[page 23]
The politics of the
environment
environment
Bill Hopwood examines the social, economic and political issues
that are at the base of the environmental crisis.
HE MOUNTING ENVIRONMENTAL crisis
T consists of many linked changes to the
earth and its patterns of life, which interact and react on one another.
Industrial wastes, the burning of fossil fuels, car and truck exhaust, and intensive agriculture, all pollute the atmosphere. Air pollution directly harms life as well as causing acid rain and damaging climate changes. This includes global warming, which threatens a spread of deserts and widespread flooding of coastal areas as the ocean levels rise.
Many Greens argue that
ving the planet takes
precedence over the
truggle for socialism.
Forests are crucial to stable climate and preventing flooding and soil erosion. Called the world's lungs', they are crucial to the balance of life, absorbing animals' waste carbon dioxide while releasing oxygen vital to animal life. But much of the industrialised world's forests disappeared in the last 200 years. Most that remain are threatened by acid rain. Half of the original tropical forests have been destroyed.
The environment is not fixed, it is constantly changing. Humanity has altered the world over many centuries. The Mediterranean area has changed with deforestation, the silting up of rivers and the expansion of deserts over two thousand years. North Africa was the main grain growing region of the Roman Empire. Plato, in ancient Greece, complained about the deforestation around Athens. However, the speed and range of change has increased dramatically with the development of capitalism and industrialisation.
The accumulation of change to quality. The is having a dramatic live on. The dramatic Something must be done.
quantity has lead to a
way our world is run effect on the world we
changes threaten fe.
However there no
March
/Ap
agreement on what and how. The pace of change is too fast for many species to genetically adapt. As only humans can consciously change, our choices will effect much of life's survival.
HE ENVIRONMEN-
TAL DILEMMA is
more extreme in what is called the third world. Millions of people starve, die of disease and live in grinding poverty. These countries are dominated by the huge multinationals.
Most of the third world is dependent on the sale nf raur motoriole tha nain
u ran materians, but price or with nas lanen relative to industrialised goods. The dependency on exporting raw materials leads to growing cash crops for export, which destroy the soil while the farm workers starve. Trees are cut for export leading to soil erosion and degradation and floods. Minerals are ripped from the soil polluting rivers, air, and land.
The governments of these countries argue the only way to improve living standards is by increased industrialisation and the development of a modern economy. However, during the boom years of 1950-75 most of them failed to catch up. In fact, the gap between the poor and rich countries has increased.
Many leaders claim there are too many people and that population control is needed to improve living standards and stop the threat to the environment. They suggest various forms of birth control up to and including forced sterilisation. They always point the finger at the poor, demanding that they must stop having children.
Whilst it is true that the earth is is not clear what the ideal population is. Moreover, population control depends conditions. While in many industrialised
finite it
density on social countries
[page 24]
population is stable, in much of the third world it is still growing. This is due to some improvements in health, which has increased average life expectancy, but the social system still leads to large families. Children in many countries are the only form of social welfare, providing support when parents are sick or old.
The position of women in society has a big influence on birth rates. Education and the at least partial financial independence of women in the industrialised countries have had a big impact on birth rates as women are more able to decide when to have children and how many to have. The only real answer to population growth is to improve economic conditions, with a public welfare system and better education and women's rights.
OW CAN THE planet be saved? As
live in a capitalist world many of
political and business leaders argue market offers the best solution.
Environmental improvements can be made under a capitalist system. In the USA lead emissions from car exhausts have been cut as have some waste emissions from industry such as sulphur dioxide and particles. There have been improvements in efficiency of production, for instance between 1973 and 1984 the raw material and energy content of a unit of Japanese production fell 40%. Internationally, between 1971-91, consumption per unit of GDP fell 25% for copper, 40% for iron ore and 50% for tin.
When faced with a serious threat, such as the mounting environmental crisis, the state can take action against individual companies to defend the system as a whole. Some governments have introduced rules governing pollution, such as from cars, or they have set up mechanisms, such as environmental taxes or allowances, to make it more profitable for companies to act in ways beneficial to the environment.
we the the
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However such schemes ignore the fundamentals of capitalism, which is based on each company trying to increase its profits. It is a system of economic competition and therefore it is incapable of taking an all-round integrated approach to solving problems. Firms often view expenditure on safety and environmental protection as an excessive burden and in the long-run try to find ways around any restrictions,
constantly looking to cut costs.
Already many companies are moving their most polluting factories to areas with less restrictions. The Mexican side of the US border is an an environmental disaster. Similarly many polluting Japanese companies have moved to other Asian countries to escape pollution controls. The third world is a dumping ground for hazardous and toxic wastes. The costs of dumping in Africa are one thousandth of those in the West because of the lack of controls.
