon.

All IRA units have been ordered to dumparms" (Extract from IRA statement of 28July)

So the IRA has given up the gun forthe ballot box - but not for the first time.

In 1956 it was reluctantly pushed byits young activists to begin a 'BorderCampaign'. Within a few months thecampaign had deteriorated into cuttingdown a few telegraph poles and issuinggrandiose statements about the activities oftheir commandos. Away from the borderbetween Northern Ireland and the Republicthis new phase of the interminable 'troubles'was hardly noticed. Everybody but the IRAknew their campaign was going nowhere.Internment, both in the north and in thesouth, emaciated the movement andinevitably internal disputes in theinternment camps began to fester among thevolunteers.

It took the IRA's Army Council fivemore years before it announced the formaltermination of the Border Campaign but atlast, in 1962, Oglaith na hEireann, the IrishRepublican Army, issued what was as nearas possible a notice of surrender. It admittedthat it had not achieved the necessary

support from the nationalist (Catholic)community in Northern Ireland; in fact itcastigated the nationalists claiming that theyhad sold 'their heritage for a mess ofpottage' - a reference to the scheme ofwelfare capitalism introduced in Britainafter the war and extended to NorthernIreland.

Henceforth, the IRA was taking thegun out of Irish politics - the IRAspokesperson, the legendary 'P O'Neill',actually said that - and would confine itsactivities to political campaigns on socialissues.

Behind the scenes a coterie ofLeninists had defeated the death-or-gloryboys of traditional Republicanism and tookcontrol of the IRA's Army Council. Thiselement saw the IRA as the nucleus of apolitical movement that would use theatrocious political and social conditions inthe North as a catalyst for uniting workerswho traditionally opposed one another onreligious grounds. The Rosary brigade,those for whom republicanism andCatholicism were synonymous terms, wereappalled by this 'rank communism' and leftthe movement.

The IRA then transformed itself into'Republican Clubs' in furtherance of itsplans. Up to then, the Unionist governmenthad claimed to accept the right of

republicans to use constitutional means toachieve a united Ireland. Such a claim didnot represent a political threat to Unionism,which, at the birth of the state in 1921, hadhelped demographically tailor the territoryof Northern Ireland to ensure that they had atwo-to-one majority based on the religioustopography of the six north-eastern countiesof the ancient Province of Ulster. Despitethis guarantee, they immediately banned theRepublican Clubs.

Traditionally, the IRA had based itsclaim to use physical force on the results ofthe elections of 1918 which was the lastgeneral election held in Ireland before thecountry was arbitrarily divided by theBritish government. Sinn Fein, the IRA'spolitical wing, won an overall majority inthat election and established the first DailEireann which was effectively banned bythe British.

!ib 9ountiesA brutal guerrilla war ensued during whichthe Westminster politicians showed thatthey were the 'moral' equal of those theycalled terrorists by recruiting mercenarieswho terrorised the populace in an effort tofrighten support away from the IRA. Thetactic had the reverse effect but eventually,as now, British ministers sat down with the'terrorists'. Under threat, an unsatisfactory

-API Is it 4eally the 8nd of eBhe 5rmed ;trugglee>

7Socialist Standard September 2005

peace deal was negotiated which dividedIreland into the 26-county Irish Free Stateand the 6-county state of Northern Ireland.

This 'solution' split the IRA andresulted in a bloody civil war between FreeState forces - armed by the British - and arump of the IRA who were dubbed'Irregulars'. The latter, the ideologicalantecedents of the present Provisional IRA,were defeated and they and their followersglumly pronounced that both the newgovernments on the Island of Ireland were'illegal' and a betrayal of the holy grail of'The Republic' as proclaimed by the new-born IRA in the insurrection of 1916. DailEireann, the legend went, had transferred itsexecutive authority to the Army Council ofthe IRA and, thenceforth, any groupclaiming to be the rightful heirs of the 1916Declaration of the Republic couldgrandiosely claim to be the de factogovernment of Ireland.

The political leader and, then, icon ofthe defeated Irregulars was Eamon DeValera. Despite being the main architect ofthe politics that resulted in the Civil War'Dev', as he was known, was a pragmaticpolitician who realised the absurdity offurther military adventures against the FreeState. In 1926 he formed a new politicalparty, Fianna Fail, to challenge the party ingovernment, Cumann na nGaedheal (later,as now, Fine Gael) and in 1932 Fianna Failwon an outright victory at a general electionand De Valera became Taoiseach. It was abad day for later incarnations of the IRA,for despite having created the genre ofdissident Republicans, Dev, who held poweruntil 1948, proved a bitter, even vicious,enemy of the IRA.

The %o<ern -APIt is important to take this brief look back atthe history of the IRA because it raises animportant question. Following the Civil Warin 1922, the split within the movement andthen the desertion of De Valera, theorganisation never regained any realpolitical influence in Ireland until 1970 andthe establishment of yet another breakawaymovement, the Provisional IRA.

The IRA admitted in 1962 that theNorthern Catholic nationalists had notsupported its brief, inglorious 'bordercampaign' but what were the new materialconditions that brought about generalCatholic support for the Provisional IRAafter 1970? And what lessons may it havefor the future, both in Northern Ireland andin Great Britain which is now facing aterrorist threat of an even more menacingkind?

The IRA's 1962 decision to pursue aconstitutional campaign based on socialissues paradoxically fused with an aspect ofthe new mood of northern nationalists whohad earlier rejected the IRA. Generally, afterthe war and the benefits of some UK socialreforms, nationalists were becomingincreasingly reconciled to acceptance of thenorthern state. In 1965 Britain and theRepublic of Ireland signed a Free TradeAgreement and after this the few nationalistpoliticians in the Northern Irelandparliament at Stormont accepted the role(and the salaries) of Her Majesty'sOpposition. But, if they were going to beloyal then they wanted the apparatus ofreligious discrimination and vote-rigging tobe dismantled.

What happened was that theRepublicans managed to tap into this mood.

Unionist politicians and fascist-type bigotslike the hot-gospeller Ian Paisley, were toclaim that the subsequent Northern IrelandCivil Rights Movement was a creature ofthe IRA but it wasn't this simple; in fact itwas established by a younger, more activegenre of nationalists, products of the 1944British Education Acts, and it resulted in acoalescing of anti-Unionist factionsincluding the IRA in its Republican Clubsincarnation.

Taking its cue from the AmericanCivil Rights campaign, the new movementadopted the name Northern Ireland CivilRights Association (NICRA) and proceededto use the same tactics of masseddemonstrations and protests in pursuit of itsdemands. The Unionist Prime Minister,Captain Terence O'Neill, was not averse togranting the basic demands of the NICRAand had he been able to do so it is likelythat Catholic nationalist anger would havebeen defused and the violence of thefollowing thirty years avoided but Paisleywas rousing old anti-Catholic bigotries inthe unionist community - and, incidentally,using that bigotry to forge a political career

that would bring rewards well beyond hismodest Bible-thumping talents.

Faced with government bans, NICRAturned to civil disobedience and thegovernment ordered the armed police,which the Unionists had traditionally usedas their private army, to use force against'illegal' demonstrations. Television picturesshowing the police (RUC) attacking non-violent marchers were flashed around theworld much to the discomfort of the Britishgovernment which was the ultimateauthority in Northern Ireland.

Events were hurrying towards a bittersectarian pogrom. Protestant loyalists,assisted by the B Specials (an exclusivelyProtestant paramilitary auxiliary policeforce) torched Catholic homes; some ex-IRA men went to the Dublin leadership ofthe IRA to seek arms to defend the Catholicghettoes in Belfast and Derry and were toldthat IRA arms would not be made availablefor sectarian warfare. In Belfast, Republicandissidents were appalled at this response;the 'communist' leadership was denouncedby much of the rank-and-file and theProvisional IRA was born, leaving twoIRA's -the Official IRA and the ProvisionalIRA, both claiming to be the executive heirsof the only legitimate Dial Eireann. ExtremeCatholic conservatives within the Irishgovernment, fearful of the consequences of'communist' influences, helped to procurearms for the new PIRA.

Fa2ns in a ga%eThe rest is the story of the brutal conflictthat became Northern Ireland's 'Dirty War'.Now the IRA is standing down its footsoldiers. There were three sides to the war:the British Army/RUC, the Provisional IRAand the various Protestant paramilitaryorganisations. As a first step in accounting,we can say that none can claim victory. It isalways the working class that make up thepawns in armies, legal and illegal, and theend of a war never brings them victory. Theother thousands who died were just theinnocent victims of those who were at war.

Ironically, Paisley's strident anti-Catholicism played a major role ingalvanising the Catholics into openrebellion. 'No truck with Dublin' has beenhis war cry but his hard-line bigotry hasnow brought about a situation of virtualjoint authority between London and Dublinin the affairs of Northern Ireland. Paisley,whose fight for Ulster went only as far asthrowing snowballs at Jack Lynch when hevisited Stormont as Irish Taoiseach, isobliged to discuss policy with both theBritish and Irish Prime Ministers.

On the other hand, the ProvisionalIRA, whose war aim was to end partition,drive out the British and abolish the state ofNorthern Ireland have succeeded only inestablishing a claim to be part of thepolitical administration of the state they setout to abolish!

Eventually the politicians on bothsides will have to reach an accommodationto work the structures of governmentestablished by the Good Friday Agreement.The salaries and the expenses are good andthe leaders can write of a finish to asatisfactory war.

But what have the workers across theinfamous religious divide got? As so manytimes before, they have simply been used aspawns.!

RICHARD MONTAGUE

A NICRA sitdown protest, November 1968

A victim of the CBloody Sunday’ massacre

8 Socialist Standard September 2005

Ie have conclusive proof thatBony Vlair doesn_t read the;ocialist ;tandard. In thesepages last month, we warned

that trying to suppress religion or religiouseXpression is not going to stem any terrorthreat. fet now, the Crime înister hasstood before the media, vowing to closedown ôsSues where religious eXtremismis preached. fet, censorship has neverworked to suppress any ideology ormovement.

Bhe Vlairites have long been proudof their writing the 8uropean Fonventionof Guman 4ights into Vritish law. fet BonyVlair has stood before the media vowingto amend the act so as to enable hisgovernment to use draconian powersagainst those it suspects a but cannotprove in a court of law a to be involved inthe promotion of terrorism. Ie have,also, in these pages before, warned thathuman rights legislation was a paper thinprotection against the might of theorganised violence of the state. Bhus itproves, when inalienable rights get in theway of untrammelled state power, they gettorn asunder. Bhere are rights, but onlywhen they don_t matter, it seems.

