Strikes Better than Arbitration (1968)

Party News from the December 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

A member of the Socialist Party of New Zealand, our comrade Ron Everson, sends us the following report on recent industrial unrest in that country:

On 17 June for the first time in twenty-seven years the Arbitration Court refused a general wage order application. The unions had sought increases of up to 7.6 per cent to compensate for cost-of-living increases following devaluation and the imposition of restrictive economic measures by the government.

The decision amazed even some employers who were prepared to give their workers a five per cent increase and some had already adjusted their prices in anticipation. The decision of course roused the ire of the workers. Widespread interest was taken in trade union activities; erstwhile apathetic union members attended work stop meetings and demonstrations. On the day of the State opening of parliament on 26 June trade unionists staged a demonstration. They were supported by students with placards pledging support for the workers and demanding bigger bursaries, by the Campaign Against Rising Prices, the Maori organisation for Human Rights and the CND. The demonstrators forced an unprecedented change in the State opening of parliament by Governor General Sir Arthur Porritt. Never before had a Governor General entered parliament for the State opening other than by the main entrance. On this occasion poor Sir Arthur had to sneak in by a side door.

Demands were made for the abolition of the Arbitration Court. Delegates to the Federation of Labour conference were in favour of ignoring the Court. It seems this, the strikes and industrial unrest that followed frightened the employers into agreeing to go back to the Court for a rehearing. As a result the Court made a wage order of a five per cent increase restricted to the first $40 earned by men, the first $30 by women and the first $25 by junior workers. Whether the nil order was the outcome of the inexperience of the new Judge of the Court, Blair, or the employers’ contempt for the workers’ will to fight is anyone’s guess.

However, the outcome was an illustration of the passage in the Socialist Party of Great Britain’s pamphlet Questions of the Day:

   “In practice arbitration bodies exist for the purpose of preventing industrial disputes from taking the form of stoppages of work, and their awards on wage claims are bound to be influenced by the attitude of the workers. If workers were to abandon all idea of strikes the employers and the arbitration bodies alike would reduce still further the amounts they were prepared to offer. The strike remains the workers' indispensable weapon".

Need we say that on the day of the march on parliament among the forest of banners there was not one advocating the “abolition of the wages system”. When workers in sufficient numbers reach that degree of understanding an effort to fob them off with a few miserable cents of a wage increase will only raise a laugh. It is a sad fact that now a few cents flung in their direction can take the fight out of workers.

While they lack knowledge of the nature of wages, and the wages system, they will be forced to engage in these never-ending struggles which merely maintain their subject position as wage-slaves.

Meanwhile the July issue of the New Zealand Building Worker,' official journal of the Carpenters and Related Trades’ Industrial Union of Workers, reprints our leaflet on devaluation (also an issue in New Zealand as the government there followed Britain), an article from this journal on the IWW and one from The Western Socialist on the materialist conception of history.

Ron Everson

Brewers & Preachers (1968)

From the December 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

The pro-and anti-Sunday drinking referendum that has recently taken place in Wales has been fought, on the one hand, under the guise of democracy and the freedom of the individual and. on the other, as a struggle to maintain a tradition in the face of a decline in standards and morals. One was an attempt by the brewers and those who, consciously or otherwise, supported them to change existing social habits, and the other an attempt by religious organisations (mainly Nonconformist) to maintain a way of life that has been peculiar to Wales for generations.

The sponsors of Sunday opening were without doubt headed by the brewery interests and other allied organisations. One found strange members in their camp — even religious people who claim to be supporters not only because of the 'freedom’ involved but because they could not find any scriptural command in the list of “Thou Shalt Nots" which was anti-drink. The Rev. Cannon R. Williams of Haverford West (the Brewers’ Chaplain) was a case in point. The public hoarding adverts and nation-wide door-to-door distribution of pamphlets must have cost the brewers a fortune — a fortune they hope to recoup in the years ahead.

Another reverend spokesman stated in the Western Mail that “the nation that loses its Sunday loses its soul”. But it is only fair to say that other, non-religious organisation have added their weight against the Sunday extension, for instance. National Life-Line (a movement similar to the Good Samaritans though primarily confined to industry) stated:

  Alcoholism is costing industry £75 millions annually . . . 250,000 men failed to turn up for work because of that ‘Monday morning feeling’.

Well, what is to the advantage of the brewing industy can be to the disadvantage of other industrialists—that’s capitalism.

It is indeed a comment on democracy in Britain that it grants ten minutes broadcasting time to the “Communist” Party, five minutes to the Welsh Nationalists and none whatsoever to the Socialist Party of Great Britain in Wales, but can spend a huge sum of money to build up a national campaign, including television and sound broadcasts, on the benefits of a Sunday pint of beer.

W. Brain

Science and Race (1968)

Book Review from the December 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Science and the Concept of Race, Margaret Mead, Theodosius Dobzhansky, Ethel Tohach, Robert E. Light. Editors. (Columbia University Press, $6.50)

About one third of this book is for the specialist; the remainder an absorbing discussion of one of society’s big problems. Not a one-sided discussion, either; Dwight J. Ingle writes

    . . . both types of racists seek to place individuals in schools, jobs, and housing on the basis of racial identity rather than of abilities, interests, drives, and behavioral standard.

Both types of racists! But even this determined bending over backwards does no more than suggest that there might be the very tiniest mouse of evidence in favour of racism—and that after all the mountains of prejudice which have been probed to find it.

Gloria Marshall makes the crucial point, that racial classification is usually taken as the starting point for an investigation of that very classification. In other words, assume that a Negro is different and then look into his differences. In other words, a case of heads I win and tails you lose.


The pity of it is that such knowledge, such discussion, does not penetrate into the council estates and the suburbs, where racism flourishes in so many forms. This can be fought only with knowledge; Science and the Concept of Race, with its up-to- date review of scientific thinking on the subject, is a sound introduction for anyone wanting to understand and attack this most pernicious of theories. It also has a comprehensive list of references for further study.

Ivan

Marxism and Communism (1968)

Book Review from the December 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marxism and Communism by Katharine Savage (Bodley Head 25s.)

Katharine Savage specialises in books for young people. Her latest is a skilfil mixture of ignorance and confusion and will probably sell very well.

John Crump

Catholics and Protestants in Ireland (1968)

From the December 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

July 1, 1690, (Old Calendar) was a major turning point in Irish history. The defeat of the catholic King James confirmed William of Orange as the new King of England and Ireland and consequently as head of the Protestant Church. The centuries which followed witnessed the suppression of catholics by the imposition of penal laws. The old aristocrats had their lands confiscated and were replaced by a new Loyalist aristocracy. The new privileged class re-let their lands to the peasants and. as the years passed, raised the rents to enormous heights. The landlords lived then in ostentatious luxury spending most of their time gambling, drinking and entertaining their fellow aristocrats in England, all from the proceeds of rack-rents.

These circumstances imposed a hard and unstable existence on the catholic peasant majority evoking their hatred of the parasitical protestant landlords. After the Catholic Emancipation of 1829 the Irish went through the greatest horror in their history—the so-called Famine of the 1840’s. The population was devastated and today is still little more than half of what it then was. The catholics strongly felt that famine had been imposed and exacerbated by a foreign, protestant government.

Then in 1916 the Easter Rising took place. The executions which followed sparked off the Anglo-Irish war, bringing Ireland to the attention of the world. Again the Irish felt they were victims of a crime against humanity—the introduction into Ireland of the Black and Tans, gangs of trigger-happy layabouts in British uniform. In the end the British government agreed to grant a mild form of nationhood to twenty-six countries, but a parliament subordinate to Westminster to the portion of Ireland where protestants were a majority. The actions of a handful of protestant politicians, who pressurised the British government into splitting Ireland in two, once again brought the religious issue into Irish politics. Giving a portion of Ulster a political divorce from the rest of Ireland was one of the causes of the cold blooded and bitter civil war.