Also, when profits are being squeezed by recession restrictions are relaxed, as is happening at the moment. There are constant conflicts over which section of society will pay for environmental protection. At the end of the day the extra costs to companies of saving the environment will be passed on to the consumer. The phrase the polluter pays really means the working class pays.
OME GREENS CLAIM that increased pro-
•duction will eventually so increase pollution
and use up resources that human and possibly other life will be destroyed. They argue that saving the planet is the top priority and must take precedence over the struggle for socialism. They put forward economic policies such as nil growth and the redistribution of wealth in favour of poorer countries.
Capitalism needs ever increasing markets and production to survive. A slow down or nil growth for a year or two, such as the present recession, throws the system into crisis. How could capitalism cope with years of no growth? For the poor masses of the underdeveloped world no growth would mean even greater poverty.
During the 1980s production increased in the industrialised countries but the gap between the rich and poor countries widened. GDP fell between the 1960s and the 1980s in Africa by 14%, in the Middle East 10% and Latin America 7%. In 1900 the differential income of the richest to poorest country was 8 to one, in 1967 it was 82 to one and in 1987 it was 130 to one.
How would the present wealth be shared out around the world to end third world poverty? As big business already refuses to cut profits in favour of higher wages or social spending then such a re-division would mean taking from the workers of the industrialised world.
There would be no guarantee that any money would find its way to the poor peasants and workers. All the evidence shows that most of present aid is ef no benefit to the masses as most of it is used for big projects and the main benefactors are the ruling elite of the countries receiving the money and the multinational companies.
And how would such a change be carried out? For hundreds of years liberals have urged the capitalists to care, whether about child labour, war or poverty, all to no avail. All the
March/April 1993 23
[page 25]
reforms in the industrialised world have been won by workers organising and struggling.
A policy of make yourself poorer would not mobilise the mass support of workers to force capitalism to change. It is extremely unlikely a Green government would be elected on such a programme and if elected it would still face all the blocks and sabotage of worldwide corporations whose sole interest is profit.
A Green government based on capitalism, rather than solving the world's environmental problems, would increase them, as a lack of growth would increase mass poverty leading to environmental decline and more social disintegration and war. There can be no separation of the struggle to save the planet from the struggle for socialism.
• OMETIMES TECHNOLOGY RATHER than
growth is blamed for the environmental
crisis. Of course with no technology there would be no problems. However there also would be no society as technology is the foundation of human society.
But anti-technologists don't usually take the argument to its full extent, rather they propose limiting technology. But where to draw line? The romantic dream of a golden age has a long history. This beautiful past never existed. It is impossible to turn the clock back. We live in a world totally dependent on technology. The question for society is not for or against technology but rather its use and control.
Many of the problems have technical solutions though they are not all being applied. Great savings in energy and raw materials use are possible and some progress has been made in some industries. Much more energy could be saved by increased efficiency and changing wasteful habits. In the early 1980s more electrical energy was used by air conditioning in the USA than the total use in China. Only a third of the energy input in a steam driven electricity generating plant is used. Much of the present waste could be saved or used to heat neighbouring buildings in combined heat and power systems.
Coal is the most plentiful fossil fuel and yet in many industrialised countries it is being replaced by oil and gas as a source of energy. Coal burning can produce many pollutants but with modern methods it can be a clean and efficient fuel. Oil and gas at present rates of use will run out in less than 100 years. There are renewable sources of energy that have hardly been exploited at all. The world is full of energy but capitalism has not invested money in finding ways to use it.
Present production methods and products are often extremely wasteful of raw materials. Scarce resources could be saved by recycling or finding alternatives. Copper, widely used in telecommunications, can be replaced by optic fibres made from glass, for which raw materials are plentiful.
There are 500m automobiles which use one
24 • March/April 1993
Possib
increa
Model average
efficiency
Best model
Best
prototype
Cars Miles per gallon
18
50
77
Homes Thousand joules per square metre
190
68
11
Refridgerator Kilowatt-hours per day
4
2
1
From Scientific
American
September
third of the oil produced in the world and large quantities of raw materials. The car is one of the major causes of air pollution. Public transport is a more environmentally efficient means of transport but capitalism does not develop cheap integrated efficient systems.
Food production and distribution is extremely wastefully organised. Millions starve while piles of food are destroyed. Farmers are paid huge subsidies to grow food that is not used while others are paid not to grow food. Intensive a chemie is some regions uses as a te
damages the environment, while food production in other regions is extremely backward and unproductive. A planned international food system is technically possible, would eradicate starvation and, stop the destruction of much of the world's forests, freshwater, and topsoil.
It is true that the development of science and technique creates problems. It also solves them. The use of fire was an early technological breakthrough. Is fire good or bad?' is a false question. The value of fire depends on its use; burning witches or keeping people warm!
Genetic engineering offers previously undreamed of potential including tackling diseases and producing more efficient strains of plants. It also has the potential of the worst nightmare of manipulating life to increase profit or control human behaviour. It is the same dilemma as fire, who controls the use of technology and for what purpose is it used.