Bony Vlair has stood before themedia of the world, venting sound andfury because the levers of state hecontrols with such ultimate power areinadeSuate to stem the terrorist tide.gings and Crime înisters have long been

able to dowhatever theypleased withthemachinery ofstate a buttheir record instopping theseas issomewhatdismal. Bhestate hasultimatepower over

our bodies a life or death, but it reaches itslimits at people_s minds.

Ceople_s consciousness is notsomething that can be shaped by fiat a aminuted cabinet meeting declaring that allinhabitants of Vritain will be loyal citicens.Ceople_s consciousness is an outgrowth oftheir life every bit as much as their armsor their hair. ;ocialists know from longOand bitterP eXperience, that merelyeXpounding an idea to someone will notmove them. Bhere has to be the basis ofagreement already in their minds, basedon their eXperience of the world and theirvalues, for any ideas to take hold.

Bhe notion that merely preaching isenough to turn people into suicidebombers is itself a part of the same flawedpremise upon which religion is based/ thatpeople choose to believe. Bhe idea thatpeople are outside the world around them,separate from the chains of causationthey can see in nature. It is also aprobection of the selfaimage of the greatleaders who believe that they can bendpeople_s wills to whatever they wish, likesome great impresario in the circus ring.4eligion itself is subbect to materialisteXplanation. It is, in fact, an effort ofhuman beings to understand the worldaround them. Veginning with the ancientreligions that eXplained naturalphenomena in terms of beings withhumanalike minds controlling events. Bhatis, early cultures eXplained the world withreference to the thing they knew best,

humans and human behaviour.Crobecting human relationships onnatural obbects h for instance bymaking gifts to the fields and riversin return for favours like not flooding.

5s civilisation grew, religion has the attempt to understand theworld h changed to adapt to the newenvironment. iifferent types of godsgrew up, who behaved suspiciouslylike the despots who governed theworld at that time. Bhe growth ofwidespread kingdoms lead to thedevelopment of divisions of labourwhich established priestly castesand codified myths to establish acommon religious narrative Owhichhelped in coaordinating things likethe kingdomawide harvesting ofcropsP. Bhe essential ingredient,though, of probecting a human giftrelationship on the world remained.

5round the first century of theFommon 8ra OF8P this process ledto the spread of the greatmonotheistic religions. 5t the time,4ome was spreading its influenceover the near east. 5s trade andcommerce eXtended, local tribalformations became more fluid, andso the image of one 8mperor rulingover a vast differentiated domaineasily gave rise to the idea of oneUod ruling over the entire 8arth.Ceople were obliged to obey thatUod much as they would have toobey the 8mperor, lest they face hisfierce and arbitrary wrath. Bhereligion that most successfullyencompassed that sort of worldeXperience was Fhristianity, whichgrew to be the dominant and officialreligion of the 4oman 8mpire in theJth century F8 under Fonstantine.

Likewise, Islam OLiterally_;ubmission to the will of god_Pemerged around Add F8 apropagated by ûhammed, awealthy and wellatravelled merchant. Bhe5rab peoples at that time were dividedand living in the shadows of the greatVycantine and Cersian 8mpires Oempirescharacterised by centralised monotheisticreligious uniformityP. It was to ûhammedand his movement_s advantage to copythis style of thinking and organising, asthey began to spread their fledglingempire and unite the 5rab tribes into apower.

Bhat is, these religions in their timewere rational observations of how both thenatural and social worlds operated. 8ven,in some senses, progressive in theiradvancement of human understandingand the growth of civilisation. Bheystemmed from a need to understand aworld that stretched beyond immediateapprehension and sense and spread overvast and intermingling empires. Lackingmodern data capture or inSuirytechniSues, such empires could only beapprehended by metaphors for the

emperors that ruled them.Bhe religions born then continued to

be at the forefront of attempts tounderstand the world for many years,either as direct means of eXplainingphenomena, or as paradigms into whichnew eXplanations and observations couldand must be incorporated. If everythinghappens by the will of god, then knowingthe mind of god is the only logical form ofinvestigative endeavour.

5s data capture and the technologyof natural science advanced over thesubseSuent thousand years, the value ofthe religious eXplanations began to beSuestioned. In Iestern 8urope, this leadto a division between the concept ofscience and of religion. 5s variousphysical worldatruth claims of religion hsuch as that of the position of the 8arth inrelation to the ;un h came undersustained challenge h by Fopernicus, injDjJ F8 h the established religious elitesfought back, using raw political power andwealth

Bhis meant that the ideologues ofreligion came up with more and moreways to defend their worldaview from thechallenge of the new scientific methods aretreating Oin some casesP to the point ofdefending religion as a mere personalpreference in areas where facts could notbe proved in the same way as in thenatural sciences. Bhat is, they clung on tothe social sciences for a further threehundred years. 5ll ethics and socialtheory was made by reference to theassumed eXistence of a despotic deity.

Flass struggle broke out over

Blair - bit of a Cnut, but stillcan’t stop the tide

Aeligionan< theli%its of the!tate


8urope. Bhe rising bourgeoisiechallenged their feudal masters, and in sodoing challenged the idea of obeying thedictates of a despotic god, instead tryingto privatise conscience and change therelationship to a more contractual one.Bhis meant challenging the religiousauthorities on the ground of socialscience, and meant that other theoriescould be opened up for debate aempiricism and rationalism and lateridealism. Bhey challenged simplyaccepting facts and truth claims based onauthority. Bhey challenged obedience to aset of simplistic rules set down by the8mperor. It was a revolutionarychallenge.

Bhis challenge lasted only as long asthere was a stake in it. Nnce thebourgeoisie was finally ensured of power,the religious Suestions didn_t matter asmuch, and in fact proved to be a usefulway of defending their new foundsupremacy from the challenge of thenascent working class. Bhe sameweapon of social science which helpedthem to power was now being usedagainst them, to show how their rule waseXploitative and domineering. Bhe oldreligion became a means of bustifying theirrule to themselves and to theirsubordinates, as they spread their systemacross the globe.

Bo the eXtent that the working classfelt themselves powerless, they werewilling to accept an eXplanation of theworld that gave them some measure ofunderstanding and control a much as forthe humans at the formation of the first

religious impulse. 5s, however,technical competence was increasinglyreSuired for work, so has a growth ofunderstanding of science and the worldthat sees much of western religiondriven to either the merest shadow of itsformer acceptance, if not outrightagnosticism Othough many still acceptthe arguments of the theists overreligion and belief over things whichcannot be provenP.

In many parts of the world,traditional religious castes still retain astrong sway a Fatholic priests werewheeled out in Cortugal to eXplain theeuro, for instance. Ihere social andeconomic development has not provideda practical impetus to challenge theteachings and presumptions of religion,it has remained strong. Uaining afurther power as a means of giving asense of identity and community toways of life that are under apparenteXternal threat a as in parts of theûslim world and their reaction towestern economic domination. 5lso,people in politically marginalised andpowerless communities a like much ofthe rural Lnited ;tates a are turning toreligious fundamentalism in the face oftheir own lack of control over their ownand their communities_ lives.

Bhe resurgence of the oldauthoritarian religions is a growingproblem. Coliticians who also like tothink of themselves as believers do notwant to challenge the presuppositionsand premises of these religions, butinstead try to incorporate them so as notto challenge the structure of eXistingsociety.

;ocialists oppose religion for itsanachronistic premises, for the barrier itpresents to scientifically eXamining andcontrolling our own lives and destinies.4eligion starts by placing humansoutside the natural world a withanthropomorph deities shaping the

world and people_s free will allowing themto obey and believe. Gumans are part ofthe world, and are amenable to scientificbehavioural study, and it is understandingthat that will allow us to liberate ourselves,and control ourselves and our destinies.

5rgument alone will not suffice toremove religion and religious strife fromthe world, it will take the material interestof a common cause and a commonstruggle to build a democratic societywhere people stand in real relation toeach other, not seeing each otherreflected in the eyes of some ancientîddle 8astern despot_s mad dream. .F-] !aUUT !

ôre on the ârXian socialist analysis ofreligion can be found atGGGIGo#l(socialis<Io#6Js36=J3(.Jsa#I3(.andGGGI<a#$istsIo#6Ja#c4i/2J3aEE2Ko2J7L+MJ#2li6ioEI4t<&&&&

n The 2aste of9o%petitionSupporters of capitalismpraise competition to theskies, seeing it as a means ofkeeping prices down and ofensuring that "consumers" getwhat they want.

Socialists, on the other hand, havealways seen economic competition as being(besides the cause of modern wars) aninefficient and wasteful way of distributingwhat people need and want. For a start, itinvolves an unnecessary multiplication ofproductive units and distribution outletswith all the extra resources this uses up.Then there are the resources used up inmarketing and advertising, which is aimedmerely at persuading people to buy fromone firm or shop as opposed to another andwhich adds absolutely nothing to theamount of wealth in existence.

No wonder Marx commented oncapitalism's "way of distributing productsthrough trade, and its manner ofcompetition" being "very wasteful ofmaterial resources" (Volume III of Capital,chapter 5 on "Economy in the use ofconstant capital").

So it was rather surprising to hear thehead of a profit-seeking capitalistenterprise, Charles Allen, chief executive ofITV plc, echo this socialist criticism ofcapitalism in the evidence he gave on 7June to a House of Lords committeelooking into the renewal of the BBC'scharter. Asked by the Bishop of Manchester(yes, it's part of the "democratic deficit" inBritain that bishops of the Church ofEngland are automatically members ofparliament) about possible co-operationwith the BBC in the North-West, Allenreplied that he was all in favour of theBBC, ITV and others sharing the sameprogramme-making studios, adding:

"A lot of money is wasted throughduplication: we have our own studios; theyhave their own studios; we have our owntransmission; they have their owntransmission; we have our owninfrastructure; they have their owninfrastructure. What I am really keen to dois actually get the money on the screenrather than wasted in infrastructure"(www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/ld/lduncorr/bbc0706.pdf).

Wasted in infrastructure! True, butthis applies across the board to allmanufacturing industry, services, shops andsupermarkets. There's wasteful duplication(triplication, and more) there too.

What Allen apparently wants inbroadcasting is the same sham competitionas exists in the supply of electricity, gas andtelephones. There's only one infrastructurehere too - only one national electricity grid,for example - with competition limited tofirms wasting resources on trying to stealcustomers from each other.

In socialism resources can be saved toproduce needed and useful things by onlyhaving one type of distribution outlet inneighbourhoods and only one factoryproducing computers, cars, washingmachines, etc in any one region. Then, wereally could concentrate resources onproducing best-quality useful things ratherthan wasting them on duplicatedinfrastructures.

