Profit the goal (1985)

From the August 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

From the Report, published on 6 July, of the Special Commission set up by the Belgian Parliament to investigate the incidents that led to the deaths of 38 football supporters at the European Cup final at the Heysel Stadium on 29 May:

Further, the immediate cause of these incidents is to be found in the fact that English and Italian supporters were side by side in blocs X, Y and Z, which was impossible to foresee given that bloc Z was reserved for Belgians. 

The Belgian Football Union and the UEFA seemed to have been motivated more by preoccupations of a lucrative and commercial nature than by their duty to ensure the safety of spectators. 

Ticket sales, as it emerges from many statements and in particular that of Mr Roosens, were completely uncontrolled. A large number of tickets allowing entry to the Z zone (a neutral zone where under no circumstances should there have been Italian supporters) were sold to Italians. 

The sale of tickets at the Heysel Stadium (where in theory only 5 tickets could be sold per person) was organised in such a way that anyone - including Italians — could without problem buy tickets for the Z bloc. This went against not only the UEFA directives but also against the measures decided before the match. Such a procedure necessarily led to a black market.

Blogger's Note:
See also the article, 'Putting the boot in', from the same issue of the Socialist Standard.

Hendrik de Man (1967)

Book Review from the April 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Beyond Marxism – The Faith and Works of Hendrik de Man’, by Peter Dodge. Martins Nijhoff (The Hague). 29.70 Guilders (about 56/-)

The American author of this book, now Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of New Hampshire, believes that de Man’s once considerable reputation in the Belgian, German and other Labour Party and trade union movements, has been undeservedly obscured by the odium which fell on him during and after the last war. It is Peter Dodge’s hope to revive interest in what he regards as De Man’s important contribution to Socialist thought.

It is difficult now to recall the standing De Man had in the nineteen thirties, even in certain circles in Britain, where he was much less well known than on the Continent. When he published his Psychology of Socialism, acclaimed by Hermann Keyserling as “the most significant work in socialist world literature since Marx’s Capital,” it received various degrees of praise in the Manchester Guardian, the New Statesman, the ILP New Leader and from Alexander Gray in the Economic Journal (September 1929).

Of course, the fact that De Man was criticising what was popularly regarded as Marxism and proclaiming himself a reformist no doubt helps to explain the reception the book had among the reformists, who were gratified to find one who had called himself a Marxist declaring that “Vulgar Marxism is a living error; pure Marxism is a dead truth”.

Henri de Man (Hendrik is the Flemish form) was born in a well-to-do family in Antwerp in 1885. As a youngster he was (like William Morris, who had some influence on his views) shocked by the ugliness and callousness of capitalism and by the indifference of money-making capitalists to the architectural and artistic works of the Middle Ages. Like Morris, he saw that the life of the workers was not only poverty stricken but degraded by the work they had to do and by the conditions under which they lived. De Man threw himself into movements of protest and rebellion; trade union, ‘Young Socialist’, Flemish Nationalism, anti-conscription. He broke away from his disapproving family, joined the Belgian Labour Party (Parti Ouvrier Belge), worked on the German Social Democrat paper the Leipziger Volkszeitung where he became friendly with Kautsky, Franz Mehring, Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg and others. By this time he was a declared Marxist and opposed Bernstein’s revisionism. He spent a year in England, where he joined the Social Democratic Federation and helped in the campaigns at Shoreditch in two general elections in 1910.

It was, however, the “Marxist” Social Democratic Party in Germany which drew his greatest admiration and confidence. Like many others who had put their trust in that hollow movement and the equally hollow Second International, he was shattered in 1914 when those organisations collapsed and the erstwhile international comrades sided with their respective governments. De Man’s own anti-war attitude dissolved in face of the German invasion of Belgium and he volunteered for the army in August 1914, assuring himself with the hope that the military defeat of Germany would lead to a Socialist revolution.

Later on he was to regard his support of the 1914 war as a “desertion of principle” which he was determined to avoid in future. With the onset of World War II De Man urged the Belgian Labour Party to adopt an attitude of “neutralism”, and when Belgium was occupied by German troops and De Man was convinced of German victory over the Allied powers, he actively associated with King Leopold II in co-operating with the German authorities. This was, however, not entirely a question of accepting the facts of the situation for in 1941 (on May Day) he delivered a speech containing the following: ―

   I recognise that National Socialism represents the German form of Socialism and I recommend collaboration with Germany within the framework of a United Europe and a general Socialist revolution. But I am not a National Socialist, for the simple reason that I am not German, but Flemish and Belgian.

Quite obviously, De Man had lost whatever insight he had once had into the nature of Socialism and the struggle against capitalism. In rejecting the German Social Democratic Party’s emasculated version of Marxism in favour of something he thought better (his own theories) he had ended up by seeing Socialism in German capitalist Nazism, just as he had also seen Socialism in Stalinist Russian State capitalism ― a delusion he shared with his Communist and Labour Party denouncers.

What then were De Man’s theories which were supposed to have revolutionised Socialist thought and thrown Marx and Marxism into the dead past? Essentially it was Keynesism. Faced with the depression of the thirties, which De Man regarded as a breakdown of industrial capitalism and the emergence of domination by finance-capital, the old trade union and reformist struggles seemed to him to serve no further purpose. What he thought was needed was planned capitalism based on a mixture of private enterprise and nationalisation, and government control of credit to secure full employment. It involved active trade union and Labour Party participation with the government. He got the Belgian Labour Party to endorse his plan.

How this works and where it leads we can see around UK in Britain to-day, in the spectacle of the Wilson government totally unable to alter the essential features of capitalism and locked in struggle with the growingly resentful trade unions.

De Man was influenced by the late G. D. H. Cole, as well as by Keynes and in 1933 he and Cole published, through the New Fabian Research Bureau, a pamphlet, Planned Socialism, outlining the plan and recommending it to the British Labour Party.

De Man was in truth a sort of continental Cole, showing the same facility for dressing up old reformist notions as new revolutionary discoveries. As for Marx, it is noteworthy that De Man rarely criticised Marx’s works at source, always concentrating his attacks on the distorted, popularised versions.

He claimed that Marx was wrong about class consciousness and nationalism and he instanced in support of his view, that workers failed to show international class solidarity or even solidarity with each other inside national frontiers. But Marx was well aware of this and foresaw it; the most that can be charged against Marx is that he expected the workers to learn the lessons of experience more quickly than has been proved by events. But there is still no other way.

Basically De Man did not believe in the capacity of the working class eventually to emancipate itself ― for him it would be a question of leadership and government by the “intellectuals”.

He did some useful work as in his study of the workers’ attitude to their jobs (published in English by George Allen and Unwin in 1929 as Joy In Labour) and in his criticism of workers who ape the values and vices of the capitalists; but the idea that De Man has rendered obsolete the invaluable work of Marx is an illusion.

Mr. Dodge has done his job admirably ― but it will not restore De Manism to life.

Edgar Hardcastle

Letter From Europe: The Belgian public sector strike (1983)

From the December 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

In September civil servants and other public sector workers in Belgium carried out a nation-wide strike, lasting for over a week, against the government's proposals in its draft budget for 1984 to economise on its spending at the expense of their wages and pensions.

