Who'll mourn the Emperor?

Bokassa's coronation in 1976.

From the December 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1920, France took full control of their tiny African colony Ubangi-Shari (later the Central African Republic) and immediately leased 50 percent of it to 17 French companies, giving them freedom to exploit the indigenous population in whatever manner they saw fit.

This exploitation would take the form of forced labour, torture and hostage-taking in an attempt to force the population to collect rubber vine.

It was at the hands of the guards of one of these French companies that a certain Chief Mindogen was flogged to death for failing to provide sufficient rubber vine collectors.

Against this backdrop, Jean Bedal Bokassa, son of Chief Mindogen grew up with a superstitious fascination for French power and an obsession with French history, particularly the Napoleonic era, an obsession which led him to enlist in the French army and which played some part in his sycophantic rise to the rank of lieutenant during French campaigns of the 40s and 50s.

On leaving the army, Bokassa quickly found a position in David Dacko’s corrupt and chaotic government as Chief of Staff of the Ministry of Defence.

At this time the French were a bit uneasy about Dacko’s corrupt government, fearing for their businesses and strategic interests should a potential "Marxist"-led uprising occur and though the country was officially independent—it had been since I960—France still retained the right to interfere at their leisure.

They had in fact been planning a coup when Bokassa, catching a whiff of their intentions, out-manoeuvred them and took control of the capital with forces loyal to himself.

Although the French did not at first take too kindly to this wagon-jumping, Bokassa seemed such a pleasant enough old Francophile that it seemed a shame to oppose him, and besides, he was anything but a "communist”. So they sat back and left the affairs of the Central African Republic to the new president, confident he could fare no worse than Dacko.

However, as Ian Schott points out; "There was little to distinguish Bokassa from any other confused, violent and corrupt post-colonial regime. It was run on the simple maxim ‘to the victors—the spoils”' (World Famous Dictators, 1992, P-78).

Anything resembling democracy was trampled upon and nepotism was rampant. Those loyal to Bokassa were rewarded with promotion and huge salaries and those who upset him met an early death.

Still France backed him, to the tune of $20 million per year. Most of this, though, was bi-lateral aid which tended to increase France’s interests in the country. It was followed by the donation of French paratroopers to Bokassa’s army.

From then on the country’s budget was treated by Bokassa as his own personal bank account. He privatised state assets, had shares in every national business including the diamond industry and secured a total monopoly on foreign trade. None complained. The entire civil service had either been bribed or were too afraid to speak out.

Twelve years later the country was almost as bankrupt as it had been on 31 December 1965 when Bokassa assumed the tide of President of the Armed Forces, the Ministry of Information and Ministry for Justice.

In December 1976, Bokassa decided it was time his 2.5 million population needed an Emperor—himself. Almost 35 percent of the state’s $70 million budget was subverted to the ensuing Napoleonic-style coronation.

No expense was spared. Bokassa donned a velvet ankle-length sword. He trailed a 30-foot-long crimson velvet, gold-embroidered and ermine-trimmed mantle and was carried to his gold-trimmed throne, backed by a huge golden eagle with outstretched wings, in a gilded coach drawn by eight white Normandy horses.

Although the event was frowned upon by the British and the US, invited representatives of both countries returning their golden invitation cards—the US so infuriated they cut off aid—the French expressed their approval by donating $2.5 million to the event, in order that the 2,500 imbecilic international guests could be ferried about in a huge fleet of limousines escorted by 200 BMW motorbikes.

The world had apparently given Bokassa the legitimacy he had sought and he revelled in it. From this point his extravagance was now only to be matched by his inhumanity.

When he discovered an attempted break-in at his palace, he drove in a fury to the local prison and personally beat three innocent victims to death. When schoolchildren protested at the compulsory wearing of expensive uniforms made at a factory owned by himself, he sent the troops in who promptly massacred between 150 and 200 of them. And when teachers and students distributed leaflets condemning his personal wealth, his "Imperial Guard" rounded up hundreds who were later beaten to death. Bokassa participating fully at Ngaragbi prison—all this in the International Year of the Child!

These and other such episodes finally began to embarrass the French government As they pondered their predicament they set up a five-nation African Mission of Inquiry to investigate the many charges against Bokassa. including cannibalism, whilst at the same time desperately seeking a means of ousting him before he could be found guilty and world opinion turned against a French government that has sponsored him.

The inquiry found him guilty and. a month later, sanctions already beginning to bite, Bokassa went cap-in-hand to Libya’s Colonel Gadaffi for help.

In his absence the French launched "Operation Barracuda", a bloodless coup, brought David Dacko out of retirement and installed him in Bokassa's palace as president.