Coo6ing the Hoo6s cCd


5common chargelevelled at thosewho challengethe Ostill largely

believedP establishedmyth concerning thedropping of the atomic

bombs on Giroshima and Magasaki, is that theydo so from the comfortable perspective ofhindsight. Bhis view was most elegantlyformulated by 5lbert 4. Gunt, writing in the NallSt#22t&Oo0#Eal on Z 5ugust jkkD/ eBhe criticsview the situation through the prism of todayand sideastep both how the situation looked todecisionamakers in jkJD and the politicalrealities facing theme.

5t first glance a not unreasonableobservation but one which, upon closereXamination, is revealed as somewhatdisingenuous. [irstly, because, given that such avast amount of crucial and enlighteninginformation was for many years kept secretOmuch still isP, anything other than hindsightconcerning many areas of knowledge wouldhave been pure speculation. ;econdly, becausethere eXisted a number of contemporary critics.âny of these were closely involved in theproduction of the bomb, others from the militaryand some, even, close to the president.

Vefore proceeding to disentangle the webof lies and deception surrounding this subbect, itis important to emphasise that, whatever thereasons for the decision to drop the bombs, itwas a conseSuence of a brutal and ruthlessconflict between warring capitalist states. 5Vritish [irst ;ea Lord once put it/ eôderation inwar is imbecilitye. Boday there are few military_conventions_ and any that remain are almostsure to be violated. 4est assured, had any oneof the main protagonists in the ;econd IorldIar obtained an atomic bomb before the Lnited;tates, they would almost certainly have used itwith a similar alacrity and disdain for human life.

Qho too6 the <e9ision to <rop thebo%bS

5lthough, of course, it was Cresident GarryBruman who had to give final approval OVritishconsent, a formality reSuired by agreement, wasreadily grantedP he was the new boy on theblock relying heavily on his advisors. UeneralLeslie Uroves, director of the ânhattan Crobectto manufacture the bomb, famously describedBruman as ea little boy on a toboggane. Nncethe decision had been made to produce theatomic bomb and the process of manufacturingit had begun, it was always assumed by themilitary and politicians that it would be used. Inthat sense no actual decision was ever a realnecessity.

Mevertheless, formalities and procedureswere prudently followed and, in order to workout the practical details and make suitablerecommendations, various committees wereestablished. Bhe two most important of thesewere the Interim Fommittee Opolitical, plus a coaopted scientific panelP and the Barget FommitteeOmilitary and scientificP. Ueneral Uroves headedthe Barget Fommittee and although not amember of the Interim Fommittee, was alwayspresent at its meetings. Ge was an unswervingadvocate for deployment of the bomb. 5s hebluntly eXplained/ eIt would not have looked wellif I had been appointed to serve on a committeeof civilians. Vut I was present at all meetingsand I always considered it my duty torecommend that the bomb be dropped.e

Bhe chairman of the Interim Fommitteewas the ;ecretary of Iar Genry L. ;timson. NnZ ây jkJD, he proposed a further member whowas to have a most significant influence onevents/ àmes [. Vyrne, soon to become the;ecretary of ;tate to Cresident Bruman. Gisviews on the dropping of the bomb were asrampantly in favour of those of Uroves and

10

Last month saw the 60th anniversary of thedropping of atomic bombs on the Japanese citiesof Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The media mostlycontented itself with repeating the myth that thiswas the lesser evil to continuing the war byconventional means. In a two-part article RichardHeadicar uncovers the real reason for thebombings: to test the destructive power of a newweapon for use in future wars.

Qhythey

<roppe<the

bo%bs

CFat Man’, the Nagasaki plutonium bomb, and whatwas left afterwards

Socialist Standard September 2005ovember2004

11

together they formed the irresistible forcethat, more than any other, led to the finalcataclysmic devastation of those twounlucky àpanese cities. 5s the physicist5rthur G. Fompton put it/ eBhe ;cientificCanel was not called to decide theSuestion of whether the bomb should beused, but only how itshould be used . . . it . .. seemed to be aforgone conclusion.e

înutes taken atthe meeting of theInterim Fommittee on jùne jkJD recorded/

e^r Vyrnesrecommended and thecommittee agreed, that. the bomb should beused against àpan assoon as possiblel that itbe used on a war plantsurrounded by workers_homesl and that it beused without priorwarning.e

Nn ED ùly jkJD adirective approved bythe ;ecretary of Iar,but which had beenpreviously composedby Uroves, manifested L; intentions andconfirmed previous assumptions in its firsttwo sections/

eOjP Bhe Ddk Fomposite Uroup, Edth5ir [orce will deliver its first special bombas soon as weather will permit visualbombing after Z 5ugust jkJD on one ofthe targets/ Giroshima, gokura, Miigataand Magasaki

eOEP 5dditional bombs will bedelivered on the above targets as soon asmade ready by the probect staff.=

Ihether or not that directiveconstituted a decision and whether;timson and Bruman or Vyrnes andUroves bore most responsibility for itremains a matter of some debate. Bhetheory of the eforgone conclusione gainssome credibility from the response givento Uroves when, in ànuary jkJD, hesuggested to his immediate superior,5rmy Fhief of ;taff Ueneral Ueorgeârshall, that detailed plans should bedrawn up for the employment of the bombin war. Ge was told esee to it yourselfe.

Qere they %ilitary targetsSeBhe world will note that the first

atomic bomb was dropped on Giroshima,a military base. Bhat was because wewished in the first instance to avoid, in sofar as possible, the killing of civilianse.Cresident Garry ;. Bruman Ok 5ugustjkJDP.

5ll of the cities on the target list Olikemost reasonably siced cities in time ofwarP were of some military significance.[ive of them, with the agreement of the5ir [orce, were to be spared any furtheraerial bombardment from ây jkJDonwards. Bhese were Giroshima, gyoto,fokohama, gokura 5rsenal and Miigata.Nn the eXpress orders of the ;ecretary ofIar, ;timson, gyoto a considered to bethe cultural centre of àpan and abeautiful city that ;timson had oncevisited a was removed from the list andMagasaki took its place. Bhe truth is, ofcourse, that the L; 5ir [orce could havedestroyed any military target that it choseto. àpanese air defences were practicallynonaeXistent and of àpan_s siXtyasiXlargest cities, fiftyanine had beendestroyedl the seven remaining partly so.Vy the summer of jkJD only two cities

with populations eXceeding a Suarter of amillion had not been assailed byincendiary raids.

;ince Giroshima was designated asa mabor port and home of 4egional 5rmyGeadSuarters and the northern sectors ofMagasaki contained the îtsubishi ;teel

and 5rms Iorks, why didthey remain largelyuntouched OGiroshimahardly damaged at alland MagasakicomparativelyunscathedP> Bhe answeris provided by theproposals of the BargetFommittee, EK 5priljkJD/

eBo enable us toassess accurately theeffects of the bomb, thetargets should not havebeen previously damagedby air raids.e

Magasaki had beenbombed to some eXtentbut it was only a lateaddition to the target listand was not first choiceeven on the day thebomb was dropped on it a

that had been gokura 5rsenal.[urther recommendations made by

the committee were that e. . the first targetbe of such sice that the damage would beconfined within it, so that we could moredefinitely determine the power of thebombe. Bhen from a further meeting on jdand jj ây came the clearOand fortunately documentedPinstruction/ e . . . to neglectlocation of industrial areas aspin point target . . . mandn . . .to endeavour to place firstgadget in center of selectedcityl that is, not to allow forlater j or E gadgets forcomplete destruction.e

Bo erase any lingeringdoubts a subseSuentVombing ;urvey 4eportstated/ eGiroshima andMagasaki were chosen astargets because of theirconcentration of activities andpopulatione.

Qas it ne9essary to <ropthe bo%bsS

Nne of the mostcommonly accepted beliefs isthat, horrific though it was, thebombing of Giroshima andMagasaki saved millions oflives a àpanese as well as5merican a by bringing about a swift endto the war and forestalling a bloodyinvasion. Ie are reminded about themassive casualties already suffered byboth sides in the Cacific Iar. Carticularlyabout the fanatical defence by theàpanese of Iwo ìma, Lucon andNkinawa. Vut although there were plansfor an invasion they were contingencyplans.

Bhe first stage a eNlympice a was toland at the island of gyushu on jMovember jkJD. Mo assault on the mainisland, Gonshu, a eForonete a wasscheduled until j ârch jkJA. In the lightof what we now know, it seems doubtfulthat the need for any kind of invasionwould ever have arisen. àpan wascertainly not defenceless. It still had aGome army of more than two milliontroops, many prepared to fight to the

death for their 8mperor. 5lso, as well asconventional planes, there werethousands of kamikace, mines, beachfortifications, etc, and the remnants of thenavy. Bheir problem was one ofdeployment. Vut as the L; ;trategicVombing ;urvey concluded, less than ayear after the bomb had been dropped/

eFertainly before Zj iecemberjkJD and in all probability before jMovember jkJD, àpan would havesurrendered even if the atomic bomb hadnot been dropped, even if 4ussia had notentered the war, and even if no invasionhad been planned or contemplated.e

;ome historians argue that thebombs were unnecessary preciselybecause 4ussia intended to enter thewar, so the conclusion of the ;trategicVombing ;urvey was all the moreremarkable. Less so, however, when thereality of the àpanese military situation isproperly eXamined. Bheir navy wasvirtually finishedl their army wasdescribed by Ganson I. Valdwin asconsisting of eUreen conscripts andsecond rate troopsel communication lineswere in disarrayl fuel was in eXtremelyshort supplyl roads were in a poor state ofrepairl transport and transportation couldbe bombed at willl ports were becomingparalysedl food was scarcel illnessthrough malnutrition was an increasingproblem and Onot surprisinglyP publicmorale was diminishing by the day. Inmarked contrast to this, the L; armedmight remained immensely powerful.

5ll of this was known to the L;

administration and military and theludicrous estimates of probected invasioncasualties a ranging from ehundreds ofthousandse to emillionse a were postawareXaggerations designed to contribute tothe successful establishment of a publicbustification for the dropping of the bombs.âbor Ueneral Furtis 8. Leây eXpressedthe truth Suite bluntly a few weeks afterformal surrender of the àpanese8mperor. eBhe atomic bomb,e he stated,ehad nothing to do with the end of theware.

Vut the reasons were not merelymilitary ones.

PQo&=2&coEcl0(2(&E2$t&<oEt4RA-C[PAW [UPW-CPA

The blinding light burnt cloth patternsonto skin

The pilot and plane that bombedHiroshima, and (inset) CLittleBoy’, the uranium bomb used.


Qe are all Zapatistas" has beenpainted on banners, walls andshouted at demonstrations inrecent years. The slogan has

been used by leftists, anarchists, advocatesof fair-trade schemes and even forcommercial gain. But who are theZapatistas?