In all societies knowledge is controlled and dominated by the ruling elites' needs and views. Science is not neutral and separate from society. The needs of big business dominate research, development and the use of science. Also the philosophy of the ruling class shapes the views of scientists.
Much of science today is dominated by narrow fields of study. Medicine is dominated by the idea of curing isolated illnesses by a specific technical answer through drugs or surgery. What is needed is an approach based on the interconnection of different causes and effects. Science needs to take a holistic long term-view, based
[page 26]
on an understanding that all things and processes are interconnected.
Cie Barth Sommi AN WE AFFORD to save the world! At third world countries put forward a target of $125bn per year help from the West to tackle the environmental problems. The WorldWatch Institution estimated that a ten year programme of $100-150bn a year would lay the basis for sustainable growth by protecting topsoil, reforestation, raising energy efficiency, resolving third world debt, controlling population and developing renewable energy sources. The world's rulers spend about one trillion dollars a year on arms, or $2.7bn a day! This colossal amount of production, money, and human talent would, if redirected, have a dramatic impact on the environment. The world is faced with a combination of interconnected crisies but the central issue is how the world is The means of production are in conflict with system. The technical means exist the social to solve many of the problems. If science concentrated its efforts on the many new developments would emerge to tackle them.
However at present the control and use of science and technology make the crisis of the environment worse. The social system has to be changed to save the world What force can change the way the world is run? There has been a big increase in people's awareness of the threat to the planet. Big business tries to exploit this by putting responsibility for saving the planet onto individuals and in some cases even to boost profits. campaigns There are defend the environment, some of which have gained partial victories and built confidence to fight back. There have also been union campaigns ranging from refusal to transport nuclear waste to demands for safer work practices. These campaigns need to be linked together and given a wider horizon of the social and economic issues that are at the base of the environmental crisis. The majority of people are workers and poor They are the most direct sufferers peasants.
from the destruction of the environment. They work in the polluted atmosphere of industry, live on polluted land, drinking and eating contaminated food. The rich, at least for a time, can escape to the cleaner parts of the globe. Any solution has to be an international Even in the European Community during the boom the national barriers could not be overcome. There have been constant disagreements between the EC countries on issues. The United Nations is unable to resolve of the worlds' major conflicts. Only the any working class can break down the barriers of the nation state. To tackle the environmental issues requires an international outlook and change in financial priorities and scientific approach. It is true that the crisis of the environment has been greater in the former Stalinist states than in the capitalist west. This has been used by the defenders of capitalism to argue against socialism and a planned economy. However the Stalinist states were not socialist. The lack of democracy and the active involvement of the working class in running society lead both to the economic and environmental crisis.
to saving the planet is people's The key control over their lives and production. In the third world and the former Stalinist countries there are no such controls and in these countries the pollution and other problems are greatest. In the industrialised world the working class Pollution nightmare: children in the Czech lands.
is organised in unions and political parties and through these is able to a limited restrain the most extreme and immediate acts of environmental damage.
Modern society has the technology to destroy life on the planet. On the other hand there is the potential for a life free of hunger, poverty and disease. Technology is the use of human skill and imagination to influence the world around us. However humans are not conquerors we are not apart from and above of nature; nature. The key to human success is to understand nature and to live in harmony with nature. Capitalism is incapable of such harmony. Its approach is short term: get the highest profits it can now and to hell with the consequences. all life in the world can no The world and longer afford this approach. People don't cause the problem; in fact, their talents and abilities are the most valuable resource for saving the planet. A world socialist freeing release human talent, would society humanity of the chains of profit, greed, war and oppression, to tackle the many problems of the world.
March/April 1993 • 25
[page 27]
Economic Focus Debt applies the brakes EcoNomy core s FOLnatural to capitalism breaas thing is to a human being.
Workers build up production for the capitalists during a boom only to see it destroyed in a recession.
The engine that powers this trade cycle is profits and profitability. If capitalism cannot get enough return for production then production stops and the economy crashes. Recession ends when the returns are enough for the capitalists to start up production. Employers will seek to drive down workers' wages, bring through redundancies, and speed up productivity, to improve profitability.
An important feature of improving profitability is low interest rates and minimum bad debt. Interest is the section of the unpaid labour of the working class that industrial capitalists have to pay back to the banks for borrowing money. If interest rates and bad debt are low, will mean more profit available for investment and production. 'Cheap credit' means that bosses are also more likely to borrow to invest.
The present downturn has been continuing now in some countries since mid-1990. One reason for its length is the debt burden that was built up in the 1980s. The OECD Economic Vutlook No.52, December 1994, deals with this question. Companies generally took on more debt relative to production in the 1980s, especially in Japan, Britain, Australia and Sweden.
