Socialist Sonnet No. 204: History Classes (2025)

From the Socialism or Your Money Back blog 

History Classes

 

History is a chronicle of change,

Incessant, of both advance and delay.

Rome wasn’t built, nor was it lost, in a day:

Became, then went, once kings could arrange

Affairs, until their castles also fell

When commerce and capital promoted

Themselves and the world became devoted

To their interest. Although it might feel

The way things are must always remain so,

The few usurping the wealth made by many,

With vital human needs needing money

To be satisfied. Yet all this can go

Should the majority say, ‘It’s ended!’

Capitalism can be transcended.

 

D. A.

News in Review: Verwoerd—hypocrites at work (1966)

The News in Review column from the October 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Verwoerd—hypocrites at work

Anyone who had been able to forecast the assassination of Dr. Verwoerd would also have had no difficulty in imagining the comments of world statesmen.

These comments, in their many tones, were all determined by the international interests of the countries whose leaders were making them.

It was also predictable that there would be widespread condemnation of the use of violence, and that many world leaders would say the use of force can solve no problems.

President Johnson, for example, said the assassination was “a stroke of violence that shakes the sensibilities of men who believe in law and order”. It was clear that the President was grimly forgetting some inconvenient facts.

During the last war the Allied leaders did not condemn the violence of the attempts on Hitler's life; they did not say then that assassination is a primitive and savage act.

The United States is now keeping hundreds of thousands of troops in Vietnam—much to the outrage of the sensibilities of many Americans who also believe in law and order—in an attempt to prove that their kind of violence works.

This is typical. Cyprus and Algeria are only two recent examples of the results of politicians stubbornly believing that violence can be useful.

Capitalism, in fact, is a social system which uses force constantly and which can never attempt to solve its disputes in any other way.

Hypocrisy is an art which politicians must learn to master. There is no more apt occasion to employ what they have learned than when one of their number dies.

Perhaps, when Verwoerd died, they were all secretly agreeing with Malta's Borg Olivier. “Let us hope,” he said, “That it does not happen to us”.

U Thant exposes UNO

Few things have more cruelly exposed the futility of that international white elephant, the United Nations Organisation, than the possible standing down of its Secretary-General U Thant.

UNO was once supposed to be the answer to war, because the major world powers would all be members, because every country would bring its disputes to be settled at the Assembly and because the Organisation would have at its disposal an international armed force which would police any trouble spots.

It did not take long to break down this image.

U Thant complained that UNO has not yet ". . . achieved universality of membership”—meaning that the United States, as part of its struggle with China, vetoes that country’s attempts to join.

He condemned the fact that the Vietnam war is an example of ". . . relying on force and military means. . .” as if there has ever been any sign of a capitalist power carrying on a struggle in any other way.

Over Vietnam, the United States pretends that UNO does not exist. This is not the first time this has happened. In many cases when a country’s interests have been threatened, and it has not been sure of the formality of UNO support, is has simply ignored the so-called peace-keeping Organisation.

Russia has done this several times. Britain did it over Suez and the Americans went into Korea before UNO had had a chance to consider the matter. (There was never any pretence that, if UNO had voted against America over Korea, the troops would have been withdrawn.)

UNO was founded on the idea that capitalism’s problems can be settled around a table and that the trouble in the past was that the big powers had not tried hard enough to do this.

A fatuous notion, which has been exposed again and again. Now UNO’s secretary has himself spoken up, and revealed that he too realises the Organisation is trying to do the impossible.

Confusion on the left

It is obvious that those trade union leaders who back the wages freeze are not acting in the interests of their members. But even those who oppose the freeze are hopelessly confused when it comes to politics. This was well shown at a meeting on September 1 organised by five of the unions opposing the freeze.

Not seeing Socialism as a practical alternative, the five general secretaries who spoke offered their own solution to the present financial problems of the British capitalist class: cut military spending overseas; impose import controls; launch a productivity campaign and end the status of sterling as a reserve currency. On this last point, loud applause followed a statement of the general secretary of the Association of Scientific Workers in which he said that they did not want “our” currency being a commodity traded in by foreign bankers! Again, Clive Jenkins of ASSET commended De Gaulle’s policy of erecting a fence round France to prevent Americans buying up French industries. “I’d like to see the same here”, he said amidst applause.