Gadaffi soon got fed up with Bokassa, just as he had with Amin years earlier. Homeless, friendless, Bokassa roamed about until settling down on the Ivory Coast to sell tropical fish. After an even more depressing spell in France, Bokassa returned to his homeland, where his death penalty had been passed in his absence. This was commuted to life imprisonment

Six years later Bokassa was released and immediately applied for the post of president. Amazingly his offer was turned down!

On 3 November 1996 Bokassa died at the age of 75, in a country where the average life expectancy is 48. There is little doubt that there will be few more delighted to see him go than the French government As long as he lived he served as a poignant reminder of France’s imperial excesses.

Bokassa’s type still exist however, in Libya, Zaire and Nigeria and a host of other African countries where the colonial experiment still reverberates down the years—stark reminders of the true nature of capitalism and how the seemingly benevolent gift of "independence" blossoms all too often into abject tyranny and terror when ill-educated dictators try to run a country in a manner in which their colonial forbears also failed. 

John Bissett

Democracy and dictatorship today (1966)

From the July 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

  “I'm tired; have you ever tried to run a country?” (General Odria, dictator of Peru, on his resignation in 1956.)

George Bernard, Shaw once wrote that democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few. This typical witticism is as inadequate as the, definitiop in the Concise Oxford Dictionary—". . . government by the people, direct or representative.” Democracy should mean more than the counting of hands; it should also mean a complete lack of secrecy, giving everyone access to information and so allowing them to take a full part in the management of society.

This is incompatible with government, which by its very nature must be coercive and secretive. And it is impossible while the many are, to adapt somewhat Shaw’s word, “incompetent”.

But to discuss the matter sensibly we have no choice but to accept the generally accepted meaning of democracy, if only to distinguish it from the other method of running capitalism—dictatorship. We shall have to accept that democracy is confined to the periodical election of a government by popular vote and the things which go with it; the existence of opposition parties, an uncensored press, the legal right to a trial and so on.

Almost 50 years after President Wilson assured Congress that the world was to be made safe for democracy, a brief look at the political set-up shows that this is far from becoming reality. In the Americas, democracy to all intents and purposes stops at the Mexican border. In the Caribbean, Cuba and Haiti are governed by ruthless despotisms. In Europe there are Spain, Portugal, Russia and the Eastern bloc. Almost the entire African continent, and most of the Arab countries in the Middle East, are under some sort of dictatorship. In the Far East China, Vietnam (North and South), Korea (North and South) are only a few of the places where democracy does not exist.

What this gloomy survey reveals is that, despite the professed aims of Woodrow Wilson and many other statesmen, at present the majority of the world’s people live under dictatorships. The United Nations (for what it is worth) is pretty well dominated by totalitarian states; only a third of its members can be described as democracies.

Neither should we forget that many of the democracies are anything but free countries. In the United States, for example, the voting and legal rights which are supposed to be part of democracy are denied to a large part of the Negro population. Indeed, this denial is particularly complete and ruthless in the Southern States, where politicians often boast loudly of their determination to defend “freedom”.

Such double-think has not always been fashionable. Pre-war Fascists professed an open contempt for democracy, which they said was decadent, corrupt and inefficient. Hence their reliance upon the strong, wise, resolute leader who would beat down all opposition and drag the rest of us into disciplined prosperity.

To some extent, times have changed. Today, even dictatorships like to call themselves democracies. East Germany, with its wall across Berlin, is officially known as the German Democratic Republic. Russia, where no opposition parties are allowed to exist, and where until recently political extermination was common, claims to be a free democracy. It is usual now for all manner of quibbles to be used in the effort to prove that dictatorship is freedom. Last October the Prime Minister of Malawi, Dr. Banda, justified the proposal to alter Malawi’s Constitution to give him dictatorial powers in these words:

  It does not matter whether there is a dictator or not as long as the people choose the dictator.

It is in the new African states that the misuse of the word democracy has been particularly shameless. The nationalist movements there came to power after long struggles to oust the colonial nations and during these struggles they won a lot of sympathy, outside Africa as well as inside, by frequent promises that independence would bring political freedom.

The result has been very different. Algeria and Egypt are now governed by autocrats—both of them, incidentally, claiming to be Socialists. Nigeria is under military government and so, after years of the Nkrumah dictatorship, is Ghana. Kenya and Malawi are one-party states and Uganda, as its Prime Minister Dr. Milton Obote foretold in January, 1964, is travelling in the same direction.

Indeed, in some ways the new states are no better than the old colonial administrations—and in others they are even worse. The Belgian rubber men committed some fearful atrocities in the Congo and even as late as the last war were still hanging criminals in public. The present Congolese government have shown that they are no improvement on this, by executing the four ex-Ministers in the main square in Leopoldville last month—and declaring a public holiday so that everyone could go along to watch.