The strike started on Friday 9 September, after a section of the railwaymen heard the details of the government's proposals from their union officials. Against the advice of their officials, they immediately stopped work. The strike, still at this stage unofficial, quickly spread to the rest of the railway network. The unions then decided to follow the movement and declare the strike official from the following Monday. On the Monday some other public employees unofficially joined the striking railwaymen, leading to the unions calling an official general strike of all public sector workers as from Thursday 15 September.

The strength of this strike lay in its essentially spontaneous nature. It was not something that had been planned and called by the union bureaucracies, but arose from a general feeling that, in view of the cuts in living standards workers have suffered in recent years, enough was enough. The present government — a coalition of Christian Democrats and Liberals that emerged from the general election held in November 1981 — had assumed, soon after entering office, “special powers" to deal with the economic situation, which meant that it could rule by decree rather than by act of parliament. These powers had been used to end the automatic indexing of wages and salaries to rises in the cost of living, to increase social insurance contributions and to reduce benefits. It was the fall in living standards resulting from these measures that made the public sector workers so determined to resist any further cuts.

Trade unions in Belgium organise workers on the basis of their political opinion. This, of course, is absurd and has led to workers being divided into three more or less rival union federations: the Christian Democrats (SC. 1.3 million members). The “Socialists” (FGTB. 1.13 million members) and the Liberals (CGLSB. 210,000 members). But on this occasion the strength of feeling among ordinary union members was such that the rival unions had to act together in a “common front". This, together with the fact that the strike took place in Flanders as well as in the traditionally more militant Wallonia, greatly strengthened the bargaining position of the strikers.

At first the government was somewhat bewildered by the strike, the Minister of Communications declaring: “I have absolutely no idea why there is this strike; there was no warning, no notice, no presentation of demands. It is a rather amazing action" (Le Soir, 14 September 1983). The government soon realised however that the strength of feeling of the ordinary strikers was deep-rooted and that, in proposing its attack on increments, bonuses and pensions of public employees — the section of the working class best able to resist downward pressures in a crisis because their work still needs to be done whatever the economic situation — they had perhaps gone too far. In the background too was the fear that the strike might spread to the private sector, resulting in a general strike as happened in 1960-1 (also sparked off by workers in the public sector reacting against a proposal to reduce their pensions). So instead of refusing to negotiate “under duress", as governments often do in those circumstances, the government agreed to start negotiations straight away as from the Friday, indicating that they were prepared to make concessions. The Civil Service Minister spoke of a “misunderstanding" as to the government's intentions.

An agreement was reached on 21 September. The government guaranteed that the increments, bonuses and pensions due to public sector workers would remain unchanged at least until the end of 1985; salaries would however be paid at the end instead of at the beginning of the month. The Christian Democrat and Liberal unions accepted straight away and the FGTB on Friday evening after consulting its members.

A number of lessons can be drawn from this strike. First, any strike against a government decision inevitably has political undertones. The unions managed to avoid this by concentrating on the decision as it affected the wages and conditions of their members rather than on challenging (other than verbally) the government's general policy of spending cuts. Having obtained a relatively satisfactory result on the bread-and-butter issue, they wisely called off the strike. Otherwise they would have provided the government with a stick to beat them — that the strike was politically aimed at a change of government which, in the Belgian context, would only have meant a change of coalition partners. The Belgian PS, in opposition since 1981 and forgetting its role in helping to impose austerity when it did share power, did, in fact, try to exploit the strike for its own party political ends. The leader of its French-speaking wing declared that “the government must go" and clearly hinted that his party was ready to enter the government again. Fortunately neither the trade union leaders, nor even less the strikers. took any notice of this. If they had. the result would have been disastrous. If the strike had become political in the sense of demanding a change of government, it would have broken ranks, the resulting division among the workers would have strengthened the government’s bargaining position. In any event, the participation or non-participation of the PS in the governing coalition is of the utmost indifference from a working class point of view since, whatever party or parties are in power, capitalism can only function against working class interests.

Second, like the majority of strikes, it was entirely defensive, a reaction against an action taken by the employer — in this case the government. In the event the government employer was forced to withdraw' the main proposals, but the workers still had to make some concessions, which meant that their conditions of employment had deteriorated even if by a great deal less than their employer had originally intended. In other words, the strike only slowed a downward movement. This, of course, is necessary and was worth fighting for, but shows up the limitations of trade union action. The workers are always on the receiving end under capitalism, however militant they are.

Adam Buick (Luxembourg)

50 Years Ago: Remember Belgium (1980)

The 50 Years Ago column from the May 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1914, hundreds of thousands of workers were duped into enlisting by the appeal to their sympathy on behalf of “poor little Belgium". It is interesting to learn that confirmation has now been given to the statement that the Allied governments had themselves prepared for violating Belgian “neutrality”. Mr. Harold Nicolson has just written a life of his father. Lord Carnock who, as Sir Arthur Nicolson, was Permanent Undersecretary at the Foreign Office in the years leading up to the war. (Lord Carnock, published by Constable, 21/-.)

From a review of the book which appeared in the Daily Herald on April 3rd 1930, we learn that in September 1911 “preparations for landing four or six divisions on the Continent have been worked out to the minutest detail”; and in 1913 French military authorities are reported by Sir Arthur Nicolson to be of the view that "it would be far better for France if a conflict were not too long postponed”. In 1913 Sir Arthur Nicolson wrote to the Minister in Brussels: “We and France might have to move troops across the Belgian frontier in order to meet the approach of German troops from the other side”. The Herald reviewer says that this action was contemplated before the Germans actually entered Belgium”. 

From an editorial in the Socialist Standard, May 1930.

The Socialist View of the German Atrocities. (1914)

From the October 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

The present conflict between the Powers of Europe is a tragedy of the first magnitude; but like most stupendous tragedies, it has its humorous aspects for those who are not entirely led away by the superficial. One of the most laughable spectacles of the day is the universal outcry about what our innocent masters and their saintly hirelings of the Press and pulpit are pleased to call the “atrocities of the Huns.” Mark ! it is not here denied that there have been appalling outrages committed by the Kaiser’s hosts. That is not the question with which we are at the moment concerned. It is the capitalist hands upheld in horror, and the round-eyed astonishment of our good, kind masters, that engage our amused attention.

They are astounded and shocked to a marked degree at every manifestation of the rules of warfare adopted by the German military authorities, and run whining like chastised curs about the world, complaining in a childish snivel of every method that presses hardly upon themselves, but which, for various reasons, does not, for the moment, commend itself to the allies.

What the reasons for all this singsong of nauseating hypocrisy are is pretty obvious, and will be returned to later. But for the moment let us deal with the ludicrously clumsy effort of Maurice Maeterlinck, the Belgian author, to exploit the bestial fruits of a bestial system for the benefit of the master class of Britain, France, Russia and Belgium.

Maeterlinck is often spoken of as the “Belgian Shakespeare,” and it may be noted that the English bard himself was not above prostituting his talents in order to curry favour with the great ones of the earth. Henceforth, then, the admirers of Maeterlinck may claim for him a further point of Shakespearean resemblance, by the evidence of a very foolish article of his which was published by the “Daily Mail” and the “Evening News” (Sept. 14th).

