Thalidomide Crime (1968)

From the August 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Every so often capitalism commits one of its more colossal crimes against mankind. A recent example is that of the Thalidomide Babies.

The Sunday Times of 19 May discussed this matter fully under the headline of “The Thalidomide File”. The public first knew of this in 1961. Nine men from the firm of Chemie Grünenthal in the little town of Stolberg are at this moment on trial charged with placing on the market a drug which even when taken as instructed caused the human body an unacceptable degree of harm, for advertising the drug as completely safe when they could give no such guarantee, and for brushing aside and then deliberately suppressing the adverse reports from doctors that it caused those who took it to itch, shake, vomit and lose the power to stand. The charge is made that this same drug, which the sales department called “the apple of our eye” because it was so profitable, caused a large number of monstrously deformed babies. The trial is expected to last some ten years. It is obviously in the interests of the defendants to spin it out as much as possible so that some of the hot feeling may have died down.

The drug was exported to about 11 European, 7 African, 17 Asian and 11 American states. There are in Germany alone thousands of victims and roughly five thousand babies have been born there with appalling deformities. The discoverer of K17, as he named it, was a qualified chemist and doctor who had served at the Institute for Typhus and Virus Research at Cracow in Poland which was under the control of the German Army High Command during the war. His name was Dr. Heinrich Muckter. His precise role at the Institute was not clear but no charges were made against him at the Nuremberg Nazi doctors’ trial. We can anticipate that — especially in view of his past — many people will blame Muckter for this crime.

Socialists, however, whatever the outcome of the trial, will not give Muckter and his associates the sole blame for this incident in medical history. This does not mean we condone the actions of the men concerned.

Under capitalism some people are capable of doing anything for personal gain; others are not. Our view is that, given certain conditions, society will produce people with no scruples who will do whatever suits them no matter what the cost in human life and welfare.

The “business mind” is well illustrated by this extract from a letter written by the Sales Director of the firm which marketed Thalidomide to a sales manager in Essen :

  “We must realise above all else that such a quick rise in the turnover of a sedative must lead to certain apprehensions in the minds of doctors and chemists. Not all members of this clientele can keep their ethical attitudes within the limits of the market economy. There will certainly be doctors conscious of their responsibility, who in view of this trend, will start speaking about addiction.”

And a report from the Sales Office in 1960:

    “Unfortunately, we are now receiving increasingly strong reports on the side of this preparation, as well as letters from doctors and chemists who want it put on prescription. From our side, everything must be done to avoid putting it on prescription, since already a substantial amount of our turnover comes from over-the-counter sales.”

Even the Sunday Times was prompted to ask “Was the fault that of society, of a set of attitudes to profit and the responsibility that it entails?” They use the word “society”. We would say rather “capitalist society”. Our answer to their question is: yes, it is the fault of society, capitalist society.

Capitalism is an obsolete system of society; it long ago outlived its usefulness. It fetters production; it distorts production so that hitherto unimaginable horrors like this become realities. The “set of attitudes to profit” is thus the reaction of men to the relations of production in which they find themselves. When men convert the privately owned means of production into the common property of all, classes will disappear. Wealth will be produced simply as products to be distributed according to wants and needs, and not as now as commodities to be exchanged on a market with a view to profit. Socialist production and distribution would mean that technical development would hold no threats to human welfare, as it does now, with its sales propaganda nuclear “deterrents” and so on.

J. MCL

Human Rights (1968)

From the August 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

A couple of months ago, twenty-four prisoners in the maximum security wing at Durham Prison barricaded themselves in their cells in protest against a new work system. They were, they said, only sticking up for their rights. On March 5 last, forty-one young soldiers protested against Army bull and red tape by marching in good order out of barracks — and back in again later. Sticking up, again, for their rights.

The same week, Emil Savundra and Peter de Quincy Walker appealed against the heavy sentences imposed on them after the collapse of Fire, Auto and Marine. They were only demanding their rights. The February issue of The Seaman, journal of the National Union of Seamen, invites all NUS members to exercise their right to apply for a place in the union’s national one-week educational course.

Get the point? The word "rights” means almost anything that anyone wants it to mean.

Governments talk about "rights”. The French constitution of 1946 proclaims that all men have the right to work, to strike, to take leisure, to enjoy culture, to take part in joint management and to have society’s help when they are unfit to work. These "rights” sound desirable enough— but dig a little deeper, and ask in whose interests some of them are proclaimed.

Nineteen sixty eight, for anyone who has been too busy campaigning against political prisoners, racial persecution and dictatorship, is Human Rights Year. This is a United Nations idea; it goes back to May 1946, when the first meeting took place of the UN Commission on Human Rights. Eleanor Roosevelt, widow of the late President of the United States, was in the chair.

The Commission was expected to draw up two documents: a Declaration of Human Rights and an International Covenant (how these words roll off the tongue!) defining the principles of human rights and making them legally binding on all signatories. At the second session, at Geneva in November 1947, the Commission decided that three stages would be necessary — Declaration, Covenant, Implementation. The third session added a Preamble and eventually, in December 1948 in Paris the Declaration, and only the Declaration was accepted. The Covenant had to wait until 1966 for its adoption. And the Implementation?

Before anything can happen on that there must be some thirty-five ratifications and the UN admits there is little chance of that even though, it says, the Declaration embraces all the rights and freedoms essential for the dignity and development of the human personality. 

These are some of the rights covered by the Declaration: freedom from arbitrary arrest, detention or exile; the right to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal; freedom of thought, conscience and religion; freedom of peaceful association, opinion and information; freedom to leave or enter a country.

Now any well-intentioned humanitarian like, say, the Duke of Edinburgh—who is a patron of the U.K. Committee for Human Rights—would readily pay lip service to these rights for the working class. So would a lot of Labour lefties, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Soper and the Communist Party, who are all in it as well.

The U.K. Committee, supported by 140 organisations, will be campaigning all this year and a very impressive programme they have. One of the high spots is the International Seminar on Freedom of Association, in London this month. The campaign has four main objectives: to publicise the Declaration; to eliminate all forms of racial discrimination; to end all discrimination against women; to help the peoples of Britain’s dependent territories to realise their human rights. Not bad. It’s only taken them twenty years to think up four objectives. And what chance have they of being achieved?

Lena Jeger, Labour M.P. for Holborn and St. Pancras, in the New Statesman (31/12/67) gave a run down on some of the fine-sounding articles, for example: “Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. The right to leave and return to any country.” And what did the Labour government do, a couple of months after she wrote that article, to the Kenyan Asians’ right to leave and enter any country?

The world situation was summarised in the UNESCO journal Courier of January 1968, in an article by Rene Cassin, former president of the UN Commission on Human Rights:

   Repeated violations of the rights to life, killings and massacres left unpunished, the exploitation of woman, mass hunger and starvation, the perpetuation of slavery, lack of proper education, disregard for freedom of conscience, opinion and expression, widespread racial discrimination and segregation, arbitrary government—all these and many other abuses are far too frequent to be denied.

In this sorry situation it would be better if the UN, instead of bewailing the fate of human rights, were to ask why they are so often violated. Sometimes it is simply a case of capitalism being unable to satisfy those rights. Thus although Article 25 of the Declaration states that everyone has the right “. .. . to a standard of living adequate for the health and wellbeing of himself and of his family including food, clothing and housing”, the November 1965 White Paper on housing stated that in Britain some three million families still live in slums, near slums or in grossly overcrowded conditions and the 1966 Annual Report of the Ministry of Health told us that "Of the 12,411 people in hostels for the homeless on one night last year 8,160—just under two thirds — were children.”

But what about the other violations of human nights—of human liberty? The plain fact here is that a ruling class which suppresses opposition does so because it sees that opposition as a threat to its own position. In Russia, for example, the state imprisoned the writers Daniel and Sinyavsky because it is afraid to allow too free a criticism of Russian state capitalism. This sort of event is not unknown in the so-called democracies of the western world. In wartime, for example, the British government assumes all sorts of dictatorial powers—and so it does in peacetime, when it considers the stability of British capitalism to be seriously threatened by, say, a strike.

