Notes by the Way: Premier Blum Faces Crises (1937)

The Notes by the Way Column from the April 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

Premier Blum Faces Crises

The Popular Front Government in France is in difficulties. But at least it can be said for Blum and his Labour and Radical colleagues in the Cabinet that they have done their best to justify themselves in their short period of office. Elected on a definite programme of social reforms, they ably and energetically set about applying them. In quick succession they legislated for a 40-hour week and annual fortnightly holiday with pay, for nationalisation of the armament concerns, control of the Bank of France, and of prices. Large sums of money were allocated to public works to reduce unemployment, and civil servants had pay cuts restored. In short, Blum’s Government behaved as if it believed in its programme and was determined to apply it. In this their behaviour is in marked contrast with that of the two British Labour Governments. Nevertheless, though they tried to make the most of the possibilities of the situation, they are faced with increasing difficulties, all due to the fact that they have got to work within the framework of capitalism. They cannot abolish capitalism, because the population of France is not prepared for such a step. They must, therefore, choose between two evils, either to enforce measures opposed by the French capitalists—in which case the Government loses the votes of its capitalist supporters in Parliament, and has to resign—or to frame its programme so that capitalists will accept it—in which case it comes into conflict with working-class interests and wishes. Faced with that dilemma in the matter of further expenditure, the Blum Government has reluctantly had to retreat.

It needs to borrow in order to finance Government expenditure. It can only borrow from those who have property, i e„ the capitalists. If it does not please them with its policy and secure their confidence they refuse to lend and, indeed, had transferred much of their money abroad. The Blum Government, unless it were prepared to take over the property of capitalists generally for the community—which would be suicidal, since the majority of the population are opposed to it—had to come to terms with the capitalists.

As the City Editor of the News Chronicle put it: —

  One sympathises with the natural reluctance of a Socialist Government to pour profits into the laps of capitalists, but such feelings must give way before the pressure of circumstances.—(News Chronicle, March 6th.)

So now M. Blum has had to ask civil servants to forego expected wage increases. He is curtailing Government expenditure and deferring expected further reforms, and is allowing those who shipped their gold abroad to profit by the devaluation of the franc on bringing it back to France.

Naturally, this forced retreat is being criticised by the Communists and Trade Unionists, who should, however, have been aware from the outset that the difficulties are those which arise inevitably from the existence of a Government which thinks it can combine a working-class programme with the administration of capitalism.

The Daily Herald, organ of the British Labour Party, supports Blum’s Government, but it has to admit that the continued existence of the Government depends on the gamble that capitalism in France quickly experiences one of its periodical phases of boom. The Daily Herald editorial, on March 13th, 1937, admits that Blum’s Government “could hardly for long endure if there were to be a trade setback and a rise in unemployment.” Yet every Socialist, and even many Labourites, know that sooner or later there is bound to be that trade setback and rise in unemployment.

There is fundamentally only one way in which capitalism can be administered—the capitalist way. While social reforms can alleviate particular evils arising from capitalism for a time, it is unquestionably better that the responsibility for running the capitalist system should be left to the avowed supporters of capitalism. The workers should struggle to raise or defend their standard of living, but not attempt the impossible task of administering capitalism, or put their trust in the Parties which do this.

Putting Labour or Popular Front Governments into office merely makes them the prisoners of the capitalist class.

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The Communists Road to Peace

There was a time when Communists were permitted to tell the truth about capitalism, but that was long enough ago. Now they talk flapdoodle like the statement which follows, delivered at a luncheon given by the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce at the British Industries Fair. The speaker, Mr. Maisky, Ambassador in this country of Soviet Russia: —

  He hoped that the outcome of the Fair would be strengthened commercial relations between Great Britain and other countries, for peace defended, to a very great extent on healthy and vigorous trade relations.—(Times, February 20th, 1937. Italics ours.)

The Daily Worker should let its readers have an article on this Cobdenite view of “friendly capitalist trade,” plus some extracts from Lenin’s writings in answer to it.

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London Labour Party's Victory

In 1934 the London Labour Party, for the first time, obtained a majority on the London County Council. At the elections in March the Labour group increased its seats from 69 to 75, and the Municipal Reformers' seats fell from 55 to 49. The votes polled at the last three elections have been as follows: —

1931 Labour, 214,000.
         Municipal Reformers, 288,000.
1934 Labour, 340,000.
         Municipal Reformers, 300,000.
1937 Labour, 444,000.
         Municipal Reformers, 403,000.

It will be seen that this year, after three years of Labour Party rule, about 200,000 additional voters took the trouble to vote and divided themselves nearly equally between the two parties. Even so, only 43 per cent. of the electors troubled to vote, so little difference does the choice between Labour and Municipal Reform on the L.C.C. represent.

The truth is that some of the more wide-awake propertied interests in London realise that there are many problems of administration, traffic control, health services, housing, and so on, which stand a better chance of being dealt with energetically by Mr. Herbert Morrison and his party than by the Municipal Reformers. They are, therefore, prepared to support the Labour candidates, at least for the time being. The question of Socialism was never brought into the election fight, except as a red herring, by some Municipal Reformers. This dodging of real issues led to an amusing attitude on the part of the Municipal Reformers. Their leader, Mr. W. H. Webbe, quoted a recent remark made by Mr. Morrison to the effect that the Tories are to-day more a party of social reform than ever before, and that “the real issue of politics is no longer social reform versus reaction: it is more like Socialism versus social reform" (Daily Telegraph, February 8th, 1937). Having said this, one might suppose that Mr. Morrison intended to fight for Socialism against his social reform opponents. Not a bit of it. His programme was all social reform and no Socialism. As the Solicitor-General, Sir Terence O’Connor, pointed out: “It was a most remarkable document, coming from a Socialist, and they might think, as he did, that it was nothing more than a smoke-screen to gull a few more pink Liberals." (Times, February 12th, 1937)

All that can be said is that Mr. Morrison, on his social reform programme, completely outmanoeuvred the rival social reformers. For those who attach importance to such things as the triumph of one social reform group over another, it was a great and glorious victory: but it leaves capitalism fat and flourishing.

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A New Stage in India

The inauguration of the new constitution in India opens up promising developments in politics and social questions. In the provincial Parliaments the Congress Party, the Party which seeks Indian independence, will be strongly represented, and will in some cases have a majority, and be able to form the Government. From a tactical point of view they will be foolish to refuse the opportunity of doing so. Whatever they may decide at the moment, they will sooner or later have to take office or see their own supporters drift away. De Valera learned this in Ireland, when his party tried the policy of staying away from Parliament.

