A word of advice to Labour Party supporters (1952)

From the October 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Labour Party is searching for a policy. The nationalisation of the basic industries and the extension of the social services have been brought about and still the position of the working class remains unchanged, the workers must sell their ability to work for a wage that scarcely buys the necessities of life. At the last general election a large number of workers showed their discontent with the Labour Party’s administration by placing the Tories in power. To rally the support of the workers next time, a host of publications have been issued recently by the Labour Party and groups within it. All attempt to find some new solution to the problems of Capitalism, since nationalisation and the welfare state have failed to solve them.

One of these publications, the “New Fabian Essays,” was reviewed in the Economist (May 25th, 1952). The reviewer wrote:—

“Mr. Crosland presents a skilful analysis of the mixed economy, neither Capitalism nor Socialism, that war and six years of Labour rule have created. Mr. Strachey thinks rather well of the result and Mr. Crossman, naturally, dismisses it contemptuously as ‘welfare capitalism.' Neither manages to define the Socialism which he wants to evolve from it. Mr. Crosland himself effectively challenges the stock Left-wing assumption that the mixed economy is naturally transitory and must pass quickly into some sort of Socialism; and he dismisses several of the orthodox lines of advance—more social services, more nationalisation, more controls, more direct taxation—without making the alternatives at all clear . . . 

“. . . . The gross result is certainly not even the beginnings of a new philosophy either of socialist change or of consolidation in the welfare state."

The Glasgow Forward (23rd August, 1952) commented upon another of these publications:—

“The Labour Party's latest policy statement—ironically titled 'Facing the Facts'—has met with all-round criticism. It tries to please everybody in the party and ends of pleasing nobody. At the moment the Labour Party is suffering from too many personalities, too many platitudes—and too few policies."

Another pamphlet published by the Socialist Union, “Socialism—A Restatement of Principles,” is called by the Tribune (11th July, 1952) “ Sunday School Socialism.” According to the Economist (June 28th, 1952), the pamphlet argues that “The Labour movement is not . . . concerned with overthrowing Capitalism and replacing it by something called Socialism . . . All the social and economic changes from the Capitalism of the nineteenth century cannot be seen as part of the transition to some definite socialist system . . .” 

From this the pamphlet goes on to protest against the class war as an instrument of socialist advance: it declares roundly that the programmes and thoughts of socialists “have all grown out of the discontents of the past, and were designed to meet the injustices of a past age it not only objects to the identification of nationalisation with Socialism, but asks whether anyone knows what “socialisation” means. . . .

“All this is, of course, destructive,” wrote the Economist. “Positively, socialist union offers as yet ethical, not political, principles; and the best of ethics can lead men to almost any practical conclusion.”

Over 70 years ago. Frederick Engels had something to say about the relation of ethics to Socialism which was later published as “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.” Here Engels traced the origin and development of Socialism, its historical conditions and philosophical ideas. He called those who sought to bring about a better society by appealing to ethical principles. Utopians. He wrote:

"The ‘Utopians” mode of thought has for a long time governed the Socialist ideas of the nineteenth century. and still governs some of them. Until very recently all French and English socialists did homage to it. The earlier German Communism, including that of Weitling was of the same school. To all these Socialism is the expression of absolute truth, reason and justice, and has only to be discovered to conquer all the world by virtue of its own power. And as absolute truth is independent of time, space, and of the historical development of man, it is a mere accident when and where it is discovered. With all this, absolute truth, reason, and justice are different with the founder of each different school. And as each one’s special kind of absolute truth, reason, and justice is again conditioned by his subjective understanding. his conditions of existence, the measure of his knowledge and his intellectual training, there is no other ending possible in this conflict of absolute truths than that they shall be mutually exclusive one of the other. Hence from this nothing could come but a kind of eclectic, average Socialism, which, as a matter of fact, has up to the present time dominated the minds of most of the socialist workers in France and England. Hence a mish-mash allowing of the most manifold shades of opinion, a mish-mash of such critical statements, economic theories, pictures of future society by the founders of the different sects, as excite a minimum of opposition, a mish-mash which is the more easily brewed, the more the definite sharp edges of the individual constituents are rubbed down in the stream of debate, like rounded pebbles in a brook.