If the history of Human Rights proves anything, it is that they cannot be achieved within a property society. The private property system is itself a matter of privilege and therefore a denial of the right of equal standing to the vast majority of the world’s people. Even more, a privileged class will always struggle to keep its privileges—often by force and suppression.

We have had World Refugee Year, which ended up with more refugees than it started with. We have had World Hunger Year — and we still have devastating famines. If Human Rights Year does as much for us. there will be a lot less freedom at the end of 1968 than there was at the beginning.

Joe McGuinness

Letters: Should Immigration be Controlled (1968)

Letters to the Editors from the August 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Agreed that the new Commonwealth Immigrants Act, passed in March, is racialist even more than the previous ones, I cannot fully agree with the complete freedom of labour movement in the existing structures.

You say that “economics demands free immigration”. This is opinion, not fact. Asians are prepared to work long hours, weekends, in order to send home money to families left in the move. If by a strenuous (as it is) effort, disregarding leisure time completely, an Indian or Pakistani can earn a large wage, this holds back any claims for higher basic wages and/or a shorter working week. Labour becomes ‘cheap’ — or cheaper — whether this is economically true or not, it will seem to native factory workers who will feel resentment. This leads to prejudice in other matters.

Make labour available cheaply and one makes automation unnecessary. Already Japan, USA, etc. have managed, by increased technical efficiency, to increase industrial productivity. Thus it can be argued that allowing free immigration—especially of unskilled workers—holds back efficiency. I am no economist. There are perhaps faults in my reasoning, but surely you are aware of these arguments. Why not then deal with them in your article? Or is it that the above arguments are sound?

What is abhorrent is the limitation of entry into a country because of race, or religion, etc. Commonwealth citizens have no more right to come to Britain than we have to go to their countries—and yet they all impose strict control on immigration. It was all very well to cling to the 19th century ‘mother country’ idea when the influx was small and the immigrants, like the Hugenots, Poles, etc., seemed to be 'refugees’. Their numbers were small and they were assimilated with few pains. But now if it is a source of economic or social instability some control seems necessary. But anyone who comes to Britain should be subject to the same rules regarding entry—whether European, Canadian, South African or Indian. And if any check is to be made on entry, it should take place in the country of origin, to avoid disappointment when in a strange environment.

I am sympathetic to the immigrant, especially to the Asians whom I have taught. They represent a real problem, and frankly our education service is so understaffed and under-equipped that we cannot hope to teach our language and customs to an unlimited number. Uneducated immigrants cause greater prejudice than those who have overcome the language barrier and understand English attitudes and customs.

D. Green, 

14 Ena Crescent,

Leigh, 

Lancs.

Capitalism brought our Blacks to create the racial hatred and colour bar to crush all resistance of the natives of this island, and to cheapen labour and force up the cost of living. Most of our unemployed are Whites and poorly housed in hostels like the Salvation Army, Church Army and Rowton Houses (on Board and Lodging Vouchers) who are making fortunes out of our homeless and half-starved workers. Blacks have created mass unemployment for our workers. Blacks are selfish and grab everything then can get for themselves. Capitalism is cunning as a rattlesnake and apparently cannot be beaten by small groups like the SPGB, who while you print a load of twaddle, have no real policy and favour Blacks before the English who have supported you from the start. Socialism! but National it will be! It’s on the way now! At least the SPGB gives an easy living to its leaders — that's all.

S. J. Deal, 

London, SE1.

Your article on Race Relations makes one think that you are in favour of the white man having to work, live and feel at home with coloured people. Such a thing is impossible. Our tradition and outlook is totally different from anything the coloured people have ever known. I agree with your assertion that a coloured man is every bit as capable as a white man given the chance and the conditions.

Socialism does not mean a free for all will take place when it comes. Black and While will not be forced to earn a living in a strange land. A free and full outlet will be the right of mankind to express the best that is in him without having to go to another part of the world to get a job. Marx’s declaration “Workers of the World Unite” meant politically and not nationally.

This country is too small for a larger population. In many parts there is no place for the native white people to live and the seeds are already being sown by the enormous number of coloured workers buying houses in an already overcrowded country. Already the dockers are supporting the criticism of their overcrowding here and those responsible for their coming here will have a lot to answer for before many more years.

W. Harding, 

London, E17.

Reply: 

Prejudice is defined as an opinion formed without proper consideration of the facts or arguments. Both Mr. Deal and Mr. Harding are prejudiced.

There is one simple reason why most of the unemployed in Britain are “white" and that is because 98 per cent of the population is.

Has “coloured immigration” cheapened labour, i.e., depressed wage levels? Alan Day, in an article in the Observer on 28 April, suggested that immigration had held back, rather than depressed, the wages of certain sections of the working class: those in the unskilled jobs that immigrants tend to do. He reckons that, without immigration (and this is the argument put forward by Mr. Green in the previous letter) employers would have been forced to introduce labour-saving machinery. It is quite true that one of the factors under capitalism which decides whether or not machinery is used is the level of wages. A labour shortage forces up wages and so could make machinery profitable. It is true also that London Transport in a bid to overcome an acute labour shortage did recruit workers in the West Indies. The hospitals, too, have had an acute labour shortage. But even if we concede that by restrictions on immigration certain workers could have pushed up their wages and that therefore immigration has harmed them, is this a reason why Socialists should support immigration control? Of course it is not. Socialists stand for the interest of workers all over the world. All who work for a wage or salary, no matter where they live or work or what language they speak or the colour of their skin, have a common interest; in working together to protect living standards while capitalism lasts and, more important, to replace capitalism with Socialism. One section of the working class may for a time improve its lot by keeping out other sections. But Socialists are opposed to sectionalism, whether it is by trade, nationality or colour. It hampers effective united action and spreads the pernicious theories of nationalism and racialism. We state frankly: we would not support immigration control even if it would maintain the living standards of some workers in Britain.

Has “coloured immigration" forced up the cost of living? We confess we are unable to fathom this one. It seems to be a prime example of the working of a prejudiced mind. Take something you don't like (rising cost of living) and blame it on some scapegoat (immigrants).

Has “coloured immigration” created mass unemployment? Unemployment there is. and will be as long as capitalism lasts, but at the moment there is not “mass” unemployment. Immigration is not the cause of unemployment. Rather the post-war immigration is itself the result of a relative labour shortage, as the Confederation of British Industries has pointed out.

Is it impossible for “white” and “coloured” people to work and live together? Mr. Harding says it is, on the grounds that the tradition and outlook of the two are completely different. Let’s clear up one point first: different peoples do have different traditions but it is not true that all “whites” share one common tradition and all “coloureds” another. If you are going to argue from different ways of life you must throw overboard arguments based on colour and so-called race, unless you are prepared to argue that a man's skin colour and other physical features determine how he must behave. All human beings are members of the same animal species, homo sapiens. All human beings are capable of learning and of absorbing the culture of the society in which they live. Such differences as exist between the peoples of the world are not the result of different natures, but of living in different environments. All peoples are quite capable of absorbing modern culture in a comparatively short time (see for instance, New Lives for Old by Margaret Mead). Obviously, people born and bred in a capitalist-industrial society are better equipped to live in it than people who have recently come to it from backward agricultural villages. This does not mean, however, that such immigrants must remain ill-equipped for ever.

Is Britain overcrowded? This is a big myth. In any event the figures for population per square mile do not allow us to say that an area is inhabited by too many people because it cannot sustain them. There is another factor which must be taken into account: the man-made means of production. In 1801 there were 12 million people in Britain, in 1851 22 million, in 1901 38 million and today about 54 million (of whom less than one million are “coloured”). Britain has been able to sustain an increasing population because of the ever-increasing productivity of the man-made means of production. In fact, of course, it does not make sense to take one part of the world in isolation from the rest. Britain, through the international division of labour, is part of the world economy and the earth could sustain many times its present population. If the politicians who talk about Britain being overcrowded really believed it they would also be advocating increased emigration, birth control, abolition of family allowances, the end of tax discrimination against single people and childless couples, and so on. They would also be instituting internal migration controls (giving us all “passes” as in Russia and South Africa): if Wolverhampton or London were overcrowded then they would be trying to stop people moving there from Glasgow and Wales as well as from overseas. But they are not, are they? This “overcrowded” argument is pure nonsense. It is only in vogue because it appears to be a respectable, rational argument for an immigration colour bar.

