50 Years Ago: A call to bolster capitalism (1995)

The 50 Years Ago column from the November 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Before the election Sir Stafford Cripps stated, for the Labour Party, "the comfort of the people is the A.1 priority." Now he intends to set up a triple alliance — Trade Unions Employers and Government. — who will plan to bring "British competitive industries to the highest pitch of efficiency."—Daily Herald, September 10th, 1945. For "comfort”? No, the priority is the export trade. In his speech outlining the plan Cripps suggested that it will be difficult for people to realise that by going short now "they are in fact making sure of better and far more stable standards for the future.” What a stale feeble doctrine.' We will paraphrase it, "Put up with your poverty a little longer and shortly. —The Kingdom of Heaven." Really, Sir Stafford ought to be ashamed of himself. Isn’t he able to do better than this? Of course, this ruse has been used very successfully for decades. In 1931 the National Government used it and they obtained 14,000,000 votes. A slight variation in Germany was known as “guns before butter.' How amazing that a famous Labour leader should formulate "markets before butter,” or, what amounts to the same thing.

[From the front page article, 'A call to bolster capitalism: Cripps appeals to the workers ', Socialist Standard, November 1945.]

50 Years Ago: Death in the Mines (1963)

The 50 Years Ago column from the November 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Lancaster Pit of the Universal Colliery at Senghenydd was again the scene of a fearful explosion, in which 435 of our fellow workers have perished—sacrificed to the greed of that butcher, King Capital. Although on the occasion of the last disaster (1901) in this mine, the coroner’s jury found that the mine was not sufficiently watered, and Professor Galloway, the Government Inspector of Mines, reported that the necessary precautions in watering the roadways had not been attended to, yet the mine owners allow conditions to prevail that send to their doom 435 miners.

Every time coal dust has caused a mine explosion the warning has been given, but it has passed unheeded. When the toilers were entombed at West Stanley in 1909, the Government investigators reported that “unless the grave danger which exists at many collieries owing to the pressure of dust is attacked with much greater earnestness than it has been in the past, disasters of a similar nature will occur from time to time.” At Whitehaven in 1910 the inspector proclaimed that “the precautions against the accumulation of coal dust were of a haphazard and unsystematic character,” and he also stated that “the ventilation of the working face was inadequate for the needs of the mine having in view the gassy nature of the coal.” Following upon this the same inspector made this sinister statement to a Press Agency representative :

“Practically every risk which exists could be eliminated if cost were no object.”

These burning words could be backed up by plenty of other quotations from leading agents of capitalism, but let these suffice. The plain fact emerges from every disaster that the toilers’ lives are sacrificed to dividends and interest. Mines Acts arc passed, as that of 1911, with special provisions excluding mines which do not “pay” well from adopting precautions. As for the others, the owners please themselves. The Mines Inspectors are so few, and their powers so meagre, that the regulations are broken with impunity. Last August a fire occurred at the Carron Co’s. pit at Cadder, and 22 miners who went down to earn their pittance on Sunday perished. And notwithstanding that the Mines Act of two years previous enjoins every mine to have complete rescue apparatus, the rescue men had to travel forty miles to obtain life-saving apparatus!

[In 1913 the number killed at work was 1,753 out of a total of 1,100,000 miners. In 1962 the number who lost their lives was 256, out of 706,000 employed.]

[From the editorial, King Capital, The Butcher,  Socialist Standard, November, 1913.]

50 Years Ago: Reflections on wartime (1990)

The 50 Years Ago column from the November 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Doubtless there are some adherents to Socialism who, seeing the appalling state of the world to-day and suffering the nightmare of the beleaguered city, are inclined to despair of the future and feel that the prospect for Socialism is wearing thin. It is understandable that such ideas should take root as it is so difficult to tear one’s mind away from the maelstrom in which we are living and take a dispassionate view of events.

Yet in this miserable hour the future is by no means as dark as it may appear. The movement for Socialism is of necessity only a trickle for a long lime, and this partly deludes people into the belief that little progress is made when in reality great progress has and is being made. The mass of people move as a mass. That is to say their political knowledge grows slowly but steadily at an even pace and it is in a mass and not by ones and twos that the great body of the workers will come to the conviction that in Socialism lies their social salvation. In fact the progress is more real than apparent.

