50 Years Ago: The Pope is Dead (2013)

The 50 Years Ago column from the July 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Pope John died when, just before the Profumo scandal burst, news was in short supply. Especially the juicy ‘human interest’ sort of news on which the popular press thrives. On thin rations, the papers made the most of the drawn out death agonies. Some of the headlines were almost ghoulish.

This gave us a peep at one of the nastiest sides of capitalism—the side which works for a profit out of human suffering, even when it is the suffering of one of the great upholders of property society.

Not only reporters rushed to say nice things about John XXIII. Bertrand Russell, a professed non-believer, echoed the popular estimation of the dead Pontiff as a man of peace:

‘The Pope used his office and his energy to bring peace and to oppose policies which lead to war and mass murder. His encyclical is a magnificent statement of the deepest wishes and hopes of all men of decency … I mourn his death.’

There is, indeed, some rather tenuous evidence that the dead Pope was prepared to act as some sort of a go-between in a new world carve-up by the United States and Russia. This is the soil of diplomatic dabbling which often qualifies all sorts of people for the description of ‘peace loving.’

But this holds good only in peacetime. We know that, just like his predecessors, the Pope would have done nothing to oppose a future war and that in such a war there could well be Catholics in both sides, killing each other.

Thus does capitalism make warriors of them all.

In any case, modern war has nothing to do with a supposed lack of men of peace among the world's leaders. Capitalism itself causes war and the leaders always go along on the tide of destruction.

And let all peace lovers remember that capitalism has always done well out of the servile ignorance of the religious, and especially of the Church of which John XXIII was so briefly the Vicar Supreme.

(From ‘The News in Review’, Socialist Standard, July 1963)

. . . from the branches (1959)

SPGB platform at Hyde Park.

Party News from the June 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

May Day in the rain

Rain! Rain! Rain! That was Hyde Park on May Day 1959. Nevertheless, over fifty optimistic Comrades rallied to the demonstration to sell literature and support the platform. In the Park itself, despite the weather, a large audience was soon grouped about the Party's platform, where Comrades Ambridge, D'Arcy and Young spoke on the significance of May Day. Large posters were displayed advertising the evening meeting held at Denison House, which was an encouraging success, with more literature sold and a good collection. The front cover of the Socialist Standard had well indicated the debasement of May Day. Union Jacks and Nationalist slogans were displayed in the procession. — The title of our meeting — "Socialism Is International." Let May Day 1960 be Brighter and Better.

Islington report that their canvassing efforts have resulted in the sale of FORTY DOZEN "STANDARDS" for May. More power to their elbows!

Manchester

On May 1st Manchester Comrades covered a large meeting of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament at the Free Trade Hall, where Bertrand Russell seemed to have benefited by the Party's persistent efforts. He stressed that it was not enough to merely seek International agreement on the banning of “H" bombs, but that we should grapple with the problem of war itself.

Hackney

As part of the Pre-Election campaign in the constituency of Bethnal Green and Hackney South, two successful indoor meetings were held, the titles being —“The Alternative to the Labour Party" and “You’ve Never Had It So Good.” The meetings were well supported and a number of new faces were in evidence. A further meeting entitled “Nuclear Weapons and the Threat of War” has been arranged and is advertised in this issue.

The Branch had three candidates in the Borough Council Election in the triangle ward of Hackney. Considerable interest was aroused, both in the Press and elsewhere, although our Comrades were not elected this time!

Ealing

Members are asked to note that there will be a special trip to Southsea on Sunday 21st June, to hold a propaganda meeting. Those wishing to make the trip are asked to notify the Branch Secretary as early as possible. Meet at Ealing Town Hall at 9 a.m.

The support of all members is specially requested for the outdoor meetings at Gloucester Road, beginning Thursday 4th June and continuing every Thursday afterwards. The meetings are timed to start at 8 p.m.

There are only a few seats left on the coach for the Branch trip to Eastbourne on Sunday 14th June (not 13th as announced last month). All members wanting seats are asked to contact Comrade R. Critchfield. Price 12s. for adults and 6s. for children.

Phyllis Howard

Gentlemen All (1941)

From the July 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ex-Kaiser Wilhelm is dead; Press dogs, who in pre-war days whined at the demise of any minor princeling, gave vent to a few feeble yaps. Imperial Caesar, dead and turned to clay, failed to elicit the funereal modulation affected by throaty B.B.C. announcers; a dead Derby winner (steed, not jockey) would have been accorded less shabby obituaries.

Rich instruction herein for the thoughtful:

“He is every inch a king" ;"He stands for peace.” Thus, A. G. Gardiner, editor of the Daily News in 1909. A. J. Cummings, noted contributor to the same organ, to-day can only feebly bleat about the disadvantages suffered by Queen Victoria’s pet grandson, due to a hard-faced mother and a withered arm. Imagine the splash head-lines and sickening adulation which the News Chronicle and an A. J. Cummings would have indulged in had not the first Great War pitilessly torn the martial cloak from Sidney Low’s “great gentleman” (Contemporary Review, July, 1907), and revealed the Imperial blighter for the barren-spirited nonentity he was.