Now, for the odd ideas about the Socialist Party of Great Britain and Marx.

Have the English always supported us from the start? First, who are the English, anyway? It is true that till now the bulk of die members and supporters of the Socialist Party (but by no means all) have been what our correspondents would label “white”, but that is not by choice but by accident. Socialism is a system of society which the workers in the industrialisted parts of the world must strive for. The fact that most such workers at present happen to be “white” is irrelevant. We seek the support of all workers and have declared right from the start that we seek the emancipation of all mankind, irrespective of race or sex.

Do our leaders have an easy living? No, we have no leaders, just ordinary workers carrying out Socialist activity in their spare time.

Who said Socialism would be a free-for- all? We are sure that in a Socialist society people will be pleased to travel and work anywhere in the world. Certainly they will be free to do so.

What did Marx mean by “workers of the world, unite”? Perhaps Mr. Harding can tell us how workers can unite politically without workers from all nations joining together. He might also ponder over this one: Why did Marx let his daughter marry a “coloured” man from Cuba?

Editorial Committee.

Morris as a Socialist Thinker (1968)

Book Review from the August 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Three Works by William Morris. (Lawrence and Wishart. 10s. 6d.)

This paperback contains two of Morris’ important Socialist writings, both novels. A Dream of John Ball, applying the materialist conception of history, shows how an attempt at the time of the Peasants’ Revolt to establish a socialist society was doomed to failure. The establishment of Socialism had to be “the change beyond the change". In other words, society had first to pass through the capitalist stage before Socialism became possible. Morris also well describes the horrors involved in the change from feudalism to capitalism (obviously based on a reading of Marx).

News from Nowhere is a genuine Utopian novel insofar as Utopia is the Greek for “no-place". It is an account of what human relationships could be like (not necessarily what they would be like) in the future moneyless, classless society of Socialism. Morris is not concerned here with the technical basis of such a society and so scarcely mentions machines. This has been taken to mean that he was anti-machine. That Morris was against the use of machinery is a myth. Certainly he attacked the abuse of machinery in capitalist society with production geared to the market to make profits for the capitalists and machinery used to speed-up work and bore and degrade its operators. Morris knew that in a Socialist society, with production for human need, machinery would be used properly as its use would be under the democratic control of the community.

The third work is Morris' narrative poem on the Paris Commune.

Unfortunately, there is an introduction by that well-known second-rate Communist Party historian, A. L. Morton. He sees the electrification policy of state-capitalist Russia as the implementation of News from Nowhere. He denounces Morris’ concern about the dangers of a Socialist organisation attracting non-socialist support and his suggestions for overcoming it as “sectarian" and “rigid anti-parliamentarianism" (not true, Morris always stood for political action). But you don’t have to read the introduction.

Adam Buick

Party News Briefs (1968)

Party News from the August 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Westminster Branch have just concluded a series of four ‘teach-ins’ on Marxian Economics at the Royal Oak, York Street, W.1; these were very successful in every way. Comrade D’Arcy took three of the sessions, dealing with Capital, Wages. Value, Commodities, Banking, Finance, Houses, etc. and Comrade Hardy rounded off the series dealing largely with Taxation. In all over 100 members and sympathisers attended the four sessions. It was a new venture in Party Education, as many members are unable to attend a course running over many weeks which is a feature of our usual classes. Questions and points in discussion were thrown in at all times, and one member was heard to remark ‘Ive never found economics so interesting before". The Branch have a series of Lectures and Discussions arranged up to the end of October. Full details under ‘Meetings’ columns.

50 Years Ago: The Making of Socialists (1968)

The 50 Years Ago column from the August 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Today the workers as a class are not revolutionary. For them to become so implies a great mental change. We have seen how successfully bourgeois vehicles of thought, such as the schools and the Press have given the workers a capitalistic outlook. Is it possible and likely that they will ever be able to throw off these baneful influences and come to a realisation that their interests lie in social revolution? The Socialist answers, yes! The process will doubtless be slow, but there are two powerful agents which further it—economic and social developments and Socialist propaganda. The former is the more important, for the Socialist, unlike those Utopians who worshipped at the shrine of “reason”, knows that masses of men have never been moved to effect social changes through mere argument, however logical they may be, unless reinforced by interest, by the sting of outraged feeling. It is experience of the bitter fruits of capitalism that will have the sophistries of capitalist apologists and of imparting to the proletariat a frame of mind conducive to the acceptance of revolutionary ideal The real function of Socialist propaganda is to clarify and organise the vague anti-capitalist thoughts already present in the minds of discontented workers, by educating them to the true nature of capitalism and the means of their emancipation, thus giving to the working class an objective which social development demonstrates with ever increasing vividness to be both desirable and possible.

From an article "Socialism: Its Economic and Theoretical Basis’' by R. W. Housley, Socialist Standard, August 1918).

Background to the Vietnam Peace Talks (1968)

From the August 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

The peace negotiations, coming in the middle of hostilities without either side obtaining an overwhelming decision, will cause many people to ask if the Vietnam war has been worth fighting.

Let us look, therefore, through the ideological smokescreen that has been blown over the mass murder there and see what are the real interests involved.

The Vietnam war is an example of an established capitalist power being challenged by an up-and-coming one. America, having helped to smash Japan in the last World War, and being in control of South Korea and Taiwan, is the dominant power throughout the Pacific, but is being challenged by China.

That America can suddenly try to negotiate a peace underlines the conflicting interests that lie behind the American government. Robert Kennedy, in running for the Presidential candidature on a policy of peace in Vietnam, is indicative of such interests, which are further demonstrated by the rise of many stocks and shares on both the U.K. and American Stock Exchanges at the news of peace.

But opposing interests arc demonstrated by the losses on the Metal Exchange and Wool Market:

  Copper, the most strategic of the raw materials, fell sharply yesterday on the London Metal Exchange when news of the Hanoi peace talk moves reached the market.
   After a quiet morning, when the forward wirebars price had eased by £5, afternoon dealings saw the price “drop like a stone by £20 before anyone had a chance to open their mouth", according to one dealer.
   By the close, cash wirebars were £45 lower at £527.10s. and forward metal lost £38.10s. to £493 a ton.
   Stop-loss selling also pushed down the prices of the other base metals, but to a lesser extent. 

Japanese reactions.   Wool prices on the London terminal market were up to l.9d. a pound easier, a movement directly related to the fact that a large part of Japan’s economy is hinged to the American commitment in SE Asia —and to the fact that Japan takes around 30 per cent of the Australian wool clip.
   There is a fairly logical belief that Japan will be cutting its wool purchasing if peace is achieved in Vietnam. (Financial Times, 4/4/68).

Some of the American capitalists hope to profit from the extensive cash crops and the minerals resources from the mines — the coal, copper, tin, zinc, bauxite, manganese, phosphates and gold and precious stones. They would also like to retain Vietnam as a market for American goods. All this cannot be in the interests of the would-be rulers of Vietnam and one can understand that they win fight against this almost to their last worker.

Those who believe that the “free world” is concerned in fighting for lofty principles should read reports from Indonesian newspapers. Indonesia has been reluctant to join Western-backed military pacts in S.E. Asia. Djakarta newspapers are rather sceptical about calls for “unity to fight communism" in Vietnam. Gotand Rojong recently quoted a Republican member of the U.S. Congress, who alleged that during June last, nine British ships, one Italian and one Cypriot ship carried 76,000 tons of cargo, (including, he claimed, strategic goods) to Hanoi — more than was delivered by Russian ships in the same period. During the first six months of this year, he stated, the number of ships from the "free world" calling at North Vietnam ports had shot up to 39, compared with 20 in the previous six months. So much for capitalist principles!