The new constitution is an advance on the old, if only because it brings a much larger number of people into politics by giving them votes. Political interest, elections, propaganda, discussion, these are all part of the experience needed before the Indian workers will become Socialist. It is true that many of them believe that they are Socialists already. They have adopted the name, and the leader of the Congress Party, Pandit Nehru, calls himself a Socialist. He and his followers are, however, of the “not here and not now" type, of whom we have many in Europe. That is to say they claim that Socialism is the paramount issue, but they subordinate it to other issues, capitalist ones. Nehru’s contention is that Socialism must be dropped for the present, while Indian workers and peasants join hands with their own exploiters—the Indian capitalists and landlords—to win independence. The Indian Labour Journal, supporting this view, says:—

  What India needs now is soldiers of anti-imperialism and Socialists later.—(Indian Labour Journal, November 29th, 1936.)

How often have we heard this before, always as a prelude to working-class betrayal and disillusionment. It was the cunning slogan of the capitalist hacks in Germany and England during the War, and of the Nationalists in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Ireland, and in every country where local propertied interests have used nationalism as a weapon in their fight against foreign rivals. Indian independence is not at present a practical policy. If the British Empire were broken up India would only fall to some other Empire. But even if it were a practical policy, the Indian workers would find their native capitalists every whit as powerful and brutal as the foreign ones.

Actually, events will themselves force the Indian workers to read the signs of the times, despite the lead given by their Nehrus and other so-called Labour and Socialist guides. One of the principal purposes of the concession of partial Home Rule by the British ruling class to Ireland, Egypt, India, etc., is that it forces the local capitalists and their politicians to accept responsibility for maintaining capitalist law and order against the workers, and thus expose their fraternity with the British capitalists.

The British Government does this because it strengthens the basis of imperial capitalism; but it happens also to be good for the working class movement. In time it compels the Irish, Indian and Egyptian workers to recognise that their class interests make them opponents of the native capitalist class and allies of the workers of other lands.

The first salutary lesson of this kind happened in India, when the elections were barely over. The Congress Party in Bihar, supported by the local landlords, won a majority. One of the vote-catching promises in the Congress programme was reform of the system of land tenure for the benefit of the smaller peasantry. Promptly, the villagers celebrated. "their” victory by forcibly taking possession of the crops on their landlords’ fields. (Times, March 10th, 1937.) What did the landlords do? They “asked the authorities for military protection.” Thus do hard facts of the class-struggle break through the flimsy talk of Nehru about the bonds of Indian nationality.

India is on the march, and the Indian workers will ultimately triumph through Socialism and against the unsound advice of the self-styled Socialists.

Edgar Hardcastle

This Prosperity (1937)

From the April 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

The depression is over and prosperity is here once again. This is the good news discovered by politicians, bankers and captains of industry and passed on to the workers in speeches and articles up and down the country. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Neville Chamberlain, in a speech at Birmingham on January 29th said that the Midlands are “enjoying a greater prosperity than had ever been known in the history of living people.” (The Times, January 30th, 1937.) Mr. Colin Campbell, Chairman of the National Provincial Bank, Ltd., in his survey of the country’s affairs at the annual meeting of his bank, sees "prosperity firmly based on well-distributed purchasing power.” (Economist, January 30th, 1937.) Indeed, the bankers and economists are becoming alarmed at the comparative shortage of skilled labour and consequent ability of the workers to secure wage increases. The question occupying their minds is when the next slump is due to break and whether by any means they or the governments can prevent it.

Prosperity for Whom?
It need hardly be said that the prosperity which so impresses the spokesmen of the propertied class is the prosperity of that class: hence their view that higher wages due to scarcity of labour is an ”evil.” They can talk of "prosperity” with registered unemployment at 1,700,000; with 4,500,000 people, according to Sir John Orr, inadequately fed because they can only afford to spend an average of 4s. a week on food, whereas the normal Army food allowance is 7s. 3½d. a week (Daily Herald, February 13th, 1937); with millions of workers inadequately housed and overcrowded. The Times (December 22nd, 1936) admits that house building in Glasgow is actually declining, although “in that city one-third of the population is overcrowded.” “Prosperity ” with 70 per cent, of the adult population in the Rhondda Valley drawing unemployment pay or public assistance; and with an army of 1,223,478 persons in England and Wales in receipt of Poor Relief at the end of September, 1936. In Scotland there were a further 316,674 in receipt of outdoor relief alone. (See Ministry of Labour Gazette, January, 1937.)

Mr. Neville Chamberlain and his associates can bear the poverty of the working class with Christian fortitude, not to say indifference and contempt, while at the same time they are able to find £1,500- millions for new armaments over the next five years.

From Gladstone to Chamberlain 
Elsewhere in this issue we reprint an address written by Marx in 1864 in which he tore to shreds the complacency of an earlier Chancellor of the Exchequer, a similar narrow-minded representative of property, Mr. W. E. Gladstone. The one was a Liberal free-trader, the other is a Conservative protectionist; both were able to hide the facts of unemployment and needless misery under a cloud of tawdry principles of “sound finance,” and under mocking assertions of better times here and now or better times to come.

It is instructive to compare the two as examples of the type of propertied men thrown into prominence in the capitalist era, a nice blend of unimaginative brutality and dull, book-keeping efficiency.

All that divides them is their belief in or rejection of free-trade, an issue of no concern to the great mass of the population. Both so wedded to capitalism as to be unable to conceive of a rational alternative system, both dazzled by statistics, and unaware of the nature of the capitalist system they nominally controlled.

Three-quarters of a century of “ Progress ” 
What has this capitalism brought to the working class in the 73 years since 1864? Malnutrition, unemployment, pauperism and insecurity still stalk the land in spite of a yet more “intoxicating augmentation Of wealth and power,” entirely or nearly entirely confined to the propertied class. If the condition of the worst-paid workers and the unemployed is somewhat better than then, the extent of unemployment is greater, and insecurity has now come to be a permanent nightmare for grades of better-paid workers who used to believe themselves immune. It is still as true as ever that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of industrious workers are worse fed and clothed than convicts, and at or below the level of the workers who are receiving public assistance. Mr. Gladstone went into ecstasies over trade figures and tax returns. What would he have said had he lived in our time? Imports and exports in 1863 together totalled £444-millions; in 1034the total was £l,127-millions, after having reached nearly £2,000-millions in 1929; Yet even in the latter year unemployment was well over 1,000,000. In 1863 there were 80 very rich persons having taxable incomes over £50,000 a year. In 1928-9, according to official tax returns (Statistical Abstract, 1936, p. 200) there were no fewer than 575. Even during the depression in 1933-4 the number was 279. So little have death duties and income tax and social reforms interfered with the normal tendency of capitalism to make the rich richer that in 1932-3 there were more people (84) with incomes over £100,000 a year than there were with £50,000 a year in 1863.

The continued increase in powers of producing wealth has been used by capitalism to widen still further the gulf between rich and poor. Great Britain has multiplied its foreign trade, added over a million square miles to the Empire, and still the fact remains, as Marx pointed it out then, that there are hard-working thrifty men and women who have to sacrifice cleanliness and comfort in order to get a bare sufficiency of food. It has been brought home only recently again that better housing (at higher rents) for ex-slum dwellers has- meant less food and a higher death rate.