Speaking of the atrocities Maeterlinck says:

   “It is not true that in this gigantic crime there are innocent and guilty, or degrees of guilt. They stand on one level, all those who nave taken part in it. . . . It is, very simply, the German, from one end of his country to the other, who stands revealed as a beast of prey . . . We have here no wretched slaves dragged along by a tyrant King, who alone is responsible. Nations have the government they deserve, or rather, the government they have is truly no more than the magnified and public projection of the private morality and mentality of the nation.
  “If eighty million innocent people select and support a monstrous King, those eighty million innocent people merely expose the inherent falseness and superficiality of their innocence; and it is the monster they maintain at their head who stands for all that is true in their nature . . .
   “They must be destroyed as we destroy a nest of wasps, since we know that these can never change into a nest of bees.
   “And even though individually and singly the Germans were all innocent and merely led astray, they are none the less guilty in the mass.   “This is the guilt that counts . . . because it lays bare, underneath their superficial innocence, the subconscious criminality of all.
    “No influence can prevail on the unconscious or the subconscious. It never evolves. Let there come a thousand years of civilisation, a thousand years of peace, with all possible refinements of art and of education, the subconscious element of the German spirit, which is its unvarying element, will remain absolutely the same as it is to-day; and would declare itself, when the opportunity came, under the same aspect, with the same infamy.”

This is the pronouncement of one of the “master-minds” of Europe. It is, presumably, the best this burning patriot of Belgium could do to reduce the “modern Huns” to their proper level, immeasurably below the race under King Albert. Let us see, however, if this pronouncement is logically sound, where it must inevitably lead us to.

On the West Coast of Africa is a large tract of country called the Congo Free State. Unfortunately for the inhabitants of that country it was found that in the great forests of the region there grew abundantly the trees from which rubber is obtained. As usually happens when white men discover defenceless natives in a country whose virgin forests are rich in rubber trees, the aborigines were enslaved and compelled to gather the rubber for their white masters.

The particular case of the Congo Free State formed the subject of a British enquiry by Commissioner Casement, whose report disclosed atrocities more villainous, if that were possible, than anything which has yet been charged against the Germans in Belgium.

The sickening details it is not necessary to more than touch upon. Terrorism was the foundation of the Congo system of exploitation. How the feet of natives were cut off because the amount of rubber they collected did not (as indeed, it never could) satisfy the greed of their masters; how the unfortunate blacks were suspended over slow fires and roasted to death; how a country was devastated in order to pile up wealth for foreign invaders: all this can be read elsewhere by those whose memories need refreshing.

To pile up wealth for whom? For Germans? Oh no! for Belgians. If the German “culture” found its expression in the stark outrages of the smiling plains of Belgium, Belgian “culture” asserted itself in the blood-reeking shambles of the Congo rubber fields. If the German “culture” as exemplified at Louvain and Tirlemont, was incidental to the stirring and (as our capitalist masters will have it) not ignoble romance of war, the Belgian “culture,” as displayed in the African forests, was an integral part of the noble arts of peace. So much for the merits of the respective instances.

Now how may the arguments of Maeterlinck be applied to the case of the Belgian “culture” on the Congo? The acts of violence and outrage were admittedly monstrous. The chief responsibility for them was brought home to that inhuman monster, Leopold, the late King of the Belgians, who made millions out of the death-agonies of braver, cleaner, better, and far lees savage men and women than himself. Here was a “monstrous King,” if ever there was one.

Are we to say, then, with the author of “The Blue Bird," that this “monstrous King” of the Belgians “stands [or did stand] for all that is true in their nature” ? Are we to declare that he, and those who governed with him, were “truly no more than the magnified and public projection of the private morality and mentality of the nation” ? Are we to assert that the Belgian, “from one end of his country to the other, stands revealed as a beast of prey” ? Are we to conclude that “a thousand years of civilisation, a thousand years of peace, with all possible refinements of art and of education,” would find the Belgian people so callous, so brutalised, so low in the scale of human development, that the “morality and mentality of the nation,” as exhibited, according to the arguments of Maurice Maeterlinck, on the Congo, “ would declare itself, when the opportunity came, under the same aspect, with the same infamy” ? If so, then the “modern Huns” would be performing a worthy service to humanity at large by blotting the Belgian race off the face of the earth.

It is not only the Belgians, however, who have proved themselves to be quite the equals of the Germans in the matter of perpetrating outrages that “stagger humanity.” In this respect Russia is so notorious that it is hardly necessary to do more than whisper the name How the Press of the world rang, a decade or so ago, with the infamies that made the names of the Tzar and his Cossacks stink in the nostrils of men! The mention of Father Gapon will suffice to refresh even the memory of the sycophant Maeterlinck. The latter says: "Through the whole course of history two distinct will-powers have been noticed that would seem to be opposed, elemental manifestations of the spirit of our globe : the one seeking only evil, injustice, tyranny, and suffering, while the other strives for liberty, the right, radiance, and joy. These two powers stand once again face to face ; our opportunity now is to annihilate the one that comes from below.” How much less than “a thousand years of civilisation,”  has sufficed to evolve from “the subconscious element ” of the Russian spirit which gave us the callous butchery of the unarmed workers in St. Petersburg on “Bloody Sunday,” which has asserted itself in a never-ending stream of misery rolling its pitiful flood across the dreary waste to the appalling doom of Siberia, that has glutted its blood lust in innumerable pogroms against helpless and inoffensive Jews—how much less than “a thousand years of peace” has been sufficient to develop out of this unpromising material that “will power” which “strives for liberty, the right, radiance, and joy ”!

Of course, now that “gallant Belgium,” “democratic France,” and “upright and honest Britain" are linked with Russia in the greatest of all atrocities, we are bidden to forget all these things. More even than this, these very barbarities which Russia has inflicted upon her subject races, and particularly upon her,working class, are adduced as evidence of the “great sacrifices” Russia has made on behalf of freedom. And as if this did not achieve the very height of imaginative extravagance, a writer in the “ Daily Chronicle” of September 24th coolly informs us that “Russian bureaucracy and autocracy is (sic) a legacy from Germany and German influences. Ever since the days of Peter the Great. Russia has been governed under ideas which have been supplied her by the Prussian Junkers, and now the time has come when the whole Russian people see the chance of freeing themselves from these influences for ever.”

That Germany must bear the blame for all the innocent blood that has soddened the soil of Russia since Peter the Great’s day is ludicrous enough in all conscience, but the spectacle that we are invited to gaze upon, of the Tsar and those who rule Russia “under ideas supplied by Prussian Junkers,” waging war in order to gain the freedom to govern according to the beatific traditions of Western Liberalism is too much for our sobriety. Albeit, it demonstrates with what rubbish these prostitutes of the Press are prepared to insult the intelligence of the working class in order to bolster up the case of their paymasters.

France, also—democratic, chivalric France—has her gobbeted pages of history. The Massacre of S. Bartholomew is a classic example of foul treachery and degraded brutality that will stand so long as dastardly human deeds find s recorder at all. The history of Paris, however, bristles with shameful atrocities, among which it is sufficient to instance—not the suppression, don't think it was that - but the bloody vengeance wreaked upon the workers of Paris for the Commune of 1871. After the fighting ceased 30,000 working men, women, and children of Paris were butchered in cold blood, while the conditions under which those were interned who were to be transported to New Caledonia are too revolting to be printed here. Let those who find themselves impressed with the idea that barbarity is the special attribute of the “modern Huns” read the history of the Paris Commune, and a new light will break in upon them concerning another of Britain's allies.