Ho Chi Minh, the so-called communist leader of North Vietnam, takes great pains to mislead the workers under his control.

He holds himself out as being at heart in favour of the workers, but pleads that capitalism won’t let him do all he would like to do for them. That if only the workers would oust the American colonialists then everything would be all right.

Like their counterparts elsewhere in the capitalist world the rulers of both North and South Vietnam have managed, with the help of the profit system, to create scarcity in the midst of plenty. In Vietnam, of all places, the climate ensures that crops are lavish to an incredible extent. Even the fish thrive to such a fantastic degree that the facetious maintain that the sea surrounding Vietnam consists of 90 per cent fish and 10 per cent water. But the food ration for the North Vietnam troops is 1½lbs. rice a day and for the civilian poor, starvation is never far away. Ho proclaims that he is out to defeat capitalism and colonialism and that North Vietnam is a communist state run for the benefit of the workers, and has changed the name of the Party he leads from Vietminh (National Party) to Vietcong (Communist Party).

But some observers cannot detect any difference between the governments of North and South. A member of the Vatican delegation said that “all they need do is to change flags, and overnight. South Vietnam could be a communist country" (The Making of a Quagmire—David Halberstam).

Both North and South are police states with similar terrorist methods, a wages system, conscription, payment by result, an exploiting class and a working-class.

Russia, China and America have been competing with each other in trying to gain favour by supplying new industries to Vietnam. Of these the cement factories are directly useful in prosecuting the war and so are the roads and civil engineering works.

The country is being opened up and the mines developed, and, at the same time, is rapidly becoming modernised and mechanised. For years the workers engaged in the war have been operating up-to-date equipment, like their opposite members in the American forces. Even the agricultural workers in producing coffee, rubber and rice, are intimately bound up with international markets. They work under capitalist conditions and when the cash crops they produce cannot be sold on the world’s markets they are unemployed.

It is the battles that creates the sensational news coming from Vietnam and help to sell newspapers in the West. But, when peace is declared, and the dust of battle settles, it will be found that a great change has quietly been coming about and that Vietnam will have taken its place in the present day world of capitalism. But there will be another war continuing there — the class war. The world of capitalism is becoming one!

Wealth will be churned out and fortunes will be made. The war in Vietnam will have been worth fighting after all —but not for the workers.

Frank Offord

Get Rid of Wages! (1968)

From the August 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Over a hundred years ago, Karl Marx gave a talk to the general council of the International Working Men’s Association, a talk whose main point was to show that workers’ unions really could get wage rises — for already the silly idea was being put about that wage increases led to higher prices and therefore the workers didn’t gain. After proving his case up to the hilt, with his usual forceful logic, Marx naturally drew the conclusion that workers should fight for higher wages. But he added the following remarks, which deserve close attention:

  At the same time, and quite apart from the general servitude involved in the wages system, the working class ought not to exaggerate to themselves the ultimate working of these everyday struggles. They ought not to forget that they are fighting with effects, but not with the causes of those effects; that they are retarding the downward movement but not changing its direction; that they are applying palliatives, not curing the malady. They ought therefore not to be exclusively absorbed in these unavoidable guerrilla fights incessantly springing up from the never ceasing encroachments of capital or changes of the market. They ought to understand that, with all the miseries it imposes upon them, the present system simultaneously engenders the material conditions and the social forms necessary for an economical reconstruction of society. Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work'." they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wages system'.”

If that doesn’t startle you, then perhaps it should. After all there are dozens of “Marxists” [parties] about, but how many of them advocate the abolition of wages? Take the British “Communist” Party, for example, which is very well-known as a Marxist Party. In vain will you scour its programme, The British Road To Socialism, for the faintest hint of the abolition of the wages system — though it reeks of the conservative motto, “A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work.” Look through every item of the CPGB's current propaganda material: it is as bare as Mother Hubbard’s cupboard of even the skeleton of Marx’s “revolutionary watchword.”

What about the “Socialist” Labour League then? They’re always accusing the CP of “betraying Marxism” aren’t they? Surely their material is full of revolutionary watchwords? No, not a jot. We could ramble through a lengthy list of so-called Marxist groups in this way; but already you're beginning to lose patience. How ridiculous, really, to take a paragraph out of Marx and use it as a touchstone of the correctness of political parties a century later!

But Marx was not just affected by the heat on that June day in 1865. The abolition of wages used to be taken for granted as the chief aim of nearly everyone who claimed to be socialist. “On this point all Socialists agree,” ran the Manifesto of English Socialists of 1893. “Our aim, one and all, is to obtain for the whole community complete ownership and control of the means of transport, the means of manufacture, the mines and the land. Thus we look to put an end for ever to the wages system, to sweep away all distinctions of class, and eventually to establish national and international communism on a sound basis.”

Frederick Engels in 1881 wrote of the workers’ day-to- day struggle for higher wages: “It is a vicious circle from which there is no issue. The working class remains what our Chartist forefathers were not afraid to call it, a class of wages slaves. Is this to be the final result of all this labour, self-sacrifice and suffering? Is this to remain for ever the highest aim of British workmen? Or is the working class of this country at last to attempt breaking through this vicious circle, and to find an issue out of it in a movement for the ABOLITION OF THE WAGES SYSTEM ALTOGETHER?” (Engels' capitals.) Notice that neither this passage nor the one from Marx were passing brainwaves related to a misty, distant future. They were both addressed urgently and directly to the workers.

Why did Marx and Engels insist on the abolition of wages? They saw that European private property society had gone through phases: chattel slavery, feudalism, and capitalism or wage-slavery. Marx pointed out that capitalism was the only system in which the vast majority of wealth took the form of commodities — articles and services produced primarily for exchange rather than for use. He saw the abolition of capitalism as the abolition of commodity production, and thus the end of money, which only exists to facilitate commodity exchange. (The other form of commodity exchange is barter: socialism will have neither barter nor buying and selling). Marxists claim that capitalism has developed science, technology and automation to such a degree that everything we need could be provided free of charge. The catch is that capitalism itself causes an artificial and unnecessary scarcity, because it is so wasteful and destructive. Things are made for profit instead of for people’s use and enjoyment.

Capitalism is, among other things, a system for rationing out scarcity. But we have reached a stage where the system for rationing scarcity itself keeps the scarcity in existence. Everywhere the forces of production are straining at the leash to flood the world with abundance — but everywhere the wages-profits system restricts, wastes and destroys, prevents this potential from being realised.

In Socialism: Utopian And Scientific Engels stated: “The possibility of securing for every member of society, by means of socialised production, an existence not only fully sufficient materially, and becoming day by day more full, but an existence guaranteeing to all the free development and exercise of their physical and mental faculties — this possibility is now for the first time here, but it is here.”

It is true that since Engels wrote there has been a huge increase in world population. It is also true that much of the easily-available mineral wealth has been consumed. It is further regrettably true that capitalism, in its beserk scramble for profits, has damaged our ecology through such abuses as chemical pollution and irresponsible treatment of the soil leading to erosion. Some of the ill effects of this insane society will take decades to cure. Some of them, alas, can never be cured. The annual extinction of scores of species of animals, plants and birds is a tiny enough matter compared with war on poverty, but our heirs, the people living in Socialism, will no doubt find time to regret such permanent scars on their beautiful planet.

However, alongside the population explosion and the Frankenstein ecology, we must put the rapid advance of science, the potential of computers and robots, the development of new sources of power and materials, and staggering new productive processes (most of the patents for which are snapped up by the big monopolies so that no one can use them).

There could easily be more than enough to go round. There is no need for scarcity. There is thus no need for a money system of allocation. Some folk, forgetting about the threat of nuclear war and imagining that we have all the time in the world, say: “True, we have the potential for abundance, but let’s delay establishing Socialism until we have actual abundance.” But capitalism, which long ago created the potential, will never actually deliver the goods.