Nothing will be done by the Ruling Class

One harmful notion widely believed at present is that now for the first time the Government and public opinion are aware of poverty and undernourishment, and therefore something will be done.

It is true that in recent years there have been many official and unofficial inquiries into malnutrition, wages, unemployment, and so forth and therefore the ruling class cannot so easily be ignorant of the facts. But it will mean next to nothing. Apart from genuine concern about the low physique of recruits needed for their armed forces the ruling and propertied class will not sacrifice their wealth in order to raise the standard of living of the workers. They will yield nothing that is not forced from them by the pressure of the working class.

Do they know in 1937 that many millions of workers are under-nourished ? So they did in 1864 as Marx points out. They did nothing then, nor will they now.

Once the momentary stir has been allowed to subside the facts will be forgotten or denied by our rulers, or hidden under Chamberlain's ecstasies about prosperity. Just as The Times could boast in 1865 that the preceding years of working class misery were “an epoch of unbroken peace and unparalleled prosperity" (Evening Standard, January 13th, 1937), so our rulers will do again in defiance of continuing poverty.

The need of our times is a working class which refuses any longer to trust to capitalist promises, and determines to take action for its own emancipation.

Apply to the world of to-day the following pregnant passage from Marx's address. There could be no better statement of the truth of the Socialist condemnation of capitalism: —

   “In all countries of Europe it has now become a truth demonstrable to every unprejudiced mind, and only denied by those whose interest it is to hedge other people in a fool's paradise, that no improvement of machinery, no application of science to production, no contrivances of communication, no new colonies, no emigration, no opening of markets, no free trade, nor all of these things put together, will do away with the miseries of the industrious masses; but that on the present false base, every fresh development of the productive powers of labour must tend to deepen social contrasts and point social antagonisms."

Edgar Hardcastle

This Month's Quotation: A Catholic Archbishop (1937)

The Front Page quote from the April 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

"The masses are ignorant and will always be so in regard to the fundamental problems of social life."

— A Catholic Archbishop

This Month's Quotation
The passage quoted is taken from a pastoral letter issued by the new Spanish Primate, Cardinal Isisoro Goma, Archbishop of Toledo. (See News Chronicle, March 16th, 1937.) The Archbishop also praises the Italian capitalists for their conquest of Abyssinia—"A work of civilisation"—and declares that "It is Spain's providential mission to save Christian civilisation from Marxism."

It Stands (1937)

From the April 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our Declaration of Principles appears in every issue of the Socialist Standard. Agreement with these principles is an essential condition for membership of the Party. Obviously, the Party attaches high importance to this document. New readers are urged to carefully ponder its Eight Points—sympathisers who agree should seriously ask themselves whether they are not shirking a duty in failing to join up. Even if comparative isolation were a bar to active work (it by no means follows—our Secretary could always suggest fruitful ideas for quiet propaganda) increase of membership is itself heartening to the Party as a whole.

The Declaration of Principles is at once a statement of FACTS, and a GUIDE to political action—the two aspects are inseparably connected —Article 8 is a Challenge and a Call.

In 1904, a small body of working men and women struggled out of the mire into which the leaders of the Social Democratic Party, allying themselves with Reformist fakes and freaks, had bogged the more or less class-conscious worker. We may add that the Communist Party is practically the old S.D.P. gazing reverently eastwards.

Basing itself firmly upon the Marxian analysis of capitalist society, with all its implications, social and political, the Socialist Party of Great Britain formulated its Declaration of Principles. For the first time in the history of the working class, a Party was formed which staked everything on the UNDERSTANDING of its class. Like the Roll given to Bunyan’s famous Pilgrim, the Declaration of Principles is a sure and certain guide to the Promised Land; the S.P.G.B. avoids high falutin’; sober statements characterise its spoken and written word. But it confidently claims that the future historian will rank The Declaration of Principles as a historic document.

The Declaration of Principles is ALIVE. Don't be deceived by its sober form. Tommy Jones, whose teacher has no difficulty in getting him to watch frog’s-spawn day by day, is convinced, in his little head, that the “ pence table," staring at him in a strait-jacket of ugly symbols, is a dead (and damned) nuisance—a simple errand for mum involving change for a bob may (painfully, perchance) bring home to him that a live reality lurks behind the table. Correct political action along main lines is indicated by the Declaration, and the possibility of serious error eliminated.

Thirty-three years has called for no change in substance or in form. While no claim is made for verbal inspiration, we assert that addition or diminution, whether of fact or of policy, will continue to be unnecessary or irrelevant. . . THE DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES STANDS.

Comparatively minor changes in the complexion of capitalist society—lipstick and greasepaint changes, Hitler for Frederick, St. Stalin for St. Nicholas, smart Social Efficiency “experts" for brutal factory overseers—all leave capitalist society at bottom what it was when Marx and Engels were writing, notwithstanding Communist blether about “phases" of (industrial) capitalism and the “building up" of “Socialism” in Russia (next firing squad, 'shun!).

Article 7 (our famous “ Hostility "clause") is a rock of offence to spurious “Socialists " . . . an acid test for Socialist understanding, this is not surprising. It is difficult for the sentimentalist to grasp the fact that sympathy with fellow-workers throughout the world, indignation against brutal suppression of free speech, whether in Germany, Spain or Russia, is consistent with that complete and unequivocal independence on the political field which is at once a safeguard against compromise of the “Popular Front” order and against war-weariness within the ranks.

Ever renewing its strength by reference to its Declaration of Principles, the S.P.G.B. has begun the inhumanly hard work of laying a path with solid four-square blocks of proletarian UNDERSTANDING across the Bog of Reformist slime. The tireless efforts of the pioneers will be crowned with success when the path is completed, and the Declaration of Principles, its work completed, stands as one of the major historical monuments of the human race.

Augustus Snellgrove

Is Another Slump on the Way? (1937)

Editorial from the April 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

Professor D. H. MacGregor, in his “Enterprise, Progress and Profit,” has proved that there is a “trade cycle,” a regular succession of booms and slumps. The Economist (March 6th, 1937) is highly gratified that this question has been settled, but is reluctant to admit that the next slump cannot be very long delayed. According to MacGregor’s reckoning, the period between slumps in this country before the war averaged 8¼ years, though running sometimes to as much as 10, and sometimes to as little as 5, years.

What the Economist does not relate is that Fourier, Marx and Engels, Hyndman and others, had grasped the essentials of the trade cycle long before MacGregor was born.

Frederick Engels wrote the following in his “Socialism, Utopian and Scientific,” in 1877: — 

  We have now, since the year 1825, gone through this five times, and at the present moment (1877) we are going through it for the sixth time. And the character of these crises is so clearly defined that Fourier hit all of them off when he described the first as “ crise pléthorique,” a crisis from plethora.