Biographies on the whole reveal the author to the same extent as autobiographies conceal him; the popular type of “history” indulges in numerous small “character sketches.”  “. . . . He was a perfect gentleman.” Believe it or not, this is the considered opinion of the Right Honourable H. A. L. Fisher on “Bloody Nick.” You may find it recorded on p. 113 of the single volume edition of “A History of Europe.” The degenerate Russian moron had been dead 18 years when the Right Honourable and Christian Liberal “statesman” awarded him full marks in the “gentlemanly” line. If H. A. L. Fisher was not in possession of facts forming the minimum requirement for historical record, why did he foist on an uncritical public his preposterously feeble “history”? Bertrand Russell’s excursion into history (“Freedom and Organisation, 1814-1914”), written two years previous to Fisher’s work, exasperatingly obscurantist on the economic field, does at any rate aim at presentation of salient and pertinent fact; he points out that Fisher’s “perfect gentleman" refused the appeal of an admiral for the mitigation of the death sentence on a boy who had attempted to assassinate a ferocious bureaucrat.

In any case, a little reflection should bring home to the reader of history the futility of “character” sketching, especially of the specific “appreciation” kind. An amusing collection of wildly differing appraisements could be compiled. Even in the matter of personal appearance incredible divergences of opinion occur. Bernard Shaw’s “handsome” Russian Dictator is about as different from David Low’s “pock-marked” Georgian as words and pen could make him (see New Statesman, week ending June 7th, 1941).

Fletcher Moulton was an acute Shakesperean critic. In the “New Shakespeare Society Transactions, 1886,” he characterised Henry the Fifth as a “perfect man and national hero.” David Somervell, to-day, in his little “Europe Throughout the Ages” (p. 41), roundly labels him “our own stupid military hero.” Page after page of glowing tribute by Macaulay to his Orange hero and saint must be compared with a note on William the Third in the chapter on “Primary Accumulation,” in Vol. I of Marx’s “Capital,” and Compton Mackenzie’s frank revelation in p. 82 of hisvery readable “Literature in My Time.”

The sober historian, bent on presenting the deep, main economic currents, will be content to leave the bewildering complexes, vaguely denominated “character” to the novelist and playwright (the film producer of historical “characters” has produced the reduction ad absurdum in this line). Heaven only knows the practically insuperable difficulty of getting “character” across the footlights. Supreme masters of stagecraft, Shakespeare and Ibsen, leave each thoughtful auditor with his own particular image of Hamlet or of Peer Gynt.

In many respects, Marx’s “18th Brumaire” is a model of historical monograph, but it is open to question whether the few mordant strokes of personal detail of its shabby hero do not constitute just the tiny fly of impatience in the otherwise pure ointment of historical presentation.

What can we say of Churchill’s estimate of Hitler in his broadcast last year (May 16th) to the Italian people. “ . . . . He is a great man,” followed by “There stands the criminal ”; the Prime Minister was never more revealing of the general outlook of the governing class. “Greatness" and criminality, if not equated, are at any rate not regarded as incompatible. Let there be no mistake. The present conflict, in spite of a superficial jettisoning of jingoism and lip-service to “Democracy,” has not altered the mental horizon of the capitalist class. The new found touching discovery of “brotherhood” between Bethnal Green and Mayfair is too late and too closely connected with the desperate struggle to save the sweets derived from the exploitation of labour from foreign appropriations to be convincing. There are not lacking signs that with all the powerful assistance rendered by oily-tongued religious pepmongers, with the servile acquiescence or hungry Labour leaders, the game played in 1914-18 will not be so successful after this war.

Hitlerism is more or less the British capitalists’ Frankenstein monster vaguely shaping in the slime of a brutal Imperialism, emerging in clearer outline after Versailles, and rising now to full stature in all its foulness to confront the astounded author of its being—a new Miltonic episode of Sin and Death!

Augustus Snellgrove

Peace in our time (1964)

Editorial from the March 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

When he announced, last month, his intention to retire from the House of Commons, Mr. Harold Macmillan looked back upon the achievements of his premiership in his way: “The thing I set myself to do almost from the beginning . . .  was to make at least the beginning of better relations between East and West.” These words give an insight into the pessimism with which the politicians necessarily regard the prospects for peace in the world. Rarely indeed can they offer anything better than “the beginning of better relations” between rival nations.

Although the big parties promise almost anything by way of better houses, schools, hospitals, social services, and so on, none of them is prepared to stick its neck out to the extent of professing to be able to abolish war. At the most, they say that peace and disarmament in our time is a remote possibility—something we might have if apparently insoluble problems like Berlin can be solved, or if apparently intransigent adversaries like the Chinese can be pacified, or if apparently persistent crises like Cuba, Korea and Suez can be prevented.

This pessimism is general among the capitalist parties. Although all of them strike some sort of an attitude over the Bomb, they all agree that in some form Britain must have it. Sir Alec Douglas-Home’s speech at Bury, in which he proclaimed his government’s determination to bargain for international influence through its nuclear weaponry, was a precise enough statement of Conservative policy. (How many Labourites remembered that Home’s speech echoed Bevan’s famous plea, in 1957, against being sent naked into the conference chamber?)