What happened to Marxism ?

You miss the whole point of Marx's great work Capital, if you don’t see why he defined “a commodity” on the first page. Capital does not simply describe a certain system of society; it proves that all the main features of that society (things like slumps and unemployment) are necessary consequences of mass commodity production. It is therefore impossible to get rid of them without getting rid of commodity production, in other words getting rid of wages, profits and money.

So we return to the question: where did it all disappear to, this talk about abolishing wages? Did somebody come along and prove Marx wrong, so that socialists started aiming for something different? No, nobody has refuted Marx. And neither did the “Communists” and left-wingers come out and say: “We have broken with Marx. We are now anti-Marxist.” It all happened in a much more subtle, slow and underhand way. Nonetheless, though these people did not say “We have broken with Marx” in words, they have certainly said it in deeds. With every drop of workers’ blood they have shed by their support for the monstrous state capitalist tyrannies in Russia, China and Cuba, every compromise they have engineered with backward forces like patriotism and religion, with every oily-tongued betrayal, they have shouted: “We are anti-Marxist.”

The substitution of means for ends

But how did it happen? Even given careerism, compromise and deceit, how could so many people — some of them dedicated and sincere, let’s face it — make such a momentous about-turn within a few years, and in such a way that many of them hardly realised they had done it? The main outlines of the process are amazingly similar in most cases.

Consider the man who wants the abolition of the wages system, the man who sees that there is no other solution to the problems of the working class. What is he to do? He is in an awkward position, because he soon discovers that the great majority of the working class do not want, and never have wanted, the abolition of the wages system. So there are two alternatives: either a minority can bring about this social revolution, or the majority must be convinced. Of course it is manifestly the case that the majority must be convinced, but that does not end the matter.

The task of trying to convince so many people, even though social evolution is on his side, is a daunting one. Easily scared by this prospect, and maybe wanting a quick career in politics, our man eagerly snatches at another scheme. Why not, he reasons, put forward a less frightening demand than the abolition of the wages system altogether? And why not, having got a big following behind that other demand, then lead this following in the direction of a real socialist revolution, the abolition of wages? This plan has every advantage on the personal level. He can think of himself as a real pioneering socialist, but never actually talk about Socialism, and therefore never suffer the scorn of unimaginative nitwits. He can even make a virtue out of expediency and erects a whole glorious mythology of “vanguardism,” “boring from within,” “transitional demands” and so on. There is just one snag. It is quite impossible to get Socialism this way.

If you advocate some measure, it does not matter what obscure and ingenious implications you may privately see in it: the followers you attract will not see them. You are forced to argue that this measure can solve the basic problem—which is an argument against Socialism. As your movement gets bigger, you find it becomes a straightforward reformist movement for the defence of capitalism. Nothing else could have happened. Your movement may actually capture political power, and at this juncture you turn to the minority who are still advocating Socialism, and you say to them: “Look where we’re heading! Why are you wasting your time in the wilderness?” And when your government, as it inevitably must, attacks the workers you may even have the impudence to say to that minority: “This would never have happened if we’d had more people like you on our side!” In your very success you have failed utterly. At this point you start looking around for a scapegoat, and who knows what trouble you will cause now? You may, for instance, come to the farcical conclusion that the way you took power was the culprit, that there is something intensely corroding and demoralising about parliament, that armed insurrection is the answer.

In this way, by irresponsibly pretending that the vote doesn’t count, you help to pave the way for a new Hitler. Thus the self-styled followers of the ultra-democrat Marx are seen disparaging even the measure of democracy the workers have won within capitalism. Although (and perhaps., more fortunately), you may just get tired, and forget even the word “Socialism”.

Some of the people who took the above road used nationalisation (state capitalism) as their “immediate demand.” (Some of them thought that nationalisation was an actual, material stage on the way to Socialism, but that is simply incompetent economics). It is rather comical, tragicomical of course, to look back on their history and see how even the original “immediate demands” were thought so wild that even milder “immediate demands” had to be put in their place. Thus, it was argued that total nationalisation would lead to Socialism, then that partial nationalisation would lead to total nationalisation, eventually that the mere existence of the government with the right tag (even though this party ruled no differently to its rivals) would do the trick. A further ironic twist is that as this retreat took place, each stage along the road was itself christened “socialism.” And then along came a host of modifiers and tinkerers with all sorts of prescriptions for running the same reformist romance along slightly different lines. Thus we get, for example, laugh-lines like “Socialism Is Nationalisation Plus Workers’ Control” (title of an article by S. Newens in Socialist Review, February 1957).

When will they learn?

That muddled assortment of movements and groups which use socialist-sounding phrases but are opposed to Socialism is sometimes loosely named “the Left Wing.” Occasionally, in all this barren confusion, like tiny shooting stars in a black sky, we see a brief mention of the need to abolish wage-slavery. In a recent essay (in The Incompatibles, Penguin) Ken Coates makes such a mention, and in fact builds up a good case against capitalism, even quoting Marx’s revolutionary watchword. But is he on the right track? Not on your life. He is merely issuing a reminder.

Coates argues that workers in general respect “fairness,” an attitude which is used to support capitalism. He wrote: “Between the idea of a fair day’s pay and the goal of the abolition of the wages system, it is clearly necessary to place a third demand.” This third demand, he believes, should be acceptable in terms of fairness, but should lead to an understanding of Socialism. (Incidentally, someone entirely ignorant of history might assume from Mr. Coates' essay that he was proposing a totally novel strategy. In fact, of course, it is the same old hat of so-called “revolutionary reforms” which has been tried countless times, has always failed, and always will).

Coates seems to realise that the reason workers accept capitalist values is because of the weight of indoctrination to which they are subjected. In other words the problem is NOT that workers are either naturally or by conditioning incapable of understanding Socialism, but rather that they hardly ever hear about it and don’t take it seriously when they do. The reasons for this are plain — the chief one being the comparatively insignificant size of the propaganda for abolishing the wages system. The prognosis is obvious: join the small but growing movement which is uncompromisingly putting the case for Socialism. Coates' strategy, though well-meant, has the effect of reinforcing the capitalist values of fake fair play.

Having taken a clear stand for the abolition of the wages system we must of course use the sort of psychological analysis indicated by Coates to inform our educational tactics. But it is a mistake to suppose that “fairness" is a concept of no use to socialists. It is hazy to be sure, but it can be used to criticise the very capitalist society which relies upon it. Any worker can quite clearly understand, when he is told that 90 per cent of the wealth is owned by ten per cent of the population, that this is hardly fair. The knowledge of economics needed to grasp the point that it is impossible for wages ever to be fixed by merit (even though that’s not what we want) is very slight. These elementary criticisms of the capitalist system are not enough. They must be followed up by the theory of surplus-value, which, again, anybody can understand. But the deeply-entrenched concept of fairness does not in itself put a vast gulf between workers' minds and understanding of revolution.

People never form their attitudes entirely by logically processing the information they get. They do this to an important extent, but they also look particularly for logical arguments in favour of what they already want to believe. So let us repeat: all the essentials of the case again capitalism, and the case for abolishing the wages system, can be readily grasped by any worker. It is not a problem of people’s mental ability which we socialists face: it is a problem of the tremendous continuous pressure of reformist conditioning.

A big obstacle is put in our way by precisely those left-wingers who have prostituted socialist phrases. Go up to any worker and tell him you want Socialism: what is the result? You may spend a couple of hours explaining that Socialism is not slave camps in Siberia, nor the Labour government, nor “workers’ control.” After that, if he has the patience, you can start talking about Socialism.

This is not his fault. And it is not our choice. We don't relish spending our time debunking the Labour and “Communist" parties. We have a straight case to put, which no one else is putting: that in a world of plenty there is poverty, that a society which puts ironmongery on the Moon cannot house people decently, that workers are debased and degraded in useless toil, that our species is threatened with extermination because of capitalist economic conflict — and that all this is absolutely unnecessary for a single day longer.

