The God That Failed (1950)

Book Review from the June-July 1950 issue of The Western Socialist

The God That Failed edited by Richard Crossman [Harper & Brother]

Six (presumably) wise men, tending their intellects, looked to the East, and saw a “new star in Bethlehem.” Pour of these savants actually journeyed to the Soviet Bethlehem, but instead of a new God, they found but another Pope. The remaining two gazed from afar, until after some meditation, they concluded the star to be a piece of cardboard, wrapped about with tinfoil.

Thus is The God That Failed, a collection of the sagas of six intellectuals who journeyed into “Communism,” and returned, a little wiser for their experiences. Three of these (Arthur Koestler, Richard Wright, and Ignazio Silone) were actually members of the German, American, and Italian Communist Parties, respectively, whereas the other three (Andre Gide, Louis Fischer, and Stephen Spender) were sympathizers and lauders of the Russian system.

The editor, Richard Crossman, Labor member of the British Parliament, terms the first group “The Initiates,” the second “Worshippers from Afar.” The title of this book originated from the play Oedipe by Gide, in which the author “is forced to the realization that man without God is doomed to defeat and despair, unless he substitutes some other idea for God. Oedipus at the end rejects God for man, and Gide looked toward Communism.” So writes Enid Starkie who edited Gide's comments. The God That Failed, indeed! After reading this sextet of confessional breast-beating, this reviewer believes that a more proper title would have been, The Understanding That Failed. In reaching out for their God, their concept of “communism,” [1] these intellectuals showed very little understanding of exactly what kind of revolution occurred in Russia in November 1917, and exactly what type of society was instituted. Later on, when their star dimmed, blinked, and then went out, they began to grasp a little more of the truth about Soviet Russia. Especially was this so in the case of Arthur Koestler who, at the conclusion of his essay, mentioned that in another of his books (The Yogi and the Commissar) he tried to expose the “fallacy of the unshaken foundation that a state-capitalist economy (Russia) must of necessity lead to a socialist regime.”

The Pull To The East

Our assertion that these individuals showed very little understanding of the nature of communism and the Soviet economy can be underlined by examining the reasons they present for either joining the Communist Party or becoming fellow travelers and sympathizers.

Arthur Koestler — a writer, as are the other five intellectuals.— entered the Communist Party in Germany because he believed that the Stalinists had the answer to unemployment, insecurity and war. Ignazio Silone became a member of the Italian Socialist Party for basically the same reasons, and although he does not state so, he allegedly switched to the Italian Communist Party out of the same motivation.

One of the most outstanding Negro writers today, Richard Wright, attached himself to the John Reed Club in Chicago, first because of a desire to further his writing. Later he signed an application card in the Communist Party of the United States when he was told that he would have to do so in order to remain Secretary of the Club.

As for the worshippers from afar, with Andre Gide it was, as the title states, the search for a new God.

“It was not through Marx, but through the Gospels, that Gide had reached communism,” writes Enid Starkie. Gide himself put it in this wise, “My conversion is like a faith.”

Louis Fischer, the noted journalist and author, and Stephen Spender, the English poet, likewise viewed the Soviet Union as the “white hope of humanity,” in contrast to the demoralized aspect represented by the Western capitalist powers.

Despair In The West

Richard Crossman, the editor, perhaps sums it all up the most satisfactorily in his foreword to the book. He emphasizes that it was the failure of Western capitalism which accounted for men of such intellectual capacities hitching their wagons to the Red Star. In general, this is a correct evaluation. At the same time does this not also prove our previous claim, that fundamentally it was lack of understanding on the part of these writers that brought them to their sorry pass?

Whether these men viewed Soviet Russia as a new faith, a Utopia, or as an answer to capitalism’s inability to solve the problems of the working class, not one of them at any time displayed an awareness of the nature of socialism, and of Soviet society. Such an awareness would have spared them the snares and later disillusionments of Russian capitalism. A scientific socialist understanding would have taught them that the material conditions were not suitable for socialism in Russia in 1917, that what the Bolsheviks did, was merely to institute capitalism under control of the state because of the inability of any strong and cohesive capitalist class to organize private capitalism.

This understanding, further, would have convinced these intellectuals that the means employed by the Bolsheviks — assassinations, character and physical, slanders, deceit, and outright lying — are not inseparable from the ends sought, but exposed the real objective of the various Communist Parties, to establish a dictatorship over the proletariat, not of it, another class society, not a classless society.

Retrospect Is Easy

Let us not be too severe on these individuals. Our understanding permits us to see how in the past several decades the Soviet Union and the Stalinists could have been the drawing cards they were. In the World Socialist Party today and in the other companion parties of socialism are many who were likewise sucked into the Soviet circle. In the absence of large scientific socialist parties to spread the knowledge of a clear concept of socialism, Russian pseudo-communism could and did make tremendous gains among workers and intellectuals seeking a way out of capitalist wars and depressions. In the lack of the development of scientific socialist ideas among the workers which would have brought socialism closer to reality, Bolshevism represented a “we-are-doing-something-about-it” movement, and drew followers unto it on this emotional basis.

What did it all add up to? The God That Fails helps furnish part of the answer. Defection and disenchantment, revulsion against a cause once held dear. Unacquainted with socialism, these six intellectuals could not have had the proper understanding to avoid the traps set by the Russian bear (a case of the hunted becoming the hunter!)

This can be overlooked. One learns by experience. One’s political views reflect one’s conception of the material world at any one time. But after these six men had gone through the hell and welter of the Russian maze, it is not too much for us to expect that they should have profited thereby.

But they haven’t except, in a negative sense, that they learned enough to be opposed to Stalinism (the term erroneously used by many to describe modern Russian state Capitalism) and all it represents. On the positive side, however, all of them, in one form or another, have returned to the support of capitalism, from which, unknowingly, they never departed when they affiliated themselves to the Russian Church. [2] Now they look upon “Western democracy” without understanding its economic base, any more than they understood the economic base of “Soviet democracy.” In spite of Louis Fischer’s theory of the “Double Rejector” — “rejecting the evils of dictatorship and of democracy,” that it is possible to steer a clear path between the rocks of Stalinism and the reefs of capitalism, events have proved there is no middle ground.