The Zapatistas take their name fromEmiliano Zapata who led the EjNrcitoLibertador del Sur (Liberation Army of theSouth) during the Mexican Revolutionarywar from 1910 until his assassination in1919. During the 30-year dictatorship ofPorfirio Diaz which preceded the revolutionmuch of the land farmed by the indigenouspeople was enclosed to form haciendas orranches for the production of food forexport markets forcing peasants into, bothwage- and debt-slavery to the often cruelranch owners. Zapata's army sought toinstitute the Plan of Ayala for therepossession of the haciendas for landlesspeasants where pre-enclosure legal titlesexisted and partial expropriation of land,with compensation, where legal titles didn'texist. The Liberation Army of the Southinitially fought the federal forces whosought to uphold the dictatorship of PorfirioDiaz. Zapata's army also fought theconstitutionalist forces which eventuallyreplaced Diaz as well as the interveningmilitary dictatorship.

Despite the defeat of Zapata's army,the 1917 Mexican Constitution contained a

provision for the return of communal landsappropriated by the haciendas and toprovide new lands called ejidos to landlesspeasants. Communal lands and ejidos areowned by the people of a village and plotswithin the designated areas are dividedamongst individual families to work.However, this article of the constitution wasnever fully implemented, or yielded onlysmall or unproductive land areas to thepeasants. In 1992, President Carlos Salinasde Gortari revoked the constitutionalcommitment protecting communal landfrom private ownership in preparation forimplementation of the North American FreeTrade Agreement (NAFTA). The NAFTAwould also remove agricultural pricesupport affecting peasants who wereincreasingly reliant on small scale cash cropproduction.

On the day the NAFTA came intoforce the EjNrcito Oapatista de LiberaciPnNacional (EZLN, Zapatista Army ofNational Liberation) officially declared waron the Mexican government and invaded sixmain population centres and many ranchesin the Chiapas region of south easternMexico. It is the EZLN and theirsupporters that are referred to as Zapatistas.

Open conflict in Chiapas lasted twelvebloody days in which hundreds lost theirlives mainly due to aerial bombardment ofEZLN-held towns by the Mexican army.By 1995, tens of thousands of troops werestationed in the region. There has been

little open combat since, but a network ofcheckpoints, army patrols, militaryincursions and alliances with localparamilitary groups have been used tointimidate and wear down the EZLN. TheEZLN signed an accord with the MexicanGovernment in 1996 to institute peace andpolitical rights for the people of Chiapas,though the government later reneged onmany of the provisions. Paramilitaries, whohave subsequently been linked to locallandowners and ruling party officials,assassinated 45 Zapatistas in the town ofActeal in December 1997.

Chiapas is about the same size (areaand population) as the Republic of Ireland.The area has a long history of conflict overland. Peasants have been forced onto thethin, rocky soils and steep slopes of thehighlands with the encroachment of cattleranching, coffee and sugar plantations fromthe more fertile lowland regions. Landavailability has also been reduced byforestry and mineral, gas and oil extractionoperations. Migration from neighbouringGuatemala, migration of those fleeingpoverty in Mexico and the return of manyof those who had migrated to urban areasfor employment after crisis of capitalism inthe early 1980s caused rapid populationincrease and eventual retreat into theinhospitable Lacandon jungle where theZapatista rebellion is centred.

The EZLN was formed in the early1980s by Leninists who had migrated into

Pre 2e all RapatistasSUapatistas, and Emiliano Uapata


the Chiapas jungle to lead the peasantry torevolution. One of those who joined theEZLN was the man now known asSubcommandante Marcos, the Zapatista'smilitary leader and most famousspokesman. The EZLN found that many ofthe peasants there could not support the ideaof the revolutionary vanguard and languageof 'Marxism'. What followed was whatMarcos calls a period of "indianization".The Leninist founders of the EZLN steepedthemselves in native Mayan culture. In thewords of Marcos, quoted by Yvon Le Bot(El Sueno Oapatista, 1997):

"Suddenly the revolution transformeditself into something essentially moral.Ethical. More than the redistribution ofwealth or the expropriation of the means ofproduction, the revolution began to be thepossibility for a humanbeing to have a space fordignity."

The "indianization"of the EZLN seemed toinfuse the organisationwith the local traditions ofdirect and decentraliseddemocracy. However, inmaterial terms the EZLNretained much of the previous reformistideology. The Declaration of War, writtenin 1993, stated that the EZLN was actinglegitimately to overthrow the rulinggovernment because of theirunconstitutional actions. The statement alsosays that the EZLN proudly carry thenational flag into battle.

In June this year the EZLN announceda new political initiative in the SixthDeclaration of the Selva Lacandona. Theysuggest a national campaign,

"which will be clearly of the left, oranti-capitalist, or anti-neoliberal, or forjustice, democracy and liberty for theMexican people, in order to demand that wemake a new Constitution, new laws whichtake into account the demands of theMexican people, which are: housing, land,work, food, health, education, information,culture, independence, democracy, justice,liberty and peace. We are also letting youknow that the EZLN will establish a policyof alliances with non-electoral organizationsand movements which define themselves, intheory and practice, as being of the left, . . "

The stipulations for organisationswishing to join the national campaign are ademocratic structure and a "clearcommitment for joint and co-ordinateddefence of national sovereignty, withintransigent opposition to privatizationattempts of electricity, oil, water and naturalresources." In addition, the Zapatistasoffered food aid to Cuba for their resistanceto the USA's embargo, express admirationfor Che Guevara and Simon Bolivar andoffered to send handicrafts, coffee or soupto activists in Europe to help with thestruggle against neo-liberalism. TheZapatistas clearly think that capitalism canbe run in the interests of the workersthrough state possession of industry andwith the absence of the intervention byforeign capital.

The EZLN stopped making demandsfor constitutional rights from the Mexicangovernment in 2001 and began to form astate within a state. This is described byMarcos in Chiapas: The Thirteenth Stele asinvolving the withdrawal of the EZLN fromcivil matters and establishment of self-governing villages or Autonomous

Municipalities, with recallable and rotatedfunctionaries. In August 2003, the 'Juntasof Good Government' were formed. Theseare regional councils which take thefunctions of administering justice, taxation,healthcare, education, housing, land, work,food, commerce, information and culture,and local movement from the EZLN.Marcos states that there have beenimprovements in living conditions as wellas improvements in gender equality in thenotoriously patriarchal peasant societiessince the formation of 'Juntas of GoodGovernment'.

However, the war is not over as EZLNrecruitment and guerilla warfare trainingcontinues. The U.S. Department of State'sBureau of Democracy, Human Rights, andLabor report for 2004 highlights instances

of state and local police involvement inkidnappings and extortion, torture, unlawfulkillings, narcotics-related crime and thetrafficking of illegal migrants in Chiapas.The report also states that there werenumerous allegations of the use of excessiveforce and the violation of internationalhumanitarian law against the Mexican Army

as well as continued violence byparamilitary groups.

There is also US involvement in theChiapas rebellion which is perhaps of nosurprise given the proximity and the factthat Mexico has the third-largest provencrude oil reserves in the WesternHemisphere and is the third-largest foreignsupplier of petroleum to the United States,behind Canada and Saudi Arabia. PEMEX,the state-owned oil corporation, is a vitalsource of revenue for the Mexican statewhich is heavily indebted to the banks inthe USA. Oil fields with one billion barrelpotential have recently been discovered inChiapas.

According to the Federation ofAmerican Scientists' Arms Sales MonitoringProject direct commercial sales of defencearticles (e.g. machine guns, rifles, pistols,grenade launchers and ammunition) and

defence services (e.g. missiles, rockets,torpedoes, bombs, mines and tanks)amounted to $112million and $436million,respectively, in 2003. The US military alsospent $1.25million on training the MexicanArmy in 2003. The US trainingprogrammes are officially for counter-narcotic operations, however the MexicanArmy have been observed using techniqueslearnt from the US military against theEZLN in Chiapas.

From the initial uprising the EZLNhas publicised their struggle using theprinted media and the internet. Thewritings of Subcommandante Marcos areavailable in many different editions andlanguages. The Chiapas conflict hasbecome a celebrated cause for manyactivists across the world and has, in part,

been shaped by theinvolvement of activists.The Mexican Army'sceasefire has beenattributed to the protestsin Mexico's urban centresfar away from theChiapas. The presenceof peace observersmostly drawn from

Zapatista support groups in the USA andEurope, as well as Mexico itself, is thoughtto have prevented excessive violence andintimidation by the Mexican army inChiapas.

So well-known across the world is thename and image of the Zapatista that co-operatives in the Zapatista communities areproducing and marketing their own brand ofcoffee which is distributed in Europethrough various ethical shopping outlets. In1994 The Independent (1 March) reportedthat Zapatista t-shirts, dolls and evencondoms bearing an image of Marcos andthe word 'uprising' have been marketed. In2001, workers of a trendy clothing shop inCovent Garden selling Zapatista-inspiredmerchandise spray-painted Zapatistaimagery and slogans on walls around majorshopping areas in central London as well asdressing up as Zapatista guerrillas to handout advertising material.

For socialists there are severalencouraging things about the Zapatistamovement: their apparent reliance on directdemocracy and the solidarity shown to themby workers across the world. However, it isclear that the Zapatistas think their rallyingcry of 'democracy, liberty and justice' can befulfilled whilst the greatest amount ofwealth, all it commands, and that we alldepend upon remains in the hands of aminority.

So are we all Zapatistas? The workersand peasants of Chiapas have experiencedsome of the worst poverty and violence thathumans have inflicted on each other.Workers across the world experiencepoverty and violence to some extent on adaily basis - it is the common bond thattranscends national boundaries. Thisfeature of our class-based society, aninevitable result of the social relation ofworker to capital, has never been abolishedby national liberation, state capitalism or'good' government. The Zapatistas' desirefor real democracy is commendable,however, this should not be limited todefence of perceived or actual gains withincapitalist society but for the abolition ofcapitalism and establishment of worldsocialism.!PIERS HOBSON

,V! in>ol>e%ent in the Chiapas rebellionis of no surprise gi>en the fa9t thataebi9o has the thir<Mlargest pro>en 9ru<eoil reser>es in the Qestern [e%isphere?

A Uapatista member at a recent rally


-n July BBC Radio 4 announced theresult of its poll of listeners to find the"the greatest philosopher of our time".And the winner was - Karl Marx, as the

first past the post with 28 percent of the34,000 or so votes cast, way ahead of thesecond, the 18th century Scottish scepticand agnostic, David Hume, with 13 percent,and the early 20th century logical-positivist,Ludwig Wittgenstein, with 7 percent.