[From the article 'Reflections in War Time' by Gilbert McClatchie, Socialist Standard, November 1940.]

50 Years Ago: Reformism fails again (2026)

The 50 Years Ago column from the November 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists have always maintained that parties, such as the Labour Party, which seek power within capitalism to try to improve the lot of the workers, end up not by reforming capitalism, but by being changed by it into simply a party of capitalist administration. A statement made by Callaghan to the Labour Party Conference at the end of September well illustrates this.

The Labour Party always used to support the idea that the way to end a slump and unemployment was to increase government expenditure so as to offset the decline in private capitalist investment, along the lines advocated by Keynes. But now listen to what Callaghan says :

‘We used to think that you could just spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you, in all candour, that that option no longer exists and that in so far as it ever did exist, it only worked on each occasion since the war by injecting bigger doses of inflation into the economy, followed by higher levels of unemployment’ (The Times, 29 September).

What a confession of failure! What a condemnation of the policy which Labour has always advocated and claimed as its own!

What a confession of failure! What a condemnation of the policy which Labour has always advocated and claimed as its own!

The experience of being in power during a slump has forced Callaghan to recognize that, in practice, a Labour government has to pursue the same sort of policy as any openly capitalist government, to try to restore business confidence and profit prospects by reducing workers’ living standards and cutting back on social reforms. In short, to accept the logic of capitalism. (…)

Once again the miserable failure of yet another Labour government has confirmed the Socialist case that capitalism can never be reformed so as to benefit workers and that therefore workers should direct their efforts rather to abolishing capitalism and replacing it by Socialism where the means of production would be owned in common and democratically controlled to satisfy people’s needs.

[From the article 'Reformism fails again' by L. B., Socialist Standard, November 1976.]

50 Years Ago: A Warning to Irish Workers (1957)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

There can be no relief for the oppressed Irishman in changing an English robber for an Irish one. The person of the robber does not matter—it is the fact of the robbery that spells misery. National divisions are a hindrance to working-class unity and action, and national jealousies and differences are fostered by the capitalists for their own ends.

The crowd of hungry “intellectuals” clamouring for jobs both within and without the Irish parliamentary party do not represent the interests of the working class in Ireland. They do not, indeed, profess to favour other than capitalist interests, provided that the landlord or capitalist be Irish, but the Irish capitalist is in no wise more merciful than the English exploiter. The national sentiment and perennial enthusiasm of the Irishmen are being exploited by the so-called leaders in the interests of Irish capitalism, and the workers are being used to fight the battles of their oppressors. The Irish capitalist rebels against the English capitalist only because the latter stands in the way of a more thorough exploitation of the Irish workers by Irish capital. Let the thieves fight their own battles!

[From an article on 'The Sinn Fein Policy', Socialist Standard, September 1907.]

50 Years Ago: Immigrants and unemployment (1988)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are asked if we want foreign workers to take jobs away from British workers, and on the surface it looks like a reasonable point of view. Actually it is baseless. It is true that if an Italian waiter comes to London he may get a job in preference to a British waiter, just as hundreds of thousands of British workers have in the past managed to get jobs in America and many other foreign countries. But unemployment in the mass is not caused by the size of the population and does not increase because the population is increased, whether by births or by immigration. Capitalism everywhere normally has its unemployed, no matter what the population figures may be. If unemployment disappeared, then the workers would be able to demand more wages, and this would reduce profits to the vanishing point. Unemployment is, therefore, a capitalist necessity. The capitalist himself deliberately creates it by installing labour-displacing machinery in the effort to keep costs down and profits up.

[From the editorial "Should aliens be allowed in?" Socialist Standard, September 1938.]