Looking at history opportunistically and from an immediate viewpoint, a middle ground may seem a likely attraction. The socialist, however, knows that in the end one must choose between capitalism and socialism — the latter, not as propagandized by Soviet state capitalism, but. as we conceive it, as the ownership of the means of production by the entire population, and democratically controlled by it.

It is a comfortable feeling between wars and depressions to rationalize that one is combatting the evils of Russian capitalism, at the same time not condoning the sins of capitalism elsewhere. But this is a luxury which perhaps only intellectuals have the mental bankroll to afford. When the drums roll and the swords are unsheathed for the third World War; when the factory gates swing shut for “lack of work,” and millions pound the pavements looking for non-existing jobs — where, then, the middle ground intellectuals?

Where they were when they joined “Stalinism,” where they were after deserting it — in search of a new “star in the East,” a new faith, a new God. Perhaps we shall be treated to a second, and even third edition of The God That Failed, with only a change in the time and the characters.

The Book Has Merits

The book has tremendous merits, in spite of our criticism of the protagonists. Through the eyes of Arthur Koestler the reader is taken through the turbulent pre-Hitlerian days in Germany and shown how the German Communist Party was used in the interests of the Soviet ruling class, not in the interests of the German workers. Later on, in his trip to the Soviet Union, Koestler reveals how foreign writers are paid royalties, not for their books (some of which are not even published), but for their support and flattery of Stalinism.

Ignazio Silone exposes how he was asked by the Executive Committee of the Communist International in Moscow to condemn a document by Trotsky without ever having read it.

For the reader in the United States, the essay by Richard Wright perhaps furnishes the most sustained interest, since it deals with the experiences of the author in the Communist Party in Chicago.

Andre Gide, who has written extensively of his trips to the Soviet Union, gives the reader a good insight into conditions in the Soviet Union. Although Gide did not see state capitalism in Russia, he was astute enough to point out that “the disappearance of capitalism has not brought freedom to the Soviet workers . . .  It is true of course that they are no longer exploited by shareholding capitalists, but nevertheless they are exploited, and in so devious, subtle and twisted a manner that they do not know whom to blame . . ." 

Louis Fischer furnishes more insight into the stifled situation within Russia, and explains how the Spanish Civil War, and the new Russian Constitution in 1936 gave Stalinism a new lease on life. Stephen Spender also deals with the Spanish Civil War, and has an interesting theory why distinguished scientists like Haldane, Bernal and Joliot-Curie become supporters of movements like Stalinism.

Conclusion To Confusion

Perhaps we cannot better conclude this review than by reciting the circumstances under which Stephen Spender joined the British Communist Party for a few weeks during the winter of 1936-7. After writing Forward from Liberalism, he was invited by Harry Pollitt, head of the British CP, to visit him. Pollit objected to Spender’s criticism of the Moscow Trials in his book. At the same time he suggested that since Spender was in agreement with the Party on the Spanish Civil War, he should join the Party. Spender was to write an article in the Daily Worker criticizing the Stalinists, at the same time he joined the Party! “I accepted this offer,” Spender relates. “I received a Party card, and my article appeared. The article infuriated the Communists in Scotland and the North of England, and my membership in the Party was quickly forgotten.”

Was it the God, or was it understanding, that failed in the case of these six men who spent a “Lost Weekend in Utopia?”

Socialists are not looking for a star, a God, but for their fellow workers to join them in a movement which is understood by all, controlled by all, and in the interests of all — Socialism.

Karl Frederick

Notes:

[1] The Russian Revolution and the appearance of the Communist Parties and the Communist International have caused those who believe in common ownership under democratic control to be all the more careful to call themselves “socialists” in order not to be identified with the state capitalist regime in Russia and the dictatorial methods and objectives of the Stalinists everywhere. However, in terms of the nature of societies, no difference exists between communism and socialism, both being defined as in the previous sentence.

[2] This statement applies as well to Ignazio Silone. Although at the end of his essay he reaffirms his belief in socialism, his concept of the latter is that of Social Democracy, according to latest reports. Social Democracy not only supports capitalism, even strengthens it by reforms, but also sees state capitalism as “socialism.” It is not enough to say one is a “socialist” to be one. One must advocate the revolutionary abolition of capitalism and refuse to work for its reform, in order to wear the label of "socialist.”

Some aspects of Russia (1937)

Book Review from the December 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

When the Russian Revolution took place in 1917, the Socialist Party of Great Britain pointed out that it would not result in Socialism, but in a development of capitalism. We laid great emphasis on the fact that Russia, being still very backward, was not ripe for Socialism. The population of Russia was composed chiefly of peasants. How could they, illiterate and individualistic in outlook, have any understanding of Socialism, or any desire for it?

Whilst we were urging these views, other parties, claiming to represent the working class, asserted that the Bolsheviks had discovered a short cut to Socialism. They ignored the lessons of history, which show that there are no short cuts, that society passes through various phases and that none of these phases can be “jumped” in the course of society’s evolution. They ignored the past failures of workers to establish Socialism by intelligent minorities. After claiming to be “Marxists”, they paid little real attention to the theories of Marx and Engels.

Alas, thanks to these parties (chiefly the Communist Party and the Independent Labour Party) a legend was created, a legend that Russia was Socialist. It was a harmful legend, too, for many workers began to imagine that they could copy the Russians, and establish Socialism with-out first having a Socialist working class.

When the S.P.G.B. said that soon the opponents of Socialism would be pointing to Russia and telling the workers to see what evils Socialism (!) had brought, in order to make them hostile to it, the C.P. and the I.L.P. just smiled (to put it mildly) and told us to be patient. “Soon,” they said, “everything in the garden will be lovely."

Unfortunately for these optimists, every so often facts about Russia are published, which prove the S.P.G.B.’s case up to the hilt.

Recently the French writer, André Gide, has written a book, Retour de l’U.R.S.S (“Return from Russia,” by André Gide; pp. 152; 6 francs; published by Gallimard), after a visit to Russia. This book is the more significant because its author has, on several occasions in the past few years, announced his sympathy and admiration for Russia.