This petty patriotism expressing itself as a dislike of international bankers (and America) is a characteristic of the Left, one which clearly distinguishes them from Socialists. Socialists know that patriotism is a delusion as workers have no country.

Jenkins' main charge against the Labour government was that it was incompetent. Wilson was wrong, he said, in claiming to have been blown off course; he had steered right into the eye of a hurricane. “Had the government not heard of Keynes?” he asked, suggesting that since Keynes any government that allowed unemployment to grow must be incompetent

This is another myth of the Left. Governments fail to solve our troubles not because they are incompetent or insincere or irresolute but because they are trying to do the impossible. Our problems just cannot be solved within capitalism. The Left, with their so-called solutions, merely serve to keep alive the myth that capitalism can be made to work in our interests. That is why Socialists oppose them.

Retreat to the Thirties

In some mysterious way, the Labour Party have been able to establish themselves as the party which can control capitalism’s economy.

Perhaps this idea can be traced to the pre-war years, when Labour embraced the Keynesian doctrine which was supposed to have the solution to the sort of slumps which persisted during the Twenties and Thirties.

It was all supposed to be very simple. A slump meant low purchasing power, investment in the doldrums, reduced demand for workers.

The solution was to increase purchasing power by cutting taxation, step up investment with tax incentives and promote a demand for labour by launching out on public works schemes: roads, hospitals and so on.

These so-called remedies are, in fact, quite useless. And perhaps the Labour government have realised it.

At last month’s TUC, Harold Wilson threw out the warning which is an especial favourite with him lately: “. . . one false, careless, regardless step . . . could push the world into conditions not unlike those of the early Thirties”.

If this were true, and the Labour Party were keeping faith in the Keynesian economics they have propounded for so long, the government would now be stimulating investment, cutting taxes, building hospitals and schools as fast as they can.

But, in fact, as we all know, they are doing exactly the opposite.

Does Wilson now think that Keynes' theories are bunk? Has he forgotten all his party ever said about slumps? Does he realise that capitalism is out of control and always has been?

Or does he ponder on another event of the early Thirties? Some people would say there is no need for Wilson actually to leave the Labour Party to imitate Ramsay MacDonald. Others would reserve their judgment.

History repeats itself

The oft repeated phrase “History repeats itself’ is a half truth. It derives from the desire.to put into fewer words the idea that like situations produce like results.

In the latter half of the 18th century the proposal was made that, as wages were so miserably low, they should be supplemented by poor relief.

Eighteen Berkshire justices, including seven clergymen, met at the Pelican Inn in Speenhamland near Newbury and set down a minimum scale for workers and their families. This scale was adopted throughout the country and where wages did not provide the minimum it. was built up by payments from the rates.

Historians have not failed to point out that this could only, and did, resultin employers paying the lowest wage possible in the knowledge that their workers would get by on the combined wage and poor relief.

Compare this with the following from the Teddington and Hampton and The Richmond and Twickenham Times of Saturday, August 13, 1966.

This paper quotes from the parish newsletter of the Reverend Emrys Evans, vicar of All Saints’ Church. The Rev. Evans urges

the elderly to take advantage of a part-time employment scheme organised by the Richmond upon Thames Council for Social Service, in which they may work either on a casual basis or a 24-hour week at an hourly rate of l/3d.

He adds that those who have already applied for work have a wide variety of skills, ranging from former book-keepers to shop assistants and that they may still be of real service to the community,

“and at the same time augment your pension”.

Words and deeds

On April 29 the Hampstead Labour Party passed the following resolution by 26 votes to 6:

This Hampstead Labour Party views with alarm the Government’s increasing and continuing support of the American war in Vietnam. It is aware also of the pressure on the Government to make a token military commitment in this war, perhaps in the form of British ‘‘observers” or “advisers".

We therefore wish to state in advance that should the Government yield to such pressure, the Hampstead Labour Party will re-examine its relationship with the national Labour Party and invite other constituency parties to do the same.