Nor is Britain herself above the perpetration of atrocious outrage, both at home and abroad. The Boer War furnished examples enough, in spite of official whitewash. The Boer general, Beyers, has just stated that every Boer farmer’s house was a Louvain, and Smuts, with all his fervent turn-coat patriotism, could not deny the statement he could only endeavour to draw the curtain over it

The history of the British rule in India, where famine has succeeded famine, and multitudes have sunk down in their wretched hovels and die of starvation whilst their white masters were exporting the grain Indian people had grown, puts Britain on a level with any Huns, ancient or modern.

But let us come nearer home. How many working-class butcheries have been perpetrated in these islands of recent years? Only three years ago the same military support which has now been given to capitalist France was promised and rendered to the railway magnates of England in order to enable them to force their men to continue to work for 16s and 17s. a week That ended in butchery. Tonypandy is another instance that will be fresh in the memory of many, while we have the testimony of the Liberal politician who “saved the Government” from defeat, Mr. Handel Booth, that in Dublin during a recent labour struggle, women of the working class were dragged from their homes by the hair of their heads and brutally batoned by the police. The same witness also affirmed, what was amply borne out by others, that one of the victims of the struggle was felled by a police truncheon, and then deliberately beaten to death by several policemen as he lay helpless on the ground.

How did the modern Huns of capitalist Britain meet the charge of these cowardly atrocities, committed at their behest and in their profit-mongering interests, and witnessed by one of their own politicians? By resorting to that rich product of Western Liberalism — a sham enquiry—and appointing legal bullies to bully the awkward witness out of Court.

The “Hun” in the British master class is revealed in a thousand places. At the very time that the war broke out instances were causing unpleasant attention to be turned to our masters’ methods. There was the callous butchery in Dublin, engineered by rival politicians, when four people were done to death, among whom a woman was shot dead, and a boy who was killed received a bullet wound in the back and a bayonet thrust in the thigh. The war came opportunely to divert public attention from this Irish “Louvain.” Again, when war broke out thousands of men in the building trades in London had been for many months deprived of their sole means of livelihood—condemned, together with their wives and children, to starvation because they refused to sign a degrading and economically undermining contract form. No snuffling Harold Begbie thought to ask of the starving victims of that “battle for liberty,” the ironic question : “What will you lack'. Sonny?"

British history, ancient and modern, at home and abroad, is a veritable fabric of atrocity, which can find no parallel in the history of any other race on earth. The early invaders of India may have perpetrated orgies of bloodshed that only the whole European civilisation has been able, after nineteen hundred years of Christian humbug, to surpass; the industrial magnates of America may have provided, in the piping times of peace, examples of lawless violence so open, so naked and unashamed, as to startle even us ; but for long exercised, persistent, callous brutality, which is none the less fiendish because it has evolved the cunning to mask itself with legal shams and social sophistries, one can find nothing approaching the industrial history of England.

Let those who want to whine about the atrocities of the Germans first explain away the methods by which the peasantry of feudal England were deprived of their lands and driven from the countryside to become factory slaves ; let them cleanse, if they can, the fortunes of the great cotton families of the blood and agony-drops of the thousands of working class children who were murdered to make those fortunes ; let them blot out from the memory the scores of shamble scenes from Peterloo to Dublin, in which unarmed British workers have fallen to British bullets; let them tell us what higher “culture” than that of the “modern Huns” is indicated in the preventable sacrifice of railway shunters’ lives, the raising of the load line of ships, the contemptuous ignoring of the laws of the mining Acts because the fine for launching 400 miners into eternity is only £24.

Maeterlinck and other sycophantic “intellectuals,” playing their prostitute part in the upholding of that system which gives them their “place in the sun,” may rail and rave as only they know bow, about the German atrocities, but their motives are clear enough. They desire to do two things to inflame the workers of Britain, France, Russia and Belgium against Germany, and to hide the truth.

And the truth is that atrocity is not a national attribute anywhere or at any time. On the contrary, atrocity belongs, not to nations, but to systems. It is of the very nature of all systems of plunder, and it was and is the common attribute of the Huns of Attila, the Huns of the Kaiser, and the Huns of Asquith, Penrhyn, Claude Hamilton & Co, and the Huns of Rockefeller and of Carnegie in America, Werner, Beit & Co in South Africa, Tipoo Tib in Central Africa, and White Wolf in China because all these ancient and modern Attilas were or are engaged in the robbery of their fellows.

The Maeterlincks and other lickspittles of the capitalist class hope, by their outcry against the German atrocities, to obscure the fact that THE atrocity is not Louvain or Tirlenoont or Rheims, but the war itself ; not the blood of unarmed victims spilled at the instance of German bullies of the master class, but the whole hell of horrors which has been let loose upon the world by the MASTER CLASS of Europe—Belgian, French. British, and Russian no less than German. Of this colossal atrocity, the bestial and inevitable fruits of the robbery of the working class of the world, Louvain and the other German outrages are but a part,  and a comparatively insignificant part.

Refuse, therefore, to have your mental balance upset by the squealing of those who raise the cry of “German barbarism.'' There can be nothing but barbarism in those who have launched fifteen millions of working men in the field of death in order to decide who shall control the markets where the wealth stolen from the workers may be sold. And those for whom the ; Maeterlincks speak would welcome ANY atrocities that would, by obsessing the public mind with the false idea that atrocity is a national trait of the German race, prevent the workers from realising that it is the common characteristic of the whole capitalist class, as is revealed in every mill and mine and shunting yard in Britain, in the Carnegie massacre at Pittsburg and the Rockefeller holocaust in Ludlow City, in the Italian brutalities in Morocco, in the rubber shambles of the Congo and the Putumayo, in the death-trap compounds of the Rand, in the slaughter of Socialists by the new-risen and triumphant capitalists of China and Japan, and in the uncountable acts of barbarity by which the capitalists of every country the wide world over establish and maintain their position of plundering dominance over the working class.

A. E. Jacomb

Mr. Europe Retires (1966)

Book Review from the October 1966  issue of the Socialist Standard

Paul Henri Spaak of Belgium has retired from politics. His post-war work with the UN, OEEC and NATO gained him the reputation of being a great European statesman and internationalist. What is not so well known is that in his younger days Spaak had the reputation of being a militant Socialist. In Mr. Europe J. H. Huizinga traced Spaak’s career in which there is much to interest the student of politics.

Spaak is the last of a family of “radical" politicians. His grandfather, Paul Janson, a great orator, fought for universal suffrage against his party the Liberals. His uncle Paul-Emile Janson, also a Liberal, was Prime Minister and his mother was the first woman Senator in Belgium. It was with this background of a lively family interest in politics that Spaak grew up. After completing his legal training he joined the Belgian Socialist Party regarding them as the vanguard of progress. This party had by this time abandoned most of what had been considered principles by Social Democrats. It had supported the First World War in alliance with the other parties of capitalism and had even dropped its opposition to the monarchy.