The alternative which the Labour Party have now to offer is to get rid of an independent British Bomb because, among other things, it is too expensive, and to rely upon the supply of nuclear weapons from the United States. This was how The Guardian reported Mr. Harold Wilson’s statement on this issue in the House of Commons on January 16th last:

   “. . .  Britain should cease the attempt to remain a nuclear Power since it neither strengthened the [Anglo/American] alliance nor made adequate use of our resources.”

And later in the same debate:

   “We believe there should be much closer cooperation in NATO for deciding ... on circumstances in which a bomb should be dropped.”

A nice way of putting it. How likely is it that such “circumstances” will arise? At present, apart from minor incidents, the world exists in uneasy peace. But the elements of a future war are still there, needing only another insoluble crisis to fuse them into an almighty explosion. If a hot spot like Cuba or Berlin were to take the world over the Brink, there is no doubt that all the capitalist parties would forget their minor differences and squarely support the war, even if it were fought with what they call the ultimate weapons.

Is the situation, then, hopeless? Is Peace In Our Time an Impossible dream?

To answer these questions we must look at the basis of capitalist society. We live today in a social system in which the means of producing and distributing wealth are owned by a small minority of the world’s population. This basic condition leads directly to the production of wealth with the one object of making a profit. Mr. Enoch Powell, M.P., recently put it this way: “The duty of every management was to conduct the business in a way which was likely to maximise the return on the capital invested.” (The Guardian, 29/1/64.)

But running a business to “maximise the return on the capital” means searching ceaselessly for the markets where the products of the business can be sold. It means struggling for access to cheap and plentiful sources of raw materials—for oil fields, copper mines, rubber plantations. And. because all businesses everywhere want to maximise their returns, it means that the world is split into rival nations and groups of nations. Sometimes they take their rivalry into the conference chamber. Sometimes they take it onto the battlefield.

But wars cannot, of course, be fought without weapons. It is futile for CND, and similar organisations, to demonstrate against a particular type of weapon—or indeed against war itself—at the same time as they support the social system which produces war. The futility bears its fruit in the splits which have characterised the anti-nuclear movement of late, and in the changes in attitude like that of Bertrand Russell, who is now prepared to accept something less than total renouncement of  the Bomb: " . . . while our ultimate aim should be the transference of armed force to an international authority, we should welcome partial measures leading in this direction—as, for example, the lessening of military budgets . . .  (The Guardian, 29/1/64.)

To end war we must end capitalism. Nothing less will do.

This could be a straightforward matter—everything that is required for it is present, except for a knowledge of, and desire for, Socialism on the part of the working class. The evidence which testifies to the validity of the Socialist case on war is massed all around us. It points clearly to one conclusion.

We can have Peace In Our Time—if we want it

The Legacy of 1914-18 (1964)

From the August 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

When the first world war was declared amid scenes of hysterical enthusiasm from crowds of workers on both sides, few thought that it would drag on for four dreadful years. Nor did many envisage the weapons that would be produced and developed in that period of carnage.

Much of what has been written recently has touched on these weapons, and criticism has centred on the failure of the high-ups to see their possibilities and exploit them to the full. A few months ago, The Sunday Times Magazine had this to say about air power, for instance: -

For much of the war pilots were more concerned about painted duels than with the destruction of men and material. The hero worship such individuals gained was great for the home front, but didn’t do a lot for the man in the mud . . . real ground strafing did not begin until Messines and Cambrai (1917). Only in the final weeks was the aeroplane fully used as a striking weapon!

Be that as it may, it is not our intention to join the largely futile arguments about who was right and who was wrong, who was far-sighted and who not. Perhaps from the viewpoint of some contemporary historians, the perfect war effort would be one which organised its resources up to the hilt and exploited every weapon to the limits of its potential. Thank goodness there is no such thing as perfection, for had it been achieved, the ghastly story of it all would have been that much ghastlier.

The great lesson is that the war-like nature of capitalism continues, whether or not hostilities are actually in progress. Once a weapon has arrived on the scene, it will be developed, refined and used until changes in the conduct and techniques of warfare make it out of date. Perhaps the brasshats will be slow to grasp when a particular weapon has had its day and there will be the usual controversy among the war councils.

Let us consider one or two examples. In 1916 the first tanks appeared on the western front, much to the annoyance of the cavalry men. The tank was an early sign that warfare was to become much more mobile.. It was the answer to the machine gun nests which had prevailed until then, although some of the Allied chiefs were slow to realise its possibilities. Who, then, would have foreseen the day over twenty years later, when tank warfare would grow to the extent that it did, and Panzer divisions overrun France in a few weeks? But even the tanks of early 1940 were as babies compared with the sixty-ton monsters which smashed their way through Germany from all directions only five years later.

When the first world war broke out, the aeroplane was in its infancy, but at the end it was being used more extensively, and a fleet of four-engined bombers was being prepared to raid Berlin. Here, perhaps, is one of the most apt examples of our point, for the inter-war years saw rapid changes in the design of fighting aircraft. The Spitfire and Hurricane, and their German opposite numbers, could fly at well over three hundred miles per hour, and by 1939 the day of the bomber had really dawned. It is as well to remember, incidentally, that only just before this, the Spanish civil war had provided a testing ground for some of the new ’planes. Even in the midst of “peace” we are in war.