Again, in an article in the London Commonweal, March 1st, 1885, Engels said: —

  Forty years ago England stood face to face with a crisis, solvable to all appearances by force only. The immense and rapid development of manufactures had outstripped the extension of foreign markets, and the increase of demand. Every ten years the march of industry was violently interrupted by a general commercial crash, followed, after a long period of chronic depression, by a few short years of prosperity, and always ending in feverish over-production and consequent renewed collapse.

It is, after all, rather funny that the people who all agree in regarding Marx out of date should be so far behind him in understanding their own capitalist system of society.

The Last Crisis

All the bankers, politicians and business men who have been pondering over the threatened next crisis are confident that it can and will be prevented. ”Something will be done,” they say. Unfortunately, they cannot make up their minds what that something is. The Economist's most helpful thought is that “since the War in fact suspended the working of the cycle, human action can plainly suspend it—if that action is sufficiently violent and sustained.” (Economist, March 6th, 1937). But even that blighted rose has a thorn, for the writer goes on to say that “suspension is not abolition.”

While we cannot place any hopes in the ability of these gentlemen to prevent the next crisis, because that can only be done by abolishing capitalism, we are entitled to ask whether they are even competent to recognise the nature of crises. Did they, for example, recognise the inevitable approach of the last one, or understand it when it happened ? The answer is an emphatic No!

Mr. Alexander, City Editor of the Evening Standard, who informs us (Evening Standard, January 22nd, 1937) that “we shall never have a slump like that again,” is one of the many experts (another was Mr. Francis Williams, formerly City Editor, now Editor of the Daily Herald), who believed that gold would lose its value entirely as a result of the so-called abandonment of the gold standard!

The Bank Chairmen, in their speeches at the annual meetings this year all advised a return to Free Trade as a means of avoiding the next slump, as if crises did not occur just as unfailingly under Free Trade as under Protection. What were these gentlemen saying before the last crisis, which was coming to a head in 1929? In their speeches in January, 1929, they were blandly ignorant of the precipice before them. The Economist at the time (February 2nd, 1929) could record that "the first thing to strike the reader of this year’s speeches is an air of quiet confidence in the country’s industrial future.”

More than that, Mr. McKenna, Chairman of the Midland Bank, could find that “considerable progress has been made towards a more ordered and prosperous world.” The Economist added, "while recovery was certain, it would be a slow process.”

In other words, in 1929, when they were at the top of a boom, following expansion after the former crisis of 1921-22, these experts did not know it, they thought they were in a depression! The financial mountaineers who were perched on the edge of a precipice thought they were climbing out of a valley!

In January, 1930, when the crisis had already shown its symptoms for all to observe, Mr. Goodenough, of Barclays Bank, cast his eyes over the previous year and could see “some improvement” in trade, and the depressed trades showing “substantially better figures." (Economist, January 25th, 1930.)

In January, 1931, just before the full force of the crisis had struck this country, the Bank Chairmen were arguing learnedly with each other as to whether high wages, maldistribution of gold, or other causes were mainly responsible. They were, says the Economist, “by no means wholly in agreement." (Economist, January 24th, 1931.)

These are the gentlemen who are going to ward off the next crisis!

What Hopes for the Next Crisis?

The bankers advice to trust to Free Trade and discouragement of speculation as means of preventing a crisis are merely fatuous. But most of their critics are in no better case. The Editor of the Daily Herald has for years banked on freedom from the gold standard as the surest means. But he based that view on the myth of a shortage of gold. We need only recall that gold production has been mounting all over the world to record heights in defiance of the learned report of the League of Nations “ experts," who predicted a steady decline.

Another Labour Party remedy is “high wages," but it is only a few years since these same people were assuring us that “high wages" in the U.S.A. had already done the trick, and brought permanent prosperity. Henry Ford, we were told, had proved Marx wrong! Mrs. Mary Agnes Hamilton, one of the influential members of the Labour Party and I.L.P., friend of MacDonald, wrote in the Daily Herald (January 20th, 1926) about this permanent prosperity. She had visited the U.S.A., and found

  prosperity so widespread and, since the temporary setback of 1921-22, so continuous, that unemployment, except in localised and special groups . . . has vanished.

But it all came to nothing. Mr. Ford hadn’t proved Marx wrong. The “temporary setback" of 1921-22 was duly followed by the year-long “temporary setback" of 1929-1933.

Now the Daily Herald (February 5th, 1937) has found new gods, in Mr. Keynes and President Roosevelt, and applauds their proposals.

  Our Government should be at work on the idea (of economic planning). It should appoint a central planning committee at once and tell it to prepare a plan of special anti-slump public works now.

Another piece of sticking-plaster for an earthquake.

There is a further useless idea Mr. Keynes and the Labour Party have in common, the transfer of wealth from capitalists to workers by means of taxation. It is based on a fallacious theory, but we need not worry about theory, since the facts are known over a long period of years. Those facts are that income tax, death duties, excess profits taxes, etc., have completely failed to stop the accumulation of still greater fortunes in the hands of the rich, and have left the poor as they were. That is capitalism.

In short, all who cherish the hope of keeping capitalism and avoiding crises are in for yet another disappointment.

Prospects For Professions (1937)

From the April 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have often been at pains to teach the fairly obvious truth, that the private ownership of the means of production under capitalism divides the community into two antagonistic classes, but unfortunately there are still quite a number of people afflicted with the snobbish obsession that they belong to some superior body of beings graded somewhere above the working class, but not, of course, actually capitalists; it is probable, indeed, that they still call themselves the “middle class.” A reader of that technical journal, The Wireless World, recently enquired the steps he would have to take in order to succeed in the wireless industry, and a communication from a member of this self-styled “middle-class” in reply reads very interestingly: -

 With reference to “Enquirer’s” letter in a recent issue of The Wireless World, I would like to state briefly my experience as a radio engineer. 

  I went straight from school to an engineering college at the age of 18, and after three years’ study at great expense to my parents (who fondly imagined that the profession was worth while) I graduated with the usual diplomas, etc. Armed with these—and six months’ practical experience—I sallied forth, brimful of enthusiasm, to obtain a post. Soon, however, the wind was taken out of my sails, when I found that the best offer I could get was 11d. an hour (less than a common labourer) and no guarantee of a job beyond one hour. I do not think this needs further comment. Apparently radio firms make a practice of engaging men (many with university degrees) just when they are busy, and then, at an hour’s notice, consign them to the labour exchange! They appear to have no regard for the men, nor the profession. One would like to know what would happen in any other industry if highly-trained technical men were treated in this manner. It certainly does not conduce to attracting the best brains, and it is impossible to enter the industry full of enthusiasm for one’s work, and desirous of putting the best into it, when one does not know whether or not he will be wanted on his job to-morrow. I would like to inform “Enquirer” that I have worked side by side with university men, with B.Sc. degrees, who were being paid 1s. 3d. an hour. To any young man contemplating entering the radio branch of engineering, my advice is “Don’t!” Take up a branch where ability is appreciated, even if it does mean the sacrifice of a subject you love.— (Sgnd.) “ Sadly Disillusioned,” Hampstead.