Now, however, Gide shows himself to be disappointed with the state of affairs there. This disappointment is largely due to his having been misled by Communists into believing that Russia is the fatherland of Socialism. Even after his visit, he writes: “The exploitation of a large number for the profit of a few no longer exists in Russia” (p.46). Thus he expected to find poverty abolished from the land and was shocked to find it so rampant (p.65). We told the Communists long ago that disillusionment would be the effect of their extravagant propaganda!

Gide observes that, even now, twenty years after the Revolution, the problem of production has not been solved, and he thinks that, for a long time to come, the supply of goods will not satisfy the demands (p.38). Hence the necessity imposed on the Russian State of paying attention to quantity at the expense of quality (p.39).

Social contrasts are easily seen in Russia, and Gide fears that these contrasts will grow more pronounced as time goes on, especially as these tendencies are encouraged by the State.

“I fear,” he writes on pp. 62-4, “that soon a new kind of ‘working-bourgeoisie,’ satisfied (and indeed even conservative), will be formed, too much like our own class of small capitalists. Everywhere I see symptoms of this.” And again: “I am greatly disturbed to see in the Russia of to-day these capitalistic instincts indirectly flattered and encouraged by recent laws.” (Gide refers to such laws as those authorising the possession of private property, legacies, etc.)

Gide gives us a picture of the social differences one sees next door to each other. He describes (p.60) the Hotel of Sinop, near Soukhoum, where everything is up-to-date. Each room has its bathroom attached, its own terrace and furniture of perfect taste. The food is supplied from an up-to-date farm, where one must sterilise one’s shoes before entering. Yet, separated by a stream from all this luxury, are houses where poorly paid workers live. Here four share one room less than nine feet by seven, and they are compelled, through poverty, to live on bread and dried fish.

In the Appendix (p.118) Gide gives us some idea of the vast differences in wages that prevail on the collective farms (Kolkhoses). Here he says: “These privileged persons can earn 600 roubles a month.” The “qualified” workmen receive very often much more. For the “non-qualified workers, who form the immense majority, the daily salary is from five to six roubles. The simple workman earns still less.”

Gide describes also the scorn or indifference that the relatively rich show towards their “inferiors”, and the servility of poor work-people towards their “superiors”. No equality here!

The ruling clique in Russia pursues a policy similar to that of all ruling classes. It tries to keep the poor quiet by persuading them that they are as happy as they can be till better times come, and that they are more happy than people in other countries (pp.50-2) “The citizen of Russia is extraordinarily ignorant of other countries. More than that, he has been made to believe that everything abroad goes on less well in every respect than in Russia. This illusion is skilfully upheld” (p.52).

All criticism in Russia is confined to deciding whether or not theories or things are orthodox. Anyone who expresses views differing from those held by officials is considered a Trotskyist. “To-day,” says Gide, “it is a spirit of submission, orthodoxy, that is demanded. All those who do not declare themselves satisfied are considered ‘Trotskyists’” (p.76). Woe betide those people who cannot hold their tongues, or who cannot always raise a cheer! “What is desired and what is demanded is applause for everything that is done in Russia . . . The least protest, the least criticism is punishable by the severest penalties” (p.67).

Other interesting things in this book could be dealt with (e.g., the “deification” of Stalin, the influence of the official newspapers on the minds of the people); but enough has been said to show that, for one admirer who went to see Russia, it is a capitalist state with wide contrasts in economic and social status, and that the ruling clique maintains its power by ruthless suppression of criticism.

With Gide, however, we agree that social contrasts in Russia will become more evident as time goes on. Then the masses will become impatient and criticism will spring up on every side. May this criticism be directed, not so much against persons, as against the exploiting nature of capitalism!

Clifford Allen

The Pilgrims to Peking (1974)

From the October 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the nastiest aspects of the fake-socialist revolution perpetrated against the Russian workers and peasants was the slimy stream of western intellectuals who, in the '20s and ’30s, made their pilgrimages to Russia (almost always paid for, on VIP level of course, by the Bolshevik government out of the surplus-value wrung from the Russian masses who were literally starving in those days.) The pilgrims returned to the west to tell (and sell) their stories of Russian “socialism” from the comfort of their western-capitalist armchairs. Such execrable names as the Webbs (who wrote a great monstrous book in praise of Stalinism), Shaw and Kingsley Martin spring to mind, but there were innumerable others. They could have known all about the anti-Socialist tyranny of Lenin and Stalin (and Trotsky, of course, despite the latter-day idiots who call themselves Trotskyists) without leaving these shores. It was all in the Socialist Standard of those days (and quite often in the newspapers too).

The miracle did happen at least once, oddly enough, The French writer André Gide went to Moscow as a propagandist for their cause (he would not have been invited otherwise) and the eyes which he had kept closed in France refused to stay closed when he saw Stalinism at close quarters so he spilled the beans when he got back. The CP’s answer was to revile him as a homosexual. (Oddly enough, Hitler did the same trick when he murdered his henchmen Roehm, Heines and company. He said they were homosexuals — as though unaware of this when they were his faithful lieutenants. Just another instance of the close relationship between red-fascism and the other kind.)

In recent years, specially since the Khrushchev “secret speech” in ’56, the new generation of intellectuals have been busy writing books like Robert Conquest’s The Great Terror which have exposed the turpitude of the western fellow-travellers of those days. But does that mean that the present lot of academics and other politicians and scribblers have learnt the lesson of history? You must be joking Having learnt only that Moscow is no longer the Mecca for leftist hypocrites to visit, they have looked around to find “a substitute for a prostitute” as an old joke has it. There is the pudgy face of Mao Tse-tung beckoning benignly to them just as Uncle Joe did in days of yore. The East is Red, so is the carpet; the grub is better than the Chinese Take-away and you can come back from your free holiday and make your fame and fortune scribbling and gibbering about your first-hand knowledge of the Utopia which has replaced Russia. (Up to a decade ago, the word was “supplemented,” not “replaced”. But now the two “socialist” giants are calling each other fascists as loud as they can. And how right both are!)

If it were not that so many students and workers in the west fall for the lies about Socialism in China (as their fathers did about Russia), “hilarious” would really be the word for it. An article in the June Socialist Standard referred to the leftist intellectuals like Professor John Galbraith and Baroness Barbara Wootton, both of whom returned from VIP trips to China to sell confusion to the western press. The former said “it works for the Chinese”, thus using practically the same words as a previous generation Yankee intellectual, Lincoln Steffens, who came back from Moscow to pronounce: “I have seen the future and it works”. Presumably even Galbraith wouldn’t dare to say that it would work for the west where only a handful of half-baked students seem to respond to the call.