The growth of air power during 1939- 45, and its use against soldier and civilian alike, had its roots in the events of twenty-odd years before. During the first war, the allies had produced incendiary and high explosive bombs which were dropped on enemy airfields with devastating effect. Practically the whole of Baron von Richthofen’s Flying Circus was destroyed on the ground in one such raid. German Zeppelins bombed London and other parts until around 1916. But if civilians found the Zeppelin raids terrifying, a glimpse into the future would certainly have widened their eyes still further in horror. For there they would have seen the firestorms of Rotterdam, Hamburg and Dresden, the flying bombs and rockets on London, and the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The casualty lists of 1914 shocked many of those who had been so enthusiastic for a fight, and the relief when it was all over was matched only by a “never again” feeling. Post-war conferences of the big powers outlawed dumdum bullets and poison gas, and supply us with a fitting example of the futility of such a piecemeal approach to the problem of war. For even by then, developments had rendered these weapons obsolete and far more efficient means of killing were to be our lot. Yet it is one of the tragedies that this attitude has persisted until the present time. Even the anti-war movements of the inter war years never got down to an examination of causes.

They have been succeeded by that prime futility of the fifties—the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. This body has canalised the fright which many understandably felt when Hiroshima and Nagasaki hit the head-lines, but like its predecessors, CND has based its policy on the false assumption that the way to abolish war is to begin by outlawing its worst weapons and then work backwards through the list. “There is no war but nuclear war” was the remark made by one of their young supporters to an S.P.G.B. speaker a few years ago, and it seems a fair summary of at least their earlier attitude.

Last summer saw the signing of the test ban treaty, and this went to their heads a bit, having the effect of diverting their attention somewhat to other sources of capitalism. The words of Bertrand Russell illustrate to some extent their current feelings. At the end of January this year, he said;

  Owing to changes in government opinion, it seems more possible than it did to avert nuclear war . . . friends of peace should look for compromise solutions possibly acceptable to both sides. It should also be part of our work to expose punishments inflicted by governments which are unjustifiable and exacerbate international hostility. (Guardian, 29.1.64.)

It has been left to the SPGB to point out that the danger of war is just as great as ever and that the test ban treaty was only a sign of the changing balance of power between the major capitalist countries. It will be the same sort of story as long as capitalism is with us.

The horror of war weapons past, present and future, cannot be divorced from the social system which produces them. Let us correct the words of the young C.N.D.'er:--There is no war but a capitalist war.

Eddie Critchfield

Lost Illusion (1949)

Book Review from the August 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Lost Illusion,” by Freda Utley (Allen & Unwin,  237 pages, 10s. 6d.), tells of her conversion to the  Communist Party in 1926, of her marriage to a Russian and her life in Russia for many years, of her disillusionment and eventually of the arrest without charge or public trial of her husband. Except that she received a postcard in 1937 from a Siberian concentration camp she has never heard from him since his arrest and all her efforts to get information from the Russian authorities have produced no result whatever. She says that she refrained from publishing the story all these years lest it should harm him, but she assumes now that he must be dead, or, if still alive, that he no longer has any chance of release whether she publishes the facts or maintains silence.

Those whose interest in the book is in this tragic personal story will probably be well satisfied and will doubtless accept the tribute to her sincerity paid by her friend of many years Bertrand Russell, who contributes, an Introduction. If, however, they have the curiosity to wonder what led the authoress through her various political enthusiasms they may well be puzzled, as indeed she is herself. She writes: “ Looking back on that distant time, I now wonder, did I really believe it? 1 suppose I did, or I should never have thrown up my job in the capitalist world and gone off with my husband to take part, as we thought, in the construction of Socialism.” (p. 17). Elsewhere (p. 11) she quotes what Bertrand Russell said to her when she was toying with the idea that it was all Stalin’s fault and that perhaps Lenin or Trotsky would have changed things. All Russell said was: “ Will you never learn and stop being romantic about politics?” The truth appears to be that in spite of having had what among the rich would be called a good education, and in spite of her economic and political studies, her changes of political faith have never been much more than violent emotional reactions against whatever unpleasant facts forced themselves on her attention. So when she came up against the sordid cruelty of British capitalism in the General Strike she suddenly had a vision that strange, faraway Russia, with its Communist Government, was different and must therefore be noble and beautiful. It is not clear from the book exactly where Freda Utley’s present political sympathies lie but we do know that it is the fate of many who approach politics in this emotional way to end up as cynical upholders of things as they are.

Socialists who read “Lost Illusion” will be interested in Freda Utley’s many first-hand examples of the inequalities of wealth, the class distinctions and snobbery, the callous attitude of the ruling clique towards the workers and peasants, and the brazen way the outward forms of democratic methods embodied in the Constitution are ignored in practice. Above all. Socialists will notice her description of Russia as a form of State Capitalism:

“The Russian workers, like the peasants have no say at all as regards the disposal of the wealth created by their labour. The Communist Party, although not in theory the ‘owner’ of the means of production, appropriates to itself or for its own purposes the profit and benefits derived from the labour of the rest of the population. One can call the system state capitalism with the Bolshevik Party drawing the dividends.” (P.184.)