Belgium at this time was suffering the results of having been part of the battlefield in the First World War, with its industry and agriculture in ruins and heavy unemployment. Spaak joined in the work of his party with enthusiasm, addressing meetings and touring the country lecturing to workers' political education classes. As in his choice of political party, so in his preparation as a political tutor of workers, much was left to be desired:

  . . . Paul Henri spent more of his leisure playing very good tennis and equally good bridge than reading Karl Marx. In fact he has never read more than a vulgarization of the master’s works. Spaak spent many years campaigning

against the leadership of his party for their willingness to join in coalitions with the Catholic and Liberal parties. He founded a fortnightly journal called Bataille Socialste using it against the party leaders. Huizinga quotes snatches of it:

   'The socialist revolution is our ideal  . . .  we are revolutionaries’, he wrote in 1927, ‘because we want a radical, total transformation of existing society . . . We accept neither the principle of private properly, the cornerstone of modem society . . .  nor that of a wage-earning class, the foundation of capitalism, nor that of the bourgeois family which finds it raison d’etre in the passing of wealth, nor that of the Fatherland . . . These principles we will not have at any price. Our Socialism aims to destroy and extirpate them’. ‘I believe more than ever’, he writes in 1933, ‘in the reality of the class struggle, in the necessity of preparing the proletariat for direct action, in the revolutionary possibilities of our epoch and in the necessity that will confront us, once we get into power by whatever method, to maintain ourselves in power by dictatorial methods; only revolutionaries are realists’.

These quotations are evidence of confused thinking not only by Spaak but also by today's left-wingers. Professing socialist aims whilst giving active support to a reformist party; advocating direct action yet eagerly canvassing votes at election times.

By now the world slump was in progress and Belgium's workers suffered like the rest. Spaak had built up quite a following and was causing the leadership a headache. In fact an attempt to have him expelled was defeated at the 1934 party conference.

His attitude to the development of fascism is worth noting. He saw the solution in demonstrations and acts of violence. The Rexist party, led by Leon Degrelle, a party of militant catholics who saw as their task the extermination of communism (that is, Russian state capitalism), was the Belgian equivalent of fascism. They burst on the political scene in spectacular fashion and within a short time had twenty-one members of Parliament. Their leader saw his chance of staking a claim to power. In 1937 one of his Brussels MP's resigned thereby causing a by election. Degrelle was put up as candidate challenging all comers, hoping for an overwhelming victory so as to cause a new election with the chance of coming to power on the wave of popular support. The challenge was taken up by Van Zeeland the Prime Minister and member of the Catholic party. The result was a 4—1 victory for Van Zeeland and at the next general election the number of Rexist MP’s was reduced to four.

It is not for socialists to advocate the lesser of two evils. The lesson lies not in the choice made by the electorate but that it was the electorate, the majority of them workers, who decided the political fate of the Rexists.

Within a few days of being involved in an unsuccessful attempt to organise a mass march on Brussels by the workers of Belgium, Spaak accepted a post of junior minister and his days of misguided rebellion were at an end. He joined a coalition of Catholics and so-called socialists doing precisely the thing which he had denounced his leaders for doing earlier. This was in 1935. From then on his rise was rapid. Within a few months he was Foreign Minister and by 1938, at the age of 38, he became Belgium's youngest Prime Minister and the [first] member of his party to have the job.

Disillusion had set in after years of confused struggle. Spaak's muddled ideas of revolution gave way to half-baked ones of turning capitalism "from a system of exploitation of the working class into a horn of plenty for all”. His party had produced a plan of action advocating replacing deflationary policies by Keynesian ideas of combatting the slump. It was this that Spaak now fought for.

Acceptance of the responsibility of administering capitalism soon aroused the opposition of his own party. One instance was the recognition of the Franco government in Spain in line with the economic interest of Belgium. This was ratified by Parliament by the votes of the hated Rexists and opposed by many of his own party.

Recent history has shown.the worthlessness of the ‘‘horn of plenty” theory. The Second World War, with its abundance of slaughter, destruction and terror, was the end of it. Since then Belgium has had its shares of problems. Workers still having to strike to defend their living standards show how little the system has changed. Language problems, the Congo, industrial stagnation, the diplomatic jungle of political, trade and military alliances are all part of the unwholesome mess that administrators of the horn of plenty have to deal with.

Paul Henri Spaak's career, a great success by the standards of today's world, is an example of what the future may hold for the well-heeled young rebel. To the worker the warning is clear. Leaders cannot solve our class problems. Spaak is but one of the many leaders who have had your support. All have failed to produce a solution.

Joe Carter

Aden: The Cost of Oil (1964)

From the June 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is nothing the press loves so much as a bogy man. Whenever Great Britain is in dispute with another country, almost without exception the newspapers spill their inky venom in caricatures of the "enemy” leader, showing him as stupid, or bloodthirsty, or power mad, or in some other, equally unpleasant, way.

So it is at the moment with President Nasser, who, ever since he first pressed the claims of Arab nationalism against the entrenched British interests in the Middle Past, has been one of the principal stand-bys for the headline writers and editors of Fleet Street.

"Get Out! Says Nasser” bellows one headline, and workers in bowler hats and boiler suits all over Great Britain feel their hackles rise as they read a carefully bowdlerised, pepped-up version of a speech by the Egyptian ruler. How dare he, they fume. It's about time we sent in the paratroops. A pity we stopped at Suez when we did. What he's asking for is an H-bomb on Cairo. And so on.

In this atmosphere, the story of the beheading of two English soldiers by the rebel Radfani tribesmen—who are said to be armed by the Egyptians—found a hysterically receptive audience. Big, slashing, screaming headlines, supported with the boy-next-door pictures of the soldiers and details of their families, blazoned the story across the nation's breakfast tables.

It did not seem to occur to any of the newspapers that, even if the story were true, they were adding an intolerable burden to the grief of the men's families by their eager publicising of it. Or, if this did occur to them, the papers ignored it. They, after all, had a job of muckspreading to do and in that great enterprise what concern can there be for an unimportant detail like human feelings?

This was one of the most squalid aspects of the affair, in which not only the press but the men's commanding officer and the government were implicated. For the alacrity with which the first story was accepted, without checking by reliable observers on the spot, suggests that those who noised it may have suspected its total veracity—but had objects in mind other than publishing the truth.

The story started at a Press conference given by Major General John Cubbon, the General Officer Commanding British Land Forces in the Middle East. General Cubbon, who seems to be one of the less subtle of military minds, said that the report of the decapitation was based on “reliable information”. And he went on to hint at the reason behind it all; “If this is true . . .  It will have a profound effect on our troops."

As it turned out Gibbon's story was only partly true, which caused a lot of red faces for a time but did nothing to put the affair in a better light. General Cubbon, with his musing upon the effects which atrocity stories are likely to have on his troops, is only the latest in a long, undistinguished line. The world is accustomed by now to the methods which are used to inflame the patriotism of the working class - although unhappily it is not inured to those methods.

There was, for example (and we shall probably be hearing more of this during the next few months), the atrocity myths which came out of the German invasion of Belgium in 1914. The usual "reliable sources” reported that the German soldiers were running amok, raping women of all ages, bayoneting babies and cutting off children's hands.

(At the same time, the German ruling class were feeding their workers on similar lies. In their version, Belgian soldiers made a sport of tearing out the eyes of wounded German soldiers. Entire hospital wards were said to be filled with men who had suffered this fate and one small boy was reported to have seen a bucketful of gouged out eyes.)