On July 25 a Foreign Office spokesman stated that there were four hundred British military engineers in Thailand helping to build a military airport at Loeng Nok Tha (see Financial Times, 26 July). Loeng Nok Tha is in north-east Thailand and it is from this area that three-quarters of the air raids against North Vietnam are launched (see Economist, 3 September). So troops, under the control of the Labour Party government are helping the war effort in Vietnam. They are in fact helping to build an airfield which American planes can use for bombing raids on North Vietnam. If this is not "a token military commitment in this war” what is?

Yet, to date, there has been no news of any breakaway move by the Hampstead Labour Party.

British capital in Malaysia - Part 1 (1966)

From the October 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Up till a few months ago British and Indonesian soldiers were butchering each other in the jungles of North Borneo. With the ending of “confrontation” Tunku Abdul Rahman, Prime Minister of Malaysia, said that it was a “victory of the forces of good against the forces of evil”. But, when it is known that this relatively small area provides over one-third of the world’s natural rubber, is a leading producer of tin— and that nearby Brunei has the largest oilfield in the Commonwealth, it becomes clear that the war in Malaysia had very little to do with a struggle between “good” and “evil”. The prizes at stake were large enough for the British government, representing the general interest of British capital, to consider it worth spending £255 millions each year to maintain its armed forces in the country. 

The original cause of British intervention in Malaya was trade. For this reason the island of Penang was rented on perpetual lease in 1786, the island of Singapore was bought in 1819 and the decayed port of Malacca was obtained from the Dutch in 1824. From these bases British “protection” was extended—so that between 1874 and 1909 the nine Malay states were brought under control. The sultan of each state signed a treaty by which he agreed to accept a resident adviser and to follow the “advice” in all matters except those that concerned the Moslem religion and Malay custom.. This arrangement still persists in the oil state of Brunei; the Sultan remains the nominal ruler but it is the British government, through its High Commissioner, which is responsible for all external affairs and defence.

Malaya in the 1880's has been described as a museum piece of Asian feudalism, roughly similar to 12th century France or Germany. But with the rapid development of the tin and rubber industries this feudal backwater found itself hurled into the modern, capitalist world. The state of the country was suddenly determined by the prices of these two commodities and no longer by civil wars between rival claimants to the throne. By 1914 the value of foreign, chiefly British; capital in Malaya had already reached $.US 194,000,000. When the Second World War broke out this figure had been dwarfed and there was something like $.US 260,000,000 of British capital alone invested in the tin mines, rubber plantations, etc. In addition there was a further $.US 82,500,000 invested in government loans, which were often floated in London. French, Dutch, Chinese, Japanese and American capitalists had all staked their claims in the rush to exploit Malayan workers, but it was British imperialism which held the whip hand. In recent years there has been some reticence about revealing the total amount of British capital invested in Malaya but some idea of its enormity can be gauged from the fact that in 1961 remitted profits on direct, foreign investment from the Malayan Federation were $.M 321,000,000. In the same year a further $.M 137,000,000 flowed into the country as private, direct, long-term investment. It would be inaccurate to picture this as a one-way process. For example, the native capitalist class in Malaya—through its government—declared its official overseas assets to be $.M 825 millions at the end of 1960. These consisted mainly of British government securities, including local authority mortgages. A clear example that the exploitation of the world’s workers by the international capitalist class is a process that cuts across all national boundaries.

Although Malaya yields approximately one-third of the total world output of tin, it is interesting to note that only some two per cent of it is now produced by the traditional dulong washers. These are individual collectors who concentrate the ore by hand, using a pan in the beds of streams. There are upwards of a hundred mines owned by British capitalists and this represents about three-fifths of the total industry. Its contribution to the profits remitted out of Malaya, taking good years with bad, is a reasonably close rival to that of rubber.