By itself this may appear to indicate that Freda Utley has a clear insight into the nature of capitalism and Socialism. In fact she seems to have reached a correct form of words by accident, for there is nothing in the book to show that she understands what Socialism and capitalism are and much to show that she does not. Nowhere does she say what exactly she understands by Capitalism and Socialism and she repeatedly uses terms in a way that betrays lack of understanding. On page one we are told that Russia in 1927 “ might be called semi-Socialist,” and we learn that some time earlier she was “ active ... in the Socialist movement" but what she means by the latter is that she was a member of the Labour Party. As such, as also when she was in the I.L.P., she was supporting the movement to establish State capitalism in Britain, which makes her criticism of “State capitalist ” Russia somewhat mystifying. If in her eyes the difference is that Russia is now a dictatorship it is pertinent to remind her that so it was in the early days of her admiration for it. And when we are asked to note that in State Capitalist Russia since 1935 “the salaries of high officials have been anything from ten to thirty times as high as the wage of a worker of average qualifications” (p.191) it is relevant to point out that exactly the same inequality prevails in British State capitalism under [a] Labour government. There is just such a gulf between a railway porter’s £5 a week and the £8,500 a year paid to heads of some State Boards.

Quite late in the book (p.183) she is still calling the Russian government “Stalin’s Socialist government,” yet she complains (p.175) because the idea still persists in western countries that Russia is a “Socialist state.” She forgets that she was one of those who in the Labour Party and I.L.P. and later in the Communist Party spent years building up the illusion that State Capitalism is Socialism. If at the beginning she had seriously studied the problem and had asked herself whether the working class could be emancipated within capitalism, she would have realised that emancipation requires common ownership and democratic control of the means of production and distribution, that this cannot be achieved until the majority become Socialists, and that it involves the ending of property incomes, the wages system and production for sale and profit. Had she done this she would not have contributed to the perpetuation of forms of capitalism by backing the Labour Party and Communist Party. Incidentally she would have escaped the painful experience of going to Russia only to be disillusioned by what she found there. She would have known from the outset that Socialism did not exist in Russia and was not being built up there any more than it is being built up in Britain today.

Edgar Hardcastle

Why I left CND (1966)

From the April 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

I was one of the enthusiastic teenage supporters of CND who took part in the 1964 Easter March. That was the last year I marched, because by Easter 1965 I had ceased supporting CND and had become a member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

It is difficult to recall when I first became attracted to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. I think I was automatically thrown into sympathy with it by the foolish outlook of many of its fiercest opponents. I was visiting London one Easter, saw the March pass through Trafalgar Square and was surprised by the huge number of marchers. Later I bought CND pamphlets from a “Communist” bookshop. One in particular impressed me—Win We Must by Bertrand Russell. This decided me to join my local CND group.

I went on public demonstrations, sold the CND organ Sanity and frequently argued about war with members of the public. As well as arguments with supporters of the deterrent theory (the “we’ve-got-to-have-it-as-long-as-theyve-got-it” gang) there were arguments within CND. One of the biggest blows to the “Peace Movement” was the Moscow Test Ban Treaty, after which it became an unsurprising experience to hand someone a pamphlet and be told; “Haven't you heard, mate? They’ve already banned it?”

From the outset one of the biggest weaknesses of CND was that its supporters had no clear idea of what it was all about, and where they did have clear ideas, these were in opposition to the clear ideas of other supporters. I don't mean that they were altogether ignorant of the facts of nuclear war. Quite the contrary: the public image of the CND supporter who wears the badge merely because of the dope-peddling and copulation on the Easter March is mostly fiction. I found the average active CND man was better informed about politics than his opponent. What I do mean is that the objects and principles of CND were not always very precise, and where they were there always existed sections of the supporters which were trying to extend them or tone them down. CND has no official membership, and supporters include Pacifists, Anarchists, “Communists,” Trotskyists, Conservatives, Labourites and Liberals—plus many other groups, and even more who have no party affiliation. Each of these sections accepts the principle of leadership, in fact approval of this principle is axiomatic to CND policy. Naturally, therefore, each section tries to pull in its direction the entire organisation.

Perhaps the main broad division is between what we could call the Pacifist-Anarchist wing, and those more interested in the preservation of Britain as a matter of expediency. I was definitely in the latter camp. On the Pacifist side it was pointed out that nuclear weapons were no longer the most fearsome available, and that as weapons of war could not be rigidly classified on the basis of destructive power it was not reasonable to see the banning of some weapons as more important than the banning of the rest of them. I can now see there was more in these arguments than I had supposed. H-bombs are NOT to be seen as divorced from other sorts of armaments. They have their own particular features but there is no longer anything peculiar about their destructive powers. They are simply weapons. They cannot be lifted out of the context of weapons as a whole, neither can weapons be lifted out of the context of the social system which produces them. This was one of the many awkward questions left to fester in my mind, slapped down for the moment with the stop-gap argument that nuclear weapons should be especially opposed because they were not only a means of war, but also—due to the “instant retaliation" policies of Russia and the US and the probability of war by accident—a possible cause of it.