50 Years Ago: The Waning Status of the "Intellectual" (1996)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Not many years ago the "intellectual," with his "middle class" delusion, was convinced that he had a fundamental identity of interest with the capitalist, but experience began to raise doubts; some sections, including bank clerks, commenced to form defensive organisations. That was a step forward. Lately there has been a giant stride forward.. For the first time bank clerks have engaged in a strike on a large scale. The Irish bank officials have been on strike for five weeks, coming at last into the main stream of the class struggle and taking a belated step towards recognising the fundamental identity of interest of all those who depend for their livelihood upon the sale of their mental and physical energies. In the not far distant future the other grades of workers afflicted with the "middle class" obsession will be forced to accept a similar outlook and the halo surrounding the "intellectual" will finally disappear.

Gilmac.

[From the article, The Waning Status of the "Intellectual", by Gilbert McClatchie, Socialist Standard September 1946.]

50 Years Ago: Socialists in Peace and War (1965)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Kautsky and others had argued that while Socialists should oppose the outbreak of war, if war comes they should remain silent. Rosa Luxemburg answered this. The following are extracts from her article).

‘But now “war is a fact” and, as it turns out, after the outbreak of war Socialists are to be guided by entirely new principles . . . In plain language this means: The Proletariat has not one fundamental principle as scientific Socialism hitherto maintained, but two, one for peace and another for war. In time of peace we are to suppose, the workers are to take cognizance of the class struggle within the nation and of international solidarity in relation to other countries; in time of war, on the other hand, class-solidarity becomes the dominant feature of international affairs and the struggle against the workers of other countries dominates the proletarian view of foreign relations. To the great historic appeal of the Communist Manifesto is added an important amendment, and it reads now, according to Kautsky’s revision: “Workers of all lands unite in peace and cut one another’s throats in war!” Today Down with the Russians and French!”, tomorrow, “We are brothers all!”

‘This convenient theory introduces an entirely novel revision of the economic interpretation of history. Proletarian tactics before the outbreak of war and after must be based upon exactly opposite principles. This presupposes that social conditions, the basis of our tactics, are fundamentally different in war from what they are in peace. According to the economic interpretation of history as Marx established it, all history is the history of class struggles. According to Kautsky’s revision we must add: except in times of war.’

[From the article, 'The Rebuilding of the International', Socialist Standard, September, 1915.]

50 Years Ago: The Capitalist League of Nations (1985)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

First let us examine the League of Nations. Its name obscures the truth. It is not a League of Nations, but a League of Governments, that is to say, it is directed and controlled by the representatives of the different sections of the capitalist class. If the importance of that is not at once apparent it is only necessary to point out that each of those Governments is occupied at home with the relentless suppression of the working class, by armed force if necessary. Never do those Governments set the armed forces in motion to promote or defend the interests of the working class, but always to protect capitalism and capitalist property rights. Yet we are asked to believe that these gentlemen undergo a surprising change on their journey to Geneva, and become representatives of the interest of humanity as a whole, or even of the working class in particular. Do our Labour Party opponents not recall that the same ridiculous spectacle was once a commonplace in the electoral field, of trade unionists voting into Parliament the very employers with whom they were engaged in bitter wages struggles?

[From an editorial "Let the Capitalists Fight Their Own Wars", published in the Socialist Standard, October 1935.]

50 Years Ago: What is Democracy (1963)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many people, when faced with this question, conjure up pictures of the American eagle, and think that democracy is all that that amiable bird symbolises. They imagine that a State run on the lines of the American Republic is a democratic State, that the institutions of such a State are democratic institutions, that the spirit of such a State is the democratic spirit, and that the philosophy of such a State—the “Rights of Man” (printed, of course, on the reverse side of a “green-back”)—is the democratic philosophy.

All of which ideas are wrong.

The common, meaning of the term “democracy,”—a form of society in which supreme power is lodged in the hands of the people—is correct enough as far as it goes, and is sufficient in all that it implies. But it implies something very different from the American Republic, and American institutions, and the “Rights of Man.” For supreme power to be lodged in the hands of the people does not mean merely that they arc to have the widest possible franchise and equal voting power. It implies that the people are to have complete control of all social institutions, the ordering of all social activities, the domination of the whole social life. Such a condition of affairs presupposes at the very outset the ownership by the people of all the means of life, all the social products, even all the social intelligence and skill and energy.