The history of the tin industry is one of desperately trying to impose some sort of order on to the chaos of capitalist production. During the inter-war period an International Tin Committee was formed whose object was “the adjustment of production to consumption and the reduction of surplus stocks by the restriction of output”. This was set up largely as a result of the slump of 1930 when tin prices fell disastrously. The verdict of economists on this attempt at enforcing price stability is that “it was unable to prevent violent short-term fluctuations in the world price”. (L. A. Mills—University of Minnesota). After the Second World War it was confidently suggested that these “short-term fluctuations” could be ironed out by means of a world buffer stock of tin. This was the method adopted when international control of production was again established in the nineteen-fifties. Just how successful this has been is demonstrated by the table below.

As can be seen, after 1958 there was a run-away increase in prices and once again the professional economists were forced to admit that capitalism reduces the most carefully-laid plans to a shambles. Thus, the Economist ruefully made the point:

The tin agreement, which is based on the manipulation of a buffer stock, and was intended to cope mainly with price declines, has been faced with unmanageable rises. The buffer stock manager has had no tin to sell since October, 1963. But, despite the long list of unsuccessful agreements, primary producers go on trying to find the ideal formula. What else can they do?  (10th July, 1965)

Any socialist could supply the answer: nothing at all, within the framework of capitalism. Only the ordered production of a socialist society provides a solution. The economists, yearning for an “ideal formula”, resemble nothing so much as the alchemists who searched in vain for the Philosopher’s Stone. (Incidentally, it has since proved just as hopeless to deal with price declines. Since January of this year, tin has fallen nearly £180 a ton on the London Metal Exchange).

John Crump

(To be concluded)

British capital in Malaysia - Part 2 (1966)

From the November 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1.

The situation in the rubber industry is somewhat different from the others because the small capitalists and peasant producers have not yet been eliminated. Of the 3½ million acres under rubber in Malaya, only about two million are controlled by the large estates (which are nearly all over the 1,000 acre mark). The other 1½ million acres are comprised of small plots whose owners have been in a relatively strong competitive position because of their much lower costs of production. This was especially so after the Japanese occupation in World War II when, because of the inexpensive methods of manufacture on the smallholdings, they were able to resume production at once—unlike the plantations, many of which were damaged. Where the large estates have the advantage is that they have had the resources to embark on costly replanting schemes with high-yielding trees. As these trees mature the systematised production on the plantations is likely to pay off and it is thought that the present trend against the smallholdings will strengthen.

Despite this, the nagging problems thrown up by the capitalist system remain to haunt the shareholders. In addition to the political uncertainty enveloping the whole of South-East Asia and the growing threat from synthetic rubber, the market has proved even more temperamental than that for tin. The rubber industry, too, can boast of a long list of futile attempts to maintain price levels. These started in 1922 when it was decided that the forced restriction of exports would keep prices hovering around the 30 cents per pound mark. After this step had been taken the price rose to $M1/b. in 1925, stood at 20 cents/lb. in 1928 and finally, between 1931-33, it sunk to 6 cents/lb. and less. Following this outstandingly successful first attempt many other schemes, including an International Rubber Regulation Committee, have been implemented; each was guaranteed in turn to be the elusive “ideal formula”. The table below makes any comment superfluous

The British capitalist class has other vital interests at stake in this part of the world. The Singapore military base provides the only major dockyard east of Suez and is the heart of a network of 300 military aircraft, including V-bombers. This base also contains major stockpile facilities and its strategic value in the defence of British capital is thus obvious. To take another example, the tiny state of Brunei measures only 2,000 square miles in area but it is graced the title “British protected state” because of the important Shell oilfield at Seria. Malaysia also represents an important market for British manufacturers, although there is sharp competition with other capitalist rivals. 

Again it is interesting to note that each of these capitalist countries listed above has resorted to war, to protect its interests in South-East Asia, during the past few decades. It is against this sort of background that Harold Wilson's statement—“If we had only ourselves to think of, we would be glad to leave there as quickly as possible”—has to be measured. .