A world social democracy without frontiers, in which work will be voluntary and enjoyable, in which every member of our society will have equal access to all goods and services, in which poverty and war will not exist — this free society is technically feasible now, and can be established as soon as the majority of people understand and desire it.

The history of the last hundred years has proved time and time again: reformist programmes do not lead the working class to Socialism. They obscure the issue. What is needed is a clear case, uncluttered and uncompromised, for the abolition of wages. Please help us to put it.

Steele.

Capitalism in Kenya (1968)

Book Review from the August 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Not Yet Uhuru, by Oginga Odinga. Heinman Educational Books. 35s.

The people of Kenya have had the misfortune, reserved for colonial peoples, of experiencing two sorts of capitalism. One at second hand through colonial occupation, and the other, a more modern version, exploitation by capitalists of local origin and by the economic interests of the ‘advanced' countries.

Today, control of the resources of Kenya is in the hands of large international firms and of the Kenya government. The local would-be capitalists and bureaucrats have certainly derived much benefit from independence, but the vast majority of the people of Kenya, who were at one time led to expect a post-independence egalitarian Utopia, have been disappointed.

In this autobiography we learn well how the “benefits” of capitalism were first introduced to Kenya. There is an interesting survey of early land-appropriation by the British authorities and of the break-up of the tribal system through forced wage- labour. Odinga is particularly good in his account of the Mau Mau uprising and the reasons for it. Once the rebellion presented a real threat to British authority in Kenya, and thus to British economic interests, ruthless measures were taken. All civil liberties were suppressed—an African could be arrested in the street at any time. All Kikuyu (the main tribe concerned in the rebellion) were forced either to collaborate with the authorities or to join the Mau Mau bands as a result of persecution. British capitalism wanted to hold on to Kenya so as to have an assured and cheap supply of raw materials and a market monopoly.

Today, some four-and-a-half years after independence, things have not changed much. The people of Kenya are now exploited not only by businessmen with white skins, but also by civil servants and politicians who have somehow succeeded in securing company directorships and land. Little free expression of opposition to the government is allowed. The only consolation that the people may draw is perhaps in seeing men with skin the same colour as theirs replacing white colonists at the wheels of large motor-cars manufactured in West Germany.

Odinga is allowed, probably by virtue of his popularity (he was at one time Vice-President of the republic and Kenyatta's right-hand man) to lead a tiny opposition of nine in parliament. His party is, however, allowed few extra-parliamentary ‘privileges’ such as the holding of public meetings or recruiting campaigns.

This autobiography, as well as being a good document of British colonial history, is worthwhile reading because part at least of Odinga's conclusion is acceptable. Odinga himself left high state office for the political wilderness because he saw that national independence does not in itself end servitude for the mass of the people. He also recognises the oligarchic character of the present Kenyan government. To solve these problems, however, he presents a creed which he calls “African Socialism". The use of the word “Socialism" in independent Africa is very common but worth little. It is used, for instance, by both government and opposition in Kenya. The general purpose of this is clear: to give obviously oligarchic governments a facade of popular support and concern for justice and equality.

Odinga’s “African Socialism" would take the form of “a Kenya government backed by popular enthusiasm and national mobilisation". We suggest to the people of Kenya, and indeed to the people of the world, that the only way they will solve their problems will be by overthrowing capitalism which deprives and degrades them. This can only be done, not on a national scale, but by an internationally united working class who reject all leaders and governments.

Not Yet Uhuru (freedom) is the personal and political testament of a sincere, but unfortunately misguided, political figure. It is well worth reading for the insights which it offers into the lot of the people of Kenya.

Amit Pandya

The Report on Trade Unions (1968)

From the August 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

In theory Royal Commissions are set up so that a government, before introducing legislation to deal with some complex problem, can have the advice of an independent body of people who have first collected and then studied all the relevant information. The initiative rests with the government since they lay down the terms of reference, appoint the members, and can please themselves whether they accept or reject the recommendations: though if a Royal Commission makes a unanimous report it is a little difficult for the government to disregard it entirely.

In practice Commissions are sometimes appointed simply as a device to postpone reaching a decision until what may seem to the government to be a more opportune moment. The Donovan Commission on Trade Unions and Employers’ associations appears to fall into this category and the fact that six out of the twelve members, including the Chairman, Lord Donovan, express doubts and reservations about the main body of their own recommendations will enable the government to put a good face on selecting whatever parts it wants to take notice of. It may reasonably be supposed that the government had some such outcome in mind when it appointed to the Commission members whose divergent views were well known beforehand.

The reception of the Report has been equally divergent; from the Times “Few can have expected . . . that Lord Donovan and his colleagues would achieve so much”; to the Economist "A report to forget—its proposals are actively harmful”. If what the Wilson government chiefly wanted was delay, the Commission was a great success —it took over three years to report.

Its main conclusions are concerned with what it describes as the two parallel systems of industrial relations — the system of national negotiations and agreements entered into by trade unions and employers associations on the one side, and on the other, the system of local negotiations through shop stewards at the factory and workshop level. The Commission considers that with near-full employment the centre of gravity has shifted to the local agreements and that these should now largely replace the remote and ineffectual national agreements, leaving to them a much restricted role, largely that of laying down guide lines for the local negotiators.

This part of the report has received fairly widespread approval but trade unionists who remember the years of bitter struggle to achieve national agreements for the protection of their members in less well organised firms and districts may find the change a mixed blessing in face of company decisions to shift factories away from “high wage" to “low wage” areas.

The Report anticipates that the changeover will help to solve the employers’ problem of having to deal with “unofficial strikes" (95 per cent of all strikes are “unofficial”). It explains that lightning unofficial strikes can be more damaging to the employer than an official strike because they are unpredictable and have the effect therefore that they prevent managements from making plans with any confidence of being able to implement them quickly, or at all.

The Report lays much blame on company managements for this situation and expects them to bring about the desired change. They are required to create comprehensive bargaining machinery at company or factory level, conclude agreements on the handling of redundancy, ensure regular joint discussion of safety measures and make agreements regulating the position of shop stewards.

Legislation is recommended to establish a permanent Industrial Relations Commission to advise the Department of Employment and Productivity (the new name of the Ministry of Labour) on the reform of industrial relations and to investigate and report on problems arising, but without any power to compel.

The local agreements will have to be registered with the Department, at first by large firms, but eventually by all firms. Employers are asked to encourage workers to join trade unions, unions are encouraged to amalgamate and to reform their organisation and rules.

The existing industrial tribunals set up under the Industrial Training Act 1964 which also deals with disputes about redundancy payments and contracts of employment would be renamed “labour tribunals” and would have their powers enlarged to cover all disputes between employer and worker about contracts of employment, etc., including a new statutory protection against “unfair dismissal”. These tribunals would also deal with employers' claims for damages for breach of contract.

When the Royal Commission was set up there were those who feared drastic changes in trade union law, measures to cut down the activities of shop stewards and penalties against unofficial strikers. The Report contains hardly anything to confirm the fears—hence the anger and disappointment of the Economist (also of the Sunday Times and Financial Times).

The Economist (15 June) starts off with the following lament:

  The report of Lord Donovan’s royal commission on trade unions and employers' associations represents the high water mark of the particular sort of British indecisiveness which has done most to damage the country in this third quarter of the twentieth century. After three years' study, the commission reports that Britain’s system of industrial relations is in a uniquely horrible mess, but that it is for boards of directors of individual companies to bring about a change: except that it oddly believes directors would be helped to do so by a requirement that all firms with more than 5,000 employees (and, eventually, smaller firms) should register every factory agreement they make with trade unions, or else an explanation why they have made no such agreements, for vague vetting by a body of bureaucrats in a new Industrial Relations Commission, which would not, however, have any executive powers.
  It is not a caricature to say that the establishment of this vacuous research body is the main government action definitely recommended in the general body of the report, although half of the 12 signatories then express significant dissatisfaction with what they have just unanimously signed.