These stories probably did their evil work effectively enough and persuaded many a man, who later in the trenches came to doubt the truth of what he had been told, into khaki. In fact, there was no reason at the time to believe the stories. In 1914, when the British propagandists were weeping crocodile tears over "poor little Belgium”, the world had only just recovered front the shock caused by the revelation of the atrocities which the Belgians themselves had committed in the Congo. The extent of the outrages are difficult to ascertain, but there is no doubt—and there was none in 1914 -that literally millions of Congolese natives had been murdered, with the active connivance of (he Belgian government, in the mad hunt for the Congo's rubber.

All of this was forgotten. There was no real evidence to support the 1914 atrocity stories, hut nobody bothered about that. In their hysterical patriotism the working class were eager to gobble up any rubbish. As late as 1917, Belgium was still considered good for a propaganda theme. An American poster of that year showed a lecherous, helmeted Prussian dragging an innocent young maid off to a fate worse than death, all silhouetted against burning houses and topped by the caption- "Remember Belgium.”

This sort of propaganda finds a lush breeding ground in the basic ignorance with which most people regard Capitalism. It is this ignorance which persuades many of them so readily to see the inevitable conflicts of capitalism in terms of the personalities of national rulers. It persuaded them to see 1914/18 as a consequence of the Kaiser's imperialist ambitions, 1939/45 as a result of Hitler's murderous insanity, and the endless small clashes in the Middle East as the fruits of President Nasser's insatiable conceits.

This ruinously naive conception does not permit of the asking of any penetrative questions. The British worker who regards Nasser as a comical, but dangerous, dictator does not ask himself why the Egyptian ruling class is nowadays so often in conflict with their British counterparts. He does not ask why British troops are in the South Arabian Peninsula, in the same way as his father did not ask, in 1914, why the Britain which had so recently fought the small Boer Republic became suddenly protective of the rights of poor little Belgium.

So let us ask the questions for him.

It is difficult to unravel the politics of the Arabian Peninsula, complicated as they are by the feudal structure of a multitude of sheikdoms and sultanates. It has long been British policy to exploit these complications—to play off one ruler against another and to conclude deals with some of them, if necessary helping them to stamp out any republican or embryonic trade union movements.

If Egypt is at the moment the big threat to British interests in the Middle East it is only because the Egyptian ruling class want to unite the various countries there in a common stand against foreign domination. Several attempts at formal unity have largely come to nothing, which has meant that the workers and the natural resources of the area are to some extent still exploited by foreign capitalists, instead of exclusively by a native ruling class.

A glance at any map shows the strategic importance of the Arabian Peninsula, standing as it does at the outlet of the Red Sea, which is part of Great Britain's vital sea route to the Far Fast and Australia. Another sort of map will show up the peninsula's abounding oilfields, which are by no means a pacifying ingredient in an area which would have been inflammable enough without the discovery of thick, black, vital ooze beneath the hot sands. All of this explains the existence of the British base at Aden, and the deep and longstanding British interest in what is incorrectly called the Aden Protectorate—incorrectly because the troops are not there to protect the people of Aden. They are there to safeguard the interests of the British capitalist class, which means that they might be used in all manner of enterprises which have nothing to do with protecting anybody.

Many of the Arab rulers are insecure, faced as they are with the rumblings of nationalist, republican movements. Even King Saud of Saudi Arabia, who was once thought to be safely cushioned by thick wads of Yankee dollars, has been virtually deposed by his brother. The constant dream of British governments has been to stabilise the peninsula under rulers who are amenable to Whitehall's commands. So it was that in 1962 the South Arabian Federation was imposed on the Aden area, part of the border of which faces the Yemen Republic.

The Yemen is one of the Middle East’s young republics whose ambitions are being encouraged and exploited by the Egyptian government. The country has its own internal troubles, in the shape of a dissident royalist movement but this has not, apparently, prevented it supporting the rebel tribesmen just over its border.

The British government has complained that the rebels are supplied with arms by the Yemen, which gets them from Egypt, which gets them from the Soviet Union. The Yemenis in turn charge that the British-supported sheik of Beihar, whose territory borders on the Yemen, has been supplying weapons to the royalist rebels in the Republic.

Both stories could well he true. The Middle East is in jus! the sort of mess we might expect in an area which, ruled by a lot of feudal aristocrats, is of enormous economic and strategic importance to the great powers of capitalism All sorts of despots are propped up by Western arms and money. and many rebel movements are nurtured by material expressions of sympathy from more developed lands.

It is an explosive situation.

And all of this because industry and transport need oil and because Western Europe needs its trade routes to the Far East. Because capitalism, inevitably, has split the world into competing nations and factions, all of them striving lo get the cushiest concession on an oil field, all of them out for the easiest, fastest selling market. These are the basic reasons for the ugly, violent mess which is the Middle East today.

Capitalism causes war and war itself is an atrocity. And part of its atrociousness is the lying which both sides always indulge in, and the receptive ignorance which ensures that the lies are believed—at any rate for the critical period. The story of the beheadings in the Yemen was gruesomely distressing. But there should he no surprise that the propaganda machine fed it out so eagerly.

Instead, there should he disgust—a fruitful disgust—at it all, at the lies and the cynicism and the ignorance which are so essential a part of property society. At such times we see capitalism for what it is and it is not pleasant to look upon.

Ivan

Our Allies and Neutrality (1915)

From the March 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is a very strange thing how deeply the average worker of to day is concerned about the independence and neutrality of “Plucky Little Belgium.” One would think to hear some of them talk, that it was the alpha and omega of this country, to protect the smaller and weaker States of the world from the continual encroachments of their larger and more powerful enemies. The capitalist Press is devoting much ink and paper in telling us that the present crisis into which we have been drawn, "to maintain our dignity and honour,” is due to Germany's disregard for the neutrality and independence of Belgium, which had been guaranteed to them by treaty, and Lt. Gen. Imhoff, at Urania Hall, Berlin, is reported by the "Daily Call," of the 8th October. 1914. to have made the following remark: "Foreign policy is the expression of national egoism, consequently every treaty is worthless when national interests demand that they should be broken." This with reference to agreements signed by the capitalist governments of to-day (with which I shall deal later) hits the nail squarely on the head. He then went on to say that "necessity breaks even iron itself.'' and as one of the greatest necessities of the capitalist class is the extension of markets for the expansion of their trade, it is quite obvious why agreements signed one day are broken the next.

We are therefore called upon by our masters to down tools at once and fight for "freedom and democracy" against the tyrannous aggression of Belgium by the Kaiser and his hordes.

Now before accepting the statement that England and her allies are fighting for freedom, it would he advisable to first of all examine a little of the past history of these "champions of the smaller States," to see how they have performed in this respect, in the past, before joining bands with them in the present.

We will then, in the first place, take the noble and liberty loving government of Russia, which in 1911, to show their love of freedom and independence of the smaller States, violently attacked Persia, in collusion with Great Britain, in spite of the fact that they were pledged by agreement signed in 1907, to maintain the independence and integrity of this small country. And her continued encroachments on the liberties of Finland from 1906 to 1911 was, of course, also due to her "desire to defend the smaller States."

France, another of our allies, has by her occupation of Fez, in 1911, overthrown the independence of Morocco, which, by the Act of Algeciras, she and other Powers pledged themselves to maintain.