It is also worth noting that neither Galbraith nor Steffens before him ever dreamt of living in the paradises they described, but put 10,000 miles between themselves and Utopia. (Which recalls the case of that other modern scribbler Graham Greene who said he would rather live in Russia than America. And merrily carried on living in his fabulous villa. On the French Riviera!)

It was more than interesting to learn from that same Standard (our 70th Anniversary number) that this same Baroness Wootton, who says she agrees with Mao for not allowing trade unionism among his 700 million blue ants, debated against the SPGB. She was then a youngish economist and Labourite. Now she is an old Baroness and clearly more pseudo than ever. How sad that the comparatively free workers of the west should then and now permit this monstrous nonsense to be talked at them.

As the latest prime example of the genre a Labour MP, Joel Barnett (a year or so ago when he was in opposition; now he is in Wilson’s government) had the luck to get on one of the jaunts (which must be worth a few thousand quid in any language — quite apart from the fact that you can’t get into China without being approved by the red-fascists who rule the roost, the fact that there are about 700 million who can’t get out). Joel made sure that he copped for a spot of extra publicity which would be read by his friends and relations and constituents, not to speak of us. When the time came for him to be red-carpeted around the Great Wall of China, which is one of the highlights of all these picnics, Joel told them he insisted on seeing some genuine Chinese workers instead. This may not have been reported in the Peking Daily Liar but imagine what a sensational scoop it would make for the local rag in Rochdale or whenever. Our Labourite friend not only wanted to see real workers — he actually insisted on talking to them. What did he want to say? Nothing less than the 64-dollar question: “What do you really think about Mao Tse-tung?” Well, that’s what I read in the Guardian. But, I fancy, not quite. Because our Joel doesn’t speak much Chinese (seeing that most MP’s don’t speak English very well, this must not be regarded as surprising).

So what happened was that Joel popped it to the interpreter, who, as in Russia, is just another minion. Whether the minion really asked Joel’s question I can’t really say. Neither, of course, can Barnett. For all either of us knows, he may have merely mouthed the ancient Confucian proverb (before Confucius was arrested as an ally of Lin Piao): Ooh flung dung? Equally, we don’t know what the wage-slave replied. All we know is that the minion told our visitor that the reply was in the affirmative. Of course, Barnett was quite aware of the charade he was acting — at the expense of the Chinese working class and of the British working class too. What did he expect the worker to say under the noses of Mao’s very own thugs? And what could this poor devil have thought Barnett was? To a Chinese slave, a bespectacled accountant from Manchester would appear to be a different species. He might have been a Dalek from Outer Space. No matter, the purpose was served.

The Chinese workers are there for the purpose of producing all the wealth of the state-capitalist system so that the rulers can live high off the hog, as they do in Russia. And to provide good propaganda for the privileged trippers who are allowed to make the pilgrimage. The odd thing is that (as the writer happens to know), Barnett is by no means the most obnoxious type of politician. He may even think himself to be honest. But it comes to the same thing in the end. As long as the workers in England, China, Russia and the rest of the capitalist world, fail to grasp the true meaning of their class subjection and to realise that only a revolutionary change to Socialism (as distinct from the monstrosity that exists in China and Russia) will free them for a life worth living, then they will continue to be battened on by the jackals of capitalism.

L. E. Weidberg

The Real Russia (1939)

Book Review from the March 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

Appalling ignorance as to actual conditions in Russia still obtains. “Communists” lying at home, and ruthless censorship in Russia, are the two chief factors responsible for this deplorable state of affairs. Added to these main factors is the fear on the part of Labour and “Left" generally of offending a section which might prove useful for assistance in vote-catching on “Popular Front" slogans.

“Yvon" has followed up his “What has become of the Russian Revolution?” with “L'U.R.S.S. telle qu’elle est" (“The Real Russia”; Workers' Bookshop; 28 francs). No translation is available yet, but some salient facts given by this worker, who started out eleven years ago as a high enthusiast, and ended in complete disillusionment, warrant immediate presentation; it is proposed to quote mainly from Russian official sources, as given by the author in his book.

It would be a pity, however, to omit reference to André Gide’s brilliant preface, and here we will endeavour to put over some of his points; it may be necessary to remind readers that Gide himself was once an enthusiastic admirer of Stalin & Co.

Gide opens significantly: “No solid construction can be based upon a LIE." His general reaction to the mass of facts adduced to Yvon (and other independent observers) is striking—it may not be literally true that “The worker in Russia to-day is in an unhappier position than ever before; he is less free than in any other country in the wide world," but, according to Yvon, the future general verdict cannot fail to fall far short of that of the distinguished French economist: “Time will show what plaited cunning hides."

The slight sketch of Yvon’s experience in Russia is highly interesting—his contacts were wide ranging from labour in a mine to a responsible position in a big industrial concern. It was while foregathering with the Big Pots (Kamenef, for instance), in one of the sumptuous residences which a grateful country gives its “giants and heroes" (enough to make Pollitt & Co.’s mouth water!), that, to quote Gide: “Yvon learnt much —in quite a different sense from his instruction from living among the workers—his first faith began to waver."

Fortunately for the subject of Gide’s short sketch, he had been wise enough to refuse military service, retaining his French nationality, but trouble was added to his growing doubts in the form of a Russian wife and, later, of a child. The two latter were Soviet subjects. Hard enough to escape as a French subject—“We know, from other similar experiences, the almost insurmountable difficulties of escaping from the foul web spun by G.P.U. spiderdom for its unwary erstwhile enthusiastic recruits"—but how to get wife and child beyond frontiers which, essayed without passport, involve death? How, in any case, to circumvent an officialdom where “several of Yvon’s staff, accused of sabotage, disappeared, and the place thereof knew them no more, but certain women took the veil—oh! ever so discreetly—since direct official sanction for sign of mourning was lacking.”