26 & March/April 1993 For a while improved sales and profits outpaced debt repayments. By the late 1980s, however, smaller profit margins and higher interest rates pushed debt-payment burdens higher. This burden rose to record levels in the USA, Britain, Australia and matched the previous peak in Canada.
Household sector debt burdens some of the highest levels in at least 20 years. Things were especially bad in Britain. The ratios of both household debt to gross domestic product (GDP) and interest payments to disposable income, doubled during the decade. Households in Australia and Sweden were also sharply affected Banks found property speculation very profitable in the 1980s.
ABIG RISE in property and share prices due to easy credit during the 1980s also turned into its opposite. Borrowed funds boosted property prices.
With the downturn, property prices crashed and with it went the construction industry. Japan's stock exchange experienced a 60% fall in share prices between 1989 and 1992. Commercial property prices in London fell 45% in the same period. Falling share and property prices combined with rising debt have also put pressure on the Banks found property banks.
speculation very profitable in the 1980s. Its crash in turn has hit them hard. Losses at | wards an upturn. By Pete Watson and David Kaplan commercial banks and savings and loans institutions in the US have caused many bank tallures. The situation in Norway, Sweden and Finland was potentially even worse before a large government bail out operation. Japanese banks have had problems.
A factor that the OECD report highlights as the cause of this massive debt burden is the relaxation of credit controls and regulations across the world. The international finance markets were allowed to let rip.
The 1980s upturn lasted seven years, from 1983 to 1990. It was however only the years of 1980 to 1990 that saw higher levels of growth and profitability. Debt played a large part in the weak boom years of the 1980s. It now seems that the very length of the 1980s boom in turn has laid the basis for the length of the recession in the early 1990s. The attempts to 'internationalise' finance through reducing government regulation has only helped to create international financial crisis. It is now debt that is a factor in restraining the faltering steps of capitalism to-
[page 28]
BM cri
In sis
BM IS ONE of the world's
giant companies, dominating the computer industry. It has a huge $65bn turnover. Yet last year it sacked 40,000 staff. This year 25,000 are expected to go. A firm once worth $106bn was at the year's end worth less than $29bn with $29bn worth of debt. It is likely to be broken up into smaller companies.
Computer industry growth rates ran at 20% a year during the 1980s, according to the Financial Times (7 April 1992). Even capitalist commentators acept that those days won't return.
Recession has hit the industry hard. The world's ten largest information technology suppliers showed a 10% fall in sales in 1991. As James Unruh, chair of Unisys says, "growth has slowed because users are not able to absorb new technology at todays rate of technological change"
Technological change is also attacking IBM. Low cost computers and the standardisation of microchips and operating systems are all leading to an offensive on IBM's monopoly position. 0
Health
›alt the
CO
in US sts
IN A SEEMINGLY radical
move, US president Clinton has pledged to guarantee nationwide access to medical care. However, the need to keep down rising health-care costs is the driving force behind the new administration's reform strategy.
From 1970-90, US health-care spending grew at an annual rate of 5.5%, twice as fast as GDP (US 1991/92, OECD). In 1990, per-capita health spending was $2,566, twice the OECD
CHARLEM HOSPITAL CENTER 00 Yan d wer
LOCAL 420 0C32 MESMEr
THE HARLEM COMMUNTY CANT
AFFORD TO LOSE T2 MED-SIGNES
Dont Limit Dur
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Harlem hospital workers dernonstrate against bed closures.
average (in Britain it was $909). The US now spends more than $800bn a year on medical care.
The share of GDP devoted to health-care spending was 12.1% in 1990 (the OECD average was 7.5%). A substantial part of this bill is footed directly by employers, through insurance premiums for employees. It is therefore a massive drain on the US economy as a whole. The appointment of Hilary Chinton to oversee the plans for a new national health system attests to the seriousness with which the new administration views the imbalance.
Why is the US health bill so high? Part of the reason is the waste that inevitably pervades an unregulated health-care insurance market of 1,500 companies: one-quarter of all costs go on administration. There is little incentive to restrain costs incurred by hospitals: practically any non-experimental procedure is covered under almost all insurance plans, and therefore, once an innovation is shown to be even marginally effective, its market is assured almost regardless of cost. Physicians are predominantly paid on a fee-for-service basis. Any increase in health-care cost is passed directly onto the policy holder through increased premiums
The voluntary,
rance market
competitive inis also largely
responsible for gaps in coverage: many employers, especially smaller ones, do not insure their employees because the 'perk' of health-care cover would cut into profit margins. Insurers often require waiting periods before insurance takes effect and disallow coverage for pre-existing conditions (because of increased costs of care). Thirty-five million Americans are not covered by health insurance.
Federal government health expenditure threatens to become the biggest contributor to the budget deficit by the end of the decade, exceeding social security and defence: in 1991, the federal government spent $104.5bn on Medicare; federal Medicaid state grants were $52.5bn. Estimates of different proposals to extend coverage to those who do not have it at the moment vary from $35bn to $123bn a year.