The Economist is particularly irate over the Commission's lack of unanimity about withdrawing from unregistered or deregistered bodies (all unions would in future be registered) the protection which the 1906 Act gives against suits for damages when strikes take place without due notice.

The majority of the Commission’s members want this immunity to continue for registered unions but not for unregistered bodies, but Mr. Woodcock, General Secretary of the TUC, and four other members of the Commission strongly dissented and the Economist fears that the Government will follow the Woodcock line.

The Government did not immediately declare what action they proposed to take on any of the Commission’s recommendations though Mrs. Castle promised quick consideration and an early announcement. The Economist, which wants strong action to curb the unofficial strikes and to remove the immunity now possessed by trade unions under the law, expects nothing to its liking, and is resigned to seeing “the horrible mess” continue—but not indefinitely. Counting on a Conservative Government after the next General Election it looks forward to the reopening of the issue. “The practical result is that the real reform to trade union legislation is now likely to have to be left to the next Conservative government and will probably have to be fought through the next Parliament as a partisan measure against fierce opposition from a Labour Party which will say that a Royal Commission intimated that reform was wrong”.

When the Royal Commission was set up it was given the task of considering the role of trade unions and employers’ associations “in promoting the interests of their members”. Had there been any socialists on the Commission they would have pointed out that the interest of the workers is not to co-operate with their exploiters, the capitalists, but to replace capitalism by Socialism, a social system in which employers and employed, the wages system and trade unions alike would have no place.

Edgar Hardcastle

A Marxist Text Book (1968)

Book Review from the August 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Theoretical System of Karl Marx, by Louis Boudin. (Monthly Review Press. 50s.)

It is welcome news that Louis B. Boudin’s book has been republished after being out of print for many years.

The new edition is identical with that published by Charles H. Kerr of Chicago in 1918, based on a series of articles written by Boudin for the International Socialist Review in 1905 and 1906.

In spite of the particular purpose for which it was originally written, in spite of the lapse of time, the intervening wars and revolutions, and the fact that Marx’s writings are now more readily available in the English-speaking world it is still an excellent introduction to the study of Marxism.

In his preface Boudin explained that he started with the intention of giving an account of the movement to revise Marxism, conducted by Bernstein and other Social Democrats in the 1890’s, but found this impossible except at great length because so much of the background was unfamiliar to English readers. He decided instead to provide “an exposition of the teachings of Marx”; not a text-book or detailed statement of economic theory, “but rather an outline of the Marxian system of thought”, with special emphasis on the relation of the different parts to each other and the unity of the whole.

He succeeded admirably, and though the names of the critics of Marx with whom he dealt are now of less interest, many of the points he made are as useful today as they were then.

Of course not all of his views have stood the test of time. He was for example over-influenced by the phase capitalism was going through in the early years of the century and appears to have accepted that the trend towards heavier unemployment was bound to continue.

In Chapter VI Boudin dealt at length with the way in which, consistently with the Marxian theory of value and surplus value, some commodities sell above and other below their value, and all capitals whether in the sphere of production or of circulation tend to receive the average rate of profit. Having explained how each capital shares in the surplus value produced in the whole of society and does not just receive surplus value produced by the workers in the particular firm, Boudin even anticipated by half a century the seemingly difficult poser presented by the automationist dream of a workerless factory. He showed that the individual capitalists can receive profit “notwithstanding the fact that their workingmen created no surplus value whatever or that they employed no working-men at all”.

Writing at the time he did, Boudin had no occasion to deal with the problem of a seizure of power (as in Russia in 1917) allegedly with the object of imposing Socialism on a population not ready for it. We can however read what he had to say about the conditions necessary for Socialism, the vital role of the proletariat and the anti-socialist outlook of the peasantry. It is therefore interesting to read what he said years later in May 1921, in a lecture to the New York Socialist Education Society:

One does not look to a poorhouse for Socialism and it is my belief that when a revolution has occurred in a backward country where the productivity of labour is low, either one of two things must happen; either the productivity of labour must be developed to a point where the prerequisites of Socialism, that is that the workers have sufficient leisure to educate themselves to a point where they are fully capable of administering their own affairs, are in existence, or else classes will appear . . . Private property is not abolished in Russia, and if Lenin has said so then he is mistaken and I must disagree, but what I have read of Lenin’s says just the contrary.

Edgar Hardcastle

The Review Column: Poor People's March (1968)

The Review Column from the August 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Poor People’s March

Typical of so much of the work of the protest movements in America, the Poor People’s March and the setting up of Resurrection City in Washington was a brilliant piece of advertising.

There is no doubt that America has a vast population of desperately poor and that the colour of a person’s skin often determines how desperate his poverty.

Thus a Negro is much more likely to be unemployed, to have his children in their beds bitten by rats, than is a white man. A Puerto Rican is more likely to suffer from malnutrition, to be unemployed, than is a white American.

These are the conditions the marchers were protesting against and as far as that goes there can only be sympathy for them. It would be a sorry day if slum dwellers and the unemployed accepted their lot without protest.

But how constructive are the demonstrations? Apart from sects like Black Power, most of the Negro movement in America supports one of the two big parties, usually the Democrats. That is why many Negroes were crushed by the assassination of Robert Kennedy; they were convinced that with him as President a lot of their problems would be solved.

Many of them—like the Rev. Ralph Abernathy—are Christians who, whatever efforts they devote to improving this life, are convinced that the real reward for all good men will come in the hereafter. 

What this means is that much of the Negro movement accepts the capitalist system which produces their problems along with the religious delusions which are aimed at anaesthetising them to its effects.

The permanent and effective solution to poverty and to racism is to be found in a new society. That requires a more fundamental questioning of the politics and morals of capitalism than the Poverty Marchers are prepared to undertake.

Trudeau: Canada’s Kennedy

The election of Pierre Elliot Trudeau, the new Canadian Prime Minister, shows that the Kennedy myth extends beyond the borders of the Untied States.

Trudeau got a lot of publicity, and support, with his image of the young, modern, unstuffy leader. He wears informal clothes, has his hair cut in the right style, drives a fast sports car. Even a Kennedy was never as way, way out as this.

The new Canadian Premier also impressed people with his uncompromising stand against the Quebec separatists—a stand which, because of the separatists’ tendency to violent demonstrations, put him in some physical danger.

In fact, Trudeau’s stand was not so much courageous as unavoidable. He simply could not run away from the separatists; to have done so could very well have cost him the overwhelming victory which he eventually won.

Now he has to live up to his image. A start has been made with a young Government and with promises to cut through a lot of the procedure which previous governments have followed.

The problem of Quebec nationalism is only one which Trudeau will face. The Canadian workers who voted for him will now be waiting for him to solve the country’s economic ills and to bring in the golden age of prosperity which his election image promised.

But Trudeau, like all other capitalist politicians, has not revealed the magical powers which would be needed to tame capitalism. Since he is only human it can confidently be said that he will fail like the rest—for example like Kennedy with whom he is compared.

Thus another political reputation will be damaged, another shining image tarnished, another working class hope disappointed. Such disillusionment are so common for the working class that it is fair to wonder, when will they ever learn?

Rail Go Slow

Strikes and go-slows are an established part of British Rail life—a comment on the wages, conditions and prospects of a job on the railways.

Commuters who as a result every so often wait for trains which do not arrive, or who when they are lucky travel to work in carriages packed to suffocation, cannot be expected to welcome militant action by the railwaymen. But if they have time and patience, they should consider one or two facts.

The railwaymen are only struggling to improve conditions of employment which are abysmally low. As the recent go slow showed, the railways need an enormous amount of overtime for their efficient running—and the workers also depend on the overtime to make up their wages.

The commuters are also engaged in this struggle, although many of them may not do so in an organised way and would not dream of coming out on strike. This does not alter the fact that, as both commuters and railwaymen are after the same thing, their interests must be the same.

The chaos caused by the work to rule also showed up who are the productive people in society. No comparable confusion would be caused by the capitalist class ceasing to fulfil their function as parasites and exploiters. Society can do without them but it cannot do without productive work.