There must be some sort ofsignificance to Marx being selected by some9,500 people. It would be nice to think thatit was a vote for Marx's aim of a societywithout private property in the means ofproduction, without money, the wagessystem or the state. More likely itrepresented a recognition of his contributionto the analysis of history and capitalism.

What did Marx have to say aboutphilosophy? In fact, was he really aphilosopher? He was certainly a doctor ofphilosophy in the literal sense, havingobtained his doctorate - the trade unionistswho associated with him in the 1860s in theFirst International knew him as "Dr Marx" -for a thesis on two Ancient Greekphilosophers, Democritus and Epicurus.And in his early and mid twenties hethought and wrote extensively aboutphilosophical problems, but then he reachedthe conclusion that abstract philosophisingabout "God", "the nature of Man" and "themeaning of life", which nearly all

philosophers had speculated about till then,was a pretty useless exercise and heabandoned it, at the age of 27, never toreturn to it. This was in fact more or less thesame conclusion as reached by the tworunners-up in the BBC poll, Hume andWittgenstein.

What such philosophy was replacedby, for Marx, was the empirical, i.e.scientific, study and analysis of history andsociety, what has come to be known as thematerialist conception of history. Strictlyspeaking, this is not really a philosophy buta theory and methodology of a particularscience. Engels has had to take some stickfor introducing the term "scientificsocialism" but it is an accurate descriptionof the outcome of Marx's (and his own)encounter with the German philosophy ofhis day.

Marx had come to socialism viaGerman philosophy. Like many otherradical-minded Germans in the 1840s hehad been a "Young Hegelian", the namegiven to those who interpreted Hegel'sphilosophy in a radical way to justify theestablishment of a democratic and secularstate in Germany. Hegel himself (who haddied in 1831) was no radical democrat, eventhough he had initially welcomed theFrench Revolution. Quite the opposite. Bythe 1820s he was a conservative defender ofthe Prussian State, almost its Statephilosopher. And he believed that

Christianity was true, with all that thatimplies in terms of the existence of a godwith a plan for humanity and whichintervenes in human affairs.

What appealed to German radicals inHegel's philosophy was the concept ofalienation (of something from its nature, oressence) and the view that (until the end ofhistory) all human institutions weretransitory and developed throughintellectual criticism bringing out and thentranscending the contradictions in the ideabehind them. For Hegel this was all in areligious context (alienation was thealienation of Man from God and the end ofhistory was the reconciliation of Man withGod). The Young Hegelians completelyrejected this and were highly critical ofreligion; in fact they made a speciality ofthis, presenting a secularised version ofHegel's system in which alienation was stillthe alienation of Man (with a capital M) butfrom Man's true nature, and the end ofhistory was the reconciliation of Man withthis nature, or human emancipation as theycalled it.

Most of them identified this with theestablishment of a democratic republic. Sodid Marx, to begin with, but he came to theconclusion that political democracy, thoughdesirable as a step forward for Germany, didnot amount to full human emancipation, butonly to a partial, "political" emancipation;"human" emancipation could only be

Marx, "the greatest philosopher of ourtime", with runners-up Wittgenstein (left)

and Hulme

aarb andFhilosophy


achieved by a society without privateproperty, money or the state. Looking for anagent to achieve this, Marx identified the"proletariat" but conceived of in veryphilosophical terms as a social group thatwas "the object of no particular injustice butof injustice in general", "the complete lossof humanity and thus can only recover itselfby a complete redemption of humanity". Ashe wrote at the end of his article"Introduction to A Contribution to theCritique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right"published in February 1844: "The head ofthis emancipation [of Man] is philosophy,its heart is the proletariat." This is the samearticle in which occurs perhaps his mostwell-known saying "religion is the opium ofthe people", i.e., an illusory escape fromreal suffering. This was in fact aimed at hisfellow Young Hegelians who seemed toimagine that religion could be made todisappear merely by criticising itsirrationality. Marx's analysis of religion andof what was required to make it disappearwent deeper:

"The abolition of religion as theillusory happiness of the people is thedemand for their real happiness. Thedemand to give up the illusions about theircondition is a demand to give up a conditionthat requires illusion. The criticism ofreligion is therefore the germ of thecriticism of the valley of tears whose halo isreligion".

And:"The criticism of religion ends with

the doctrine that man is the highest beingfor man, that is, with the categoricalimperative to overthrow all circumstances inwhich man is humiliated, enslaved,abandoned and despised" (Translated byDavid McLellan in Karl Marx: Early Texts).

This is still a philosophical approachand it makes Marx, at this time, a humanistphilosopher. Some find this enough, andeminently commendable (and Marx mayeven have got some votes in the BBC pollon this basis), and of course being a

socialist has to rest in the end on wanting to"overthrow all circumstances in which manis humiliated, enslaved, abandoned anddespised".

Marx himself, however, was notsatisfied to let the case for socialism rest ona mere philosophical theory that it providedthe only social basis on which the "essenceof Man" could be fully and finally realised.After continuing to initial with his previousphilosophical position, he ended byrejecting the view that humans had anyabstract "essence" from which they werealienated. As he put it in some notes jotteddown in 1845:

"The human essence is no abstractioninherent in each single individual. In itsreality it is the ensemble of the socialrelations" (Theses on Feuerbach).

This led him away from philosophicalspeculations about "human essence", what itwas and how to realise it, to the study of thedifferent "ensembles of social relations"within which humans had lived and to seehistory not as the development of any idea

but as the development from one "ensembleof social relations" to another in line withthe development of the material forces ofproduction. This gave socialism a muchfirmer basis than a simple "categoricalimperative to overthrow all circumstances inwhich man is humiliated, enslaved,abandoned and despised". It made it thenext stage in the development of humansociety, a stage which was both beingprepared by the development of the currentstage (capitalism) and the solution to theproblems caused by capitalism's inherentinternal contradictions. It kept the agent ofits establishment as the class of wageworkers, no longer considered as a classembodying all the sufferings of humanity,but as the class whose material interestwould lead it to oppose and eventuallyabolish capitalism.

Marx still retained some of thelanguage and concepts of his YoungHegelian past, but he gave them a new,materialist content. Thus, for instance, thealienation of the "proletariat" was no longeralienation from their human essence butalienation from the products of their ownlabour which came to dominate them in theform of capital as personified by a capitalistclass; and "the emancipation of Man"became the emancipation of all humansthrough the abolition of classes and classrule by the world-wide working classpursuing its material interest; and he stillreferred to end of capitalism as the close of"the pre-history of human society". Theimperative to change the world tooremained, but addressed to the workingclass rather to philosophers. As he put it in1845 in his parting shot at Germanphilosophy: "The philosophers have onlyinterpreted the world, in various ways; thepoint is to change it" (also from the Theseson Feuerbach).!

ADAM BUICK

Philosopher and defender of the PrussianState, Hegel

P99ess<enie<In June the BBCoffered free downloadsof live Beethovenconcerts broadcast onRadio 3. It was a hugesuccess. But noteveryone was pleased.The Independent (10

July) reported:"The BBC has been lambasted by

classical music labels for making all nineof Beethoven's symphonies available forfree download over the Internet. This weekthe BBC will announce there have beenmore than a million downloads of thesymphonies during the month-long scheme.But the initiative has infuriated the bossesof leading classical record companies whoargue the offer undermines the value ofmusic and that any further offers would beunfair competition."

Yes of course (but they must meanthe price, not the value, of music). Ifsomething is available free, nobody's goingto pay for it. That is the ultimate "unfaircompetition". But the real question isdifferent: if something can be provided freeat little or no extra cost, why isn't it?

The answer is that, under capitalism,the basic economic law is "no profit, noproduction". So, no private capitalist isgoing to invest in providing something freeto people. What would be the point?There'd be no profit in it.

The only institution which could dothis would be the state, using resourcesobtained through taxation from the privatecapitalist sector. In Britain the state does infact provide a number of services that arefree at the point and time of use: roads,schools, parts of the health service, forinstance. But these are seen as services forthe capitalist class as a whole and as notinvolving competition with capitalistbusinesses trying to make a profit out ofsupplying the same service. (Certainly,there are capitalist firms lobbying for theright to cherry-pick the profitable parts ofthese services but no capitalist is going tobe interested in investing in side streets orin rural roads.)

If the state does venture to supplyfree a potentially profitable service - as theBBC did on this occasion - then the privatesector squeals "unfair, subsidisedcompetition". As the British state and theBBC are fully committed to capitalism andits logic, the BBC's director general, MarkThompson, rushed to reassure the profit-seeking commercial suppliers of music

recordings:"In a speech to the British

Phonographic Industry, the tradeassociation for the recording industry, MrThompson tried to allay fears from thecommercial sector. The anxiety, he said,'boils down to two questions: is this thestart of some new regular service from theBBC, in which, without warning andconsultation, the public will be offeredchunks of music free at the point ofdownload which will inevitably distort thecommercial market in music? And second,are there any limits to what the BBC mightdownload? Could we wake up one morningto discover that half the BBC's musicalarchive is available on the net? The answerto these two questions is: no and no.'"(Guardian, 21 July).

But that precisely is what could wellhappen in socialism. Not just half theBBC's musical archives but the whole ofthem, as well as all other musical archives,could be made available for people todownload freely. And why not? Let thoseagainst the provision of free music - andfree telephones, free electricity, freetransport, etc, for that matter - put up a casefor restricting access to what people needand want when the resources to do thisexist. If they can.

Coo6ing the Hoo6s c)d


The Hritish Co%%unist Xeft by aar6[ayes c-nternational Co%%unistCurrent; )**+d B+O**

This is a history of the so-called 'CommunistLeft' in British politics from 1914-1945,published by one of the main, contemporaryorganisations of this tradition and written byone of their sympathisers.

It is a largely accurate account of thoseidentified with the left-wing of Bolshevikpolitics in this era, a political tendencychastised by Lenin in his famous 'Left-wingCommunism, An Infantile Disorder'. Over along period this tendency gradually struggledtowards taking up socialist positions on thenature of the future society, reformism, thestate capitalist nature of Russia, China, etcwhile also developing a virulent hostility to'bourgeois democracy' and trade unionism.As this pamphlet unwittingly shows, it was apolitical current which made some seriouserrors during its political evolution too - andcontinues to do so, largely because of itsadherence to the vanguard politics ofLeninism.

The left communists in Britain weresmall in both number and influencecompared to their counterparts in continentalEurope, specifically the German, Dutch andItalian lefts. While elements in the SocialistLabour Party and British Socialist Party heldviews associated with left communism for ashort time after the Bolshevik takeover, themost significant left communist organisationin Britain emerged out of the radicalsuffragette movement led by SylviaPankhurst during the First World War andwas grouped around the paper Women'sDreadnought, which by 1917 had beenrenamed the Workers' Dreadnought.