This very brief outline of Irish history is essential to an understanding of how religious belligerence arose. The protestant minority have not been the victims of terror by “the papists" in the Irish Republic despite their fears in 1921. On the other hand, this ridiculous religious belligerence still exists in Northern Ireland where the catholic minority are subjected to various forms of discrimination.

Both religions, catholic and protestant, claim to be Christian. Today we hear their leaders crying out for peace throughout the world; they beg the rich to be charitable to the poor; their tongues are blistered denouncing socialists. Yet they stand firmly rooted in the society which causes and perpetuates war and poverty.

Religion, to the Irish catholic, is man's first and most important duty. They feel that the road to god is the road to happiness. They are thus led to accept present conditions and to look forward to happiness after death. They fail to see that they, like men in other religions, have a common bond—they are members of the working class. Religion to them is like heroin injected into their veins. It mixes with the blood and sinks their minds into a state in which they can no longer think for themselves. It is this which leads them willingly to submit to their energies being used for the benefit of a few parasites. They are unable to see that this oppression helps perpetuate their exploitation, the sale of their labour-power for a minimum of its produce. The consequent degradation, and the insecure existence, always with the fear of what may happen should their ability to work be maimed, encourages a belief in a better existence after death, just as primitive man’s struggle with nature gave rise to beliefs in gods, devils, demons, food-laden paradises and all sorts of unrealistic fantasies.

Only by a close examination of society can the worker learn the reason for his poverty and only after casting aside all forms of addiction—nationalist and religious—can society be examined in a clear manner. Only by learning where his true interest lies can the worker go out, organise consciously and take the proper steps to end his subservience; Religion is of no use here. It is in fact a hindrance, a serious and a malicious hindrance.

All the workers of Ireland should end their addictions. They suffer the same conditions as the workers in England. Russia and everywhere. Their split into different factions of a similar dream will have to go. It is sad to see our fellow workers fighting amongst themselves over opposed beliefs in some form of nothingness, with the catholics shouting about partition and the protestants about 1690 and the Inquisition. They mistakenly believe their degradation to be inflicted upon them because of their different beliefs, one faction agitating the other. The catholic workers are unable to see through the nebulousness of their religion while the protestant workers allow themselves to be used as instruments of hypocritical Unionist parasites who want the link with Britain in order to make more money. The catholics swoon over their history while the Orangemen denounce the tyranny of the papacy at the height of its power.

The solution to the problems of workers in all Ireland will not come by conversion of one faction to the other, but by uniting with each other and with their fellow workers of the world. Then, when the workers are united their energies can be turned to the real conflict—that between capitalists and workers, not between workers with different national and religious tags. However the workers must, in the first instance, reject all the drugs, nationalist and religious, which lead them into willing submission to the capitalist class.

Patrick Garvey

The International Oil Scramble (1968)

From the December 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

The modern oil industry has seen many changes since the first successful well was drilled in Pennsylvania in 1859. At first the main application of oil was as a fuel for lamps. Now it has many more uses. Its distillates provide the fuels and lubricants for various types of internal combustion engines powering the means of transport on land, sea and air. It can be used as a substitute for coal as boiler fuel and as a raw material for the chemical industry. For all the changes the oil industry is still beset by the contradictions resulting from the capitalist mode of production. The leading producers operate on a world wide scale but are hampered by the nationalism of the countries they operate in. The extraction, refining and distribution of oil needs a vast social effort; yet a motley host of parasites make a fine living from it, through private property rights. As in all capitalist industry costs are cut to the bone; yet the waste that characterises the system is not eliminated.

America is still the leading national producer, but its market has expanded so much that it is also the leading importer. The early years were characterised by cut throat competition among the many producers. As the landowner has the mineral rights, an oil field can have as many producers as there owners over it. This is one aspect of waste that goes beyond duplication of effort, in that an excessive number of wells in an oil field reduces the amount recoverable from that source. In spite of the many different producers the American industry was soon dominated by Standard Oil. founded by Rockefeller in 1870, who within a few years controlled approximately 80 per cent of refinery capacity, 90 per cent of the pipelines and had large interests in railway tankcars. Hence the producers had to dance to the tune called by this firm. Standard became the dominating oil interest in the world. In 1911 it was broken into 30 companies under American anti-trust law. One of them, Standard of New Jersey (ESSO), is still the world’s largest oil company.

A number of oil fields outside America were developed before 1918. The most important was in the Baku region of Russia, which was controlled by the Nobel brothers of Sweden (of dynamite and peace prize fame). German interests had important investments in the Rumanian oil fields. They also had a share in the Turkish Petroleum Co. (now Iraq Petroleum Co.), in partnership with British interests and Gulbenkian (Mr. 5 per cent). In 1908 important deposits were found in Persia by the Anglo-Persian Co. (later Anglo-Iranian, now B.P.) and the Abadan refinery set up in 1913. The British Admiralty in 1914 switched their warships from coal to oil fuel, and also obtained a controlling interest in the firm. The main challenge to Standard Oil during this period came from the Royal Dutch Company. Operating from Sumatra, they were well placed to undercut the Americans in the important Chinese market for lamp oil. Shell was another competitor. They distributed Russian oil and cut transport costs by introducing tanker ships. In 1907 these two firms merged and five years later had carried their challenge into Standard's home territory by setting up subsidiaries in America.

The first world-war showed the importance of oil as a strategic material. The defeat of Germany resulted in the confiscation of its oil interests, France taking over its share in Turkey. In Russia the oil fields were taken over by the state. With increasing demand competition intensified in the scramble to gain control of new sources. The main contestants were Britain and America who clashed wherever there was oil to be found. American interests were excluded from the Middle-East till 1928 when they gained a share in IPC. They were later to gain concessions in Saudi Arabia and other parts of the region. The interwar period saw Venezuela. Iran and Iraq became important producers.

The development of such synthetic materials as nylon, plastics and artificial rubber during the second world war gave rise to the petro-chemical industry and important new markets for oil. The growth of air transport, the replacing of steam by diesel traction on the railways and the increasing number of motor can, have also been factors in the continuing growth of the oil market in recent years. The main outlets are still in the industrialised areas while relatively underdeveloped regions have become increasingly important producers. This has led to conflicts over royalties, taxes and concession agreements between oil companies and governments in whose territories they are operating. One showdown came between the Anglo-Iranian Co. and the Iranian government which resulted in nationalisation of the firm’s assets. The British government replied by successfully placing an embargo on oil from Iran. Output was increased elsewhere, including areas operated by Anglo-Iranian, while the Iranian government had assets yielding less income in two years than a single day’s royalty had done before. In 1954 a new agreement was signed in which the eight leading oil companies formed a consortium to run production for a half share of the profits. Those who controlled the marketing end of the industry still called the tune.

The struggle between the various capitalist sectional interests over the division of the spoils continues. It mainly consists of haggling over royalties and concessions. At times of stress such as the Suez war or the more recent Arab-Israel war, pipelines have been blown up, supplies cut, or the Suez canal blocked. As a result some other sources have expanded output to take up the slack. Having found that individual action unsatisfactory, governments of the producing countries have set up the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to take joint action. In fact they are only doing what the international companies have long been accused of. Vast fortunes have been made in recent years by the rulers of the oil producing lands. More than enough for luxurious living so that they still have large funds to invest. Places such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela are pressing ahead with industrialisation projects. Large sums have also been invested in armaments. Iraq and Saudi Arabia are examples; each nation has territorial claims on neighbouring Sheikhdoms.