The increased cost of universal coverage will outstrip reformprogramme savings for the next five years, boosting the US budget deficit, and pushing the pledge to extend cover further out of reach. As the Wall Street Journal remarked, "creating an effective system... in the US health-care industry is a task on a par with making capitalist economies out of the formerly socialist countries of Eastern Europe" (25 January).
/ April 1º
[page 29]
A Life on the Right Peter Taaffe reviews The Time of My Life, the autobiography of Denis Healey, for decades a key figure on the Labour right. DEE with her occup of the Cantal Party at critical times in its evolution over the last 45 years or so. His admirers claim that he was Labour prime minister that never was'. Yet his saving grace, viewed historically, is that he became the Labour leader. If he would have done, given his programme and policies, his reputation would be as tarnished as those of Wilson, Callaghan and Kinnock. In other words, his ideas were never put to the test, except as part of a Labour cabinet, holding influential positions such as defence secretary and chancellor of the exchequer, where he demonstrated an unswerving support for the status quo, that is capitalism.
Although Healey is an intelligent and cultured figure - with an obvious expansive knowledge of classical music, opera and theatre - along with many of his co-thinkers, and the broad swathe of left reformists as well, he has a thinly disguised contempt for theory. Karl Marx is described as 'a great man' and yet Healey extols the virtues of Popperism and proclaims himself an 'eclectic pragmatist. On the one side he can declare: "I am a socialist who believes that the Labour Party offers the best hope for Britain's future... I do not believe that I or my colleagues are perfect; nor have I ever believed in the perfectibility of man. But my faith in the moral values which socialism represents, and in those who try to put them into practice, however imperfectly, remains undiminished". (p13) And yet this 'socialist' can quite happily recount his collaboration with CIA agents, generals, bankers, and seemingly every stripe of opponent of the organised labour movement and working class. His philosophy, which he constantly counterposes to 'impractical Marxism, he sums up as follows: "And what is socialism, if it is not a crusade?... 'An obstinate will to go down a road by inches to conditions which reduce avoidable suffering... In my opinion the essential differences in politics concern the priority given to one group of social values rather than another" This progress by inches' is not even on a par with the Fabian doctrine of 'the inevitability of gradualism'. Healey's philosophy is pure liberalism rather than socialism. If it is possible I to gradually reform away the worst features of 28 • March/April 1993 a central | capitalism, and mankind was to arrive peacefully and painlessly at a classless society, why put forward, as Marxism does, a programme to radically break the economic and political power of capitalism? Because history, not the least Denis Healey's own experience, attests to the fact that not even by inches is it possible, without abrupt changes in the situation, for humankind to advance up the historical ladder of progress. Indeed, when Healey was chancellor in the government of 1974-79, he received a harsh lesson disproving the very doctrines he enunicates in his book. He introduced for instance a wealth tax, alongside corporation tax,_ which because of the protests of the City of London - they accused Harold Wilson of being 'a Bolshevik' - was neutered and effectively cancelled out He actually recounts in this book that under that Labour government not only did the capitalists have the lowest taxes of any of their counterparts in the advanced industrial countries, but that a wealth tax proved to be completely inoperative.
His nostrums for the problems of Britain, as well as his predictions, have been falsified by the development of events. He recommends 'the Swedish Model' for the British Labour Party: "The Labour Party could learn much about a constructive symbiosis between government and market from the experience of Sweden's Social Democrats, who have earned over half a century of almost uninterrupted power by managing their economy with exceptional efficiency". (p584) Recent developments in Sweden, however, completely contradict the rosy scenario sketched out by Healey. Consensus has given way to a bitter class conflict as the Swedish ruling class attempt to snatch back the gains of the welfare state'. For good measure the author also invokes the example of Japan which is now beginning to suffer the same maladies • slowing down in the rate of growth, contracting investment, a crisis in the financial sector, etc - as the rest of the capitalist world.
The Time of My Life, by Denis Healey, Penguin, 1990, £6-99 Available from World Socialist Books, 3/13 Hepscott Road, London E9 5HB. Tel: 081-533-3311.
[page 30]
In a kind of anticipation of the collapse of his 'models' for the Healey, like all reformist 'pragmatists'
, takes refuge in the assertion that it is well-nigh impossible to make 'predictions'. He for example, 1907 no-one predicted the First World War or the Bolshevik revolution which grew out of it" This shows that even an intelligent reformist, with more than an average knowledge of history, has a very scanty grasp of the real history of the working class and the labour movement.