There can be no other foundation for democracy than this common ownership of all the means of life, for where these fall into private possession social distinctions at once spring up, the owners become dominators, and it becomes impossible for the people to control the social activities—because, forsooth, they have not control of the means and instruments through which the most important of those activities—those directed to the production of the social wealth—are applied.

Notwithstanding, then, the popular conviction to the contrary, existing republics no more enfold democracy than do monarchies. Nor are they nearer to it since they are no nearer to the property condition upon which democracy must be founded.

 

[From the  front page article, 'What is Democracy? A Socialist View. ', by A. E. Jacomb, Socialist Standard, October 1913.]

50 Years Ago: Plimsoll Line (1962)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Samuel Plimsoll hated Toryism, but the depth of his hatred of Liberal government was shown when he said in the House of Commons on May 14, 1873:

“I am a Liberal of the Liberals. I have supported Liberal measures ever since I came into this House, but it has been borne into my mind that the interest of the working classes, when at issue between themselves and capitalists, are safer with the Conservatives than with the Liberals.”

Thirty-one years after the load line was lowered; thirty-one years after the Plimsoll Mark was established, David Lloyd George became President of the Board of Trade, and he wiped out the labours of Plimsoll by issuing new regulations raising the load line. The Plimsoll line—the charter of the seamen—was dead. In its place was substituted the Lloyd George load line.

*

On Saturday, September 21st, the Board of Trade enquiry into the loss of the North Briton was held at Cardiff. The magistrate who presided over it summed up thus:

“For some time before the vessel foundered, and when her condition was hopeless, the crew—those 20 brave men of that brave class, the British Mercantile Marine—stood together on the deck with their pipes in their mouths, silently, calmly, dauntlessly facing death. Without a murmur or a cry they perished in the sea. Their lives were sacrificed to the 130 tons of additional freight.” 

He pointed out that:

“According to law she was not overladen, but the Court is satisfied that consistent with safety the loading was excessive,” and “the primary cause of her loss.”

The Court put the Board of Trade the following question for urgent consideration:

“Do the disasters to vessels that have occurred since March 1906, when the rules for assigning a ship’s freeboard were revised, and whereby numerous vessels had their freeboard reduced, call for further immediate revision of such rules?”

[From the editorial, 'Lloyd George's permit to murder', Socialist Standard, October 1912.]

Fifty Years Ago: No quick road (1975)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is evidence that capitalism has yet a considerable future before it; a future of extensive exploitation of the yet untouched areas of the earth; a future of economic centralisation crushing out the last effective remnants of individualism; a future of imperialism and war, of industrial and political anarchy without parallel; a future in which the workers will be hammered and battered into a recognition of social realities.

But alongside the education of experience and practice will go also the education in theoretical principles and tactics born of the conception of history we owe so greatly to Marx. The first form will provide the necessary groundwork of class-consciousness; the second, the essential guidance to a policy avoiding the pitfalls and errors that beset a revolutionary class groping its way amid endless problems along the path towards emancipation.

[From an article “Economics and Ideas” by R. W. Housley, in the Socialist Standard, October 1925.]

50 Years Ago: Proposal to abolish strikes (1961)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the recent Trades Union Congress. . . a resolution was moved on the Friday severely condemning the Bill introduced into Parliament by Mr. Will Crooks to end industrial disputes. . .

Briefly, it is a bill that seeks to abolish strikes altogether. It lays it down that employers and employees should give at least thirty days’ notice of an intended change affecting conditions of employment with respect to wages and hours; that it shall be unlawful for any employer to declare or cause a lock-out, or for any employee to go on strike on account of any dispute before or during a reference of such a dispute to a board of conciliation and investigation, any employer declaring or causing a lockout being liable to a fine of not less than £20 nor more than £200 for each day or part of a day that such lock-out exists, and any employee going on strike being liable to a fine of not less than £2 nor more than £10 per day. (Why didn’t Mr. Crooks make the employees’ fine £100 or £1,000 per day while he was about it? The modesty of the bill in only claiming £10 per day from a man who is probably striking for a living wage is distinctly rich.)