“To make a science of Socialism, it had first to be placed upon a real basis.” (“Socialism: Utopian and Scientific,” Vol. II, pp. 117-8, Marx Engels' Sel. Works, published by Lawrence & Wishart, Ltd.)

As the foregoing comments on the Labour publications show, Engels’ words also describe the Labourites of the 20th century.

Engels pointed to the working class struggles in the early 19th century and argued that these ’’facts more and more strenuously gave the lie to the teachings of bourgeois economy as to the identity of the interests of capital and labour. As to the universal harmony and universal prosperity that would be the consequence of unbridled competition . . .”

"The new facts made imperative a new examination of all past history. Then it was seen that all past history, with the exception of its primitive stages, was the history of class struggles; that these warring classes of society are always the products of the modes of production and of exchange—in a word, of the economic conditions of their time; that the economic structure of society always furnishes the real basis, starting from which we can alone work out the ultimate explanation of the whole superstructure of juridical and political institutions as well as the religious, philosophical and other ideas of a given historical period. . . .”

"The Socialism of earlier days certainly criticised the existing capitalist mode of production and its consequences. But it could not explain them, and therefore, could not get the mastery of them. It could only simply reject them as bad. The more strongly this earlier Socialism denounced the exploitation of the working class, inevitable under Capitalism, the less able was it clearly to show in what this exploitation consisted and how it arose. But for this it was necessary—(1) to present the capitalistic mode of production in its historical connection and its inevitableness during a particular historical period, and therefore, also, to present its inevitable downfall; and (2) lo lay bare its essential character, which was still a secret. This was done by the discovery of surplus value. It was shown that the appropriation of unpaid labour is the basis of the capitalist mode of production and of the exploitation of the worker that occurs under it; that even if the capitalist buys the labour power of his labourer at its full value as a commodity on the market, he yet extracts more value from it than he paid for; and that in the ultimate analysis this surplus value forms those sums of value from which are heaped up the constantly increasing masses of capital in the hands of possessing classes. The genesis of capitalist production and production of capital were both explained.” (“Socialism: Utopian and Scientific,” Vol. II, M.E.S.W., pp. 123-5.)

After tracing the development of modern social production from small handicraft, Engels wrote:

“The means of production, and production itself, had become in essence socialised. But they were subjected to a form of appropriation which presupposes the private production of individuals, under which, therefore, everyone owns his own product and brings it to the market. The mode of production is subjected to this form of appropriation although it abolishes the conditions upon which the latter rests.

“This contradiction, which gives to the new mode of production its capitalistic character, contains the germ of the whole of the social antagonism of to-day.” (M.E.S.W.. Vol. II. pp. 128-9.)

Engels explained in detail the social antagonisms that follow from this fundamental contradiction and pointed out how it would be eliminated ”with the seizing of the means of production by society.” (P. 140.)

By this Engels didn’t mean nationalisation. He claimed that

"the transformation . . . into state ownership does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces . . . the modern State . . . is only the organisation that bourgeois society takes on in order to support the external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments as well of the workers as the individual capitalists. The modem State, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage workers—proletarians.” (P. 136.) 

Members and sympathisers of the Labour Party seeking a policy to which they can give their support should lay hold of ”Socialism: Utopian and Scientific,” and read it carefully. They can find it included in “Marx, Engels, Selected Works,” Vol. II. The language may reflect the conditions under which it was written, but as an exposition of the rise and development of capitalist society and the solution to its problems. Socialism, it is right up to date.

We hope that many of them would then realise that the object of their policy should be the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments of production and that to ” thoroughly comprehend the historical conditions and thus the very nature of this act, to impart to the now oppressed proletarian class a full knowledge of the conditions and of the meaning of the momentous act it is called upon to accomplish, this is the task of the theoretical expression of the proletarian movement, scientific Socialism.”

J. T.