That section of the British capitalist class with investments in Malaysia senses that it is in a precarious position. T. H. Silcock (Emeritus Professor of Economics of the University of Malaya) has summed up the outlook for the two major industries: “Even though the tin market recovered in 1961 and 1962, the long-term market prospect is . . . not hopeful, though the threat is probably not as great as for rubber.” Apart from this, the risk of losing capital is high in an area  which has been repeatedly fought over by those countries with conflicting economic interests in the region. As a result there has been a great deal of discussions in the press about “our” defence policy east of Suez and about “maintaining stability” in this part of the world. Some of the rising capitalist powers, like China and Indonesia, have called upon the working class in South-East Asia to support them in their attempts to extend their spheres of influence at the expense of their rivals. But, clearly, in these struggles among different sections of the capitalist class, working men and women have nothing at stake; whichever side wins, for the workers victory means continued poverty under the renewed threat of war.

John Crump

The Government’s confidence trick (1966)

From the October 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Switch selling on wages

In the commercial fringe where firms concentrate on a quick turnover before the police catch up with them, switch selling is an accepted method of breaking down a customer’s sales resistance.

It is very simple. A firm advertises—or a shop displays— something at a bargain price. When the customers start pouring in they are told that naturally there was a terrific rush for such a snip and that unfortunately the cut-price stuff has all been sold. But there is another model, a little dearer but still a fantastic bargain . . . Surprisingly, they fall for it.

Perhaps not so surprisingly, they have also fallen for the latest example of political switch selling—which is not confined to any dubious fringe but is openly practised by the most respectable parties. The Labour Party got the voters into their shop by advertising a dynamic, expanding British economy in which everything was nicely under the control of Harold Wilson and his university economics wizards and where wages and production would rise in a planned, consistent curve.

In their 1966 election manifesto, Time For Decision, Labour claimed that under its leadership this country had “. . . fashioned the new instruments of policy with which, under the guidance of the National Plan, a new and better Britain can be built”. This was such an attractive bargain that millions of the electors paid out with their votes to get it.

Now they have had the switch. The government are, of course, very sorry; the National Plan, and all the other alluring things they said they could organise into existence, are not in stock. They forgot to mention in their election brochure that it all depended on the goodwill and the profits of overseas financiers. In the meantime all those expectant Labour voters who came in to buy the latest Wilson bargain will have to be content with something else—the wage freeze, the credit squeeze, government plans for recession and unemployment.

Switch selling succeeds because the customers, whatever their disappointment, still believe that they have got a bargain. The Labour Party’s confidence trick depends on a similar misconception; the voters have to be convinced that the switch is actually, in their interests. They have to be persuaded that we are all together in a desperate struggle for survival and that in this there are no sectional interests, that we are all responsible for our own little bit of what is called the National Interests.

This is a favourite subject of the Prime Minister. At this year’s TUC, after laying about him on all the old bogies of restrictive practices, wage claims and so on, he went on to talk about ‘‘our country” and to ask for “. . . assent to what the national interest requires”. Most of the delegates were too busy applauding the Prime Minister to notice that there has been a change of the Labour Party line. During those famous 13 years of Tory rule Wilson was always sure that the British population was divided into classes, so that some people were privileged to own a lot, receive a high income, live in sumptuous homes, send their children to the best schools, while the rest were condemned to inadequate wages, poor houses, obsolete and restricted schooling.

Now even Harold Wilson does not pretend that his government have done anything to alter the basis of society. In a speech on April 29 last to the AEU national committee, he declared that he had called for local factory committees ". . where each side will put pressure on the other side to get maximum production. . .” which was by any standards an admission that there are still two sides.

But at the same time the Prime Minister wants us to accept that there has been a miraculous transformation and that the strife-racked, divided, class-ridden Britain of Macmillan and Douglas-Home has suddenly disappeared and been replaced by a country where the interests of every clerk, bus driver, miner and scientist are the same as the landlords and the shareholders. This is a remarkable variation on the technique of switch selling, an innovation for which Wilson deserves to be remembered. For his switch results in the customers being offered the goods they are supposed to have rejected in the shop next door.

The best way to beat the switch sellers is to show them up for what they are. The first, basic fact about Britain is that the vast majority of its people depend for their living on getting a job. Even though they may have saved up a bit of money, or even bought some shares in a building society or even on the Stock Exchange; even though they labour with a pen or in a laboratory or at a drawing board; even though they travel to work each day in a dark suit with creases you could cut yourself on; when it comes down to it they have to go out to work for a wage.