A further clause in the bill declares that any person who incites, encourages, or aids in any manner any employer to declare and continue a lock-out, or any employee to go or continue on strike, shall be liable to a fine of not less than £10 nor more than £200.

[From the article, The Trade Union Congress, by F. J. Webb, Socialist Standard, October 1911.]

[Other Labour M.P.’s who supported the Bill, which was not passed, were Henderson, Barnes, Fenwick and Enoch Edwards; the last-named said it was “inadvertently” as he gave his name without reading the Bill and did not approve of it. The T.U.C. resolution of condemnation wits passed unanimously.]

50 Years Ago: Bandits or Patriots? (1988)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Patriotism has been described as “the last refuge of a scoundrel’’; but everybody does not take that view. Some of those who do not are the London newspapers, also the Liberal, Labour and Conservative parties. They all say that patriotism is a very fine and noble thing, and that we should honour the courage and devotion of the patriot who fights to defend the land he was born in against foreign invaders. There is Abyssinia, for example. The Manchester Guardian reports that widespread guerrilla warfare is still bring waged against the Italians, and the writer in the Guardian (September 8th, 1938) goes to some trouble to explain that the Abyssinian patriots are not just “bandits." But if we turn from Abyssinia to Palestine, where the Arabs are trying by force of arms to overthrow the detested British rule and oust the Jewish settlers, we find a remarkable difference. All the London daily papers, with hardly an exception, habitually report the efforts of the Arabs as the activities of “bandits." Actually the Arab fighters talk the same kind of language as all the other patriots. Here is a sample:—

Were it not for the justice of our cause, the holiness of our demands and the victory promised to us by God, the enemy would have succeeded in its intentions. —(Daily Telegraph, September 8th, 1938.)

Not that we wish to idealise the Arabs, but it would be more fitting if the gangs of patriots in all countries recognised that they are all worshipping the same barbarous ideals in the same bloodthirsty way.

[From the Notes by the Way column by Edgar Hardcastle, Socialist Standard, October 1938.]

50 Years Ago: The passing of Mao (2026)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

The death of Mao Tse-Tung has been anticipated for many years in speculations over who would be his successor. Now it has happened and drawn world-wide attention to China. Ostensibly the interest is in the passing of a celebrated national leader; practically, it is in whether there will be changes of policy and how they will affect China’s relationship with the rest of the world.

The history of China since 1949 closely resembles that of Russia thirty years before. The Communist revolutions in both countries were the taking of political power so that capitalism could develop and the entry to the modern world be made. Like Lenin, Mao provided a figurehead, and as with Lenin a version of Marxism was put out in his name to create a social vision to gain mass support for modernization. The projection of Mao’s personality has been carried much further than Lenin’s; but behind this cultivated charisma has stood a ruling class strongly conscious of its economic aims.

The phrase for China in these conditions is ‘Mao’s China’, implying that his personal and political qualities have been the chief factor. The effect of this ‘great man’ view of history is to make it dependent on the emergence of outstanding individuals; but the opposite is true. Individuals are given opportunities by crises and the pressure of new developments, and these make them ‘great’. But for the 1939-45 war Churchill would have remained an unpopular minor statesman. Napoleon was the product of post-revolution conditions in France. The rise of Mussolini and Hitler was primarily the result of the failure of social-democracy in Europe and the effects of the 1929 depression on Germany. In some circumstances history appears almost to go looking for some nonentity or a lunatic to elevate into a ‘great man’.

Of course the day-to-day behaviour of individuals, once they have political power, produces effects of its own. But what makes them ‘great’ is precisely that their ambitions and whims are not incompatible with the wider requirements of the time. The shifts and innovations in Chinese policy under Mao have had a plain coherence in aiming at the achievement of world power status as quickly as possible.

[From the article, The Passing of Mao, by Robert Barltrop, Socialist Standard, October 1976.]