In recent years Italy, Japan, Spain and France have been trying to get or increase their stakes in the oil producing areas, thus adding to the chaos that already exists. State-capitalist Russia has recently produced more oil than it needs and has captured some important export markets. It is estimated that demand for oil in Russia will expand so much that they too are on the look-out for outside sources of supply. At present about 60 per cent of the proven oil reserves are in the Middle-East, yet efforts to discover other reserves arc being made throughout the world. In a situation where there is a problem of oversupply, this may seem crazy. Yet under capitalism with its conflict of interests, it makes sense to be crazy. In the case of oil. consuming, marketing, and producing interests vie against one another in an orgy of waste.

The oil industry presents a fine example of the confusion that can arise from the conflicts of capitalism. Workers get caught in the mythologies of imperialism. Hence the idea that the international oil companies have simply to be ousted from the Middle East, to hasten the end of capitalism. Its opposite is that they must stay there to defend our standard of living. Russia is a case where foreign interests have been replaced by local ones, yet the differences are only superficial. A minority still dominate society and conflicts over the terms of trade remain. Neighbouring satellite countries pay more for oil from Russia, than the same product will fetch on the open market. As for living standards, the majority have to put up with working class standards, which are well below those of the capitalists—the Gulbenkians. the Rockefellers, the oil sheiks.

Joe Carter

50 Years Ago: Equal Pay for Women (1968)

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

A writer in Reynold's Newspaper October 13, 1918 bewails the fact that women’s wages should be lower than men’s. She complains that: —

   Woman has been treated as a sort of lay figure for students of economics. Her value to the employer as a profit- maker, to the community as a potential Mother, to the politician as a dispenser of votes, has had the fullest consideration. But who has claimed the right of woman to that payment for her labour which will allow of a full and independent life?

The writer forgets that in the past the capitalist has only employed women in preference to men because they were cheaper, and if we except those special occupations where women — because of lightness of touch etc. — excel, men would still be employed in preference to women if wages were the same for both sexes. A woman who does equal work with a man must obviously require and obtain the same amount of the necessities of life. It does not follow, however, that the employer must pay her a wage that will provide it. Girls living with their parents for instance, look upon the factory as a makeshift to obtain a living until they get married. The capitalist knows this, and the girls seldom organise to try and force them to pay for their labour-power at its cost of production, hence the parents have to make up the difference. The employment of large numbers of women sets free men who, competing with their fellow-workers' provide employers with the power to reduce men's wages: and married women, unable to live on their husbands’ wages, take their place beside the younger women in the factory, and the capitalist gets the husband and wife for wages that would not sustain them if they lived separately.

From an article 'Woman and her Work' by F. Foan. Socialist Standard, December 1918.

Letters: Reform or Revolution (1968)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Reform or Revolution

Sir,

In connexion with Socialism it seems pertinent to consider three situations: the current capitalist-situation, the future Socialist-situation and the change-over-situation when capitalism changes to Socialism. Many people claim Socialism infeasible, usually on the grounds that human-nature would not allow Socialism to operate. To this the Socialist Party of Great Britain replies that those elements of human-nature that would harm Socialism are merely a product of capitalism and that under Socialism human-nature would adjust accordingly. Such an adjustment would surely take generations, certainly many years, to come about, and this in itself surely renders the sudden onset of Socialism an impossibility? The Socialist Party demands that Socialists should not vote for reformist parties such as the Labour Party and apparently forgets that by condemning reformism an increasing public sympathy towards the Socialist Party will technically be followed by an increasingly “Right Wing” government. Indeed, as soon as the Socialist Party became a threat to the status-quo, repressive government measures would be taken to destroy it. In fact we could see politics moving backwards. It appears that Socialists must become involved in reformism, or cry for ever to the wind. This makes the unsympathetic attitude taken by the Socialist Party towards the Labour Party all the more difficult to understand.

R. E. Shimmin,

Port St. Mary, Isle of Man.

REPLY:
Mr. Shimmin’s argument might have some validity if it really was the aim and policy of the Labour Party to achieve Socialism by a gradual process of reform. But Labour has always firmly stood for capitalism (even if we concede that a tiny handful of its members may have wanted Socialism). Its constitution commits it to wholesale nationalisation or state capitalism, while in practice it accepts capitalism in Britain more or less as it is, a mixture of private and state enterprise. The only party in this country to stand for Socialism is the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

Class ownership of the means of production causes workers’ problems and any government, be it Labour or “right-wing”, which takes power within capitalism cannot solve these problems and must come into conflict with the workers. It must run capitalism in the only way it can be, as a profit-making system in the interests of the privileged few who live off rent, interest and profit, and to the detriment of the workers. As socialists, we are not particularly concerned whether the capitalist government is Labour, Tory, Liberal or a coalition of them all. They are all anti-working class.

We fail to see Mr. Shimmin’s point about the growth of the Socialist Party “technically” being followed by a reactionary government. We presume that this is the old hoary one about splitting the anti-Tory vote. But it is not the Tories that are the main enemy. It is capitalism and we are equally opposed to all parties that support it, Labour as well as Tory. We would also remind Mr. Shimmin that in many countries, and especially in pre-war Germany, it was the failure of democratic reformism that paved the way for the rise of parties favouring dictatorship.

We are given no reason as to why the growth of the Socialist Party should be at the expense of the Labour Party. No doubt when the socialist movement grows those who support capitalism, fearful of splitting the anti-socialist vole, will rally around one or other of the large capitalist parties. It may be the Tories or it may be Labour or they both may form an anti-socialist electoral alliance. It does not really worry us what they do. That is their problem and that of the class they represent, the capitalists. We assure of one thing, though. Going by the record of the two post-war Labour governments, if there are any repressive measures to be taken against socialists and workers generally Labour will be only too pleased to oblige.

Which brings us to another of Mr. Shimmin’s points. He suggests that when the Socialist Party grows the government will take steps to try to crush it. Maybe, but we doubt it. For as the socialist movement grows so the power of the capitalists is weakened. The balance of class power shifts in favour of the workers. Any government, be it Labour or Tory, which tried to crush the socialist movement would be biting off too much. By the time the socialist movement has grown so as to be a threat to capitalist power then it will be too late to crush it.

Nor has our correspondent really understood our view of human nature. We are not out to change it. We merely assert that human beings behave in different ways under different social conditions and that they can change themselves by changing these conditions. The change from capitalism to Socialism will not be made by us on behalf of the people, but by the immense majority of workers who want Socialism and are fully aware of what is involved in establishing and running such a society. Once workers are socialist-minded Socialism can be established fairly quickly. When the workers have political power it won’t take long to use it to convert the means of production from class to common ownership. This done, then production for use, to meet human needs can begin. Socialism will have been set up.

Editorial Committee

Democracy and Socialism

Sirs,

A member of your party who saw me leaving Hyde Park on a march on Sunday 25 August claimed that because anarchists consider parliamentary democracy to be a farce we have no reason to object to the suppression of the minimal democratic liberties that the Czechs have so far won.

Indeed we consider that parliament is manipulated undemocratically, though in point of fact the Czechs anyway have at no time claimed to have achieved a "free parliament” so this is rather a red herring. If they did they would no doubt have the danger that their “gains” would be rendered nugatory by making such parliament powerless as our own is in fact, if not in Tory constitutional theory. We would then surely warn that the achievement of parliament is the achievement of the shadow of democracy not the reality, and that to allow one’s self to be hamstrung by the rules of parliamentarian politics, when the ruling class never accepts such a limitation, would be to shackle the working class and hand it over bound hand and foot to exploitation.

What the Czechs have tried to achieve, however, is freedom of expression, the right to publish their own views. Here again, if the ruling class has the state to finance its press, and anyway through the ownership of industry is able to afford a preponderant share of the press, we would say that such equality of the press and freedom of expression is a myth, the shadow of the substance only.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain stood aside from what was the most significant demonstration on the issue, a demonstration which had as its basis solely the two principles that the Czechs should have the right to decide their own system of society —whether or not our demonstrators might like their choice—and that the demonstration should be confined to those who make the same demand for the Vietnamese.