So that we learn from our disillusioned friend that, in return for three years’ training, he received 11d. an hour, that the capitalists consign members of his profession, including B.Sc.s, to the labour exchange, and that this is an experience that would not be expected in any other industry.

In spite of our industrial steeplejack having soared to such heights beyond the “common labourer,” we notice he still has a great many things to learn, not the least important being that he would find conditions very similar to those in the wireless trade in other industries. We imagine, in fact, that even an ordinary man, not claiming the special competence implied by the award of engineering diplomas, would be able to realise that, given a present unemployed percentage of one man in eight, it must be quite unusual for the positions held by the remaining seven, whatever the trade, to be other than transitory.

Perhaps we may also remind our disillusioned victim that the free education given to “common labourers” and their debased confrères is enabling them to win scholarships, and that, in consequence, the ranks of the technicians and professions are being very considerably swollen. The capitalist class, whether purchasing technicians, accountants, or other trained men, or bricklayers and manual labourers, display no sense of such uneconomic and antiquated distinctions as “middle class,” “lower middle class," ”the working classes,” “labouring classes," and so on, and when they hire any of these gentlemen, hire them each and all on exactly the same terms. There are thousands of you there, and if you cannot live on thirty or forty bob a week to begin with, you may as well have a little practice on seventeen bob and perhaps that will whet your appetite. As for showing “regard” for you, you can just go to the devil.

G. M. A.

Answers to Correspondents (1937)

From the April 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

J. Pepper. We have your letter, but do not consider this is a question suitable to be dealt with in the Socialist Standard.

Editorial Committee

Sunderland (1937)

From the April 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

Residents in Sunderland who might wish to see the Socialist Standard in the public library will be interested to know that the Libraries Committee unanimously refused our offer to supply a free copy.

Lewisham Branch (1937)

Party News from the April 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lewisham Branch is running (fortnightly) a Course of Lessons based mainly upon the minor masterpieces of Marx and Engels, paying special attention to the "Communist Manifesto" and "Socialism, Utopian and Scientific." Active co-operation of the class by questions and discussion will be aimed at. Needless to say, non-party visitors will be welcomed, and in accordance with the unvarying practice of the Socialist Party will have equal opportunity for expression of views.

For Students of Socialism (1937)

From the April 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are always being asked by readers of THE SOCIALIST STANDARD how, after having become interested in Socialism, they can gain knowledge of its principles and thus fit themselves to be propagandists. Which out of the many books and pamphlets should they read and to what sources should they go to discover the way in which Socialist principles can be applied to everyday problems. It is to meet this need that the S.P.G.B., so far as its resources will allow, publishes pamphlets dealing with important theoretical and practical questions. There is, however, another source of information which is far too little used by students of Socialism, that is the bound volumes of THE SOCIALIST STANDARD for past years. When advised to read these the student thinks of the short-lived interest of articles in most periodicals and concludes that THE SOCIALIST STANDARD suffers from the same defect and that articles published five or ten years ago can have little bearing on current problems. This is a mistake. The principles of Socialism have not changed and the situations to which they have to be applied are likewise constantly recurring. It will be found, in fact, that the supposedly new situations and problems and proposals facing us to-day have all happened before; and THE SOCIALIST STANDARD has had something to say about them. Is it the question of war ? Then read our war issues, 1914-1918, consistently proclaiming the Socialist message in face of all the treachery of the pseudo-Socialists. Is it the ever-recurring proposal of working-class unity? Then our back numbers will tell you why all the earlier efforts failed.

In short, our bound volumes are indispensable to those who want to understand the reason why the working class have failed to emancipate themselves in spite of heroic and untiring efforts, and who want to understand how to avoid past mistakes.

Hamilton. Offer of a Free Copy of "The Socialist Standard" (1937)

From the April 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some reader of the Socialist Standard regularly defaces, mutilates or removes the copy placed in the Hamilton Public Library. In order to prevent inconvenience to other would-be readers, the individual is invited to apply to the Secretary of the local branch of the S.P.G.B. for a free copy.

Is Democracy Worth While? (1937)

From the April 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is democracy desirable or not? This is a question that is being heatedly debated of late years, and many people are asking themselves the question very anxiously. Of those who put it some are filled with doubts, others are filled with apprehension. There are a number of people who fear that democracy has become a broken reed that will have to be thrown away, and this view is being strongly urged by some who feel that their economic interests are jeopardised by its continuance.

A good deal of the doubt about the value of democracy arises from a misunderstanding, a confusion as to what democracy really is, and the varying and contradictory definitions given by professional writers on the subject is one of the principal sources of this confusion. Some define democracy as a system of society, others as a form of government. Some define it as a method of procedure, others as an end in itself. There have been writers who have endowed it with mystic powers, giving the impression that if only we had real democracy our troubles will be over. Then there are the people who give a group character to democracy, and speak of bourgeois or proletarian democracy, as if there were different brands of this particular form. What these latter have done is borrowed phrases from Marx and Engels, and given them a quite unintended meaning.

Before there can be any reasonable discussion of the subject it is necessary to be clear about the meaning of the terms used. In the present instance the meaning can be got at by taking the generally recognised way of using the term “democracy," before professors and others commenced giving their exasperating definitions of it.

When the expression is applied to society those who use it frequently intend to signify the poorer section of the people as opposed to the aristocracy. When, however, the general statement is made that during the last century government became more democratic, the invariable meaning is that the governed had more say in the making of the laws by which they were governed. In other words, the basis of government was widened. The franchise was extended so that more and more of those who compose society took part in electing representatives to the places from which political power was exercised. To-day the capitalists rule by the consent of the majority of the people, though this is only so because the workers (who make up the majority) cannot conceive of an alternative social arrangement.

Behind all the confusion over the meaning of democracy there is one general idea, although it is often very little appreciated. When a club, a political party, or a society is spoken of as being democratically organised, the idea intended to be conveyed is that in all of them each member has an equal power in the control. The fact that sometimes this power is not sensibly exercised has led many to lay the blame on democracy instead of placing it where it really belongs. At bottom, then, democracy simply means majority rule—that the expressed wishes of the majority shall always prevail, but that also minorities will have freedom of expression, and will not be penalised for their views.

In order that the will of the majority may prevail certain conditions must exist which will make it possible to know at any time what views the majority really hold. For this purpose it is necessary that there should be (1) freedom of discussion and means existing for this purpose; (2). freedom and equality of voting; (3) freedom to select those who are to carry out the wishes of the majority, and (4) equality of electoral divisions or districts.