50 Years Ago: Land Tax (1962)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

At a time when the toilers are engaged in a bitter struggle with the employers, the Liberals are busy diverting attention to the “wicked landlords” and their “unearned increment.” The dockers being “done down” by a Devonport, are told to tax land values. The miners, vainly seeking 5s. a day, are urged to support the Single Tax idea. The railway men, cursing Conciliation, are advised to levy the ducal landlords.

The Land Tax campaign serves the Liberal manufacturers well. Labour unrest is exploited to turn the minds of the workers away from the real question to the old bogey of taxing land. The policy of smothering men’s bitter feelings against the Devonports, Thomas’s, and Hugh Bells, has, however, a more palpable and material driving force behind it. Hence we note from the Liberal Press that a wealthy and influential committee has been formed to boom the Land Tax campaign.

Mr. Joseph Fels, the well-known soap manufacturer, has contributed £30,000, and many others have given largely. Mr. Josiah Wedgwood, the Liberal pottery manufacturer, is one of the leading spirits in the movement.

Hirelings are sent about the country at great expense, preaching the virtues of the Single Tax.

But why this enormous expenditure? Why this outcry about taxation? Once the worker grasps the true facts of the question of taxation, the campaign and its real meaning become plain. The upkeep of this system of society calls for hundreds of millions a year to support the services that must be run to ensure the safety of our masters.

The cost of the Army. Navy, Police, and bureaucracy is ever rising, and the manufacturers and business men—chiefly organised in the Liberal party—are crying out about their heavy burden of taxation. Wishing to divide the cost of those forces and institutions necessary to keep the workers down, they propose to tax land or land values. The landowners, on the other hand, have no desire to be taxed further, hence their bitter wail.

This time honoured squabble as to who should pay is but one between robbers over the cost of the robbery.

[From the article, 'The Lying Land Campaign: The Socialist View' by Adolph Kohn, the Socialist Standard, September 1912.]

50 Years Ago: From the Cradle to the Grave (1994)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Manchester Evening News of May 25, 1944, publishes an article by a staff reporter under the heading, “Control of Funerals, Unlikely.”

We are not here concerned with the question of price control, whether for ingress to or egress from “this sorry scherne of things entire”—that we can safely leave to those “financial wizards” and “price ceiling experts” whose job it is to “navigate” the “good ship Capitalism.”

The footnote to the above mentioned article is much more interesting and informative, and we quote it as follows :

“Prices at Southern Cemetery for Graves range from £3 4s. 6d. to £72 15s. More than 50 per cent. are buried in £3 4s. 6d. graves. Those at £72 15s. are double spaces in prominent positions on main drives. Single space in same position costs £30 1s. (Our italics.)

Human beings born into the working class are rocked in “shoddy” cradles, dressed in “shoddy” clothes, fed on “shoddy” food, housed in “jerry” buildings, and when their days of toil are over buried in “shoddy” graves. Worn out by a lifetime of toil and poverty midst plenty, the worker “giving up the ghost'” reaches his goal—a “£3 4s. 6d. grave.”

[From an article by G. R. Russell in the Socialist Standard, September 1944.]

50 Years Ago: Amin, Africa and the world (2026)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

The way to stop understanding of events is to show them as resulting from personal misconduct or mismanagement by those in charge. Had Hitler not been mad and bad, the Second World War would never have happened. Stalin’s treacherousness made Russia what it is. But for a succession of weak and untrustworthy leaders, the Labour Party would have brought us all to the Promised Land. This view of history means we are perpetually invited to look at figures idiotic and corrupt, and put all the blame on them. Without doubt they are all as objectionable as stated, but that is not the answer. The high chairs in which these characters sit are provided by capitalism, and at some time of need each appeared to be the ideal occupant.

The special place of buffoon-turned-villain is held at present by President Amin of Uganda. Since his regime began it has been characterized by killings, culminating in the ‘Makerere massacre’ of over 100 students in August this year. It has included the deportation of Asians in 1972, and a series of international incidents; in July there was a confrontation with Kenya, and on the 28th July Britain broke off diplomatic relations with Uganda. There have been attempts at uprisings and to assassinate Amin. On 1st August The Observer had an editorial headed ‘Getting rid of Amin’. (…)

The balance of power in Africa is between the growing and aspiring ruling classes of the states there, their deals for aid with bigger nations, and the bigger nations’ own need for oil and minerals for commodity production.