The Committee of 100 (which is often confused with CND. There is no official connection between the two) began to crystalise an ideology, based on the concept of the “nonviolent society.'’ I dismissed this as mere idealism, though in fact it was the natural corollary of an obvious train of reasoning: we want disarmament. How are we to enforce it? Obviously by something more than a treaty, since treaties can be broken at will. We need something more fundamental. Go on thinking like this for a bit and you will start to consider the cause of war. Had I thought more analytically from the outset and gone straight to the question “What causes war?” instead of wasting time over silly red herrings like disarmament treaties, neutral initiatives, UNO etc., I should never have supported CND. What it comes to is this: if the human race is to survive in peace, the very antagonisms which create war, or even the machinery of war, must be removed.

However, my thoughts 'didn’t follow this chain, because I didn’t accept the first link: that there is no way of enforcing disarmament between nations. I thought it could be done, as outlined in Russell’s Has Man A Future? by means of world government, or at least a super-UN. It should have occurred to me that if we can persuade nations to give up a tremendous part of their sovereignty to a world authority it should be an easy job to get them to perform the' much less demanding task of refraining from annihilating each other.

But this point was glossed over by another piece of Russell’s reasoning which seemed to me perfectly valid at the time: that the interests of nations lay in co-operation. Russell used to say that Russia and America had ninety-nine per cent of their aims in common, and it was silly of them to destroy each other for the sake of the remaining one per cent. He called on the nations to treat the prospect of war as he thought they would the possibility of being exterminated by a comet from outer space—by uniting together to oppose what was threatening them all. By this very analogy he gives the real key to the situation. War is not a comet from outer space. The whole point about war is that it does not come from outer space, but from the social system which exists on Earth.

It is easy for the non-Socialist to fall into the error of thinking that it is in the nation's interest to co-operate. This is because he identifies the nation with the people. In fact the nation is not the people; it is the capitalist class and its machinery of coercion. The people—ninety per cent of them —are not the nation. They are the nation’s employees, the working-class who have no country. It is certainly in the interests of all the peoples of the world to co-operate. But it is not in the interests of all the nations of the world to co-operate. It is not in any nation’s interest to combine with another nation, except to form a supra-national bloc in order more effectively to assault other nations or blocs.

CND supporters stress the importance of “escalation,” and quite rightly so. Escalation is the process by which relatively minor conflicts develop into major conflicts, because of the ever-increasing force which each side finds it necessary to bring into the field to equal and overcome the other. It is a pity people can’t take their realisation of escalation a stage further and see that it is present at the very genesis of war. Military conflict is an escalation from economic conflict. War, it has been said, is fought for vital interests. The trouble is that the same thing is likely to be a vital interest to more than one nation at a time. It is rather naive in these circumstances to discover which nation actually possesses the particular interest (i.e. which nation managed to steal it first) and label the other nation the “aggressor.”

A lot of people talk as though there is nothing really at stake in a war, as though wars were caused by “arrogance" or “hatred” or the desire not to lose face. Russell even compares brinkmanship policies to the American teenagers’ game of “chicken” on the motorways. Surely it should be evident that wars are fought over something, that they are not just misfortunes, that something is at stake.

However at the time when I came into contact with the Socialist Party I was a convinced follower of Russell, of CND and (with reservations) the Labour Party. I first heard of the Socialist Party about four years ago. 1 saw the name in a Central Government textbook giving voting figures for all the parties at general elections, then I saw the advert in Sanity. I asked a Communist Party friend of mine what the party was, and he replied inaccurately: “The Trots.” Later I met members of the Birmingham branch.

At first I was inclined to scoff. It is somewhat difficult acclimatising oneself to the idea that a party of 600-odd members can be right, and nearly everyone else wrong. I already called myself a Socialist, of course. By this I meant something rather vague, to do with support of the “left-wing” of the Labour Party.

My main objections to the Socialist Party were: first, I thought nationalisation was a step towards Socialism, I saw the increase of state control throughout the world as a praiseworthy thing I ought to support (whether through the Labour Party, the Communist Party or some other body I considered merely a matter of tactics). Second, I could not appreciate the Socialist Party’s opposition to CND and other disarmament groups, which I thought had great potential influence for peace. I would say (as scores of people have said to me since): “Let's make sure of our survival first, then we can decide on the system of society.” (As though the two had nothing to do with each other.)

The answers to these points are, of course, first that state ownership is a device for running society more smoothly in the interests of the capitalist class; second that Capitalism is the cause of modern warfare. Capitalism without war is as absurd a proposition as a deciduous forest without dead leaves.

Any effort expended on reforms is effort unexpended on revolution. When we consider that parties which have started out for revolution and “immediate aims” have ended up with no revolution and immediate aims gone sour, we realise what a wild goose chase the pursuit of reforms is, even if they are connected with something as vital as the possible end of civilisation. The only way to prevent war is to establish Socialism.

Steele. 

The Uselessness of "Practical Politics" (1934)

From the February 1934 issue of the Socialist Standard

Most Socialists are familiar with the type of criticism which consists of arguing that Socialism is a vague proposal for general change, whereas what is needed is a series of definite, practical reforms. Bertrand Russell, in the Sunday Referee for November 5th, reproduces this argument with a variation which is new, at any rate, to the present writer. This is the opening paragraph, which provides the key to the entire article, entitled “The age of stagnation”:—

"The nineteenth century, judged by any definite test, was a period of solid progress, in comparison with which the present is an age of stagnation. This not because there were, in those days, more people who desired change, but because reformers worked patiently for definite objects without any thought of altering the entire social order.” 