I cannot believe that the Socialist Party is still really so foolish as to deny any value to opposition to a dictatorship. You rest such enormous claims on the validity of British parliamentary democracy as a road to Socialism, that one might have expected you to support any struggle to win such basic liberties as freedom of expression—saying of course at the same time that these gains would not solve everything and that more needed to be won to make this valid.

No doubt as the bombs begin to fall in a nuclear war, you will still be saying you cannot associate yourselves with protest embracing anyone but members of your own party. You will of course be right in saying that there is no permanent cure short of Socialism, but you will be wrong, a million times wrong, in refusing to attempt to get a short respite so as the further to work for Socialism by joining with others who do not share every jot and title of your faith.

Laurens Otter, 

Thornton Heath

REPLY:
The attitude of the Socialist Party of Great Britain on democracy is well set out in Chapter Four of our pamphlet Questions of the Day.

  “Under Democracy, the workers are allowed to form their own political and economic organisations, and within limits, freedom of speech, of assembly, and of the press is permitted as well as the possibility of the electorate choosing between contending political parties. “Now, unlike many people intoxicated with a newly-found love for democracy, the Socialist Party of Great Britain has always insisted on the democratic nature of Socialism, and on the value that the widest possible discussion of conflicting political views has for the working class. When we refuse to unite with non-socialist organisations for the purpose of defending democracy, it is most certainly not because we in any way minimise or underestimate the importance of democracy for the working class or the socialist movement It is simply because we are convinced that democracy cannot be defended in such a manner.
  “Democracy, in itself, cannot solve the problems of the working class. Unemployment, poverty, insecurity, and other evil effects of capitalism remain, no matter whether the form of its political administration be democratic or dictatorial. Freedom to cry working class misery from the house-tops will not, in itself, abolish the misery. Democracy is a weapon, potentially invaluable, it. is true; but like every other weapon, it can be used either for self-preservation or for self-destruction.
  “As long as the working class supports capitalism and capitalist policies, it will be tempted ultimately to give its support to that policy best calculated to meet the political and economic needs of capitalism —even though that policy may be one of dictatorship.
  “Democracy for the working class can only be consolidated and expanded to the extent that the workers adopt the socialist standpoint. To renounce Socialism so that democracy may be defended, means ultimately the renunciation of both Socialism and democracy”.

and, in our manifesto on the Second World War, reproduced in our pamphlet The Socialist Party and War:

   “The Socialist Party of Great is fully aware of the sufferings of German workers under Nazi rule, and wholeheartedly supports the efforts of workers everywhere to secure democratic rights against the powers of suppression, but the history of the past decades shows the futility of war as a means of safeguarding democracy”.

Thus, we do, and always have, held that democracy is of value both to the working class and to the Socialist movement, but we do not think that it should, and in the end can, be defended by uniting with non-socialists or by war. So we are not "so foolish as to deny any value to opposition to dictatorship”. We welcome the break-up of dictatorships and the coming of democracy, however limited. But we do not support democracy in the abstract, but as a means to an end: Socialism.

Otter’s case is based on a fallacy. Because we refuse to join in demonstrations with non-socialists, in favour of democracy, he says that therefore we are not in favour of democracy. This conclusion is quite unwarranted as the reason we will not join with non-socialists is because we do not think this is the way to defend democracy. Besides, with the pro-Vietcong elements on his demonstration we are sure there were many there who couldn’t care two hoots about democracy.

In his last paragraph Otter begs the whole question as he assumes that our joining with non-socialists would "get a short respite so as the further to work for Socialism” (we shall ignore the jibe about faith). But this is precisely what we deny. As we said above: experience shows that to renounce Socialism so that democracy may be defended means in the end to renounce both Socialism and democracy.

"British parliamentary democracy" is not the road to Socialism. Socialism can only be established by the democratic political action of a working class convinced of the need for it. In Britain universal suffrage and parliament (and the local councils) can be used to win political power. But there is nothing special about the British constitution. Other states have different arrangements but as long as they allow a majority to get its way they can be used to establish Socialism.

It is quite true that in Czechoslovakia there was no struggle for a “free parliament”. Technically, there was already a national assembly elected by universal suffrage but these really did conform to the anarchist image of being a fraud, a facade and a farce. Real power lay elsewhere: in the top ranks of the Communist Party. Electors had no choice but to vote for (or if they dared against) a list of pro-government candidates. Opposition parties and journals were suppressed. It is nice to see, however, that some anarchists are learning that there is a difference between dictatorship and democracy as far as the workers are concerned.

Editorial Committee.

The Review Column: Rhodesia (1968)

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

Rhodesia

Harold Wilson, who knows where the votes come from, has never lost any sleep over upsetting his left wing. So we know what to expect from any negotiations over Rhodesia.

It was clear that the stands originally taken in both London and Salisbury left no chance for discussion. Something had to give, if the two sides were ever to talk to each other again. In other words, some promises would have to be broken, some vows once fervently taken would have to be betrayed, some fierce political infighting take place.

Smith’s political problems were severe, only partly solved by the purge which got rid of men like Lord Graham and by the Rhodesian Front’s recent by-election victory. The big advantage he had was that the Rhodesians could make concessions which were more apparent than real.

Wilson’s problem was to drop the albatross of the original pledge that there would be no agreement to independence without some copper bottomed guarantee (to use one of the Prime Minister’s favourite phrases) of majority African rule.

The "No” in Nimbar was as unrealistic as Lennox Boyd’s famous “never” over Cyprus independence. Wilson quietly abandoned NIMBAR and suddenly most of the newspapers were telling us that this once-sacred principle was foolish and unreal. Of course the left wing fumed but who cared about them? None of the M.P.s who protested went so far as to risk their career on the principle by resigning their seat. The left have always stopped short of that.

Wilson went on governing and the negotiations continued by his man George Thomson in Africa. At the time of writing the talks have reached deadlock and Thomson is back in London, although it was clear that both sides were straining to reach agreement. Even so, now that there is this apparent readiness to abandon what were once called principles, there will probably be further efforts in the future.

After all, capitalists in Rhodesia and Britain, as well as the Rhodesian farmers, have a lot to gain by the resumption of friendly trading relations. They will not let a little matter of the suppression of a few million people obstruct the noble enterprise of profit.


Troubled Air

The British Eagle pilots were really very foolish if they ever thought that, because they were earning several thousand pounds a year, they held a secure and privileged position in the working class.

In fact, their fat pay packets were a reflection of what it takes, in terms of social labour and organisation, to put a multi-million pound jet into the air with a man at the controls who is trained and fit to avoid the expensive business of pushing its nose into the ground.

Basically, this is exactly the same way as the wages of all other workers—dustmen, miners, engineers;—are determined.

But of course wages, high or low, are paid only so long as it is profitable for an employer to buy labour power. The glamour of a pilot’s job may obscure the fact that it is all done to make profit, but that is the way it is.

The employees of British Eagle could not escape from this although as the glamour faded around them it was clear that their understanding of what was happening to them was no better than that of the average dustman, miner, engineer.

They simply trod the well-worn class path of seeking a scapegoat—in this case the state airlines and in particular BOAC, which has successfully opposed the granting of licences to the independent lines for the more lucrative airlines of the world. But BOAC are themselves not free of troubles.

Their chairman, Sir Giles Guthrie, complained that a half year’s profit of £8.2 million had been cut in half by the 17 days’ pilots strike last summer. These figures take a bit of swallowing but if they are correct then they are an indication of the importance which BOAC’s workers have to the line’s operations.