There is a very simple, and very accurate, name for these people. They are the working class. We can get a rough idea of their numbers from the Report of the Board of Inland Revenue for 1963/4, which estimated that there were 20½ million people getting an income, before tax, of £1,000 a year or under.

We can get more than a rough idea of the lives of these people—because we are ourselves members of this class. It is members of the working class who live in the 1½ million houses which the 1961 Census revealed as being without an indoor or an attached lavatory, and in the nearly half a million London households which, according to the Milner Holland Report, do not even have a share in a bathroom. Of course not all working class homes are like that; a lot of them are monotonous semis in the suburbs and they have bathrooms and lavatories and fresh painted doors and misty curtains behind which the poverty is a steady ache instead of the short, sharp agony of the slums.

We know what working class life means. The budgeted holidays, clothes, food. The council schools where kids are trained to become future wage slaves. The hire purchase structure of our lives, which only needs the sack—or redeploymcnt, as Harold Wilson called it at the TUC—to destroy it.

What do we know of the other people in society? It may have escaped attention, while the Prime Minister has been thundering and threatening at the TUC “. . . we have the right to ask that each hour worked must be filled with 60 minutes’ worth of work well done”, that there are people who do not need to work yet who live lives which are fuller and more secure than the working class could ever dream of.

There is a simple and an accurate name for these people, too. They are the capitalist class. They own the land, the factories, shipping companies and airlines and so on. They also own, in a rather more involved way, the nationalised industries; because of their ownership they receive the sort of incomes which enable them to live without having to go out to work. The capitalists are a minority of the population; the same Inland Revenue Report estimated that there are about 12,000 people owning wealth worth £200,000 and over.

The capitalists’ wealth, and their incomes, take many forms. The Labour Party promised that their Land Commission Bill would give the land to the people (although surely nobody was expected to believe that). But so far there has been no disturbance of Britain’s massive landholdings—the Duke of Westminster’s 138,000 acres, the Duke of Northumberland’s 80,000, the Duke of Devonshire’s 72.000.

A capitalist can get a lot of money from buying and selling companies; Mr. Wilfred Harvey, once chairman of the British Printing Corporation, was estimated in December last year to have made over £1 million in this way. Or perhaps a shareholder prefers to sit back and simply let his dividends roll in—dividends which, whether they arc held steady under the government squeeze or whether they go up or down, can still provide a capitalist with a very comfortable life.

However the wealth of a capitalist comes to him, there is only one point of origin: the exploitation of those millions of workers. Capitalism lives on exploitation and a firm which cannot produce its profits will quickly die. That is why capitalism concerns itself with the continual refinement of the techniques of exploitation—why it has enslaved man to the methods of mass production, why it has spawned machines like computers to devour costly and repetitive operations, why it sends young men to universities to study the psychology, the mathematics and the logistics of exploitation.

From the proceeds of exploitation the capitalists can live very well. Some of them let us look over their homes at week-ends and, for half-a-crown a head, we can drool over the opulence and ponder upon the startling fact that some human beings actually do have the chance to live a full life. They do not rely on credit accounts on hire purchase debts for their clothes and their domestic equipment. They get the chance to develop their abilities and their talents; their children go to the schools which exist on the comfortable assumption that they are training the future dominant privileged class.

This is Britain today, after two years of Labour rule. When we consider these facts, the panderings and the manoeuvres of the TUC fall into their correct perspective of irrelevance.

Perhaps the trade unionists at Blackpool really thought their decisions were significant; perhaps they really thought they were helping to build the new society. At any rate, it is better to assume they did; unless we grant them sincerity most of the speeches and the decisions of the TUC would be too awful. Yet trade unionists, of all people, are always being brought face to face with the realities of capitalism and now they have once again been shown the futility and impotence of the party most of them helped into power.

Is it too much to expect that such hard-hearted people should realise they have had the switch worked on them, and should stop waiting about for the next fast operator to come along?

Ivan