Immediately before the Great War these conditions obtained near enough in most of the advanced countries of the world. Since the War, on the pretext that democracy is a failure or obsolete, these conditions have been modified or nullified in certain European countries.

The first thing that strikes one, in relation to democracy, when taking a sweeping glance over past history, is that the question of the rule of the few or the rule of the many has been a burning one from very early days, and has been productive of considerable internal strife. The source of the strife has, however, been something of far greater importance that lay behind the question of ruling —the economic interests of classes.

The attitude of Socialists towards democracy is determined by the conditions that are bound up with Socialism.

Socialism is a system of society based upon the common ownership of the means of production and distribution. It is a system in which the wealth produced, and the work of. producing it, will be spread, as far as required, equally over the whole of society. Each will contribute to society to the best of his ability, and each will receive from society the best that can reasonably be done towards fulfilling his needs. In order to carry on such a system democratic control is essential. Each member must understand the possibilities and limitations of society so that each can help in the orderly arrangement of affairs and also so that no one will make unreasonable demands upon society.

Consequently, Socialism needs democracy— the participation of all members of society in the control of social arrangements.

Society at present is based on the private ownership of the means of production, and all laws are made and administered with the object of keeping this system in force. Those who own the means of production, the capitalists, as a class, are directly interested in the continuance of the present system and, consequently, they and their supporters do what they can to prevent a change. The capitalists have no objection to democracy providing the votes leave them in their privileged position. The doubts about democracy have developed when and where the capitalists feared that their privileges might be questioned. Hence, as long as the workers voted for the masters or their henchmen, democracy was all right, but when the workers begin to show a disposition to vote for their own nominees then the question is raised by the capitalists as to whether the workers are intelligent enough to know whom and what to vote for.

The present system is defended and the laws are enforced by.the armed forces, which are set in motion in this country at the behest of the group which has behind it a, majority in Parliament. Before any social change can be brought about it is necessary to get control of political power, and this can be done by obtaining a majority of Socialists in Parliament—the centre of political power—supported by the votes of a class-conscious majority in the country. This is another important reason why Socialists are in favour of democracy.

Gilmac.

Marx's Address for the International, 1864 (1937)

From the April 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

Reprint of a Famous Speech

(The following address was delivered by Marx on the occasion of the inauguration of the International Working Men’s Association, September 28th, 1864. Apart from its interest as an historical document, it contains many timely lessons for the workers in face of present problems.
   The reader will notice that the tone and phrasing of the Address are moderate and indefinite by comparison with others of Marx’s speeches and writings —the “Communist Manifesto,” for example. This was a restraint imposed on Marx, as he explained in a letter to Engels, by the character of the organisations in the International. They were composed of Trade Unionists and others who had only made the first approaches towards accepting internationalism and towards understanding Socialism. If, too, Marx was more optimistic about some developments of the period than they deserved the essentials of the speech have worn well. How well can be seen by comparing this speech with a typical product of the man Marx was criticising, Mr. W. E. Gladstone. Who cares now what Gladstone said in 1864? Marx, on the other hand, with his remarkable understanding of the slow but inescapable trend of events, becomes every year a more vital figure in the task of moulding the society of the future.
   Some of the points in the speech are dealt with elsewhere in this issue. EDITORIAL COMMITTEE.)

Fellow Working Men: It is a great fact that the misery of the working masses has not diminished from 1848 to 1864, and yet this period is unrivalled for the development of its industry and the growth of its commerce. In 1850 a moderate organ of the British middle-class, of more than average information, predicted that if the exports and imports of England were to rise 50 per cent., English pauperism would sink to zero. Alas! On April 7th, 1864, the Chancellor of the Exchequer delighted his Parliamentary audience by the statement that the total import and export trade of England had grown in 1863 “to £443,955,000, that astonishing sum about three times the trade of the comparatively recent epoch of 1843.” With all that he was eloquent upon "poverty.” "Think,” he exclaimed, “of those who are on the border of that region,” upon “wages —not increased”; upon “human life—in nine cases out of ten, but a struggle of existence.” He did not speak of the people of Ireland, gradually replaced by machinery in the North, and by sheep-walks in the South, though even the sheep in that unhappy country are decreasing, it is true, not at so rapid a rate as the men. He did not repeat what then had just been betrayed by the highest representative of the upper ten thousand in a sudden fit of terror. When the garotte panic had reached a certain height, the House of Lords caused an inquiry to be made into, and a report to be published upon, transportation and penal servitude. Out came the murder in the bulky Blue Book of 1863, and proved it was, by official facts and figures, that the worst of the convicted criminals, the penal serfs of England and Scotland, toiled much less and fared far better than the agricultural labourers of England and Scotland. But this was not all. When, consequent upon the Civil War in America, the operatives of Lancashire and Cheshire were thrown upon the streets, the same House of Lords sent to the manufacturing districts a physician commissioned to investigate into the smallest possible amount of carbon and nitrogen, to be administered in the cheapest and plainest form, which, on an average, might just suffice to avert “starvation diseases.” Dr. Smith, the medical deputy, ascertained that 28,000 grains of carbon and 1,330 grains of nitrogen were the weekly allowance that would keep an average adult just over the level of starvation diseases, and he found, furthermore, that quantity pretty nearly to agree with the scanty nourishment to which the pressure of extreme distress had actually reduced the cotton operatives. But now mark! The same learned doctor was later on again deputed by the medical officer of the Privy Council to inquire into the nourishment of the poorer labouring classes. The results of his researches are embodied in the “Sixth Report on Public Health,” published by order of Parliament in the course of the present year. What did the doctor discover? That the silk weavers, the needle women, the kid glovers, the stocking weavers, and so forth, received, on an average, not even the distressed pittance of the cotton operatives, not even the amount of carbon and nitrogen "just sufficient to avert starvation diseases.”

"Moreover” (we quote from the report), "as regards the examined families of the agricultural population, it appeared that more than a fifth were with less than the estimated sufficiency of carbonaceous food; that more than one-third were with less than the estimated sufficiency of nitrogenous food, and that in three counties (Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Somersetshire), insufficiency of nitrogenous food was the average diet.” “It must be remembered,” adds the official report, “that privation of food is very reluctantly borne, and that, as a rule, great poorness of diet will only come when other privations have preceded it. Even cleanliness will have been found costly or difficult, and if there still be self-respectful endeavours to maintain it, every such endeavour will represent additional pangs of hunger. These are painful reflections, especially when it is remembered that the poverty to which they advert is not the deserved poverty of idleness: in all cases it is the poverty of working populations. Indeed, the work which obtains the scanty pittance of food is, for the most part, excessively prolonged.” The report brings out the strange and rather unexpected fact, "That of the divisions of the United Kingdom," England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, “the agricultural population of England,” the richest division, “is considerably the worst fed,” but that even the agricultural labourers of Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Somersetshire fare better than great numbers of skilled indoor operatives of the East of London.