Striking workers are constantly being blamed for financial troubles and social disorder (although this was one excuse British Eagle could not use). The only thing this proves is that wealth is made by workers and that they, and not those who directly or indirectly receive the profits, are the useful, productive class.

It's Nixon

Richard Nixon’s victory in the American Presidential election came after a long campaign—over twenty years long, in fact — during which he won a reputation for being ready to say or do anything to win political advantage.

This is one possible interpretation of Nixon’s early campaigns for the House of Representatives and later to the Senate, during which he rode on the widespread American neurosis about Communist activities. It also could explain a lot of his work while in Congress —for example his zealous pursuit of Alger Hiss.

The surprising thing is that the. allegation of a ruthless political ambition should be used against Nixon—that he almost alone among big time capitalist politicians should be condemned as the man it would be unwise to buy a used car from.

For where would any of capitalism’s leaders be without ambition? How far would he get, without a ruthless determination to exploit every fear, every prejudice, every facet, of mass ignorance? Would it have been wise to buy a used car from Lloyd George? Macdonald? Baldwin? Macmillan? Wilson?

Nixon is very much a political man, which means more than that he is ready to lie. It also means that he will approach the problems of American capitalism, to use a current word, pragmatically. He will not be tied by the emotions he has roused in his supporters; a lot of them are probably in for a shock.

The Republican campaign gave the impression that Nixon would be tough on demonstrators, would push a hard line on Vietnam, would cut back federal power and interference. This classical Republican image has never had any more reality than its opposite of the Democratic Party.

Faced with a situation which must be judged in terms of the interests of American capitalism, Nixon will find in many cases that he has no more power to keep his election promises than any one of his predecessors.

This will cause him no lost sleep. Presidents have to be even harder and more cynical than car salesmen.

The Dangers of Leadership (1968)

From the December 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

At first glance the theory of vanguard action by a highly disciplined minority to achieve Socialism might seem to have a lot to recommend it. In a pre-revolutionary period, revolutionaries are always confronted by the twin obstacles of a ruling class armed with state power and the apathy of the masses. So any theory which suggests that the mass of the people has only a minor role to play, that their inertia can somehow be circumvented, is obviously very attractive. Like most modern political ideas this theory has its roots in the French revolution, but it was Lenin who first systematically organised a political party on this principle.

Today there are numerous organisations which, to a varying degree, draw their political inspiration from the Bolsheviks. Despite bitter disputes over the minutia of their faith, they all conform to a common pattern. Each adopts a programme of immediate demands which are designed as bait to attract working class support. It also seems to be a general rule that groups which start with a theory that the party must lead the masses, end up by developing a highly centralised leadership within the party, with the rank and file members progressively subordinated to a sort of inner party.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain from its inception has rejected this form of organisation and its related theory. The experiences of our early members in the Social Democratic Federation before the Socialist Party was set up taught them the dangers inherent in a reform programme. Inevitably a party which attracts support on this basis finds people joining it and identifying themselves with it who have no interest in getting rid of capitalism, but who are simply concerned with reforming and modifying the present social system. Faced with this situation, the party can develop in two ways. It either becomes an openly reformist organisation and the genuine socialists inside it are reduced to a minority or it may still manage to adhere to its original principles—but only at the expense of democracy, by a dictatorial clique concentrating power in its own hands.

The “International Socialism” group is worth looking at from this point of view since it clearly shows these tendencies and it also has members within its ranks intelligent enough to be conscious of their dilemma. In fact, the I.S. group and the Socialist Party are of roughly similar size and to a superficial observer there might seem to be certain similarities in our ideas (when pressed by socialists the l.S. leadership will concede that there is state capitalism in Russia and the Socialism will eventually—their emphasis—be a moneyless economy based on free distribution). Up till 1967 l.S. took the form of a loose-knit group with very little formal organisation inside the Labour Party and Labour Party Young Socialists With the slump in the government’s popularity, however, it has noisily proclaimed its independence from Labour [1]  and has been growing rapidly over the last few months, with an influx of young people—mainly university students — into its ranks.

I.S. sees its immediate task, as does the Socialist Party, as one of developing class consciousness among the workers. But there is an important distinction between the two concepts of “consciousness". The Socialist Party is convinced that there is no basis for going forward from capitalism until a majority of people understand what Socialism entails and are prepared to take conscious action to establish it. By contrast, the level of understanding which at least some members of I.S. expect the working class to reach is indicated by the following passage, taken from one of the internal documents circulating inside their organisation prior to their recent bi-annual conference:

It is irrelevant what the working class ‘thinks’; it is even more irrelevant what individual workers think; what, ultimately, will determine the outcome of class struggle is what the working class is forced to do, and what it decides to do. (their emphasis)

Naturally, this different interpretation of consciousness gives rise to a completely different approach to the question of presenting socialist ideas to the working class. While the Socialist Party supports the efforts of workers to improve their wages and working conditions by trade union activity, we do not as a party immerse ourselves in such work. We see our job as essentially one of drawing attention to the fact that the individual problems which make working class life a misery are all rooted in the capitalist system. Against this we pose the alternative of a world socialist community. I. S. takes a different line. Their strategy is to become involved in particular struggles over rents, wages or redundancy and—so the theory goes—support gained on local issues in this way will gradually blossom out into a fully developed grasp of Socialism among those who accept I.S. leadership.

Certain elements within I.S. now seem to be seriously questioning the value of these tactics. One lesson which a number of them seem to have drawn from their involvement in the “day to day struggle" is that the idea of the working class eagerly waiting for some group of self-appointed leaders to turn up and start leading them has no existence outside of Bolshevik mythology. At their recent conference there were various rueful accounts of tenants and others telling I.S. members in no uncertain terms where they could stick their leadership. These provoked the conclusion from one faction at the conference that “the working class is not as stupid as some people think”.

An equally important development has been the analysis which other I.S. members have been making of the shortcomings of their organisational structure. Some of them are worried by the trend towards the “bolshevising” of their movement:

. . .  we are in the process of creating inside IS. an organisation based on ‘leadership’ where the leadership is to be trusted with central power for the sake of efficiency.

But this tendency cannot simply be explained away by references to the growth of their group and the consequent centralisation in the interests of efficiency. Its roots go deeper, down into the theoretical basis from which I.S. operates.

After all if there is a theory of a working class which needs an external leadership, the obverse organisational theory of a rank and file membership needing a strong leadership, will lake hold—at the top.

Alongside this they outline the organisational form which a socialist party should take:

What is required for a really efficient challenge to capitalism is the building up of a REVOLUTIONARY ORGANISATION OF EQUAL PARTICIPANTS IN DECISION AND POLICY-MAKING, (their emphasis)

The Socialist Party of Great Britain, of course, is organised along these lines. It is because we reject all leadership and restrict our membership to socialists alone that we can afford to be uncompromisingly democratic. Some of those who in the past have sneered at our “impossibilism” are perhaps now starting to realise that what we have succeeded in building up is the nucleus of the type of mass party which the working class can use to liberate itself. We certainly do not have any of the glamour which makes organisations like I.S. so attractive to their romantic revolutionary elements, but to those interested in the serious work of achieving Socialism we do represent a party where they will be welcomed as comrades and equals.

John Crump

[1] Too much should not be made of this. At least some l.S. leaders (e.g. Michael Kidron) have taken the precaution of quietly remaining on the Labour Party’s books. For details of their previous commitment to Labour see Socialist Standard, August 1968.

No Change from Labour (1968)

From the December 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Late in September the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party presented a four thousand word statement to the Annual Conference at Blackpool, with the title Britain: Progress and Change.