This became the paper of the Workers'Socialist Federation, a group dominated byPankhurst and with support drawn frompolitical activists mainly in the East End ofLondon. The WSF never numbered morethan about three hundred members at thevery most and, after eventually beingsubsumed within the Communist Party ofGreat Britain in January 1921, vanished as agroup or faction by 1924. Pankhurst hadbeen expelled from the CPGB within a yearfor her criticism of the official Party line,before moving on to other, more eclectic(and openly reformist) causes. AlthoughMark Hayes doesn't mention it, what is clearfrom this and every other related study is thatwhile it would be an exaggeration to say thatthe Workers' Dreadnought group was a onewoman show, it would not be that much of anexaggeration. When Pankhurst moved on,the group collapsed and the paper - alwaysowned and largely financed by Pankhurstherself - ceased publication.

Small organisations around theidiosyncratic Glasgow anarchist Guy Aldredsuch as the Anti-Parliamentary CommunistFederation also came and went in this period,veering between left communism andanarchism, but none of them amounted tomuch. And that in essence is it: leftcommunism in Britain until its re-appearancewith the ICC itself and one or two other tinygroups in the 1970s.

After interesting beginnings, the ICChas mutated into an organisation regarded byvirtually all other political groups (includingthose on the communist left previously well-

disposed towards it) as a paranoid sect, andits treatment of the SPGB here is aninteresting one, not least because we are theone workers' political organisation discussedstill in existence and thereby the mostobvious target for its spleen.

The key 'class frontier' for the ICC andother left communist groups is whether apolitical organisation takes sides in acapitalist war or not. Yet, despite ourimpeccable record of actively opposing bothworld wars and all other wars too, this bookgives the SPGB short shrift. It claims, "inpractice" that in 1939, just as supposedly in1914, "the SPGB made no attempt to opposethe war" (p.101). What it means by this isthat we did not raise the ICC's suicidalslogan of 'turn the imperialist war into aworld wide civil war against capitalism'.

The Socialist Standard is criticised fornot publishing openly anti-war articles forpart of the Second World War because of thestrict Defence Regulations relating toseditious printed matter which caused thesuppression of the Daily Worker, but nomention is made of the Party's open anti-warpropaganda by other means or the way inwhich the SPGB sought to prevent merepacifist opponents of the war from becomingmembers. Presumably never having beensent to prison himself for his political beliefs,Mark Hayes also sneers at the SPGBmembers who applied during the world warsto be conscientious objectors, scores ofwhom were imprisoned by the British statefor refusing to kill their fellow workers.

Quite why the ICC thinks that a fewhundred political activists starting a civil waragainst the might of the capitalist state is asensible socialist tactic is anyone's guess.The SPGB members who successfullyapplied to be conscientious objectors or went'on the run' were at least able to work forsocialism and keep the organisation alive,whereas if the ICC was ever crazy enough toput its own tactic into operation it wouldsoon cease to exist organisationally. That theICC is not really serious about this type ofabstract sectarianism though can be seen bythe fact that "in practice" (to use its ownphrase) there has not been one singleoccasion when any of its sections across theworld has ever tried to do anything otherwhen faced with a war than what the SPGBdid in 1914 or 1939, i.e. denounce it as acapitalist conflict not worth the shedding of adrop of blood.

The ICC do exist in something of anunusual - not to say unique - political bubble,as this book repeatedly demonstrates. Whilethe SPGB is lambasted for its insufficientopposition to wars and for betraying thefuture moneyless commonwealth byopposing the misguided tactics of theBolsheviks (at least until the early 1920swhen the ICC retrospectively thinks thisbecame respectable), the Trotskyists - whothen as now took sides in 'national liberation'struggles and wars, were reformist,advocated state capitalism, supported theLabour Party, etc - are regarded with someaffection, until they finally 'betrayed' theworking class by taking sides in World WarTwo. For sheer illogicality and inconsistencythere can be little to beat this.

When it is filtered for its Leninism andsectarianism, the British Communist Left isnot all bad as it is a useful historical accountin parts. While it is a short book it isnevertheless a bit of a trying read, bestcharacterised as a largely academic pieceinfused with heavy doses of the ICC's

somewhat tiresome political liturgy. If pageafter page of references to 'centrism','opportunist currents', the 'proletarian terrain'and 'ambiguous swamps' are your thing thengo out and buy it immediately. It's not toounkind to say you are unlikely to be killed inthe rush. DAP

eeffrey !a9hsI The Un< of Fo>ertyI [o2Qe Can aa6e -t [appen in @ur Xifeti%eOFenguin BDO^Ô

There are variousthings wrong withthis book, the firstbeing the title.Sachs (described onthe back cover as'probably the mosti m p o r t a n teconomist in theworld') is notconcerned withdoing away withsink estates where

children do not get one square meal a day, letalone three, or the culture of pawn shops andloan sharks (which would be classified asrelative poverty). Instead he is writing abouteliminating absolute or extreme poverty,where households cannot meet basic needs:people are chronically hungry, have noaccess to health care or safe water, and maylack rudimentary shelter. In 2001, around 1.1billion of the earth's population were inextreme poverty. Sachs neatly places thingsin perspective:

"Almost three thousand people diedneedlessly and tragically at the World TradeCenter on September 11; ten thousandAfricans die needlessly and tragically everysingle day - and have died every single daysince September 11 - of AIDS, TB, andmalaria."

But even if his proposals wereimplemented and proved successful, therewould still be plenty of poverty in the world.

Ending extreme poverty would ofcourse be very worthwhile, but cancapitalism achieve this? Sachs claims thatthe number of people living in extremepoverty has fallen from 1.5 billion since1981 (largely due to developments in China).Surely, however, we are entitled to be a littlesceptical about such claims: they are basedon World Bank estimates, and ignore theextent of poverty still found in China,especially in the countryside. Heacknowledges, though, that the extreme poorin Africa have more than doubled in thetwenty years to 2001, now being over 300million, which is a rise even in percentageterms. Yet, he argues, extreme poverty can begot rid of by 2025: the key is 'to enable thepoorest of the poor to get their foot on theladder of development.' The way to kick-startthings is by comparatively modest amountsof overseas aid, which will mean thathouseholds can save more and so increasethe amount of seeds and agriculturalequipment they have access to and will alsoallow governments to build roads, sanitationsystems and so on; this will snowball andlead on to further development. The first fewchapters of the book imply that Sachs hassome kind of economic magic wand that hecan wave over countries from Bolivia to

1%%2 3.4#.5s


India, delivering prosperity. However, his proposals for 'ending

poverty' are effectively put forward in avacuum, unencumbered by the existence of aworld dominated by one super-powerfulnation, a small number of super-powerfulcompanies, and a tiny minority of super-richcapitalists. Sachs accepts that exploitation ofpoor countries by the rich has happened inthe past, but believes that it no longerapplies. He also accepts, though withoutmaking it explicit of course, a division of theworld into owners of the means ofproduction and non-owners. Doing awaywith this would mean an immediate end to allkinds of poverty - extreme, moderate andrelative - without having to wait anothertwenty years and rely on yet more emptypromises.PB

eung Chang an< eon [alli<ayI aaoI theVntol< !toryO eonathon Cape B)+O

Overturning aparagraph ofc o n v e n t i o n a lhistory can be thebasis for an entirethesis, if not anentire professionalreputation. Changand Halliday haveset out to re-writeevery paragraph ofthe story of MaoZedong.

The authorsattack the established canon of Maobiography; and their clear, unrelentinghostility may house the book's greatestweakness. Much of their re-interpretationdepends upon assessments of Mao'scharacter, and his internal states when hemade vital decisions. For example, theymaintain that Mao deliberately meanderedalong the Long March (a period of retreat bythe Red Army from the nationalists) in orderto strengthen his grip on the party before theymet up with the rest of the army.

Repeatedly they make reference towhat Mao was thinking, which, withoutwritten sources, is impossible to determine.Most historians and biographers wouldhedge and say 'maybe' or 'probably' hethought something.

Such potential weakness, although theymay allow latter-day Maoist wingnuts todeflect debate away from the issues raised,aren't fatal. The book describes in achingdetail the horrors of Mao's regime, factsestablished by witnesses and irrefutableevidence. This is largely because, unlikeHitler or Stalin, Mao's preference was not fordisappearances and quiet murder, but forpublic witch-hunts - mobilised terror inwhich anyone refusing to wholeheartedlyjoin in would find themselves a target. Herepeatedly used this strategy throughout hiscareer to gain and hold power, culminating inthe infamous Cultural Revolution, whichaccounted for some 100 million people beinghumiliated, tortured, maimed and, in 3million instances, murdered.

His callousness is almost beyond thescope of human imagining. In one year, 22million people died of starvation - broughtabout primarily through Mao's disastrousproject to make China - then one of the

poorest countrieson Earth - into anuclear super-power. Thefamines andoverwork inducedby the programmeled to 38 milliondeaths.

The authorsmaintain Mao wase s s e n t i a l l yapolitical: merelyegotistic and

power hungry.They reject claims that he cared aboutpeasants - producing a quote in which hemaintains that the lot of students (likehimself) was worse than that of the peasants.They suggest his choice of the communistparty over the nationalists (for a time the twoparties were united) was simply down to apredilection for violence.

He had many homes built for himself -at great expense - which he would only setfoot in once - if ever. While people starvedhe would gorge himself on whole chickensand huge quantities of meat and fish.Around him, millions of Chinese had lessfood than labourers in Auschwitz.

His reputation for supporting feminismalso takes a battering in this book, as theauthors reveal how he used women almost asimperial concubines, procured from the locallabour force. Anyone who objected to hisand other leaders' privileges amongst squalorwere derided as "petit-bourgeoisegalitarians".

Chang and Halliday even attempt tooverturn the central story of the Mao myth -the war of national liberation against Japan.Even very recent writers hedge criticisms ofMao by mention of the vicissitudes of thatwar. However, this book alleges that theReds under Mao were more concentrated onfighting the nationalist government than theJapanese.

Further, they try to show that on theLong March, Mao and the other leadersdidn't march with their soldiers: they werecarried; that the leader of the nationalists,Chiang Kai-Shek allowed the Red Army toescape because his son was being heldhostage by Stalin; and that some of Mao'smajor victories may have been assisted bythe treachery of the nationalist general whorepeatedly allowed troops to walk intohorrific ambushes.

The narrative makes out that Maonever commanded much support with eitherthe Chinese communist party or thepopulation. His ascent was largely down tothe backing of Russian communist officialswho never met him.