Space forbids recounting the grim struggle for “evasion" (beats Dumas into fits, makes Hugo look colourless), but the hearing of appeal for release made by the girl-wife should be read at once by all who can manage French without too many tears. The atmosphere, the whole conduct of the tribunal, should open the eyes of any who retain illusions as to the nature of this unparalleled ruthless despotism which the Communist Party of this country is subsidised to bolster up.

Gide summarises it in three acts. With fullest apologies for crudity and mauling of. a work of art, here is a synopsis: —

Act 1.—Paternal solicitude on part of “grand inquisiteur": “Where in the wide world can your husband find a better nest than here? In any case, he will long to come back. . . . You do not really wish to accompany him?”
Act 2.—Change of key; solemn warning: “Once your husband has quitted the soil of your fatherland, his light instincts will assert themselves ; his feet on the pavé of the Rue de la Paix, you will be forgotten—” (Only older readers who have sat in the gallery of the Adelphi, or “Surrey,” long years ago will get the full flavour of this act.) “—Bitterly will you regret the land of your birth, your brother, father, sister, friends.”
Act 3.—Loud pedal — after splendid little woman, tear-choked but firm, sticks to her point. Crescendo. The Soviet Pharaoh will drive you out! Strict time-limit. . . . No chance to “Spoil the Egyptians”—Soviet money not even exchangeable for foreign travel. . . . Still, they did get out, by the last available train, deliberate obstacles having been placed in the way.

Says Gide: “I know nothing more sickening than this sad recital."

Yvon’s own comment, at commencement of book (very freely done into English), seems to hit the mark:—

  “Kind distance lends enchantment to the view, But close-ups call for judgments new, Expression strong, perhaps, but surely lawful is final verdict: ‘ *Bloody Awful!' "
   “ Bougrement douloureux."

Red School Tie

Liberal, Labour, “Left" generally (even the I.L.P., whose relatively correct attitude on the recent crisis might deceive the unwary as to their still fundamentally Reformist outlook), class Russia as a “peace-loving" nation. Ponder the following:—

Isvestia (10.9.35) quotes Radek: “I have never yet found a single kiddy, who, when asked whether he would like to join up in the Red Army, did not reply: 'Do we not know the high honour of wearing the school uniform, whose aim and object is to prepare me as a soldier of the Red Army?' " Craftily cunning in “palace” intrigue, the Soviet bureaucrat limps painfully behind Downing Street’s subtle bids for cannon-fodder. Read that sweet youth’s reply again. Does Soviet Communism not only kill its Radeks, but also all sense of humour?

Suffer Little Children

A not uncommon experience on the S.P.G.B. soap-box is to have a “Russia To-Day” photograph waved wildly, with violent demand to show the audience a happy band of children engaged upon some highly cultural task, such as fruit-picking or harvesting (ever had some, sweet reader? Don’t murmur “gardening”; this is a serious topic).

Yvon (p. 243), quoting literally again from the Soviet official sources, “From the age of 12 years, children guilty of theft, wounding, assassination, or attempts thereto, are subject to all penalties provided by the common law.” (Death is one of the penalties.) After 28 years of “Socialism,” a reminder of conditions prevalent in England centuries ago. Yvon caustically heads his paragraph “ Le Paradis des enfants.”

Russia's a Prison

The difficulty of shaking the dust off one’s feet for natives of Russia has been referred to; significant is the attitude of Soviet authorities with regard to sailors. We used to be regaled with tales of bluff, hearty “ A.B.s ” slapping their “comrade” captain on the back, joining in spontaneous bursts of the ”Internationale,” and feeling generally that “everybody’s somebody.” . . . On page 241, light is shed upon one aspect of the Soviet’s strenuous endeavour to stop “desertion.” Every obstacle, including the customary “ Communist ” device of sheer lying, is placed in the way of sailors landing when in a foreign port. Sailors are given to understand that they run serious risk from foreign regulations if they land. And further, “To ask leave from ship is to write one’s self down already as a suspect ” (significant Jacobin word). Well might the Soviet Hamlet of to-day exclaim: “Russia’s a Prison."

“Intourist” Trippers Note

Elaborate precautions (see p. 246) are taken to prevent "Intourist” sheep from straying from the fold. “Certain regions” can be visited only by “authorisation speciale" of the formidable G.P.U. It is safe to assert that very special “authorisation” would be required to visit the concentration camp which a responsible writer has recently asserted contains more "traitors” than all the similar camps in Germany.

Telegrams of “journalists" (a wide term) “are always censored by a Special Bureau of the Foreign Office.”

Bread and Wages

It is notoriously difficult to estimate standards of living; no one would deny that Stalin & Co., with limousines, bed and board of “3 star” hotel level, are better off than before 1907. Statistics are too often a Mills' bomb in the hand of the unskilful user, but just one humble fact, from Soviet official figures, quoted by Yvon on p. 215:

The monthly salary of an ”average” worker before the war was 30 roubles; in 1937 it was 220 roubles, 7 times increase. Sounds good! But, the price of a kilo loaf before the war was 5 kopecks; in 1937, the same loaf cost 85 kopecks!! Not so good. 17 times as much for an article which stands in all economic books as a good general index of other levels of price. And, note well, the “loaf” of the “average” worker is “seigle,” in short, black rye bread (the “average” worker can afford nothing better).

A final word on wages. The range is extreme. 110 roubles (per month) for the “worker”; 1,000 for high officials; 20 to 30 thousand in a few cases. Did not the Saint Lenin, whose mortal remains (some of them) dominate the Red Square, proclaim in 1917: “The standard of living of the highest State official should not exceed the average wage of a good worker” ?

Alas, poor Yorick!

Reginald.

Stepfather Stalin (1938)

From the August 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard

May Socialist Standard quoted Tom Mann’s 

“The great march past was extremely impressive, every section of the fighting forces in full equipment, telling of millions of others, ready on the instant to spring to the defence of The Fatherland.”

A few facts (mainly derived from Soviet sources) will assist the reader to glimpse what this ”Fatherland” means for the Russian underdog.