It was not a list of promises for the next election nor, in the main, a claim to have been successful in the four years that have passed since Wilson’s government was elected in October 1964. In fact it is difficult to decide what purpose the document served. One suggestion (The Times 30 September) is that the idea was to take the minds of the delegates, and other members, away from present despondency and apathy—firstly by explaining that all the original plans are sound but have taken longer than expected to produce results and secondly, by showing how all will be well a few years ahead. Several times phrases are used in the statement on the lines of' “we all thought that Britain’s economic problems could be solved more quickly than in the event has proved possible”. Having thus disposed of a lot of things even Labour Party supporters grumble about, attention is directed to the shape of things to come, “Britain in the Seventies”.

If the first part of the statement is an attempt to explain away the government’s failure in its four years of office, the second part indicates, though in a very vague way, what may be the vote-catching promises of the next election. One of them is headed “A Fair Society” — a masterpiece of false suggestion that much has already been done by the Labour Government.

The paragraph begins:—

Britain to-day is still divided by privileges inherited from an earlier age. The maldistribution of income and wealth is the most obvious example, but it is not the only one.

and it ends “there still remains in Britain glaring and unacceptable inequalities in income and wealth’’. (Their emphasis).

In between we are told that the inequality still left is “despite the growth, under successive Labour Governments, of a crucial public sector with vast assets owned by the whole people”.

Long ago the Labour Party claimed to have the intention of ending the concentration of wealth in the hands of the propertied minority. In their 1918 Election Address they pointed out that 90 per cent of wealth was owned by a tenth of the population. At every election since then the Labour Party has promised to do something about it but for all practicable purposes the position now is just what it was fifty years ago.

And what Labour Party supporters are offered for absolutely nothing done is the figment of “owning” the nationalised industries; as if it makes any difference to a worker without large sums to invest that wealthy people who formerly held railway or steel company shares now hold Government securities instead.

Among the many surprising admissions of the statement is one about full employment, price stability. 

The task before us is formidable. No democratic society in the world—or for that matter, any other society-has ever succeeded in achieving, all at the same time, economic growth, price stability, rising wages and increasing social expenditure. 

This is a complete reversal of the confident attitude of the Labour Party in the past. For at least twenty years it has been an article of faith among the leaders of the Labour Party and their economist advisers that with the magic wand of Keynesian techniques they could do all the things with the greatest of ease. It was precisely because of this belief in their power to control and operate capitalism on lines chosen by themselves that they could dismiss the Socialist argument that capitalism is uncontrollable and must be replaced by Socialism.

So what happens as it dawns on the faithful that the Keynesian magic does not work? That it never had a chance of keeping price stability, and that the low unemployment since the war in this country has not been the result of applying Keynesian policies? (Professor of Political Economy R.C.O.) Matthews examines this in the September Economic Journal.

There are too, cold winds from another quarter. Under pressure from foreign bankers the Wilson Government and its advisers are being required to revise their ideas about monetary theory and practice—in effect to repudiate Keynes (or at least to repudiate the version they have favoured for many years). This kind of switch would present no particular problem to the Tory Party (which also has its Keynesians) but will not be so easy for the Labour Party. 

Edgar Hardcastle

Socialists and the "October" Revolution (1968)

Party News from the December 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists were out in force to sell genuine Socialist anti-war literature at the pro-Vietcong, and thus pro-war, demonstration held in London on Sunday 27 October, about which the press spread such hair-raising scare stories.

On the Friday evening, when students of the London School of Economics occupied college buildings to turn them into a sanctuary for the demonstrators, Socialists (including two who were LSE students) were able to hold an impromptu meeting and sell a few dozen socialist standards. A photograph appeared in Saturday’s Morning Star in which one of our members selling this journal could clearly be seen.

At 12.30 on Sunday, thirty or so Socialists were at Charing Cross to get ready to sell literature to the demonstrators as they marched to Hyde Park (we stayed well away from Grosvenor Square and the hooligans). Of course, as with CND, we did not join the march but sold literature to the marchers and by-standers. The cover of the October Socialist Standard can have left no one in doubt as to our position: VIETCONG. NO! MAO, NO! CHE, NO! SOCIALISM, YES! Up to 600 copies were sold in what turned out to be a very successful afternoon’s socialist activity.

Law and Order in the U.S.A. (1968)

From the December 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

A member of the World Socialist Party of the US paints a somewhat frightening picture of politics in America

If you saw it only on television and stayed off the streets, the political situation in the United States this year seemed like a second-rate circus which had suddenly and dramatically risen in entertainment value. The star performers—Humphrey, Nixon and Wallace—were clowns at best, whose acts included the usual inane platitudes, empty promises, perpetual smiles, and abysmal ignorance of the system they defended. At worst, they were not clowns, but surrealist weasels, one of whom was seeking the power to provoke and crush insurrections, to fill the concentration camps which have already been constructed here under the McCarran Act, to complete the extermination of the Vietnamese, to bring on a chemical, biological, and/or atomic world war, and to turn the circus into a chamber of horrors whose only audience would be the eskimos lucky enough to survive the epidemics of anthracis and tularemia. 

The theme of all three performers was the same: change "our" military strategy in Vietnam and do something about law and order. Many U.S. "radicals" have been thoroughly shaken by Wallace's success among white workers, recalling that the Nazis succeeded with a similar combination of racist chauvinism and pretended hostility to big business. And indeed, his aggressive, anti-intellectual appeals to the racism and bigotry of his supporters are frightening to hear. But the actual policies that Nixon is (or Humphrey would have been) likely to adopt are no less frightening.

We should be grateful, in one way, that "law and order" became such a strident campaign issue in the election, because it gives us a chance to expose the primary aim of government. That aim is to protect the social order of capitalism. Government is the agency which maintains the control of the capitalist class over their property and their workers. It is essential to grasp the fact that a given form of government is the result of a particular social order, not the cause. Otherwise we cannot understand the true function of elections, and we cannot understand politics. Instead we will approach politics the way most workers do, and waste our time in futile and meaningless debate over the personalities of individual candidates.

The phrase "law and order: has the merit of calling our attention away from trivia like sales taxes, trade agreements, foreign aid, directly to the basis of politics itself—the structure of the society. That structure consists of two major classes: the capitalist class, who own the means for producing and distributing wealth, and the working class, who depend for their living on wages and salaries. There are groups which do not fit into either category, but the nature of the social order is determined by the relationship between these two classes.

Because the interests of the two classes are irreconcilable, they are most of the time locked in a struggle for power; and one cannot increase its power except at the expense of its opposite. The interests of the capitalist class are to conserve its right to property over industries and resources, invest capital, sell commodities for profit, expand world-wide markets, obtain cheap raw materials, control the social behaviour of non-owners and hire competent labor at the lowest possible cost. The pursuit of these interests forces the capitalist class to inflict misery on everyone else. They must break or emasculate unions. They must employ salesmen to lie and trick their way into homes and sell un-needed products, pay engineers to make cheap, dangerous cars, send police into the streets to club, stab, and shoot the people who cause trouble for them, and draft troops to deal with resistance to their power and hold onto valuable real estate.

The interests of the working class, whatever their color, are to find jobs, obtain decent living and working conditions, raise their wages, cling to their civil liberties, and ultimately, put an end to alienated work, take over control of society's wealth and distribute it for their own benefit.

The government is a class instrument, the means by which law is made and enforced. It regulates matters which concern the capitalist class as a whole, but which no one corporation or capitalist enterprise can manage by itself: interstate commerce, law enforcement, taxation, foreign investment subsidy, and suppression of threats to the capitalist system from riots or wars.

Politics for the workers is usually an exercise in futility. They choose between various capitalist candidates on the basis of a few speeches and television appearances, and hope for a law now and the in their favour. In times of social turmoil, most of them support candidates who re-assure them and promise to keep things normal. Having only a vague idea of their own interests, workers are swindled into accepting the best deal they can get from the capitalist parties. Time after time they scab on each other, smash their most militant political organizations, police and suppress the "radicals" among themselves who have begun to wake up, dilute their collective strength by using ethnic minority groups within their class as scapegoats, and fight and die in defence of the very property investments which exploit them. Then they are told that to vote for anything but a capitalist party is "unrealistic" because only capitalist parties can win elections.