It was precisely the Marxists internationally who anticipated a world conflagration between the major capitalist imperialist powers. through And Lenin, and above all Trotsky his theory of the permanent revolution, did predict the precisely Russian revolution. Of course they did not give it the name of 'Bolshevik' either then or subsequently. This was added by the bourgeois calumniators of the revolution who to this day picture it as a putsch and not a genuine expression of the overwhelming majority of the population of Russia seeing the need to overthrow the tsarist autocracy through revolution. Marxism of course is not in the business of making arithmetical 'predictions'. It is however the science of perspectives, allowing those who are able to apply it skillfully to understand the broad trends within society, which will at a certain stage lead to certain results. Thus we can say that unless British capitalism is replaced by a more sane, harmonious and intelligent means of organising production in society, increased chaos, anarchy, economic collapse and mass pauperisation is inevitable. We can also certainty that the British working say with class will resist ferociously the attempt on the part of the capitalists to thrust them back to the conditions of the past. Callaghan told Healey privately "he was so disenchanted with the behaviour of the unions that he was contemplating legislation to control them" HIS BOOK ALSO allows us to understand movement in the course of the post-war economic boom.
For example, international dehead of the Labour Party's partment in the immediate post-1945 period, Healey advertised for a secretary. One of those who applied was Geoffrey Johnson-Smith, but because he was in America he was unable to Denis Healey, Chancellor in the last Labour government.
attend the selection meeting. Later he became a television star and a Tory MP. The right-wing of the Labour Party hardly differ in their class background, psychological type and outlook from the tops of the Liberal Party and the so-called left-wing of the Tories. This is why many of them can pass over from the Labour Party, in the case of MacDonald to a national government, or from Labour to Tory as did Reg Prentice, with as little difficulty as a man passing from a smoking to a non-smoking compartment on a train.
Healey also reveals the shameful private feelings and statements of well-known right-wing lumiof the past.
Thus Hugh Dalton, arch right-winger in the Atlee government, revealed that Atlee had offered him the Colonial Office after he had resigned from the Treasury following "No bloody a budget leak. His response was: fear, I told him. A lot of syphilitic niggers. All kicks and no ha'pence. Not me!" This from leader and a party professional professing 'internationalism' and opposition to racism! Healey also shows the bitter hostility of Labour leaders, when in power, to the pressure exerted unions. Thus when the on them by the trade opposition to the social contract was building the late 1970s, Callaghan told Healey privately "he was so disenchanted with the behaviour of the unions that he was contemplating legislation to control them". As in many other things, Labour's right-wing anticipated the Tories. In some very interesting chapters on economic policy and in particular his period as chancellor, Healey details his own retreat, and that of other Labour leaders, from the ideas of Keynesian reformism. Another right-wing guru lony Crosland "the party is over". But it coined the phrase was Healey who translated this into practice with an £8bn cut in government spending in | 1976, proportionately the largest cut in public March/April 1993 • 29
[page 31]
expenditure in the postwar period.
He denounces the 'punk-monetarism'
of Thatcher and the 'crewcut Keynesianism' of Reagan. Yet it was Denis Healey himself who paved the way for Thatcher and Lawson with their mad policies of monetarism.
Notwithstanding this he gives good a very picture of the changes wrought at the top of the Tory party. In this he shares much analysis of Militant of the trends at work within the Tories. He points out that Thatcher had hijacked the Conservative Party "from the landowners and given it to the estate agents". He also paints a very graphic picture of the catastrophic falling behind of British capitalism on the basis of Thatcher's policies: "Britain is lagging behind Europe in using computers, Europe behind the US, the US behind Japan. Britain is expected to have a shortage of 50,000 computer technicians in the 1990s, behind in electronic research and development". He also very simply but clearly shows the contrast between Japan, where manufacturing has been given a priority, and the decay of US capitalism: "Japan has 1,000 engineers for every hundred lawyers; the US has 1,000 lawyers for every hundred engineers". And yet he professes the belief that socialists "had better learn to live with organised capitalism". This bald phrase would be too much for Labour Party members and therefore Healey dresses it up by declaring "although I prefer the phrase 'market socialism' which is used in Sweden to describe its form of social democracy".
• ECAUSE HE WAS at the centre of event -in the 1970s and has followed the economy attentively, although empirically, Healey's account of these developments, of the globalisation of capital, the effects of the 1987 crash etc, are interesting. But he fails to draw the right conclusions from the very diagnosis that he makes. Because he rests firmly in the camp of capitalism, purged of its brutality and "inefficiency, he naturally is bitterly opposed to those who seek to arm the labour movement with a programme to replace it by a socialist society. Hence there are many bitter and quite false statements about Militant by Healey. He mentions the role of Militant supporters within the Labour Party in the campaign for democracy and socialist policies in the early 1980s. Quite falsely, without any evidence to back up his assertion, he maintains that Militant supporters followed | 30 • March/April 1993 Callaghan, Labour leader (1976) with other factors, and is hopelessly keep the Labour Party cash from the trade unions. the reformism has little to show. world under attack as much from individual, divided government.
to step back.
and him around during the deputy leadership con- 'shouting him test down'. Many such assertions are made by the bourgeois press, but never proven with facts.