He then goes on to specify the particular types of reform he has in mind, such as Parliamentary reform legal reform, sex reform and prison reform.

This attitude embodies two fairly obvious errors. In the first place the present, century has witnessed social reforms, such as National Health and Unemployment Insurance, Old Age Pensions, etc., and political reforms, such as the enfranchisement of women. One would have expected the latter, at any rate, to have held a special appeal for Mr. Russell. In the second place it is obvious that the present National Government have no “thought of altering the entire social order.” On the contrary, they obtained power for “ definite objects.”

At the last election they obtained support by promises of certain immediate reforms. Even the Bolsheviks, who do profess to have Socialism as their ultimate aim, secured power by promising peace, land for the peasants and bread for the workers.

It is no part of the Socialist case that reforms are unnecessary. Capitalist society produces such a crop of evils that the need for reforms is constant and urgent; but it is a necessity which imposes itself upon the master class, who alone possess the power to introduce them. Hence we find arising from this class (in the words of Marx and Engels), “Economists, philanthropists, humanitarians, improvers of the condition of the working class, organisers of charity, members of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, temperance fanatics, and hole and comer reformers of every imaginable kind.” (Communist Manifesto.)

Mr. Russell belongs to this type of person. He is superficial enough to think that by concentrating attention upon the details of capitalist administration he will avoid facing the fundamental problem which the very existence of capitalism involves. In this he resembles most defenders of capitalism to-day. Indeed, this is the only safe line for such people to take, since the moment the workers begin to think about fundamentals the game of bluff will be nearly up.

No one need worry that they will not have enough to do if they become revolutionary. Even a small organisation like the S.P.G.B. is not maintained by meeting to pass revolutionary resolutions. Practical details have to be attended to, and will become more numerous as the Party grows. The revolution will change the class of details that need dealing with. The working class in power will find its administrative capacity amply taxed. Mr. Russell, however, wishes us to ignore the need for revolution. He offers us the barren prospect of becoming mere busybodies on behalf of our masters.

Various sections of the ruling class at present are preoccupied with what they describe as ”preventing war.” Not having finished paying for the last they do not relish incurring a still greater burden of debt by having another. Mr. Russell proposes, in a further article in the same paper (November 19th), international agreement to take the armament industry out of private hands. It is, of course, only to be expected that armament firms will support policies suited to their interests, but it by no means follows that Mr. Russell’s proposal is any solution to the war problem.

In the first place, Governments do not increase their debts merely to oblige the armament firms. Control of trade routes, markets and sources of raw materials is essential to any powerful group of capitalists, and conflicts over this control are the prime cause of modern wars. Secondly, Mr. Russell’s idea implies a degree of harmony of interests among the national groups which is simply non-existent. If they cannot agree about the division of the plunder derived from the exploitation of the workers of the world they are hardly likely to trust one another not to obtain arms except from Government arsenals. In fact, the armament industry is not a separate, watertight, economic department, it is inextricably bound up with other industries.

In order to carry out Mr. Russell’s proposal each Government would either have to confiscate or purchase industrial concerns normally used for other purposes or leave them outside its control, thus losing valuable sources of supply in time of need. Mr. Russell might just as usefully suggest an international agreement between Governments not to employ civilians in war time. Experience shows that armies can, in a few months, be increased from a few hundreds of thousands to several millions, and similarly all kinds of factories become sources of war supplies, including arms and munitions, when the emergency arises. Mr. Russell, with his passion for attention to detail, should pay a certain amount of respect to details such as these. Deeper than this he can hardly be expected to go, but of all utopian schemes that of establishing peace under capitalism is the most fantastic. Capitalism is founded upon robbery—the robbery in the workshops, mines, farms, etc., of the producers, by the possessors of these means of living. The proceeds of robbery require to be protected, both from the robbed and from, rival gangs of robbers. Hence the existence of armed forces. For the international capitalist class to get rid of these forces would be equivalent to abandoning the most important guarantee of its own conditions of existence; in other words, it would be equivalent to, economic and political suicide.

Disarmament in any real sense of the term is the task of the international working class. They can accomplish it only by getting control of the armed forces through consciously organised political action. That is the essential preliminary act in the drama of social revolution, whereby the means of living will be converted into the common property of all. Nothing less than the determination to emancipate themselves will provide the workers with a motive equal to the task. So long as they are prepared for slavery in the factories they will be ready for sacrifice on the battlefield at the behest of their masters.

Mr. Russell fears that much of the stagnation of which he complains is due to the fear of war. This only demonstrates the urgent need for the workers to concentrate their attention upon the revolutionary task. For them no essential change for the better can come within the limits of a system which inevitably generates wars and the fear of war. Our masters may alternately slacken or tighten our chains as circumstances dictate, but the chains will still be there until the workers as a class deliberately break them.