This point has been made before, when railwaymen or dockers or factory workers have downed tools. It was shown up recently in New York, when the dustmen went on strike.

Outraged commuters are fond of adopting a moral attitude. So what about the morals of a situation in which the people who are important to society can barely get a living?

Is the Labour Government Crumbling Away? (1968)

From the August 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Like rotten timber, the Labour government is crumbling before our eyes. The departure of Ray Gunter, which was only the latest evidence of decay, had a significance all of its own. Gunter has never been famous for being a rebel; loyalty has always been his line—loyalty through thick and thin, through incomes policy and Vietnam, through prescription charges and unemployment. There must have been extremely powerful pressure upon him to bring about his change of role and so suddenly lose his desire to be a member of Wilson's government. Of course Gunter may have been disappointed at the recent promotion of Barbara Castle over his head; but it is reasonable to think that, had the government been in better shape, he would have managed to swallow his pique. What probably made up his mind was Labour's poor showing at the polls, and the likelihood that they will be heavily defeated if they fight the next election under Wilson.

Gunter has every reason to be worried—and, if the by-elections are anything to go by, so have the majority of Labour M.P.s. On current form, there are hardly fifty seats Labour could expect to hang on to if there were a general election to-morrow. Such have been their humiliations, as one stronghold after another has fallen, that they actually welcomed the Nelson and Colne defeat with relief because the swing against them there was only around eleven per cent. The voters, it is clear, are not grateful for the age of technological capitalism which Wilson promised to bring in.

Meanwhile, the problem the government have pledged again and again to solve refuses stubbornly to go away. When they came into power in 1964, Labour made a big thing of the deficit in the British balance of payments; they were quite sure that this was the basic cause of many of our troubles and that when they had got the balance into surplus we would all feel terrific benefits. This was, of course, a lie but the millions of workers who have always taken as one of their first concerns the fortunes of the British capitalist class were duly impressed. They hopefully accepted Labour's promise to protect and enhance those fortunes, under the delusion that they would thus do themselves a bit of good.

Callaghan first of all promised that he would get a surplus in 1966. But the great day when the Chancellor was to announce the end of the payments deficit came and went and the deficit was still there. This, said the government, was only a postponement—one or two other difficulties had intervened but everything would be alright by 1967. By 1967 the date of arrival at the Promised Land had become 1968. Now it is 1969, or 1970, or never. The latest trade figures give the government no encouragement. The deficit persists which means that, leave alone establishing Socialism, the Labour Party cannot even master the anarchies of the capitalist system they are trying to organise.

If, by some near-miracle, the balance of payments problem was solved the government would lose one of the arguments they have used to justify another of their unpopular policies—the wage freeze. Ever since the prices and incomes policy was born we have been ceaselessly lectured by Labour politicians on the iniquity of higher wages because, they said, these have a directly adverse effect on the British balance of payments. (Gunter was always particularly keen and verbose on this point.)

This was another lie from the Labour government but any effect it may have had is clearly wearing off. The railwaymen having called off their strike in 1966 just in time for Wilson to call the general election, find that the promises which were used to persuade them to stay at work have not been kept; they have, in fact, got nowhere and they have protested. The engineers have already had a token strike in support of a pay claim and others may follow. BOAC's pilots have made their famous contribution to trade union history. From many quarters, the incomes policy is under fire but so far there has been no talk of any unionists being prosecuted for defying the Prices and Incomes Act which the Labour government introduced with the object of holding wages down.

The plain fact is that this government is now branded as a failure. Wilson, once the political master, is now discredited and exposed as a trickster. (The Tories are trying to cash in on this with massive technicolour posters of Ted Heath looking like an overgrown choirboy, eyes gazing out frank and level, with the slogan "Edward Heath—Man of Integrity." Get it?) It is not so long ago that Wilson had the ear of a national audience. Yet when, in the middle of the uproar over Enoch Powell, he tried to get into the act by announcing that he would shortly make a "major" statement on racialism there was barely a flicker of interest. It was no different when the statement came out; it was received in apathy. Nobody wants to listen to Wilson any more.

But the Prime Minister, famous for his strong nerve, is hanging on, presumably hoping that something will turn up. He claims that his policies are succeeding; in the House of Commons on July 2 he was talking about ". . . new and spectacular evidence from all over the country showing the great robust strength of British industries"—a statement very 4 much in the style of the war communiques in Orwell's 1984. Wilson can try occasional gimmicks, like restricting the powers of the House of Lords as a punishment for their naughty rebellion over Rhodesian sanctions. This might just have started a modern Peers versus People battle, which would have been a convenient diversion from all those embarrassing and persistent discussions of Labour’s record.

One idea the government have decided to try is a "mid term manifesto”, which will come out just before the Labour Party conference in the Autumn, in which they will admit to having made mistakes but plead to be on the right road and to deserve another chance. (This manifesto is largely the brain child of Anthony Wedgwood Benn, who is where he is only because the Macmillan government pushed through an Act which enables the renunciation of peerages. As a result we got Douglas-Home as Prime Minister and such as Quintin Hogg and Wedgwood Benn in the Commons—which seems a good argument against reforming the House of Lords.)

There is no reason to think that a mid term confession will be any more successful than any of the other ruses the government have tried. Wilson must be one of the most precarious Premiers ever. There are continual stories in the press of plots to unseat him. Not only Cecil King thinks he should go — so do the Observer and the Times and the Economist, to name only three of the organs of responsible capitalist opinion and each of them has been helpful enough to suggest a way in which his party can be rid of him. Several names have been put forward for the succession and among them, interestingly enough, is that of Barbara Castle. Imagine an election which might result in the first woman Prime Minister of Great Britain! What a super gimmick that would be! What a thick smokescreen would be ejected over Labour’s history, as the battles of the Suffragettes were fought all over again! It would certainly be overlooked, that the sex of capitalism's leaders is unimportant; that there is nothing in Castle's record, nor in that of any other woman Minister, to encourage the idea that women are any better able to solve capitalism’s problems than are men, or that they run the system any differently or more humanely than men.

But all that, if anywhere, is in the future; for the moment we are left with Ray Gunter, who could not be mistaken for a woman and who has never pretended to be a humane administrator of capitalism. One of the first things Gunter did after his resignation was to suggest that the Labour Party needs a new leader. He wants, he said, to " . . . sit back and think about the terrible danger into which this great movement is getting”, by which he probably means the chances of electoral annihilation, because a sense of danger seems to have taken hold of Gunter only after all those by elections. The other reasons he gave for his resignation—the Cabinet being “overweighted with intellectuals”, the alienation of the ordinary working man from the Labour Party—are not new to the Wilson government and they applied to the Attlee government. But Attlee’s hold on the Premiership was never insecure for the simple reason that his party held on to their votes and their seats.

One thing which can be guaranteed wonderfully to concentrate the minds of politicians is the prospect of being rejected by the voters. The Labour Party, never let it be forgotten, have always claimed that the secret of success was to get into power, on no matter what programme, and then think about reforming capitalism and even introducing Socialism—or rather what some of them think of as Socialism. The result of this theory can be seen at Westminster now—a party with a single-minded obsession with power, entirely without interest in, or indeed knowledge of, Socialism and prepared to try almost any dirty and cynical trick to stay in power. Thus we have the nauseating spectacle of Labour M.P.s hanging together in a unity cemented by their own fear of electoral slaughter, keeping in office the man they know is a liability because at the first sign of revolt from them he will threaten to call the election which would consign most of them to oblivion.

What this amounts to is that the Labour government is being kept in power by its own unpopularity, because it dare not face an election. This is an interesting situation for a party which, when it suits it, condemns the House of Lords as unrepresentative. It is an interesting situation for a party which has claimed to be democratic and to be based upon principle. And it is an impossible situation for a party which once said that they would bring in Socialism. Let us at least hope that, when the Labour government have finally crumbled away, we shall hear no more of that particular piece of monumental nonsense.

Ivan