Of the same stripe is his praise of Neil Kinnock: "He started to purge the party of the Trotskyite fungus which infiltrated constituencies"
'purge' has resulted in a catastrophic drop in Labour Party membership and widespread cynicism amongst the more advanced, politically conscious workers about Labour and above all its leadership. Moreover it did not lead to the result claimed for it in advance, namely, victory in general elections. On the contrary it allowed the Tories to present Labour as divided, and laid the basis for the defeats in the 1983, 1987 and 1992 general elections. In common with the right wing as a whole Healey wishes to distance the Labour Party from its trade union link. He hopes that Labour would introduce the public funding of political parties in order to separate themselves from the 'tainted' but alas necessary wherewithal to going that is, the There are many other interesting features of this book, from the history of the labour movement in the last 50 years, Healey's own experiences during the war, and in particular his acquaintance with the Socialist parties on the continent. But the central justification for his political activity remains unproven. Un the contrary, despite all efforts in the service, ultimately, of the capitalists in keeping the Labour Party 'safe', All the gains of the post-war period are now 'nice' Major as from Thatcher herself. This shows that it is the crisis of the system, and not this or that which determines the actions of the representatives of capitalism. What is different the position under Thatcher, however, is that the working class, following the upsurge around the miners, perceives a weakened and If it uses its power and strength in action, it can force this government In the course of this movement the ideas of reformism will also be found to be wanting.
Notwithstanding Denis Healey's 'intelligent' but nevertheless bitter denunciations of the left, and particularly Marxism, it will be these ideas that will come to the fore and will lead to a refashioning of the labour movement itself.
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Book Reviews The Good Old Cause - British Communism, 1920-1991 By Willie Thompson Published by Pluto Press, 1992, £12-95 Reviewed by David Turner N NOVEMBER 1991 the communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) voted itself out of existence. Beginning life in 1920, at its peak the CP boasted 55,000 members, two MPs, dozens of councillors and a daily paper. CP members held leading positions in trade unions working class communities and throughout Britain.
The Good Old Cause is a highly condensed version of the CP's history, written by academic who an belonged for to the party thirty years. But revolutionaries looking for a balance sheet of the CP's achievements and explanation of its failure will be disappointed. The book reeks of the cynicism and defeatism felt by erstwhile left wing intellectuals, disoriennow tated by the collapse of Stalinism and the move to the right at the tops of the Western labour movement. Thompson excuses TUC leaders Thompson does provide a sumnary of the CP's history after 1957, a period until now barely touched by historians of the party. But the period of CP history from which most can be learnt is that before 1957, when the party had its deepest roots in the working class and labour movement. On this, Thompson relates little that | can't be found elsewhere, often in better written and more informative books, untainted by Thompson's despairing analysis.
In arguing the alleged futility of trying to build a revolutionary party in Britain, he excuses the conduct of the Labour leaders while damning the working class itself. For example, the Communist International (Comintern) - to which the CP belonged - was born out of the carnage of the first world war and the historic betrayal of the workers' leaders who supported their respective ruling classes. Incredibly, Thompson argues that they could not have done otherwise in the pro-war hysteria of 1914. Likewise, Thompson excuses the role of the TUC leaders in the 1926 general strike, arguing that the strike never had "any hope of succeeding against a government determined to beat it as a maximum priority and with the resources and SO"
public backing to do The key to understanding the CP's failure is the fate of the Comintern in the 1920s. As the reactionary bureaucracy headed by role in the general strike. Stalin usurped power in the USSR the Comintern they foisted on policies that put the bureaucracy's interests before those of the world working class.
The CPGB inherited weaknesses of both organisation and theory from the groups that preceded it, and was heavily dependent on Moscow for money and ideas, lacking cadres capable of independent critical thought. As such it accepted Stalin's policies rapidly and without question. After an interlude of lunatic ultra-leftism (denouncing the Labour party as 'social-fascist'), the CP in the 1930s embraced the policies of Popular Frontism', of collaboration with 'progressive' capitalist parties.
The post-war history of the CP is a tale of inexorable decline. The British party's programme, The Road To Socialism, initially drafted vith the aid of Stalin himself, ecame ever more reformist and nationalist, increasingly overlapping with the policies of the Labour lefts.