Japan, another country with which England is allied, and which has promised to support them in maintaining the independence of Belgium, annexed Korea in 1911, thus violating the agreement of 1904, which was supposed to guarantee Korea's independence and integrity.

England, with her anxiety for the "independence" of the smaller States, could not be out of this "good work,” so she absorbed with the aid of blood and fire the Transvaal and Orange Free State Republics of South Africa in 1902. And even now while this war is still raging and while the hirelings of the allied Press are foaming with anger about the broken agreement of Belgium's neutrality by Germany, they themselves are losing no time in snatching colonies from the latter, quite irrespective of the wishes of the inhabitants thereof.

And again, while England has repeatedly promised to evacuate Egypt, she has for more than thirty years continued to maintain her hold on that country, and has finally annexed it — of course, for the good of the Egyptians; and these are the countries which appear so troubled about the broken agreement concerning the independence and neutrality of Belgium.

No, dear reader, it is not the freedom of "Brave Little Belgium” that the allies are so anxious about, but the freedom of the capitalist class of England, France and Russia from the competition of their greatest rivals and pacemakers, the German capitalist class. A government like ours, which could not see its way clear to incorporate a 5s. per day minimum wage in the Miners’ Act 1912 does not suddenly become loaded with the burden of protecting the smaller States, at the expense of (according to "Reynolds,” 27th Oct., 1914) £39,000,000 per month.

De B. Gibbon, in the “Industrial History of England,” tells us that all the wars of the nineteenth century in which England was engaged were fought in the interests of commerce, and the wars of the present century appear to be pretty much the same.

Your enemy is here at home, as the enemy of the German working class is in Germany, consequently we ask you to study the facts, and when yon have analysed them with the same intelligence as you use in your daily toil, yon will join with us in the great struggle, not for Belgium for the Belgians, nor Europe for the Europeans, but of the world for the workers.

H. Barnett.

Remember Belgium! (1930)

Editorial from the May 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1914, hundreds of thousands of workers were duped into enlisting by the appeal to their sympathy on behalf of “poor little Belgium!" It is interesting to learn that confirmation has now been given to the statement that the Allied Governments had themselves prepared for violating Belgian “neutrality.”

Mr. Harold Nicolson has just written a life of his father, Lord Carnock, who as Sir Arthur Nicholson was Permanent Under-secretary at the Foreign Office in the years leading up to the war (“Lord Carnock,” published by Constable, 21/-).

From a review of the book which appeared in the Daily Herald on April 3rd, 1930, we learn that in September, 1911,

“preparations for landing four or six divisions on the Continent have been worked out to the minutest detail"; and in 1913 French military authorities are reported by Sir Arthur Nicolson to be of the view that “it would be far better for France if a conflict were not too long postponed.”

In 1913 Sir Arthur Nicolson wrote to the Minister in Brussels :—

We and France might have to move troops across the Belgian frontier in order to meet the approach of German troops from the other side.

The Herald reviewer says that ‘‘The Minister's reply makes it clear that this action was contemplated before the Germans actually entered Belgium.”

These statements based on Mr. Harold Nicolson's book were promptly confirmed by the Countess of Warwick in an interview which she gave the Daily Herald on April 4th.

She reports a conversation between Lord French and M. Clemenceau which took place in 1910, she being the only other person present, and acting as interpreter. Clemenceau said:—

. . . .  The British landing would be at Dunkirk, and your troops would go through Belgium into Germany.

French was dubious, and raised the question of Belgian neutrality, to which Clemenceau replied:—

Treaties do not matter when it comes to war. 

The Countess of Warwick relates the following further facts :—

 In later conversation Clemenceau stated that while the British pushed through Belgium the French would attack through Lorraine.
 The conversation was private, but I wrote to King Edward, who was my friend, about it. 

The Countess of Warwick then explained why she had kept this secret for so many years. She had intended to publish it in her reminiscences published six months ago, but her publishers refused to include these passages because “it put our country in a bad light.”

She admits that she made no attempt to publish it earlier than 1929.

For years I bottled it up within myself, even at the time when the “poor little Belgium” talk was being used to lure thousands of poor boys to their deaths.

Then, last year, when she was publishing her own book, she “asked one or two friends what they thought, and they said that they thought it would do no harm so long after the war.”

In short, the noble Lady, one of the shining lights of the I.L.P., the Labour Party, and the Social Democratic Federation, kept her mouth shut when “poor little Belgium talk was being used to lure thousands of poor boys to their deaths,” and only disclosed the secret when she thought “it would do no harm.”

The number of British subjects who lost their lives in the Great War was nearly 1,100,000. In addition, thousands have been blinded, crippled or otherwise mutilated. This the Countess could stand. But she could not bear the thought of putting the "country" in a bad light, and therefore did not let the victims share her knowledge until "it would do no harm,” that is, 15 years too late for it to be of use to them.

We wonder what the Countess of Warwick regards as "harm.”

The Congo (1961)

Book Review from the April 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Congo Disaster by Colin Legum, (Penguin Books 2/6)

For a very long time, the natives of what was the Belgian Congo have been an ill used race of men. The Arab slavers look, according to one estimate, 30 million of them. The agents of Leopold II were little better. The king said. "The slave trade . . . is a plague spot that every friend of civilisation would desire to see disappear . . . " but in the event he imposed what Legum calls ". . . forced labour on a scale unknown in modern times until the advent of Hitler".

It is little wonder that the Congolese have not forgotten and that their politics were so conditioned by the memories of the colonial period. Strong nationalist parties grew up and at the Brussels Conference in January last year they made their surprise demand for independence within six months. Just as surprisingly, the Belgians agreed without a struggle. There was, apparently, to be no repetition of Cyprus or Algeria. In fact the Congo, as Mr. Legum tells us, had already ceased to be a “Blue Chip" colony: the fall in world prices of copper and other primary commodities had seen to that.

The climb-down in Brussels was followed by the elections in June, in which the nationalists swept the board. But no section of them had a decisive lead and the ring was cleared for the Unitarians (Lumumba,  Gizenga) and the federalists (Kasa-Vubu, Tshombe) to fight it out. The rest of the story is yesterday's news.

Mr. Legum indicts the Belgians, reveals Tshombe as a vicious fop, disposes of the notion that Lumumba was baking a troubled pie for Moscow to stick its thumbs into.

Although criticising the United Nations, he also gives them a lot of credit: "If there is neither chaos nor anarchy today it is solely due to the U.N. operations." 

Congo Disaster has been overtaken by events (it  was published before the Lumumba murder) so that its introduction is, in fact, a kind of postscript Mr. Legum's suggested remedies are essential old hat and. not surprisingly, ignore the commercial nature of society which is the real cause of the strife in the Congo.

But it is a typical Penguin—easy to read, easy to carry, and a useful refresher course on the history, economics and politics of one of the world's latest eruptions

Ivan

Congo Nationalism (1960)

Editorial from the September 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Africa, it seems, is going to he in the news for a very long lime. The latest trouble spot is the Congo, where, after the attainment of independence from Belgian rule, there were riots which apparently involved murder and rape. One news agency has described Luluabourg, in Kasai, as like a “sea of flames.”

