everyday capitalist nations today allows no mainstream SOONE ALOYEE avoid its presence. The pubs of major thread in British working blutionaries join crusades for speedily and padly commercialThe reactionary social role of alcohol is, however, very gradually re-emerging into view. As the economo recession mersists anc campion of muritions foods is drop. recorded by current government sratistics. The same figures also demonstrate a proporrionate rise in the consumption of alcoholic beverages!
Indeed. the underlying industrial trends lowards automation and technologicalinnovation conLion of production workers and so enhance the role of alcohol as a SOUTE A COIET TOM WOTKARCE Occupational breakdownsof the UlK national abour force show the continued decline in craft jobs which permit skilled workers a ENS SCENT ORCHED BE identification with their products and the drift lo semi-skilled, employment. In such circum stances, the appeal of the pub —as a lunchtime and post-Sols TErRe NEW OPPORTUNITIES revolutionaries anticipate opportunities for working class resistance to capitalism, it was A.E. Housman who prescrihed ale for fellows whom it hurts to think/Lack into the pewter pot To see the The light of socialist analysis ence of alcohol in class society. wisere millions of workers bond to evade the harsh realitica locarion, by one or other of the ORGANISATION The present era of imperialist industrial organisation, ism's highest slage', offers little scope to alcohol and -Is many ramitications, if seen through narrow, eyes. The production techniques vigorously opposed i. Frederick Taylor, lic creator of "scientific! ment, demanded social conditions fit for the development of "trained gorillar', motivated sole ly to operare assembly lines at the higbest level of elficiency. The drunkard was excluded Henry Ford, this manufacturer, declared thing that interferes with our ability to think clearly, work well will ultimately may discarded condemning alike ibe evils of alcobol, pre-marital sex and all 'un-Christian' prac Lices: Imperialism, however, had to contend with a tradition of alcobol consumption effects of alcohol for too long.
tram the end of prinsitive society itself, and was to reconsider its approach.
Analyses of tribal societies (the grapevine was probably the first of BCSC that ward the hunting gathering methods employed, the ness within the tribe.
Dine that became established, was relatively reduced, but remained a strong farce in social capital- existence. The advent of the early logicaily alercontinental trading societi Law fresh atracks on alcoholse the Jewish tradition achieving economistic control of the rate of conDESHIRLS sumption bs its social and rel gious ritualisation contained in-the Old Testament) and the Islamic tradition ding alcohol altogether. With the dawn of the capitalist era proper, INC ACMAL WE COLE DELULLI was raised in Europe by the bourgeois revolution, automobile wells local adminstrators lond Wing the closure of hundrods of BAIT ale-houses in the 1650s lead COMPROMISE Early capitalise state policy. however, compromised on this a on ollier cultural fronts, and dating alcoholisen thus survived to meet Richard Neubauer argues that socialists have ignored the in defending financed the Tary cultivated) Sug thore back and food the degree of drunkenBy the agricultural society alcobolism sumption between 1920 carupdign sears. In Britain consumption, needs.
of imperialistic production the imperialist era. Indeed, one child section of the ruling class, the brewers, held an obvious interes and heavily Party Brilain to resist the party of Imperialist industry, the Liberala. Hon. (The brewers still donate more to Tory funds than other sections of capitalism). As throughout carlier history, the rise to power of a new form of class rule based upon more sophisticated means of production brought with it new assault on the indiscipline of alcobolism. Imperialism in th J5A banned all alcohalis co WUS MOSE and allay agitation' 1933, the 'Prolubition Era'.
In Italy, It financod Mussolini's down 30,000 wine shaps in only a lew legislative action, such as the 1882 Act forbidding the payment of wapes to employees in places of alcohol society too Victoriar moral crusading bad combined centuries-old "trade footings" (linking apprenreduce the overall level of drunkThe deach of alcoholism rion (drinking was in sight — at the hands of mass manufacture. A final leas of historical life, however, was to be sranted by the cyclical nature The new social order brought in its train a bitherto unknown scale of economit crisis and its war. The Great Dep ression" and the world wan which preceded and followed it pave alcohol a place in the cuture of modern assemby-line societs. In his memoins, the RL.
Roberts, government Food Controller in Britain during 1914-18, neatly lustrated tbe point: When I was Food Controller, bad control of more beer than any brewer in the country, and the government at that time, confronted by growing EnTest called beer to be diverted to places where industrial unrest acute, in order to Contemporary capitalist states know and emplay the properties of alcohol in times of emergency and disaffection. And, in everyday life, alcohol has been award ed a 'special' niche in bourgeois Various forms and methods of struggle against drunkenness have been tried and the first place must he raken by #rote Lean Trotsky in 1926. This is because cult bE woohol ConsumiD a lot and not showing its effects, in current British practice) is broadly couFined to males, women in our society being frequently isolated from general social activily by domestic and bence Isolated work Junctions. The worst consequences of drunkenness are munist Lengue in Lenin's time thur toral absention from alco hol consumption would he main tained, and the stale propa gandised against alcohol thouch one-eighth of its total budge liquor taxes within its revenue rule in the USSR has clinionted Benuine working class socini Intercourse (no real squivalen ta pubs or public cafes permitted) and 'thus fostered alcoholism within the home on a large scale, in iritation of the social life lost in the distant past. the historical link berween social Ise and anti-alcoholism formed a significant element in Bolshevik theory and practice and so remains on the record for future proletarian generations to consider RESURRECT DEBATE The abjective in this shor article bas aimply been to resurrest a significant cultural issue for debate in the socialist press Perbaps, Can common wita Tell gion and mysticism, alcoholism CUHASETERIEYS reliance upon the natural world is borerational recestion ot Lhe recession the world tabitals creasingly visible in recent years is likely to revive the Issue ol itself, since the phenomenon flourishes on commonic uncertainty and worry, Marxists should at least take the matter scriously at this time, however untrendy the subject in immediate term: Alcoholism is presently extend ing its influence among workers across the Western world - and socialism will have to face this enemy again.
SOCIALIST CHALLENGE 15 September 1977 Page 14