This book is unlikely to be the lastword on the matter, but it is a forcefulreappraisal of a figure who would be theequivalent of a George Washington for theemerging Chinese superpower. This is thestory of what happened when a ruthlesstyrant tried to rule a quarter of the humanrace.

The only positive message is thatultimately, his terror proved futile, as heincreasingly found himself having to horsetrade policies to stay in power against hisrivals - leaders are prisoners of theirfollowers. The terror of Mao's rule couldwell be seen as the impotent rage of a tyrant.PS

Capitalis% an< @ther ]i<sf !tuff

To describe asociety ofc o m m o no w n e r s h i pw i t h o u tmentioning theword socialismis undoubtedlydifficult. Butby no meansimpossible. Fora short filmproduced bymembers of the

Socialist Party, Capitalism and Other Kids'Stuff, does just that in a language thatnevertheless consistently pulls no punches.

Socialists are well aware of the dualpurpose on the part of the capitalist media inportraying the class of exploited producers asa mindless, selfish, non-caring mass ofindividual consumers: to promote profits andcreate disunity. The film destroys thesecaricatures right from the start and exposesthem for the claptrap they are, by juxtaposingthe individual differences of perception withthe broad facts of social evolution, humanbehaviour, and the unique ability of humansto care and share in common despite ourcultural differences and lifestyles.

When the producing class engage inwidespread discrimination over issues ofrace, ethnicity, age, gender, sexuality,disability, etc; and take sides over who getswhat share of the global market, this isclearly against their interests since they arethereby helping to create the conditions for awealthy few to control the means of living.

Globally the results are all too familiarwith the complexity of private propertyrelationships concealed within a quagmire ofdisputes over territory and markets, followedby constant eruptions of violent conflict, andending in misery and destitution on amassive scale. By skilfully crafting thereasons for this complexity of privateproperty relationships to a novel 'kids stuff'analogy the script neatly underlines theimportance of gaining a worldview ofcapitalism by analysing how the rulesgoverning the minority ownership of the'toys' determines the terms of oppression andthe conditions of inequality for the 'toylessproducers'.

Although there is an obvious dangersuch an analogy could be counter-productive, by unintentionally projecting anoversimplification of what constitutes thereality of capitalism, this hurdle is overcomeby complementing the linkage to the"reality" of capitalism with a powerfulbackdrop of words and images, so the overallcontext underscores a revolutionary outlookon how we might live. These contrasts arefurther enhanced by comparing the divisionsand horrors of capitalism with a societywhere production is geared to meetinghuman needs not profit - plus the immensebenefits to be gained when the world'sresources are distributed through a system ofproduction for use and free access - so thenecessity of social equality becomeconclusive.

This is maintained throughout the 50minutes so the viewer is left in no doubt that

Jung Chang

6#(7 3.4#.5

-.+(arat#%n %8 9r#n+#:(.sQ4is&(2cla#atioE&is&t42&=asis&o.&o0#o#6aEisatioE&aE(9&=2ca0s2&it&isalso&aE&i<3o#taEt&4isto#ical(oc0<2Et&(atiE6&.#o<&t42.o#<atioE&o.&t42&3a#tS&iE&7L>+9&itso#i6iEal&laE60a62&4as&=22E#2taiE2(I

NbbectThe establish%ent of a syste%of so9iety base< upon the9o%%on o2nership an<<e%o9rati9 9ontrol of the%eans an< instru%ents forpro<u9ing an< <istributing2ealth by an< in the interest ofthe 2hole 9o%%unityO

ieclaration of CrinciplesThe !o9ialist Farty of GreatHritain hol<s

j.Bhat society as at presentconstituted is based upon theownership of the means of livingOi.e., land, factories, railways, etc.P

by the capitalist or master class,and the conseSuent enslavementof the working class, by whoselabour alone wealth is produced.

E.Bhat in society, therefore, thereis an antagonism of interests,manifesting itself as a classstruggle between those whopossess but do not produce andthose who produce but do notpossess.

Z.Bhat this antagonism can beabolished only by theemancipation of the working classfrom the domination of the masterclass, by the conversion into thecommon property of society of themeans of production anddistribution, and their democraticcontrol by the whole people.

J.Bhat as in the order of socialevolution the working class is thelast class to achieve its freedom,

the emancipation of the workingclass will involve the emancipationof all mankind, without distinctionof race or seX.

D.Bhat this emancipation must bethe work of the working classitself.

A.Bhat as the machinery ofgovernment, including the armedforces of the nation, eXists only toconserve the monopoly by thecapitalist class of the wealth takenfrom the workers, the workingclass must organice consciouslyand politically for the conSuest ofthe powers of government,national and local, in order thatthis machinery, including theseforces, may be converted from aninstrument of oppression into theagent of emancipation and theoverthrow of privilege, aristocraticand plutocratic.

K.Bhat as all political parties arebut the eXpression of classinterests, and as the interest ofthe working class is diametricallyopposed to the interests of allsections of the master class, theparty seeking working classemancipation must be hostile toevery other party.

o.Bhe ;ocialist Carty of UreatVritain, therefore, enters the fieldof political action determined towage war against all otherpolitical parties, whether allegedlabour or avowedly capitalist, andcalls upon the members of theworking class of this country tomuster under its banner to theend that a speedy terminationmay be wrought to the systemwhich deprives them of the fruitsof their labour, and that povertymay give place to comfort,privilege to eSuality, and slaveryto freedom.

18 Socialist Standard September 2005

best to stop the sale of bogus 'official' kit, sothe Olympic 'movement' says that onlycompanies who stump up the money to themcan gain any kudos from the magic O-wordand the five rings.

Naturally money has long been talkingthe Olympic language with regard to the2008 games in Beijing. Three levels ofcorporate involvement are envisaged,including partners (cost $40 million), andsponsors (over $20 million). Budweiser, forinstance, is the official international beersponsor, giving its owners Anheuser-Buschthe right to use the 2008 games logo forpromotional purposes in China and manyother countries. And it's not just a matter ofgetting money in for 2008. In the words ofone marketing expert, 'The BeijingOlympics will not be about sport, it will beabout creating a superbrand called "China"'(http://www. chinabusinessreview. com/public /0501/ogilvy.html). So as Chinaflexes its muscles in terms of currencyrevaluations and provides financial supportfor Mugabe's thuggish regime in Zimbabwe,it also competes in staging the Olympic free-for-all and marketing itself within worldcapitalism.!PB

TPX]! PT T[U !Vaa-TBhe snows of the Fold war are melting.Bhe ;oviet Cremier, Vulganin, and theFommunist Carty leader, gruschev, are tovisit Vritain neXt spring. Bhey will be fetedby the pueen. 8ven the TailS&!ailwelcomes the visit a with somereservations.

iuring the war the 4ussians wereour friends, our egallant allies,e ourecomrades in arms.e Vut since jkJD theyhave become the villains of the piece.Bhey have become our potentialenemies. Ihilst our old enemies theItalians, the àpanese and the UermansOthe Iestern Uermans, of courseqP arenow our friends, our allies in a possiblefuture war. Vut now, since the UenevaeBalks at the ;ummite the 4ussians a forhow long we know not a are almost our

friends againl or at least our politicianshave eagreede to differ with the ;ovietrulers.

Bo most people, who think that allthese differences and antagonisms aredue to differences of systems orideologies a to eFommunisme ore[ascisme a these changes are Suitebewildering.

O . . .P mBnhe reasons why the rulersof 4ussia, 5merica, or Vritain fall out isnot any soacalled difference of ideologies,of iemocracy, or Fommunisml ordifferences of social systems or ways oflife. [or we know that their social systemsare not basically differentl that 5mericanefree enterprisee is not fundamentallydifferent from ;oviet eFommunism.e Ieknow that in Vritain, 5merica a and theL.;.;.4. the same problems eXistl weknow that the workers of these lands arepoor, that they live insecure lives, whilst

their employers are richl we know that inthe ;oviet Lnion, as ;talin admitted bustbefore he died, the ruling class is beingforced more and more to look for marketsfor its goods a outside its own frontiers.Ie know that the ;oviet leaders are asmuch concerned with protecting theirproperty interests as are the 5mericansor Vritish. Bhat is why we are notsurprised at the antagonisms the FoldIar, the changing alliances, the eBalks atthe ;ummit,e and the temporary patchingaup of differences.

O[rom an article by Ceter 8. Mewell,Socialist&StaE(a#(, ;eptember jkDDP

6#8t; <.ars Ag%

from page 5

aan9hester Hran9haeeting ônday )J !epte%ber, o pm Gare and Gounds, ;hudehill, Fitycentre gTUUW-ZG T[U Q@AXWh

?..t#ngsbefore a world of common ownership ispossible the majority have to gain a level ofclass consciousness and politicalunderstanding. In other words: engaging in astruggle to promote the class interest of themajority to attain and create a society whereprivate property is replaced by commonownership involves acknowledging that thepresent unequal access to the means of livingrequires a political solution.

To get this solution across to anapolitical audience successfully in itself isno mean feat, but to also focus attention onthe vast amount of social and individualfreedom such a revolution will bring aboutwill motivate many viewers to press thereplay button over and over again, and sospeaks volumes for the professionaldedication and attention to detail. Althoughthis is a first in terms of the socialist messagebeing transposed into a film format no doubtit will not be the last. So watch this space,but in the meantime judge for yourself bywatching Capitalism and Other Kids' Stuff atwww.socialist-tv.com, or alternatively bypurchasing a DVD from: Socialist Party, 52Clapham High St, London SW4 7UN. Cost£5 (including post & packaging). Brian Johnson

Qest Xon<on Hran9hBuesday )* !epte%ber, o pm

Fhiswick Bown Gall, GeathfieldBerrace, I.J Onearest tube/Fhiswick CarkP.

;howing of video PAU `@V -Z PHPW !TPTUS

19Socialist Standard September 2005

Faul Toot an<the >ote

Caul [oot who diedlast year was alwaysa readable bournalist.Ge was also a

member of the Brotskyist;IC. Ihen he died he wasworking on a book about the

vote, a curious subbect, it might be thought, for the politicaltestament of a member of an organisation which favours armedinsurrection and mass strikes rather than the vote as the way togain control of political power. Falled Bhe Rote, Gow it was Ionand Gow it was undermined, it is basically about the tensionbetween iemocracy Oas universal suffrageP and Croperty Oasaccumulated wealthP.

iuring the 8nglish civil war a famous debate, presided overby Fromwell, took place in the church at Cutney, in London,where the issue was thrashed out amongst representatives of allranks in the parliamentary army, of the ordinary soldiers as wellas of the officers and the high command. ;oldiers who wereLevellers argued that the vote should be given to every man Oorat least to every man who was not a servant or on the Coor Lawlthere was some ambiguity on this pointP. Bhey were opposed byFommissaryaUeneral Ireton, Fromwell_s sonainalaw, who arguedthat only those who had a real stake in the country by virtue ofbeing owners of land should have the right to vote, i.e. to decidewhat laws were made, what taXes were levied, etc. It fell to anofficer with the appropriate name of Folonel 4ich to spell outwhat might happen if men with little or no property were giventhe vote/

eIt may happen, that the mabority may by law, not inconfusion, destroy propertyl there may be a law enacted, thatthere shall be eSuality of goods and estatee.