It is difficult to convey to the average reader the obstacles which are deliberately placed in the way by the Soviet Union to prevent the truth leaking through; there is, after all, a long tradition among the governing clique in Russia of hiding facts skilfully; even the cute Catherine “the Great” could be taken in as to the real condition of the peasantry by her cunning ministers (all the sinister features of the Soviet regime have their roots deep in the past). Sheer weight of suppression of free speech and a rigid censorship of writing, eked out by shameless misrepresentation in other countries by their respective “Communist Parties,” renders the task of getting the truth across an exceedingly difficult one; it must be grasped that branches of the "Comintern” outside Russia are, in effect, contingents of the Soviet Foreign Office. It is not generally known that the Daily Worker repress advertisements of the Socialist Party, and even of an organ like Controversy, which, at any rate, opens its columns to all parties, including the Communist Party; as significant a straw is the fact that "Intourist” visitors to Russia have to undertake not to stray from a very strictly conducted fold.

But the truth is gradually seeping through. André Gide, a foremost man of letters in France, was prepared four years ago “to die for the Soviet Union”; to-day, on revisiting Russia, he writes: ” It was the steepness of your bluff which made the downfall of my confidence.” BLUFF!!

A member of the Communist Party, at a meeting on Clapham Common last year, said to a speaker of the Socialist Party, on being cross- questioned : —

 "We’ve got to bluff the people” (was he “purged” for blurting out this naive admission indicative of the general outlook of his party ?).

A few outstanding indications of what “Fatherland” means for peasant and proletarian: The News Chronicle of January 4th, 1936, reproduced a photograph of “12-year-old Mamulokat Nakangova, wearing the order of Lenin, which she has received for harvest work during her holidays, addressing a meeting in Moscow." Do the daughters of Kalinin and other surplus-value eaters harvest during holidays? Kalinin (alive up to date) cabled condolences to Queen Mary on the death of George V.

A French miner (Kléber Legay) visited Russia. His report appeared in the Daily Telegraph, December 13th-16th, 1937. (It is simply silly to snarl Daily Telegraph!! Are the facts recorded by the President of the Miners' Union true? Has any refutation been attempted? Motives for inserting report by D.T. are irrelevant.)

“On the way to the Red Square we passed crowds of people, most of whom were poorly dressed, while many were dirty.

   

“Everywhere there were representations of the genius Stalin.” (Visitors to Paris Exhibition last year will call to mind the impossibility of being out of range of Stalin’s mug in the Russian Pavilion.) J. C. Taylor, in Popular Psychological Fallacies (an excellent book), gives evidence of the hysteria produced by this leader worship (p. 187). He quotes “ the poet Kazak Djambul": —

   There is none left with whom the writers can compare thee.
   The poets have no longer enough pearls to describe thee !

Pravda (August 28th, 1936) weighs in with: — (

O great Stalin, O ruler of the peoples,
  Thou who did’st curse mankind to be born
    . . . Thou sun reflected by millions of hearts, etc. 

Which, as Bret Harte remarked, “is coming it strong,” but, as J. C. Taylor comments: “These are the words not of genuine poets, but of men who are terrified into irrational behaviour.”

Disappointed with the dwellings of the “rulers of their country,” the deputation decided to forgo any more visits, but on pressing they consented. “Our visit was a shocking disappointment.” Legay (troublesome fellow) asked a few questions on his own. “What do you eat?" Miner to wife: “ Show these comrades the stewpot.” With great reluctance the contents were revealed: beetroot leaves and potatoes with a little lard. “He refuses to eat it,” added the wife. Discontented, unpatriotic brute; shortly after, the officials “explained” : “The man was drunk”—a son of Belial, flown with insolence and — beetroot juice.

Yvon’s “What Has Become of the Russian Revolution" (One shilling; order from 42, Great Dover Street) should be read by all who desire to learn the facts. A manual labourer, eleven years' experience in Russia and an ex-Communist, he writes with knowledge.

Poor little Kama apparently worked voluntarily during her holidays; the fathers of the Kamas "have to implore their bosses for permission to work during their vacation. . . . We know old fellows who have laboured 50 years in the same factory in Moscow and now get 35 roubles as retirement pension, the price of two kilos of butter." The merry “homes" of Moscow: “In Ural the complaint in every house is 'bed-bugs, bed-bugs.' "

There is a tale told at teachers' meetings of a child in a poor school who refused a picture for a prize because he had no wall to hang it on: his family occupied the centre of a room. They manage these things better in Moscow. Frequent advertisement in newspaper: “ Wanted, an angle” said “angle" being a corner of a “common" room.

Russia’s “houses of rest" for “the people" bring painful memories to some of certain “convalescent homes" in England—the advantages, on the whole, however, being certainly not on the side of Russia. Dormitories contain 30 to 40 sleepers. “You dare not tarry too long on the beach for fear of losing your meal or being disciplined." The final end of “rest" for the people is set forth in a pamphlet issued by the Soviet “trade unions": “The repose of our Socialist worker ought not to be the old 'rest after labour.' but should be transformed into ‘rest for labour, rest for the raising of the workers' productivity'." Sounds very reminiscent of our old friend “Rationalisation,” “Business Efficiency," carried to the n'th degree, but Russia To-day assures us that the bug-ridden homes, eked out by semi-penal "homes of rest," are “the lot of those who toil and dictate to those who don’t."

Little Kama chose her father unwisely. Had she chosen a Stalin, a Molotof, a Vorosilhof, or even a “specialist” worker, she could have shared in sumptuous apartments, “furnished with a special housemaid’s room.” (Note that wages range from 20,000 roubles down to 80 roubles.)

Would the process of “Building Socialism" by the Communist Party of this country entail penalisation of the Kamas for the benefit of the great-brained Pollitts and Gallachers?

Claims for a general wide-spread, all-round amelioration of conditions for the worker must be received with the utmost caution. Yvon asserts: “The Russian worker under Tsarism had simple but plentiful fare, foodstuffs were cheap, daily he ate his food and kasha; he had sugar, lard, tea and good bread in large quantity.” Acquaintance with Russian novels, let alone works of economic writers, like Stepaiak, will bear this out.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain stands four square upon the belief that Socialism can only be attained by a working class invincibly strong through Socialist knowledge; all its activities are directed towards the spreading of this knowledge.

Reginald.

Blogger's Note:

There was a follow up to this article in the December 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard, where a reader in Manchester took exception to some of 'Reginald's' statements.