In this balance, the grotesque Amin is entirely dependent on his sponsors. The continuation of the Kenyan oil blockade in July could have caused his downfall, and from the viewpoint of his Arab allies he is unreliable and disposable; no doubt their attitude is like Samuel Pepys’s — ‘whether it will be better for me to have him die, because he is a bad man, or live, for fear a worse should come’. Meanwhile, workers in Uganda and countless other countries live not only under tyrannical regimes but have the prospect of being fodder for wars, in which the enemies are a matter of permutation. This is the result of production for profit. It does not have to go on.

[From the article, Amin, Africa and the World, by Robert Barltrop, Socialist Standard, September 1976.]

50 Years Ago: Organisation (1962)

The 50 Years Ago column from the August 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

. . . Often there seems to be an idea—an entirely erroneous idea in the writer’s estimation—that as capitalism (or at least the present phase of capitalism) appears to be drawing to a close, the next step must inevitably be the establishment of Socialism in its stead. There is, therefore, no need, so it is considered, to do anything more than sit with folded hands, waiting for the downfall of capitalist society and the springing up, full-armed, of the new system of society.

. . . It does not actually follow that Socialism will be the outcome of present-day capitalist society. If you have a discontented people, poverty-stricken, degraded by continual toil and suffering into mere human machines, ripe for any change from their present existence of physical and mental penury, you have within that people all the possibilities, not so much of an elevation to a higher type, but rather toward an atavism even more degrading physically, more destructive intellectually, than at present.

The essential thing is, of course, that there should be implanted in the minds of the workers knowledge of the fact that their position as workers must be altered from the present state of slavery to a state wherein they shall be free to order their lives as they may best determine. But this knowledge once having been attained, it then becomes quite as necessary to know how to live. After all, life is not only the eating of good food, the wearing of good clothes, the sheltering in good houses, with a minimum of work and a maximum of leisure. All these things are, or should be, simply the means to an end in themselves . . .

. . . So it can be seen that the necessity of organisation becomes doubly imperative. Firstly, in order to build up a body of men and women whose main idea shall be the ending of capitalism and the establishment of the Socialist Commonwealth. Secondly, that the men and women thus organised may have the opportunity of keeping themselves in touch with every phase of life, thus forming, indeed, an educational centre in the real meaning of the word education . . .

[From the article, 'The Need For Organisation', by F. J. Webb, Socialist Standard, August 1912]

50 Years Ago: The row about overseas students (2026)

The 50 Years Ago column from the August 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard 

 

Students who come to the UK from abroad to study make another part of the education pot that is at boiling point. But as with the reasons for the cuts in the education system (discussed last month) so also with the explanation of the row about overseas students. The causes have nothing to do with so-called academic freedom, or colour prejudice, or the duty to help developing countries. The cause of the dispute is within the economics of capitalism itself in one of its periodic crises.

Cuts are demanded in state expenditure by the capitalist class and in education in particular. One of the things which have been cut back on is the “subsidy” to overseas students. This so-called subsidy relates to the fact that the fees paid by all students to universities and colleges of higher education do not in fact represent the true cost of the course they will be attending. The real cost will be many times higher and the balance comes from central and local government grants to the universities and colleges, together with whatever else they can squeeze from private sources. Overseas students (estimated to be about 95,000 for the academic year 1973/4) therefore apparently cost the capitalist class considerable amounts.

For example the “price” of one year of a 3-year course in science at University College London, for the academic year 1975/76 was £157. But this figure probably represents no more than 10 per cent of the true cost of providing the services and equipment available to each student on a science course at UCL. So the call grows from the politicians (the mouthpieces of the capitalist class) and others involved to make students who come here to study from abroad pay the market price.

[From the article, 'The Row About Overseas Students' by Ronnie Warrington, Socialist Standard, August 1976.]