To any worker who is fully alive to his slave position emancipation is his supreme specific need. Compared with this the petty details of day-to-day adjustments within capitalism sink into relative unimportance. Certainly they can form no basis for a workers' party. Such a party can have for its object nothing less than Socialism.

Eric Boden

The Enemy on the Left! - Jean-Paul Sartre (1973)

The Enemy on the Left Column from the April 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Apart from the conventional left, the Labourite and Communist elements, the pseudo-socialist political scene is also cluttered up with a plethora of fringe-leftists who call themselves Trotskyists, Maoists, International Socialists etc. and who (insofar as one can follow their varying lines) claim to be lefter-than-left or more socialist than thou. (Alice's answer to the Mad Hatter is perhaps relevant. She could not have more tea because she hadn't had any yet. Similarly, these proliferating groups cannot be more socialist than the Labour Party which is not socialist at all. Though it is true they could not be less, either.)

It is difficult to keep up with these endlessly splintering groups and practically impossible to gather what they really stand for but perhaps one can begin by mentioning an interview in the Guardian recently with Jean-Paul Sartre "widely acknowledged as the greatest living philosopher". (Not so long ago, the title of world champ was claimed for Bertrand Russell whose most philosophical moment had occurred when he mooted the dropping of an atom bomb on Moscow. Not bad for a life-long pacifist. If only Marx was still around to re-write The Poverty of Philosophy.) This French genius, hero of the would-be revolutionary students, now, it seems, calls himself a Maoist. What he was doing all his leftist life, before Maoism was thought of as a creed, the interview does not make clear. One recalls that at various times he has quarrelled with the French Communist Party and at other times he has supported them — including times when the Stalin terror has been at its most ferocious; but you can't really expect leftist philosophers to bother themselves with such trivia as the fact that 200 million Russian workers were held in a tyrant's grasp and untold numbers were being frozen and worked to death in forced-labour camps. One also recalls his association with Russell in the so-called Tribunal to try America for war crimes in Vietnam (of which there was no shortage, of course) which really boiled down to support for the victory of that kindly, freedom-loving "communist", Uncle Ho.

The interview, though it occupies four columns, never gets round to asking the Great Man why he is a Maoist or indeed what kind of an alleged socialist that animal is supposed to be. So one can only fall back on the assumption that the Maoists stand for the sort of régime that exists in China today: where Mao makes it clear, both in word and in deed, that he is himself a Stalinist. So we have the farcical position that the revolting students of 1968 who called the French Communist Party "Stalinist shit" are now personified by a philosopher who stands for Chinese Stalinist shit. A rose by another name indeed. But of course that sort of muddle is the inevitable fate of those who lurch from one fashionable nostrum to another without ever giving themselves the time to work out the real lesson of the present jungle world, in Russia, or China, or the West — that capitalism is the enemy and only an understanding proletariat can do anything about it.

Clearly, the workers will never learn that lesson from a Professor of Maoism. Instead of getting knowledge in their heads, their heads will be broken by the brutal arm of the state. For our Maoist makes it clear he does not hold with the "legal action" of voting and although he does not spell out what means the workers should adopt, it is clear that our Maoists are enemies on the left indeed.

L. E. Weidberg 

The sage of Merioneth (1970)

Book Review from the December 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Russell Remembered, by Rupert Crawshay-Williams, OUP. 40s.

The author was a close neighbour and friend of "Bertie" in his plushy retreat in deepest Merioneth and although he goes through the motions of noticing some of the great man's faults (his vanity, bad temper, monumental conceit, etc), he does not attempt to hide his hero-worship and clearly regards himself as supremely fortunate to have been able to cultivate the friendship of this intellectual paragon. Most of the book consists of small talk reported à la Boswell. But there is no rival to Dr. Johnson here; not a word that is worth remembering in fact. (Sample of the humour: Good, better, best, Bertie. This sort of thing, it seems, had the great Earl wiping his eyes with helpless laughter. Of such stuff is greatness made.)

The one thing that should have struck the author he clearly never even considered. The great philosopher occupied the public stage for the better part of a century. And at the end of it all, the books, the speeches, the lectures, what remained that was worth remembering Russell for? Even a cursory glance at Russell's career makes it obvious that his influence merely served to spread confusion in matters that concern human society. The contradictions are crass and speak for themselves. A pacifist in the first world war. A belligerent in the second. An advocate of a pre-emptive atomic strike by America before Russia got the Bomb (for which he was dubbed Atom-Bomb Russell by the Daily Worker). And finally a founder of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, that great mass of "sound and fury, signifying nothing". He cheerfully lent his name to organisations which backed one side against the other in Vietnam (like so many "intellectuals", he became pathologically anti-American; which of course had nothing whatever to do with anti-capitalism). And to supporting vicious dictatorships like that of Nkrumah.

The evil side of all this is rendered worse when one thinks of the good that someone like Russell could have done had he been concerned to learn what was wrong with society and using his immense influence with whole generations of idealistic young people to taking the road towards ending the evil system of capitalism. But he preferred the road of easy fame and helped to lead the students and others into the hopeless blind alleys of movements like CND. So for that he must share the blame for the disillusion that inevitably followed. And which has left capitalism as securely entrenched now as on the day he first came into the world.  

L. E. Weidberg