The Russian Workers under the Czar and under the Bolshevists. (1938)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Comrade,

Reginald, in the August “Socialist Standard," makes a most bitter attack upon Soviet Union. With part of what he says (growth of nationalism, adoration of Stalin) I am in agreement. He goes gravely wrong, however, when he attempts to show that there hasn’t been an “all-round amelioration of conditions for the worker."

He quotes Kléber Legay and Yvon as authorities. Now I have never heard of these gentlemen before. As far as I know they may not exist and may only be the disguises assumed by anti-Socialist publicists. I prefer to get my information about Russia from sources in which I can place greater confidence—Sydney and Beatrice Webb, Sir E. D. Simon, the various official delegations of British trade unionists to Russia, Walter Duranty, Sir B. Pares. Now these aren’t Communists or Communist sympathisers. But they all tell the same tale, and that is that material conditions in Soviet Russia are very much better than they were in Czarist Russia. Not only has the output of industry and agriculture been enormously increased, but health services (1917—13,000 doctors, 1937—106,000 doctors) and education services (1913—8,000,000 children at school; 1937—30,000,000) have been improved; output of books increased five-fold since 1913, illiteracy almost stamped out.

All these are solid improvements, and we will be foolish if we shut our eyes to them. They have been made possible by the introduction of the rudiments of Socialism. Russia is far from perfect and has a long way to go before it reaches Socialism, but Russia of to-day is enormously better from the workers’ point of view than Russia of Czarist days.

Yours fraternally,

H. Heather

Manchester

Reply:

Our contributor, “Reginald,” in the August The Socialist Standard, in an article headed "Stepfather Stalin,” quoted from André Gide, Kléber Legay, and Yvon, statements made by them about things they saw in Russia. “Reginald’s ” conclusion was that “claims for a general, widespread, all-round amelioration of conditions for the worker must be received with the utmost caution”; surely a very reasonable conclusion to reach in face of the statements made by the admirers and the critics of Russian conditions. But our correspondent, Mr. Heather, will not have it. He has read the admirers and has not read the critics, and he does not want to read the critics. In fact, he doubts whether they exist at all! May we suggest that his first obligation, if he really wants to know the truth, is to supplement his reading of the admirers by reading the statements of such men as Gide and Yvon, who were formerly supporters of the Bolshevist regime but who, on further knowledge, have become critical? Yvon, for example, lived for eleven years in Russia and was a Communist. (Yvon’s pamphlet is obtainable at 1s. and was reviewed in The Socialist Standard for June, 1937. Gide’s “Return from Russia” was reviewed in The Socialist Standard for December, 1937.)

Our correspondent says that he places greater confidence in the writings of the Webbs, Sir E. D. Simon, the various official delegates of British trade unionists, Walter Duranty and Sir B. Pares. He does not mention Sir Walter Citrine’s book, which is decidedly critical of many aspects of working class life in Russia.

The one thing, of course, which ought to be available, and which would be more valuable than all the rest put together, is the freely expressed views of the Russian workers’ own democratically controlled organisations, trade union and political. These views are not available because such organisations are not allowed to exist under the Russian dictatorship. If, therefore, the truth is hard to come by, the dictatorship itself is responsible.

Our correspondent points to the unquestioned advances made in Russia in such matters as getting rid of illiteracy, but claims that these advances “have been made possible by the introduction of the rudiments of Socialism.” The latter claim is utterly unsupported and unsupportable by any evidence. Similar and greater advances have been made in countries such as Britain, which make no claim to being Socialist.

Editorial Committee.

The Illusion of Disillusionment (1950)

Book Review from the June 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

Because of its inner contradictions Capitalism is a dying and decadent social order. This decadence is reflected not only in its institutions but in its literature. That is why some of its most effective literature is that of despair, cynicism and protest.

The first World War did much to shatter the complacency of 19th century Capitalism. The slumps, massive unemployment and wide “Labour unrest” which followed it, seemed for many to threaten social disintegration.

It was in this period of shell-shock disillusionment that many “intellectuals” began to lose faith in Capitalism and to search desperately for a new faith. Having no real historic evaluation of social development, they had no real solution to existing social problems. It became easy—fatally easy—for them to seek escape from the obsessional anxieties of a dark capitalist reality in the wishful thinking of an enchanted socialist fairy-land—Soviet Russia.

A miracle had happened. Socialism had been established in an economically backward country, All things were now possible. Not only were the “toiling masses” to be freed but art and literature would also be freed from its degrading commercial morality and cash payment. For many “intellectuals” well might Russia look to be “ All this and Heaven too.”

The six contributors to “The God That Failed” (Hamish Hamilton) could easily be fitted into that category of intellectuals. The dust cover also announces it as “Six Studies in Communism.” The contributors are Arthur Koestler, Ignazio Silone, Andre Gide, Louis Fischer, the American negro writer Richard Wright and the poet Stephen Spender. All are Soviet apostates, ideological crusaders in an holy war against their once adopted Russian Fatherland.

This book is not primarily about the objective state of affairs in Russia but the subjective state of mind of each of the writers over Russia; their doubts, inner conflicts and guilt feelings as part of the protracted process of disillusionment resulting from the shattering impact of their experiences inside Russia or the Communist Party or both. Each appears not so much as an objective commentator on Russia but rather in the role of a Dostoevsky of a fallen and disgraced ideology.

In the first fine careless rapture of their conversion they regarded themselves as “servants serving a higher purpose”—vide Mr. Crossman, M.P.. who writes the preface. They were however “intellectuals” and, according to Mr. Crossman, better able to interpret the social significance of an age than were the inarticulate millions. How catastrophically they failed in this respect their own confessions bear damning testimony.

The totalitarian requirements of Russian State Capitalism were unwilling or unable to make concessions even to gifted servants. Mr. Crossman tells us that these intellectuals were treated with indifference by the Party apparatus. He also makes the suggestion that the Kremlin might have regarded their influence as negligible. It does seem that this “indifferent’ of the Kremlin towards them gives the book its strong personal edge on Russia. This accounts for their concern when “The Party line” affected them as individuals and consequently clashed with their own preconceived ideas on their role and status as “intellectuals.” It might also explain why on matters that affected them less, i.e. the glaring anomalies in Russian social life, they showed, in spite of the overwhelming proof at their disposal, an almost unbelievable capacity to believe what they wanted to believe and an almost incredible credulity in swallowing Kremlin rationalisations of the ugly contradictions and crass inconsistencies existing in Russia.