Such are the official statements published by order of Parliament in 1864, during the millennium of free trade, at a time when the Chancellor of the Exchequer told the House of Commons that

"the average condition of the British labourer has improved in a degree we know to be extraordinary and unexampled in the history of any country or any age.”

Upon these official congratulations jars the dry remark of the official Public Health Report: —

"The public health of a country means the health of its masses, and the masses will scarcely be healthy unless, to their very base, they are at least moderately prosperous.” 

Dazzled by the “Progress of the Nation,” statistics dancing before his eyes, the Chancellor of the Exchequer exclaims in wild ecstasy: —

“From 1842 to 1852 the taxable income of the country increased by six per cent.; in the eight years from 1853 to 1861 it has increased from the basis taken in 1853 20 per cent.: the fact is so astonishing as to be almost incredible.”

“This intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power,” adds Mr. Gladstone, “ is entirely confined to classes of property.”

If you want to know under what conditions of broken health, tainted morals, and mental ruin, that “intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power entirely confined to classes of property ” was, and is being produced by the classes of labour, look to the picture hung up in the last “Public Health Report” of the workshops of tailors, printers and dressmakers. Compare the “Report of the Children’s Employment Commission” of 1863 where, it is stated, for instance, that: —

"The potters as a class, both men and women, represent a much degenerated population, both physically and mentally,” 

that the unhealthy child “is an unhealthy parent in his turn,” that a progressive deterioration of the race must go on and that "the degenerescence of the population would be even greater were it not for the constant recruiting from the adjacent country, and the intermarriages with more healthy races.” Glance at M. Tremenheere’s Blue Book on the "Grievances complained of by the Journeymen Bakers.” And who has not shuddered at the paradoxical statement made by the inspectors of factories, and illustrated by the. Registrar-General, that the Lancashire operatives, while put upon the distress pittance of food, were actually improving in health, because of their temporary exclusion by the cotton famine from the cotton factory, and that the mortality of the children was decreasing, because their mothers were now at last allowed to give them instead of Godfrey’s cordial their own breasts.

Again reverse the medal. The Income and Property Tax Returns, laid before the House of Commons on July 20th, 1864, teach us that the persons with yearly incomes valued by the tax gatherer at £50,000 and upwards, had, from April 5th, 1862, to April 5th, 1863, been joined by a dozen and one, their number having increased in that single year from 67 to 80. The same returns disclose the fact that about 3,000 persons divide amongst themselves a yearly income of about £25,000,000 sterling, rather more than the total revenue doled out annually to the whole mass of the agricultural labourers of England and Wales. Open the Census of 1861, and you will find that the number of the male landed proprietors of England and Wales had decreased from 16,934 in 1851 to 15,066 in 1861, so that the concentration of land had grown in ten years 11 per cent. If the concentration of the soil of the country in a few hands proceeds at the same rate the land question will become singularly simplified, as it had become in the Roman Empire, when Nero grinned at the discovery that half the province of Africa was owned by six gentlemen.

(to be concluded).

The Passing of Comrade F. Maby (1937)

Obituary from the April 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

We regret the loss of an old comrade, Fred Maby, who died on Monday, March 8th, in his eighty-first year.

He joined the Battersea Branch of the Party in 1907, and for thirty years was a consistent and efficient worker for Socialism. From the early days of his membership he acted as either secretary or treasurer for his branch, and continued until a few years ago, when work he had undertaken at Head Office compelled him to pass his part in branch organisation on to other members.

For the past eight years he has dealt with the postal subscribers to THE SOCIALIST STANDARD, and during that time had the satisfaction of seeing the number of subscribers nearly trebled.

When we moved into the present Head Office we were faced with the task of sorting and storing our stock of binding copies of THE SOCIALIST STANDARD, which dates back to 1904. Our late comrade undertook this work, and completed it in a most satisfactory manner.

While attending to his business at Head Office on the Tuesday evening he had a stroke, and collapsed. From this he did not recover consciousness, and quietly passed away on the following Monday morning.

E. L.

The Sit-Down Strikes in America (1937)

From the April 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

America, we have often been told, is the great land of "Liberty". They boast there of their "Liberty Statue" and their "Declaration of Independence". There is scarcely a snob in the American States who will fail to trace his ancestry to the "liberty-loving" English, or omit to recall with pride the landing on Plymouth Rock of the Puritan Pilgrim Fathers from old England. Perhaps Col. Bob Ingersoll, the Freethinker, was not unwise when he suggested what a pity it was that Plymouth Rock hadn't landed on the Pilgrim Fathers. The liberty known to the American workers is much the same as that experienced by the working class throughout the world -- the liberty to work for the benefit of capitalists and to slowly starve amidst the plenty which the workers have themselves produced. Since it is part of the workers' "freedom" that they may leave off working when their masters fail to consent to demands for improved conditions, trouble is bound to arise between these two contending forces. It is inevitable that some "wicked and troublesome swines" among the toiling masses will set out to ask for a little more from life as they find it. Hence, in America and practically all over the world, we are presented with a series of strikes which periodically mark the history of capitalist society.

Despite the efforts of all the social reformers and "world planners", the clash of interests between workers and capitalists asserts itself. The recent strikes in America provide proof (if indeed such is needed) of the soundness of the Socialist analysis of capitalism. Private property versus the sustenance of the workers -- profits versus wages -- the power of those who own the means of life versus the slender means at the disposal of those who merely interfere with that power rather than become all-powerful themselves. The underlying causes of the American strikes have been misrepresented to be due to inter-Trade Union rivalry -- to the long-standing quarrel between craft Unions and industrial organisations. But whilst it is true that conflict between these does exist, the causes of the strikes are, as usual, the conditions of capitalist society. The Trade Union movement of America has been largely built up on the basis of craft organisation, and generally only what are called the best-paid workers have been catered for. The mass of semi-skilled or unskilled workers have had little or no organisation to deal with their demands in negotiation with the employers. In fact, many of the most powerful combines in America have always refused to deal with any other workers' organisation than those which they, the employers, finance and organise, under the name of "Company Unions". But the present strikes have been conducted by a committee for industrial organisation led by, among others, John L. Lewis, a former Welsh miner and latterly a member of the United Mineworkers of America.

