Religion in Russia.
One of the heads of the Russian Church, the Metropolitan Pitirim of Minsk, addressed a Press conference at Lambeth Palace on the position of the Church in Russia.
His figure of “over 20,000 churches” shows little change from the figure for 1945. (Statesmen’s Year Book, 1952, p. 1413.)
He claimed that there are eight seminaries and two academies, at which over 2,000 young men were in training for the priesthood. “He said that 85 per cent, of Russians had remained faithful to their Church.” (Manchester Guardian, 12 July, 1955.)
He had rather a lot to say about the funds of the Church and must have made some of his English audiences envious.
“Questioned about church finance, the Metropolitan said that it was all provided by the gifts of the faithful. Fingering a diamond-set medallion of die Virgin Mary, he added that he had several of these treasures, as well as two fine cars which had been given to him. 'By this you can judge our material position,' he said; 'it is all given by the people, who love their priests.' ”(Manchester Guardian, 12 July, 1955.)
The Daily Mail reported him as saying also that every clergyman in Russia is provided by the faithful with a car.
The “Socialism” of the I.L.P.
The Socialist Leader, organ of the I.L.P., in its issue of 16 July, comes out with its proposal for the coal mines. It asks “ Why not stop paying the former coalowners?” This, it thinks, would enable the Coal Board to avoid increasing the price of coal.
It is typical of the I.L.P., now as in all the years of its history, that whenever a problem of capitalism comes up, it thinks of all sorts of solutions except the one to which it is nominally committed—Socialism. It is also typical of the I.L.P. when it makes its proposals to help the capitalists run capitalism that it thinks it knows better than they do how it should be done. Past experience gives no support even to this. When the two Labour Governments, of 1924 and 1929, were running capitalism, composed as they were predominantly of members of the I.L.P., there was nothing in their record to encourage such belief.
It is also characteristic of the naive attitude of the I.L.P. that its article on the coal situation should discover, as if it is a matter for surprise, that the Government has not put up coal prices in the interests of the mineworkers. Why should it and if it accepted the new I.L.P. proposal the same would be true. When will the I.L.P. wake up to the fact that nationalisation is State capitalism and is not in the interest of the workers, and has nothing to do with Socialism?
How High are Co-operative Society Profits?
The co-operators insist that their dividends on purchases are profit, not a reduction of prices. They do so on principle, but they also have a particular reason in that some manufacturers of proprietary articles will only supply them to Co-operative societies on condition that no dividend is paid to purchasers in respect of these articles. Co-operative News (9th July) writes:—‘The manufacturers regard the payment of dividend as a cut in price, which is pure nonsense.”
But apart from this, some Co-operators are keen to show that their stores make just as large profits as do private Capitalists. Co-operative News (14th May, 1955), published some facts about Co-operative profits. The writer showed that the Co-operative Wholesale Society last year paid out £6,174,067 as dividend; which on a capital of £27,431,064, is a rate of 25.25 per cent. He compared this with the Imperial Chemical’s distribution of a 10 per cent. dividend (but did not deal with the further profit, not distributed, which would have enabled I.C.I. to pay 30 per cent).
The writer showed, too, that on the retail co-operatives’ capital of £220,500,000 their dividend of £38,000,000 is 15.2 per cent. It looks like good Capitalist business.
Can the Workers Understand?
In the Socialist Standard of 50 years ago (August, 1905) was an article with quite up-to-date applications. It derided a furious agitation then being carried on by Labourites as being for a farcical object of no value to the workers. It went on to examine the reason given by Labourites who claimed to want Socialism, for wasting time on such trivial issues. Their explanation was one we still hear. They said that, desirable as Socialism is, you cannot expect the ordinary worker to understand it but must gain his interest by putting to him other simple immediate issues that he can understand, and thus lead him on step by step.
The writer of the article in the Socialist Standard argued that the case for Socialism was in truth simpler than the tortuous case for reforms and that these sidetracking proposals could only serve to confuse the workers and take them away from the real issue, that of establishing Socialism.
From 1905 we may jump 50 years to the recent Blackpool Conference of the Transport Workers Union. On 12th July, 1955, the delegates accepted the lead of their new general secretary Mr. A. E. Tiffin, and rejected resolutions for widespread new nationalization measures. Mr. Tiffin reminded delegates that the Labour Party had just fought an election on Nationalization and lost it, and the reason was, he said, that the workers don’t understand what Nationalization is all about.
“. . . We have to face the fact that nationalization at the present time has not yet been sufficiently explained to our fellow citizens as to convince them that further nationalization is in the interests of the whole nation."“. . . even our own people in the industries we nationalized do not really understand what was the basic motive for nationalizing them." (Times, 13 July, 1955.)
The leaders also did not understand what they were doing and had, said Mr. Tiffin, relied on trial and error methods. “We should know precisely what we are going to do before we engaged on more Nationalization and not leave it to trial and error.” (Daily Herald, 13 July.)
So after half a century they can’t understand their own programme though Nationalization was, 50 years ago, just one of the side-tracking, time-wasting reforms advocated by Labourites on the plea that it was more easily understood than Socialism and would help us on the way.
Now let us return to another of these useless agitations, the one dealt with in the Socialist Standard of August, 1905. The article in question pointed out that this agitation had already been going on for 25 years and had never mattered. What, then was it? It was the demand for the abolition of the House of Lords! Three years later at the 1908 conference of the Labour Party a resolution demanding its abolition was passed unanimously (Report, p. 68) and this demand was reaffirmed at later conferences.
And here is an extract from a speech about it:—
"The first thing the Tories should understand is that if they tinker about any further with the British Constitution they must be informed that if we get a majority we will put an end to the House of Lords . . ."
Who made this speech and when? It was none other than the ebullient clown of the Labour circus, in one of his profound, statesmanlike moods, Mr. Aneurin Bevan. (Times, 24 May, 1955.) And it was made in 1955 after three Labour Governments had been in office and done nothing about it; showing, incidentally, how little it matters even for their purposes. All they have ever done is to fill a lot of the plush seats of the House of Lords with superannuated Labour M.P.s.
Edgar Hardcastle
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