Indeed Mr. Crossman in a revealing passage tells us that “If the Comintern had only shown an occasional mark of respect for the western intellectual it could have won the support of the largest body of progressive thought in the world.” He adds that “not one would have hesitated to have returned in the protracted process of withdrawal if the Party had shown a gleam of understanding of his belief in human freedom and human dignity.”

So for “an occasional mark of respect” these intellectuals could have got round the awkward dilemma of vast social inequalities in “Socialist Russia;” have ignored the brutality and repression of its state machinery, its Moscow trials and slave camps. They might even have returned to the cess pool unconscious of its mud and slime, all for “ an occasional mark of respect.”

Perhaps these people were deceived by the Kremlin but most of all they deceived themselves. In spite of their inner conflicts and Dostoevskian torments they never achieve the level of objective self-criticism; never see that their own attitude as intellectuals and their claim to interpret social reality in a way different from the “ inarticulate millions ” has, in its way, contributed to the perpetration and perpetuation of the Russian myth as effectively as Soviet inspired propaganda.

People like Gide and Silone are in essence religious idealists. They preferred to regard Soviet Russia less as a social phenomenon than as a religious revival, and Socialism as not basically the transformation of one set of productive relations to another set, but as a way of living like the early Christians. To their patronage of Marxism they brought the authority of the Gospels. Marx, it seemed, played the role of “ John the Baptist ” to Lenin’s “Jesus Christ.”

Richard Wright came to Communism he says knowing nothing of economics which meant he knew nothing of Socialism (the terms Socialism and Communism are of course synonymous). He also was a religious convert to the Communist Party and brought to it that humourless, deadly earnestness with its readiness to live and even die for “ the cause,” so typical of many Communist converts. For him, the cause was mainly the "coloured question.” It was Stalin’s National and Colonial Question that won his interest. His internationalism was in effect merely a black and white cosmopolitanism. He fails to appreciate that only the abolition of Capitalism can guarantee the emancipation of workers, black or white, from their real thralldom, the thralldom of those denied access to the productive resources to a privileged section who own those resources. His writing becomes at times almost hysterical. His account of his persecution at the hands of the Chicago Local is more reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan than a so called proletarian party.

Louis Fischer’s is the most objective account—that of a humane and sympathetic supporter whose sentiments over Russia led him badly astray. Stephen Spender is just another of the pink poets who left the Fabian drawing-room in search of red-blooded political adventure. He appears to have wandered back without ever finding out what it was all really about.

Koestler is the most orthodox of these “ Communist ” converts. He even claims to have accepted Marxism, although his account of it is never more than the tedious rubber-stamped version of the typical communist editorial. In effect he was one of the many highly emotional anti-Fascists who believed that the Communist Party was the best instrument for serving such ends.

Koestler’s account of his seven year membership of the Communist Party is a piece of sheer self-dramatisation. Indeed Marxism merely serves as a somewhat dubious literary device for sustaining the suspense and tension of a thriller. The chief impressions one gathers from his tale are of a temporary period of conspiratorial anonymity; visits of party “contacts,” from whom he received instructions and to whom he gave bits of information gleaned in his journalistic capacity in a big newspaper publishers; his studies in the art of going underground and acquiring techniques for insurrection; his participation—although he was, he says, never in the actual shooting frays—in the political cum Chicago— gangster warfare between Nazis and Communists. All of which activity suggests not so much adult political reasoning but rather an adolescent desire to play “Cops and Robbers.”

He left the Communist Party as the result of three carefully chosen phrases which he used at a meeting of German emigre writers. One was “ No movement, party or person can claim the privilege of infallibility.” Another was a quotation from Thomas Mann—“A harmful truth is better than a useful lie.” Although at the meeting he uttered no criticism of Russia or the Communist Party, it was, he says, a declaration of war. A few days later he resigned his membership.

This piece of typical Koestlerian crypticism simply adds up to the plain fact that he had merely discovered that lies and corruption are still lies and corruption no matter under what guise they appear; that the end does not justify the means because in such practices the means themselves become the end. It took seven years of intense political experience and on-the-spot observation for this intellectual to painfully acquire what the newest convert to our organisation regards as an almost self evident proposition.

Nevertheless “ Fight Fascism ” was still for him the political categorical imperative. He supported the war. He regarded it in the character of a crusade. In an article in the New York Times Magazine during the war he referred to the war as a showdown between the powers of light and darkness. He did make the half hearted reservation that it was not the final showdown. Nevertheless he left no doubt about his belief that it was a showdown.

Koestler is always getting his political objectives mixed up with his “ id ” and “ super ego ” As an admirer of Freud he is always seeking truth, not at the level of empirical observation but in the dark depths of his “unconscious,” to which he seeks to descend. Occasionally he comes up for air but it is never with the truth but always another error.

Koestler tells us in the preface to “The Yogi and the Commissar” that since his schooldays he has not ceased to marvel at the fool he was the year before. He says this is still true today although in a modified form. For some that may be a Koestlerian epigram. For us it would be fitting words for his political epitaph.

We cannot resist the temptation of saying that what is happening in Russia today is an empirical confirmation of the correct position we took up right from the first as to the real nature of Russian social and economic development, while the intellectual Christopher Columbuses were feverishly discovering “The Socialist Sixth of the World.”

“The God That Failed” might provide one of the popular formula’s which serve as current explanations of Russia. They are often successful because, although they do not say anything objectively valid about Russia, they do give the illusion of understanding what they do not really understand. It will perhaps be accepted by people who are politically naive and no more than merely curious about social affairs.

The writers of this book seem to have forgotten nothing and learned nothing. Russia still remains for them a sinister historical enigma. All of them still believe Russia had got on the right path but somehow has taken the wrong turning. Believing as they do in a non Marxist sense that men make history, they believe that bad men make bad history.

Having started with illusions they were ripe—rotten ripe one might say, for disillusionment. In substance their disillusionment consists of the replacing of one set of illusions with another set. One hardly knows whether to call the book a study in tragic futility or a lesson in futile tragedy.

But this is where we came in.

Ted Wilmott