Following the example of the French and Belgian workers during last year, who decided to "stay-in" whilst on strike, the American Automobile Workers' Union "struck the job" and "stayed put" inside the factories. It was here that the sanctity of private property asserted itself. Those inside the factories formed their own committees, which arranged for the supply of food, to be delivered to them by friends and relatives outside, every means possible being observed to conduct the strikes on orderly, peaceful lines. But the majesty of the Law had something to say -- and do -- in the matter. Ordinary police, special police, and hired thugs surrounded and entered the factories, using mustard and tear gas to dislodge the strikers. A judge decided that the action of the strikers remaining in the factories was illegal, so a cordon of 4,000 troops, armed with bayonets and machine guns, was drawn round the factories, and the strikers' food supplies cut off. Yet the strike ended largely in favour of the workers. Soon after the settlement the General Motors Corporation announced an increase of pay of 2 1/2d. a hour, which, it is estimated, will cost 5,000,000 pounds a year, and agreed to the principle of collective bargaining. The success of the automobile workers appears to have been the signal for similar strike movements all over the country. The giant steel industry, which has turned its back on collective bargaining for the past fifty years, was threatened with strike action. At Waukegan, Illinois, in two factories of the Fansteel Metallurgical Company, a stay-in strike actually took place. The Times' report of this is to the effect that the fight which took place between the strikers and the police was an "unequal fight". Against sprays of acid from fire extinguishers and volleys of tools and other missiles used by the strikes, the police brought into action "an improved turris -- a wooden structure 30ft high, armoured with sheet steel and mounted on a lorry -- and through its portholes shot hundreds of gas bombs into the factories." "It was impossible", says the Times, "to stand up against that, and after an hour's fighting the strikers broke and fled."

Yet here again the workers gained notable concessions, such as are described as "the biggest victory United States labour has ever had."

"By two wholly surprising acts late yesterday", says the Times (March 3rd), "the principal steel companies have averted from this industry a strike involving half-a-million men, and ended at the same time a deadlock which has kept the Government from getting the steel sorely needed for new armaments." (Bold Italics ours.) The Times describes these two "surprising acts" to be, first, the recognition by the Carnegie Illinois Steel Company of the right of an outside Union, i. e., other than its own company unions, to act for the men. Second, the establishment of a basic 40-hour week and 1 pound a day, with usual overtime rates. It is thought that this decision will serve as a standard of working conditions throughout the entire industry.

It appears that a wave of enthusiasm has now taken hold of the American workers, and a great increase in Union membership is announced. As Socialists, we see in this something that is to the good in the class struggle. These efforts of the workers to combine, either to resist the onslaughts of the master class, or to gain whatever they can, must meet with the support of all workers who understand their class position.

The particular form of economic organisation through which the struggle is conducted is one which the circumstances of the struggle must mainly determine. The chief thing is to maintain the struggle whilst capitalism lasts. The spirit of the craft form of Trade Union is generally one which tends to cramp the activity and outlook of the workers, each craft thinking itself something apart from all others, particularly from the non-skilled workers. But capitalist society itself tends to break down the barriers artificially set up between sections of the working class, as many of the so-called "aristocrats of labour" have been made painfully aware. The industrial form of union should tend to bring the various sections of workers in an industry together, and thus help level the identity of interests between all workers so organised. But the whole question of Trade Union organisation in itself, and by its very nature and necessity, calls into prominence the deeper, far deeper, question of the position of the working class in its entirety. Capitalism, the private ownership of the means of life and production for profit, is the root cause of the workers' troubles, and they must, therefore, learn that the capitalist system must be abolished if they are to reap the fruits of their labour. What are called high wages cannot secure the workers against the ravages of capitalist exploitation. The supreme task of the working class must be the ending of capitalism.

Meanwhile the struggle on the economic field must be looked to and encouraged. But the workers must not be deluded into a false sense of power by occasional Trade Union victories, such as those in America, France, and elsewhere. It is essential that stock should be taken of the conditions at every step of the way. In the case of the American strikes, conditions favoured the workers in gaining their demands. Prices and profits are at present rising, and production is in fairly full swing. In such cases the capitalists do not want their works idle; that they can reserve for the time when they really want a fight to a finish, or when they want to dispose of surplus stocks when changes in the methods of production are contemplated. It is estimated that in the case of the steel industry of America the pay-roll will, in consequence of the increases in wages, increase by twenty millions a year, but, as the Times points out, this sum will be recouped by the present rising prices of steel. The American Government alone needs twenty-five million pounds' worth to meet its naval requirements, and steel works must be kept going for that purpose. Besides this, private orders for steel in America are even larger than those of the Government. In such conditions the master class will seek to compromise with the demands of the workers. But these conditions are not always with us, consequently, it is not always possible to win strikes, as the history of strike movements in this country will prove. Nevertheless, the workers should take what opportunities that come along. It would be a lamentable fact if they failed to take advantage of a "rising market" in the sale of their only commodity -- their power to labour. Failure to take this elementary step in the class struggle would generally indicate failure to work for the greater movement for Socialism. What the workers need to learn is the source of capitalism's power and the process by which the workers are subjected. That "learned judge" of America who declared the stay-in strike to be illegal, truly sized up the position when he said:

". . .  he had no power to consider the merits of the dispute . . .  He confined himself to the point that, under the law, the workers had not the right to take possession of their employers' property." (Bold Italics ours.)

That it is outside the pale of the law to deal with the struggle between workers and capitalists is, of course, a purely technical point in legal procedure. In practice it proves not only a mockery of the workers' position, but at the same time reveals the underlying force of capitalist "law and order".

The declaration of illegality was accompanied by the use of gas-bombs and machine-guns to drive unarmed men from occupying a vantage point in a battle for bread and butter. Truly can the "impartiality" of capitalist law-givers be taken as tragi-ironical. Anatole France, with characteristic irony, correctly figured the position out when he wrote: "The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike -- to sleep under arches; to beg in the streets; and to steal bread!"

The Socialist Party urges all workers to consider the position. They have to strike and face lock-outs because they are slaves to the capitalist class. They cannot enter into ownership of the means of life whilst the capitalist is in possession of political power. That power is given them by the workers themselves, who have been trained for centuries to think along capitalist lines, and then through the medium of the ballot box have, in consequence, elected the capitalists to, power. The wealth of the world is produced by the workers and it is, therefore, just sound common sense to say that what the workers can produce for the capitalist they can produce for themselves. But Socialist understanding and determination is essential to that task. Until the workers are prepared to give their consideration to this aspect of their problems, all the stay-in sit-down strikes in the world will not rid them of their troubles.

Already, as far as the working-class movement in America is concerned, there are rocks ahead to be seen. John L. Lewis, their strike leader, who backed Roosevelt in the last Presidential election, is said to be looking to the Presidency himself, and may contest the election for the position in 1940. The Labour movement in America is similar to the Labour movement in this country; it is reformist, and does not seek to abolish capitalism. Let the workers ponder over the position. Should Labourism triumph in the USA the workers may find themselves, during future sit-down strikes, gas-bombed by the police, acting under the authority of their own leaders. The only cure against all this is Socialism, a system of society wherein strikes and all other aspects of class struggle will have been consigned to the limbo of the past.

Robertus.