As a complication, the province of Katanga has declared its intention of remaining separate from the rest of the independent Congo. Katanga is an area possessed of tremendous mineral wealth—uranium, diamonds, zinc, iron, cobalt and copper are all there. Prior to independence, these resources were extensively worked by the powerful Union Miniere. If Katanga succeeds in asserting its independence, Union Miniere will probably be able to continue its operations; when this possibility became apparent, the company’s shares soared. The Congo as a whole has not for a long time been a profitable source of investment for Belgian capitalists and one of the few chances of recouping some of their losses lies in dealing with a separate state of Katanga.

The wealth of Katanga is vital to the Congo: it was intended that it should make the largest contribution to easing the new State’s economic difficulties. This is the sort of situation which has thrown up many a nationalist movement. Now, M. Tshombe has used the arguments of his rival M. Lumumba to work a double trick upon him —to build nationalism within nationalism. Even so, Katanga may have a hard time if it loses the services of the port of Matadi. If westward of Katanga there is a hostile Congo, M. Tshombe’s government may be forced to seek an outlet for the province’s commodities through the east coast ports of Dar-es-Salaam or Mozambique. Perhaps this is the basis of the rumours of a proposed alliance between Katanga and Ruanda Urundi.

The onlooking capitalist powers know that without Katanga, an independent Congo would be dangerously unstable. They also know that although this may suit some Belgian capitalists, it would not be acceptable to the other African states. Ghana is already showing a close interest in the dispute. Hence the concern of the United Nations and Mr. Hammerskjold’s warning of the danger of a war which may not he limited to the Congo.

All of this is sickeningly familiar. As the Congo struggles to establish itself among the other independent capitalist nations, so the problems of capitalism make themselves felt. The need to produce its goods as cheaply as possible and to sell them on the most favourable market —these will soon be the day-to-day concerns of the Congolese government and of any state of Katanga which may be set up. So also will the need to organise the most efficient exploitation of their workers. Already, the recent devaluation of the Congo franc is being interpreted as a measure to offset wage demands by the workers on the plantations. Doubtless, some of these workers will soon be organised into Congolese armed forces to protect the economic interests of their ruling class.

Much sympathy has been expressed for the victims of the riots and it is impossible to disagree with such sentiments. But this is not the first time that such things have been known in the Congo. It is only sixty years ago that the grisly excesses of the commissaries and agents of the Congo Free State were terrorising the natives. It is typically ironical that the victims of that savagery have not appreciated its futility and are consumed with the ambition for revenge. The Congolese, like so many others before them, have answered violence with violence.

The history of capitalism’s colonial powers is a horrifying story of brutal exploitation. Belgium has played her part in making that history. Yet the Congolese workers are wrong to believe that national independence is in their interests. As capitalism takes root in Africa, so will the social ailments of that system. The troubles in the Congo will probably be smoothed over but we know that they will be followed by others, perhaps somewhere else. For example, the Congo flared up just as the Nyasaland conference was nearing agreement in London. Where will the next eruption take place?

For this situation will last as long as the capitalist social system is in existence. The only way out is to establish Socialism, which will organise the world so that everyone, whatever their sex or colour of skin, has free access to the world's wealth and stands equally to the rest of humanity. There is no place for vicious exploitation in such a society.

That is the lesson for workers to learn, in Africa and all over the world.

Letter From Europe: Enter the green reformists (1982)

The Letter From Europe column from the December 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent change of government in West Germany has again focussed attention on the ecologists, die Grünen or the Greens as they are called, who are expected to replace the discredited Free Democratic Party (Liberals) as the third party in the German parliament after next March’s general elections, maybe even to the extent of holding the balance of power.

But the first country in which ecologists have been elected to a national Parliament is in fact Belgium, where since the general elections of November last year they have nine representatives (four deputies and five senators). They also scored a relative success in the Belgium local elections in October, winning 120 seats, and they now take part in running Liège, the largest city in the French-speaking part of the country.

Before going on to examine the programme of these ecologists, we must say something about the word ecology itself. This is a science, a branch of biology which studies the relationship between living organisms and their natural environment. Strictly speaking then an ecologist should be somebody who studies or practices this science, not the partisan of some political movement. It is true that humans are also living organisms and that their relationship to their natural environment is another legitimate field of study for the science of ecology. It is of course because such a study reveals that this relationship is unbalanced that, by extension, those who advocate political, social or economic changes with a view to trying to restore this balance are called, or call themselves, ecologists.

In this sense socialists could also legitimately call themselves ecologists, with much more justice in fact since the change we advocate — production solely for use on the basis of the common ownership of the world’s resources — is the only lasting and effective way of restoring a proper balance between Humanity and Nature. In contrast, as we shall see, those on the political field who call themselves ecologists advocate mere reforms which would either only scratch the surface while leaving the basic problem unchanged or which are quite unrealisable within the framework of capitalism.

For the 1981 general elections the French-speaking section of the Belgian ecologist movement, ECOLO, published a pamphlet called 90 Propositions des Ecologists. Apart from the usual proposals that you would expect to find in the programme of an ecologist party — anti-nuclear, anti-motorways, consumer protection, health food, protection of the environment, anti-blood sports — the pamphlet does also attempt to provide a more global programme, of change from existing “capitalist and productive society” to an “ecological society”.

Instead of a society oriented towards “growth” they want a society in which, among other things, goods would be made to last, materials would be systematically recycled and work shared so that the working day could be considerably reduced. Whether or not these are desirable objectives, reading through the pamphlet it soon becomes clear that ECOLO takes for granted the continuing existence of wages, prices, profits, taxes, banks and so on. In other words, they don’t envisage going outside the framework of capitalism.

But capitalism is precisely a society geared to “growth” or. more accurately, to the accumulation of capital. This is its logic, its dynamic, even if this growth is not in a straight line but in ups and downs (we are currently in the middle of a down period, a state of “zero growth" which the now discredited Club of Rome used to call for). Capitalism is a system of society in which production is oriented towards the accumulation of capital through profits realised on the market. So to want to stop the accumulation of capital (“growth”) and its side effects while preserving the wages-prices-profits system which is capitalism is quite unrealistic. The political ecologists, in Belgium. Germany and elsewhere, are therefore a species of reformist and so subject to the same criticism: that they deal with the effects, not the cause, and that they divert much-needed energies from the struggle to achieve socialism (the only real ecological society possible today).

Capitalism has solved the problem of production; it has built up a stock of means of production capable of eliminating hunger and poverty throughout the world and even of providing plenty for everyone. But what capitalism has not solved, and cannot solve, is the problem of distributing this potential abundance. It is constitutionally incapable of doing this as its economic laws decree that priority has to be given to accumulating capital, or growth, as against consumption. Production under capitalism is geared to making profits, and not to satisfying needs. The only way to solve this problem is to institute production solely for use, but this can only be done on the basis of the common ownership and democratic control of the earth’s resources, both those made by people and natural resources; in other words, by abolishing capitalism and replacing it by socialism.

Only on the basis of common ownership can the aims of the ecologists be achieved. Only in a society in which goods are no longer produced for profit can the problems of pollution and adulteration be eliminated. Only in a society where goods are no longer produced for sale can high-quality, long-lasting goods be produced. Only, finally, on the basis of the common ownership of the earth’s resources can humans restore the balance which capitalism has upset between them and nature and live in harmony with their natural environment, live ecologically if you like.

Adam Buick (Luxemburg)