The Capitalist Class To-day (1940)

From the October 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

Social contact between the proletarian and the capitalist is extremely rare. When it does happen and the proletarian is a Socialist into the bargain, the meeting can be highly illuminating. Such an incident in which the writer was involved produced certain impressions which are recorded here together with some conclusions.

Roughly the capitalists can be divided into two sections. There is the group which takes an active part in directing the political, financial and economic affairs of the nation. This group is continually decreasing in numbers, ability and prestige.

At the present moment we have proof of an extraordinary nature in support of this contention. Men like Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin, all of them proletarian in origin and up-bringing, have proven themselves more than a match as politicians and diplomats against rivals, who, inheriting generations of economic security and experience in governing a world-empire, possess all the obvious advantages in this game of diplomacy and international relations in which the stakes are nothing less than the right to exploit the natural resources of the earth and human labour power living on it.

In this country the governing class, faced with the greatest emergency in its lifetime, has to call on men who are ordinarily outside its social circle.

The leaders of British Labour are the products of the working class, such as for instance, men like Bevin, Alexander and Herbert Morrison.

All of which, while it will not help the cause of Socialism does show that the proletariat is in fact, not inferior in ability and intellect to its de facto master-class.

In the Socialist movement itself, we have men and women, who, despite the shattering effect of continued and harrassing poverty, are yet able to develop as writers and speakers and match their wits, most certainly their case, with the best that Anti-Socialism can produce.

As in the domain of politics, so in the sphere of production and distribution of wealth the capitalists are rapidly disappearing from the co-ordinating and supervisory activities, which in the past were their exclusive function.

Workers who are trained specifically for organisational duties have taken over this role to a large extent, particularly in those undertakings which having assumed proportions of a national and even international magnitude, are taken wholly or partly under the wing of the state machine.

As the development in productive technique increases the function of co-ordinating and supervising becomes merely the work of clerks and statisticians, book-keeping and the collating of figures, i.e., work that has no direct bearing on the organisation of production itself, which is thus reduced to a mechanistic process, entailing no human directive agency whatever excepting of course, the men who work the machines.

In “Finance,” which is another name for the gamble with the products of labour (as seen on the various stock exchanges) the same factors apply.

It is this disappearance of the capitalist from the economic activity of his system which is so largely responsible for the mental deterioration of that class. It is obvious that the lack of purposeful work is bound to result in the stagnation of the mind.

Where the capitalist is still active, politically or economically, he is invariably found to be openly reactionary, ready to fight tooth and nail even the slightest advance made by the working-class, be it over the question of wages and hours, or the actual threat to his political power.

So much for the active section. The other section, inactive in every social sense, is far more numerous and its ranks are ever swelling.

From the economic point of view, this second group is as one man content not to interfere with the productive process so long as the dividends, which accrue to them as a result of their propertied status, are forthcoming.

Only when disaster threatens, such as an economic crisis or a major war, are they ever heard or seen. Then they swarm out of their comfortable retreats in town and country and raise an outcry against the forces or persons they consider to be responsible for their impending plight.

Not that they are concerned with their own privileged position, so they protest; their woes are the woes of humanity as a whole, their cause is really the cause of all citizens, therefore everyone whether hunting the fox in Berkshire or hunting a job in Lancashire, must rally to the common cause.

Until this war began, how many of us knew that thousands of bourgois hearts were bleeding for a vanquished democracy in Germany, Italy or Spain.

True, the movements of protest against the brutality of the Nazi concentration camp attracted a certain number of the propertied class.

It is still to be questioned however, to what extent these people were moved by genuine love of democracy and humanity or whether fear of Germany’s growing military might was not the actual motive.

It certainly does seem that the policy of the present British Government is to frown on the purely anti-fascist exuberance of some of its most ardent well-wishers.

So Mr. Duff Cooper carefully explains that “it would not he wise to say we are fighting for a new social system.”

This is no more than can be expected; but when we recall that it was Mr. Duff Cooper also who at the beginning of the war prophesied the collapse of the Nazi regime and its replacement by a Monarchy (presumably he referred to a Hohenzollern restoration) we may well ask what Mr. Duff Cooper means by “a chahge in the Social System !”

Then again, there is the internment of Anti-Nazi refugees; Jews, Social-Democrats, Liberals, Communists, most of them people who must surely hate their persecutors with a passion unequalled even by the lofty flame burning inside the righteous hearts of our government.

Yet Prince von Startemberg, late leader of the fascist Austrian Heimwehr, erstwhile puppet of Mussolini, is enrolled in the De Gaulle Section of the Air Force.

It certainly seems as if the British capitalist does not welcome an over-emphasis on the anti-fascist (and pro-democratic) character of the war against Hitler Germany. They prefer the distinction between the two countries to maintain a national character and not to assume too much of an ideological flavour.

In fairness to the title of the article, we must mention the presence of a capitalist fraction which has as yet not been dealt with.

This fraction, small at present, but making itself heard, really belongs to that large inactive group just described.

But just as the preponderant majority of this inarticulate mass turns as one man to the support of its active spokesmen, so this last tiny group attempts to wrench itself free from its economic and political foundations, seeking a line-up with more advanced ideas and even with the proletariat itself.

To this group a number of organisations such as Federal Union and the Peace Pledge Union owe their existence, and individuals of this type have also drifted into the I.L.P. and the Communist Party.

Although many of these people are well-intentioned, they do not belong to that type of capitalist, which as Marx once prophesied, would during the revolutionary epoch rise objectively above their class and join forces with the proletariat.

Objectivity is impossible for that type; their actions are determined either by a sincere humanism or else to provide the frills of a dillettante to an otherwise empty and parasitic life.

Socialism they are constitutionally incapable of understanding and the life of the working class remains, even after inspection, a closed book.

Their most numerous representatives are in the various peace movements.

This is no accident. The capitalist has far more to lose by war than the worker. The life of a capitalist is a far more pleasant one, therefore more precious than that of a worker, his pocket also suffers badly as the cost of modern war reaches fantastic proportions.

These intellectual diversions, often prompted by none to altruistic motives, represent so far the apex of bourgois efforts to get to grips with the bewildering problems of the present age. They support the view consistently held and propagated by the S.P.G.B. that only the working class can be materially interested in the removal of Capitalism and the establishment of Socialism.

The mental and physical decay of the Capitalists and their henchmen everywhere is bound to strengthen our cause.

Sid Rubin