Bhis remained the standard argument against democracyuntil the end of the jkth century. Voth Uladstone and iisraeliwere declared opponents of democracy, and in fact in 8uropedemocracy was seen, by both its opponents and supporters as a

revolutionary demand. ârX himself hoped that, with theuniversal male suffrage that the Fhartists demanded, whatFolonel 4ich had feared would come about. eLniversal suffrageis the eSuivalent of political power for the working class of8nglande, he wrote in 5ugust joDE in an article in the Mew forkBribune Suoted by [oot. eIts inevitable result, here, is the politicalsupremacy of the working classe.

5fter the ;econd and Bhird 4eform 5cts of joAK and jooJ,the mabority of electors in Vritain came from the working class,even though only about Zd percent of the adult population hadthe vote Ono women and only Ad percent of menP. Bhis remainedthe situation until after the first world war, when the vote waseXtended to men over Ej and women over Zd. Lniversal suffragedid not come until jkEo when the vote was given to women tooat Ej.

Bhe eXtension of the vote did partially realise Folonel 4ich_sfear and garl ârX_s hope in that it did lead to the formation andrise of the Labour Carty as a eworking class partye with as one ofits aims a redistribution of wealth from the rich to the workingclass. Vut this didn_t happen. Bhe second part of [oot_s book isdevoted to eXplaining why iemocracy did not lead to anysignificant inroads into the rights of Croperty, in other words, whyLabour failed.

Nne thing he had neglected in his account of ehow the votewas wone was the eXtent to which an eXtension of the voteincreasingly became a necessity as capitalism developed and asthe administrative work of the capitalist state, at local as well asnational level, grew and became more compleX. It was clear that

some, in fact most, of this work would have to be done bypersons who were neither aristocrats nor capitalists. Bhe workingclass had to be got involved in the administration of capitalism.Bo do this they had to be brought ewithin the constitutione bybeing given full citicenship rights, as represented by having thevote. Bhe more faraseeing of the supporters of capitalism realisedthisl some actively campaigned for it even in Fhartist times. Bhebourgeoisademocratic republic Oor constitutional monarchyP is infact the ideal political form for the rule of the capitalist class.

Gowever, bust because universal suffrage and formaldemocratic control of the machinery of government was in theoverall interest of the capitalist class as a whole didn_t mean thatthis was going to come about automatically. 5s [oot points out, ithad to be struggled for. Voth the [irst 4eform 5ct of joZE OwhicheXtended the franchise to the emiddle classeP and the ;econd4eform 5ct Owhich eXtended it to most urban workersP wereaccompanied by riots and demonstrations by workers thatpersuaded the Gouse of Lords not to use its veto. In between, as[oot recounts, the Fhartists demonstrated and rioted and evenstaged some armed uprisings to try to achieve universal malesuffrage, unsuccessfully as it turned out, but with the aim oftransferring political power to the working class.

Ihen it comes to the second part ofthe book Oehow the vote was underminedeP,[oot seems to be suggesting that Labourfailed because its leaders, when ingovernment, weren_t determined enough intheir use of parliament to bring about, inthe words of the Labour Carty_s manifestofor the jkKJ general election manifesto, eafundamental and irreversible shift in thebalance of power in favour of workingpeople and their familiese Oyes, believe it ornot, that what_s they actually werepromising as recently as thatP. Bhis,despite the fact that his own descriptionsof what happened to the various Labourgovernments a ebankers_ rampe in jkZj,esterling crisese in jkJK and jkJk,egnomes of ]uriche for Iilson in the jkAds, and eI^[ conditionsefor Fallaghan in the jkKds a bring out the fact that capitalism is aworld system and that no government of one country, howeverdetermined, can isolate the economy from the workings andpressures of the world market.

It might be thought that [oot as a Brotskyist Ohe was in the;ICP would have realised that esocialism in one countrye isimpossible. Vut, although Brotsky did proclaim this, it didn_t meanthat he thought nothing could be done in one countryl if avanguard was ruthless and determined enough it could, heargued, establish a eIorkers ;tatee, based on nationalisationand planning, i.e. that estate capitalism in one countrye waspossible.

It is what had happened in 4ussia and [oot gives theimpression that the Labour Carty could have done the same inVritain if only its leaders had been prepared to stand up to thegnomes of ]urich and other international capitalists. 5ctually, asa Brotskyist, [oot doesn_t believe this, as it is the Brotskyist viewthat the sort of fullascale state capitalism that [oot thinks theLabour Carty should have been bold enough to have pressed ontowards can only be established after a successful armedinsurrection led by a Brotskyist vanguard OeBhere is noparliamentary roade, says eIhat the ;IC ;tands [oreP. It is thusrather odd that [oot should have chosen to write a book aboutBhe Rote at all since for him the vote is only of relatively minorsignificance, serving merely as a potential means of access to atribunal from which to spread Brotskyist views Oe5t mostparliamentary activity can be used to make propaganda againstthe present systemeP.

Bhis is Suite adifferent perspective tothat of the more clearasighted Fhartists a andârX who wasinfluenced by them athat universal suffrage,once achieved, couldbe used as a means ofwinning control ofpolitical power so that,in the words of Folonel4ich in jAJK, ethemabority may by law,not in confusion,destroy propertye.!PXH

Chartist meeting, [ennington, 1848

Voting with its Foot - theSWP never had muchtime for democracy

]eep -t -n The Ta%ilyBhe âke Coverty Gistory movement hasbeen taken seriously by at least onemember of the 5frican capitalist class.eôst of his country_s citicens survive onless than Adp a day, but that has notstopped the son of the Cresident of8Suatorial Uuinea spending nearly rjmillion on three luXury cars during amassive shopping spree in ;outh 5frica.BeodorinMguemaNbiang, theînister of[orestry,8nvironmentand Gousing inhis [ather_sUovernment,bought a blackVentley 5rnageand a creamVentley ûllinerworth rAdd,dddlast weekend.Ge then added awhite siXalitre Lamborghini worth rEKD,dddto his new fleet, according to Bhe ;tarnewspaper.e Bhe Qi<2s OEj ùlyP. ^rNbiang_s family have made povertyhistory a for their family at any rate. Vutwhat about the working class in thatcountry a Adp a day> Ie might earnabout rAd a day but the capitalist class inVritain enboy the same class differences.Gow many of you spend a million poundson a shopping spree>

Pn [onest P%bassa<or Cresident Vush took the unprecedentedstep of appointing the L; 5mbassador tothe LM òhn Volton during a recess of theL; ;enate. Ge deemed this necessarybecause of an opposition easy tounderstand when you consider Volton_s

contemptfor the LM.eIn jkkJ,during aconventionin Mewfork, ^rVoltondeclared/TBhere isno suchthing as

the Lnited Mations. Bhere is aninternational community that occasionallycan be led by the only real power left inthe world, and that_s the Lnited ;tates,when it suits our interests and who canget others to go along.’e Ge also said/eBhe only Suestion for the Lnited ;tates iswhat_s in our interest. 5nd if you don_t likethat, I_m sorry, but that is a fact.e BheQi<2s OE 5ugustP Bhere is nothing

remarkable about this.It correctly sums up theL; position in worldpolitics, but what the;enate obbect to is thehonesty with whichthey are eXpressed.Coliticians are neverfond of honesty, it setsa dangerousprecedentq

Qage !la>es5 common obbection to

socialism is that peopleare too lacy and

wouldn_t work thus making socialismimpossible. Bhis elacy mane obbection to anew society doesn_t seem to sSuare withthe findings of a report prepared by theoffice supplier 8sselte. eMearly a third ofVritish wage slaves work more than Ddhours a weekl J per cent more than Kdhoursl and more than a third take workhome according to a survey of E,Ajjpeople.e Bhe Qi<2s OJ 5ugustP

Goo< Ze2s Tro% Vgan<a5midst all the despair about world povertywe have managed to discover from theletter page of an 5frican newspaper somegood news. e5bout two thirds of theworld_s population are hungry, whilemillions die from starvation every year.Ihy in a world of potential plenty, is soelementary a human need as foodneglected> ... Bhe law that governseverywhere is eno profit, no productione.Lganda U=s2#/2# OJ 5ugustP fes, even insoacalled backward 5frica, workers arelearning that capitalism causes poverty.P Hlea6 Tutureiespite the wellameaning activities of theâke Coverty Gistory campaign andvarious promises from Uo the future looksgrim for the poor in 5frica. eBhe proportionof malnourished people in suba;ahara

5frica has remained at about ZDs sincejkKd, the International [ood Colicy4esearch Institute said. Vut populationgrowth means the number affected roseto Edd million by Eddj. ... It warns that thenumber of malnourished children couldgrow from Zo.A million now to Jj.k millionby EdED.e VVW&F2Gs&OjE 5ugustP Iellmeaning charities are not the answer tothis horrendous social problem. 5s thesocialist letter writer to the LgandaU=s2#/2# noted ethe law that governseverywhere is no profit no productione.

Qhat is your >ie2SIe are socialists and obviously we detesta society where people are forced to lieand cheat in order to survive, but whatabout successful liars and cheaters whohave done well inside capitalism> Gere isthe C4 Uuru âX Flifford who has mademillions lying and cheating. eio I say, Mo,my client isn_t gay when I know that he is>Nf course. ioes telling the truth matter> Ifit_s showbic...rock_n_roll ... then absolutelynot.e Bhe Qi<2s OjA 5ugustP It isn_t bustshow business though, here is ;ir Garveyònes a former chief eXecutive of IFIcommenting on modern capitalism aeVusiness is getting more corrupt. It isless a calling, less a profession. Bhe stockmarket ... has purely become a gamblingden. Bhe Qi<2s OjD 5ugustP Bhese peoplehave benefited from capitalism and yetcan see how corrupt it is. fou haven_tbenefited at all, so why do you support it>

Produced and published by the Socialist Party of Great Britain, 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN

Tree lun9h

-!!Z **KD L)+^

Bentley Arnage interior, (ust so you know

Rambo Bolton telling it like it is see page jK for details

M e w i R i

by Aigg

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