The workers in short are a subject class. They are prevented from changing their position by their failure to see government as a class weapon. The schools teach them that government mediates between classes, and that they owe something to the government because it represents them. But no government, in a society made up of two classes with irreconcilable interests, can represent the interests of both classes. If it represents the interests of one class, then it is by definition suppressing the other. Either the government represents our employers, or it represents us. Either the government represents our employer, or it represents us. And since it protects our employers' monopoly over the nation's wealth, orders us to risk our lives in its defence, limits our right to strike and safeguards their right to exploit us, and maintains our cages for our "rehabilitation" in the event that we rebel against their authority, we should recognise that "law and order" in their mouths is just one more of the many frauds by which they remain in the seat of power.

Law and order means the law and order of General Motors, Standard Oil, Socony-Mobil, U.S. Steel—the law and order of the capitalist class. For the rest of us, law and order means ten thousand troops clubbing and gassing crowds of unarmed demonstrators in the streets of Chicago. More important, it means a system which enriches 10 per cent of the population at the expense of the other 90 per cent.

What capitalist politicians want us to understand by it, of course, is mothers being able to wheel their baby carriages through the park without getting raped, and smiling policemen who help little children across the street. But what their use of the tern suggests is that the ordinary methods of protecting the system are no longer working. Individual assaults on the property of the capitalist class are handled by courts and prisons; but the courts are not prepared to handle mass insurrections, nor are they equipped for things such as the guerrilla warfare that broke out last summer against the Cleveland police.

The phrase "law and order" is intended to prepare the politically ignorant majority of Americans for some extraordinary, perhaps unbelievably brutal, means to cope with dissent. The government, with working class support, may suspend what few civil liberties remain to the workers. It may draft half a million young men for continuous occupation of the major cities, and imprison the leaders of every organization which is considered subversive. It may dupe white workers into venting their discontent on black workers in a kind of domestic Vietnam. The future seems grim, and the only thing that will brighten it is the spread of socialist concepts.

Stan Blake

Abolition of the Wages System, Cuban Style (1968)

From the December 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

During the Summer of 1967 Fidel Castro announced that a communist community was being set up by several thousand members of the Union of Revolutionary Communist Youth on the Island of Pines (now renamed the Island of Youth).

Here (said Castro) we propose not only to revolutionise nature but to revolutionise man, to revolutionise society, it being given that the objective conditions exist on the island for making this possible, for it is a very sparsely populated region, a region that is to be fully technically developed, a region where the most enthusiastic of our youth are now gathering to work and build. We will attempt to transform this region into a social experimental centre where we must try to work out, as far as possible and with the vanguard of our people, the problems which are involved in creating a communist society.

Since then thousands more young people have settled in the area, committing themselves to stay for at least three years, although the authorities hope that most will remain permanently. Forty thousand of them are labouring to build from scratch a thriving agricultural-cum-industrial economy. Prefabricated buildings are being thrown up, hydro-electric complexes constructed and the extensive marshlands reclaimed. 

For the individual, most basic requirements are supplied free—accommodation, food, cigarettes and so on—but low wages are still being paid. They range from 80-130 pesos, which is a good deal less than the salaries earned by workers on the Cuban mainland. According to a recent visitor to the Island these wages are needed by the islanders to support parents and relatives left behind and also for holidays when they return to the money-conscious Cuban mainland.

What are we to make of this "social experimental centre"? The most that can be said for it is that, like the kibbutzim and other utopian settlements, it does demonstrate that people can live on a cooperative basis. But the Island of Pines must be seen within the context of the overall state capitalist economy. The enthusiasm and sacrifice of thousands of young people is merely being used by the ruling class in Cuba to develop the economy of a backward area. The wealth which the islanders are creating does not belong to the Cuban "people" but is appropriated by the state, which in turn is in the hands of a class of party bosses and bureaucrats.

No doubt in the process many of the young people involved will become disillusioned and drift away thinking that they have witnessed the failure of socialism, when all they will have experienced is the "communism" of the barracks.

John Crump

The Death of a Socialist Pioneer (1968)

Obituary from the December 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Comrades,

On the first Tuesday (23 May, 1911) after arriving in Vancouver from Manchester, England, I joined Local Vancouver No. 1, Socialist Party of Canada, and there met, along with a number of other young enthusiastic socialists, "Jack" MacDonald. We became close associates, an association which lasted throughout his lifetime.

In the Vancouver Local of 1911, a Local of approximately 120 members, there were such stalwarts as E. T. Kingsley, D. G. McKenzie, Jack Harrington, W. W. Lefaux, Jack Burroughs, and many others including the mentor of the Economic Class, G. D. Morgan.

The Local at that time conducted a propaganda meeting each Sunday evening in the Empress Theatre with an audience usually of 2,000, an Economics Class on Sunday, a History Class on Monday, a Business Meeting on Tuesday, a Philosophy Class on Wednesday and a Speakers Class on Thursday with a Social Evening on Saturday, together with nightly soap-box street corner meetings usually carried by H. L. Fitzgerald (an orator if ever there was one) and Chas. Lestor—well-known in his last years to the London members of your party.

MacDonald and I together with other young members came to known as the Young Turks, and through our efforts caused the withdrawal throughout the Province of British Columbia (outside of Vancouver) of certain reformist elements which had appeared in the Party.

It might be of interest to note that the SPC was the result of the merging of the Revolutionary Socialist Party of Canada (located on Vancouver Island) and the B.C. Socialist Party (on the Mainland). The Revolutionary and the B.C. were dropped from each group and the Socialist Party of Canada was thus formed.

This was around 1902 and in 1903 twenty-seven Locals existed in British Columbia alone. In that year, 1903, a Provincial Election took place and 23 candidates were put up. To me, most significant of that time was the "Election Platform", the most succinct ever offered and a pattern worthy of copy when one today is accosted with extreme wordiness of some of our election manifestos. The Platform was one short sentence: "THE ABOLITION OF THE WAGES SYSTEM AND OPPOSITION TO ALL PALLIATIVES".

In time, we of the Young Turks found ourselves in the position of having to carry on most of the Propaganda and MacDonald and I, starting from scratch (with a few others) became speakers and writers. An article of some years back in the Western Socialist, "Other Times." by MacDonald, gives his opinion of those days.

"Mac" quickly developed as a propagandist both with pen and voice. Readers of the Western Socialist must know of his facility as a writer, his subtle humour, his satiric touch, his penetration into the questions of the day, his capacity for socialist analysis. I can testify to his equal powers as a Platform man. And so close did he and I become that invariably Mac would be designated by the Local to be Chairman when I was the speaker and vice-versa.

From Vancouver MacDonald went to the States, made a visit to Australia, and after many vicissitudes and a few menial jobs in and around the Bay Area, he opened a small book-shop in San Francisco, later expanding into a large one and finally into the huge store on Turk. near Market. Mac's store became famous, not only in the Bay Area, but throughout the world. It was often called "The Cross-Roads of the World" and people from many lands were visitors. During this period he organised the Jack London Labor College and many pupils went from there with a socialist education.

He debated with Ernest Untermann and according to those present I understand that Mac's attack was so devastating that Untermann's sister broke into tears.

From his early Vancouver days to the end Mac was an outstanding exponent of Scientific Socialism.

Fraternally,

W. A. (Bill) Pritchard, Los Angeles.

Middle Class Radicals (1968)

Book Review from the December 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Middle Class Radicalism. By F. Parkin, Manchester University Press.