Following its takeover by Kinnockites grouped around Marxism Today, the CP disappeared in a blizzard of factions and feuds. Surveying the wreckage, all Thompson can do is despair: Communism was doomed to fail and now there's nothing to stop the "unconstrained military and capitalist savagery rapacity" of the New World Order. Yet the tragedy of the CP is not that socialism is a hopeless cause, but the betrayal by Stalinism of the historic opportunity that the party represented. We have much to learn a critical study of from the CP's legacy, but Thompson's cynical despairing book is of little value for such a purpose. Strike Across the Empire • The British seamen's strike of 1925 By Baruch Hirson and Lorraine Vivian Published by Clio Publications, 1992, £5-50 Reviewed by Richard Knights been hidden' from history. That is, until the painstaking research of Hirson and Vivian, brought together in this short book. Although somewhat drily written, the events speak for themselves.
recounted The strike was a genuine international movement that para d the world's most powerful me har marine - in the teeth of opposition and sabotage from the seamen's own union leadership. It followed wage cut, offered to the a 10% March / April 1993 • 31
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shipowners by Havelock Wilson, president of the National Sailors and Firemen's Union (NSFU). The background to the strike was Red Friday, July 31, 1925. Then the mine owners, and behind them Baldwin's Tory government, were forced to retreat over plans to cut miners wages. But this was only a tactical retreat, to prepare the ground to fight again. These preparations included securing a firm hold over the merchant fleet, to enable the government to import coal to break a future strike by the miners. And so, a day after Red Friday', 140,000 merchant seamen found their wages cut. On August 2 the strike began in London and rapidly spread to other ports. On 16 August 2,000 seamen marched through Poplar and 35 ships were held up on the I'hames! By the end of however the strike in the UK had begun to collapse. But as ships arrived in South Africa, New Zealand and Australia, seamen refused further duties, immobilising British ships for two to three months. The strike spread rapidly. In South Africa 1,200 seaman struck with 17 ships idle.
In Australia the strike lasted for 102 days with over 40 ships held in port. In September mass arrests were made, starting with 329 in Melbourne. The local trade union movement held a solidarity march in which the seamen's banner proclaimed Prison before in 1914, slaves in 1925.
They were sentenced to three weeks imprisonment. This was followed by 946 arrests in Sydney. In New Zealand the 86 man crew of the Arawa were jailed for six weeks for being absent without leave. And in South Africa 1,200 seamen struck with 17 ships idle.
The 'strike across the Empire'
was eventually broken by the use of 12,000 scabs, some of them foreign seamen. This fuelled racist underlaid by the refusal of the NSFU to organise foreign seamen in the UK fleet. In the general strike that followed, the NSFU was the only union to openly scab. O 32 • March/April 1993 Harold Wilson By Ben Pimlot Published by Harper Collins, 1992, £18-50h6 Reviewed by Ken Smith HAROLD WILSON WAS Labour's longest serving prime minister. He won four elections and was leader of the party for 13 years. Yet since he resigned as prime minister in 1976 he has become one of the most vilified of former party leaders. A new biography by Ben Pimlot attempts to get under the many myths surrounding Wilson and tries, unsuccessfully in my opinion, to redress the balance in his favour. He also tries to unravel the process by which Wilson became so mistrusted by both right and left in his own party and resigned a broken man. The biography is a fascinating insight into the struggles in the Labour only at the leadership the last Labour government in 1979.
tradictory perceptions of Wilson stem from his own political evolution from right to left to right again; often he was capable of shifting positions on an issue within hours. He was seen as untrustworthy, aloof and completely isolated.
Wilson was a very clever, who achieved meeting her that he was going to become prime minister. His aims, however, were not socialist ones but were all related to getting to the top and, once there, staying Wilson came from a lower middleclass background and was more affected by radical Liberal politics in his early years than the labour movement. Even in his days at Oxford University in the 1930s when many of his contemporaries - including Denis Healey were joining the Communist Party, Wilson joined the Liberal society. His evolution into a Labour politician came during the Second World War.
Elected to parliament in 1945 he was a cabinet member within three years. He was seen as a technocrat by many of his colleagues more than a socialist or even Social Democrat. In 1950 he resigned along with Nye Bevan against Gaitskell's plan as Labour chancellor to impose prescription charges. This marked the beginning of the period in the 1950s where he became heavily involved with the Bevanites, the left wing of the party. Yet by the late 1950s he was in Gaitskell's shadow cabinet as shadow chancellor.
Wilson became leader of the party In 196s aiter the sudden death of Gaitskell. He was the centre-left candidate and his years of successful posturing to the left and then the right and middle ground had paid off. When he won the 1964 election he raised great hopes about the Labour government carrying new through the "white heat" of a technological revolution. This was a phrase that was ten times more Wilson, Labour's longest serving PM. clever in its appeal than anything Labour leaders have done since.
But it was also one that raised expectations which proved impossible to fulfil on the basis of a Labour government staying within the confines of capitalism. In fact the book shows brilliantly the dilemmas faced by the Labour governments of 1964-70 and 1974-79 where they were continually forced to try and defend the interests of capitalism instead of carrying out a socialist programme of transformation in favour of working-class peoplerall Pimlot's biography is extremely well written, full of facts, figures and information that does not appear in other books. Although possibly too expensive for many readers at f18-50 for the hardback edition, it would be well worth looking out for when it comes out in paperback.
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