This book is a study of the social bases of support for a political mass movement —CND. It is not CND itself which is of primary interest to the author so much as certain sociological issues which his study might help to illuminate.

Parkin makes the usual assumption made by most sociologists and advertising men when he labels a certain section of society as 'middle class' rather than seeing that most members of this category although having certain common characteristics are also members of the working class.

Only if sociological techniques are set firmly within a historical frame—and a Marxist conception of the historical process at that—can they be used to full effect. Indeed the inadequate definition of class and of some of the problems posed derives from the a-historical approach of this type of enquiry. The author, in some measure is aware of this, and in an excellent chapter he provides a commentary on the battles that took place within the Labour movement and CND over unilateralism and the way in which this related to the leadership struggle going on in the Labour Party. The tactical shifts for personal and factional advantage, regardless of previous declamations are tersely documented. A veritable little museum of turncoat butterflies, neatly transfixed for Socialists to display as a warning to the inexperienced new voters who could be deceived by the Labour Party's more subtle election ploys now promised.

The book is based upon answers received from questionnaires circulated to CND supporters in 1965 and 1966. Even bearing in mind the specific purposes of the study, anyone remotely concerned knows that 'CND 1958' was definitely not 'CND 1965.' It is true that its social roots might not have changed drastically but the effect of this time-lag should always be kept in mind.

Part of the study assesses the activities of CND supporters in terms of the sociological concepts of 'expressive—instrumentalist' action. 'Expressive' action being that which obtains '. . . satisfactions derived from expressing personal values . . . unrelated to class or material interests . . .' 'Instrumentalist' actions are those '. . . geared to the attainment of specific and concrete goals.'

Although Parkin is careful not to ignore the instrumentalist aspect of CND activity he tends to overemphasise its expressive role generally and that which it played as the symbolic rallying point for a variety of 'anti-Establishment' positions. This derives, perhaps, from the fact that he is dealing with 1965 not 1958. It should be remembered that one of the techniques employed by ruling groups when policy is being subjected to radical criticism, is to convey the impression via comment in the mass media that their critics are 'honest well-intentioned, chaps, you know, but who are highly emotional and don't really have a grasp of the facts.' Thus while it is true that most CNDers had little grasp of the political or even military realities, an attempt was made to discount their generally accurate knowledge of weapons and radiation which was the factual basis from which the movement grew. Most commentators have fallen for this line of seeing the protesters as primarily highly emotional and —in the jargon, as 'expressive' in their actions. Is this not to mistake ruling class propaganda for fact? Most opponents of nuclear weapons in 1957-8 seem to have been people combining knowledge of atomic and nuclear weaponry and its past and present effects, a simple 'instrumentalist' anti-test, anti-bomb policy, intense moral indignation and an a-political, anti-political naivety which was swiftly and effectively manipulated by astute pro-Labour elements who saw their opportunity to organise and control the growing dissent as a powerful weapon in the coming election battle in 1959. This was 'instrumentalism' indeed!

The cynical Labourites who captured and corrupted the idealism of 1958 are responsible in no small measure for setting in motion the growing anti-parliamentary feeling which exists today. Despair and disillusion arising from the unprincipled actions of nominally 'anti-nuclear' Labourites helped to strengthen the call for direct action and the attack on the democratic process. At the time we warned of the dangerous path to which direct action could lead a radical movement, and now, when the call for violent direct action has grown, the danger to democracy from the 'right' and the 'left' has become clearer for all to see.

The author in a chapter on education, occupation and radicalism brings out a connection between high formal education and radical views which in a period of student unrest (notwithstanding the many other factors operating) is of general interest. He refines the term 'middle class' and locates the main support for CND as coming from the 'educated middle class' offering an explanation for this.

One final thought for Parkin: what are the implications for social theory if it turns out that the 'educated middle class' is primarily a section of the working class? It is about time that the un-Marxist identification of the 'working class' with the manual and industrial workers made by Trotskyists and nearly everyone else was abandoned.

B.

Marxism in the USA (1968)

Book Review from the December 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marxian Socialism in the United States, by Daniel Bell, Princeton University Press. 17s. 6d.

This book, written over fifteen years ago, has been re-issued with a new introduction by the author. It is a history of the Socialist Party of America and the Communist Party, with a few asides on De Leon's Socialist Labour Party and on the trotskyists.

Marxist and social-democratic ideas in America grew out of the previous populist and labour union movements in the 1870's. In 1876 was formed the Workingmen's Party which next year became the Socialist Labour Party. Its ideas, partly from Marx and partly from Lassalle, were provided by refugees from Germany. Twenty years later under the influence of De Leon the SLP took a more intransigent standpoint, though even today (apart from its syndicalism) there are traces of pre-Marxist ideas like labour-time vouchers and the phrase "the full product of his labour". De Leon introduced a new—and important—suggestion into socialist discussion. He argued that a socialist party should not have a programme of "immediate demands". He also held that the ballot was the way to political power. These ideas had considerable support among that section of the Social Democratic Federation in Britain that in 1904 was to set up the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

At the founding of the Socialist Party of America in 1900 there was a group dubbed "impossiblist" because they were against a reform programme. Although there was always before the first world war a minority in the SPA who took this view the party itself never did. There was a considerable exchange of views between uncompromising socialists in America, Britain and Canada. Bell finds one of their arguments strange. He says that a new member of the SPA would, among other things, "be assaulted by 'impossiblists' who told him that a fight on taxes as a political issue was meaningless because the workers did not pay taxes". We cannot go into this here except to say that the view that taxes are not a burden on the workers was held by Ricardo as well as by Marx and Engels.

The SLP, under De Leon, had always been wrong on the union question. In 1896 they had set up "socialist" unions in opposition to the pure and simple unions of Samuel Gompers but they did give the working class movement such expressive phrases as "labour fakir (or faker)" and "labour lieutenants of the capitalist class".

The peak year for the SPA was 1912 when Debs polled six per cent of the presidential vote and one member was elected to Congress. Thereafter it was decline all the way. Many of the writers and others who had supported the party deserted to Woodrow Wilson especially when America entered the war. The SPA and the IWW, to their credit, opposed the war and were ruthlessly hounded by the government. Many of their members, including Debs, were thrown into jail. The party was by now composed largely of migrants from east Europe who in 1917 were swept off their feet by the Russian revolution. But it was 1919 before all the pro-Bolsheviks had left the SPA.

After Debs' death in 1926 the leadership of the party fell to Morris Hillquit and Norman Thomas. Thomas, a Christian pacifist and moralist, came to symbolise the SPA though there remained many like Hillquit who still claimed to be Marxists. From now on the SPA reminds you of the ILP in Britain: completely confused on every issue, suffering attacks of infiltration from communists and trotskyists, taking an equivocal position on the war, growing smaller and smaller and seeing its top-ranking trade unionists leave for other larger parties.

The Communist Party was a pathetic but at the same time a vicious mob whose anti-working class antics are well summed up by two phrases coined by the SLP (who saw through them if not through Russia): Burlesque Bolsheviki and William Zig-Zag Foster. In the thirties it attracted many famous names, though most of them could not swallow the Moscow Trials. During a patriotic phase before the war the CP tried to show it was a good old American party by praising such bourgeois heroes as Jefferson and Lincoln. After 1941 it enthusiastically supported the war, so much so that in 1944 on Stalin's orders it dissolved itself! This was later reversed and poor Earl Browder was forced to walk the plank. Towards the end of the forties the CP was persecuted and eventually driven underground. Only recently has it re-emerged to be found firmly backing the Democratic Party.

Bell's book is interesting but it should be read in conjunction with the issue of the Western Socialist (No. 4, 1966) marking the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of our companion party, the World Socialist Party of the United States, for a socialist analysis.

Adam Buick