Public hangings have also been promised in Malawi, where the government last year introduced the Penal Code Amendment Bill, which reversed the decision taken by the British in 1875 that in future all executions must take place behind prison walls.

And to show that this criticism is not confined to African states let us also mention South Africa, which gained independence after a long and bitter struggle against British Imperialism and where the descendants of the Boer fighters are dourly resolved that freedom shall be something reserved for the minority of the population who have a white skin.

It can be argued with some force that at present democracy is not practicable in much of Africa. The powers who parcelled out the continent during the 18th and 19th centuries did little to disturb the agrarian economies of their colonics. As a result the feudal structure of tribalism was intact when the colonists went home—and has since proved a considerable problem to nationalist politicians trying to drag Africa into 20th century capitalism.

Tribalism and democracy do not mix. The tribesman’s concepts are limited to his dependence on his tribe; he can no more understand what is implied by voting for representation in a national government than could the peasant in Mediaeval Europe. When the African nationalists claimed to stand for democracy they were often speaking in terms which the tribesmen, on whom they depended for support, had no reason to understand—and perhaps this shows how potent the word democracy has become.

Modern democracy is a by-product of the development of capitalism. It is part of the development of a free working class—free in the sense that they can sell their labour power to any employer and are not tied by social groupings such as feudal manors and tribes. As capitalism’s production techniques become ever more complex, and as its commerce becomes ever more international, so it requires an ever wider schooling for its workers. This inevitably stimulates a demand for democracy which, apart from its other uses, can be a safety valve to ease the pressures of discontent.

Although democracy has certain drawbacks for capitalism —political parties which aim to run the system must, for example, always form their policies with one eye on public opinion—it also has some solid advantages. To begin with, it is the most efficient method of running capitalism.

There was once a popular theory that dictatorships, because they were under the control of one man who did not have to bother about consulting anybody else before he took any necessary decisions, were models of efficiency. We have all heard the stories about Mussolini personally ensuring that the Italian trains ran on time; but we have also learnt how the war mercilessly exposed the ineptitudes of Italian capitalism under the Fascists. We have all heard the stories about Hitler simply deciding to abolish unemployment in Germany and, because he was a dictator, of unemployment promptly decreasing. This is not so effective a story when we remember that Hitler came to power, like Roosevelt, just at the time when the slump of the Thirties was in any case receding.

In dictatorships as well as in democracies, an opposition of some kind is bound to exist. In a democracy this is useful; an opposition brings the government face to face with the realities of capitalism. In a dictatorship inconvenient facts are often suppressed; the ruler tries to eliminate opposition and to surround himself with sycophants—he frequently lives in a dream-world of his own, governing the country by his hunches.

President Duvalier of Haiti, for example, believes that he has magical powers. By the time he was deposed, Nkrumah had lost his once famous charm and was a fear-haunted megalomaniac with a taste for employing wanted ex-Nazis on his personal staff. Hitler's last days in the bunker in Berlin were spent directing non-existent armies, under the delusion that victory was in his grasp.

A dictatorship is a power pyramid, with each layer being able to enforce its wishes on those below. If an official can be bribed into giving certain orders, the people he gives them to cannot question them—that can come only from above, where bribery is probably also operating. Thus dictatorships are frequently hotbeds of corruption, with the men at the top amassing huge fortunes—Goering’s famous art collection, Batista's £15 million, the Trujillo family's £280 million.

The leaders of capitalism find it difficult enough to run the system without burdening themselves by ignoring facts, regardless to their own conceits and immersing themselves in corruption. These things undoubtedly exist in democracies, but not so widely nor with the effect which they have in dictatorships. A democracy can reveal scandals like the affairs of Sydney Stanley and Profumo; a dictatorship tends to cover them up. It is not without significance for capitalism that the most efficient and competitive of its countries are democracies.

For the working class, democracy has its uses—and its dangers. There is first of all the great delusion that democracy inevitably means social equality. A rich man has the same vote as a poor one, but it does not follow that both have equal standing in capitalist society. In fact, as long as the majority of people use their votes to support capitalism there will always be rich and poor, which means that there will be privilege and repression.

The danger of this situation is that a working class who support capitalism have little understanding of the cause of their problems. They will vote for all manner of reforms and remedies, none of which have any effect, and they are easy prey to the demagogue who blames their problems on to democracy. Then millions of people are liable to fall for the strong man theory and use their votes to abolish the right to vote, as they did in Germany in the Thirties and as they may do anywhere, at any time.

Another danger is in the fact that democracy can be used to persuade the working class to act against their own interests. In the last war, for example, the fact that this country was a democracy and Germany a dictatorship gave the British ruling class the chance to sell the war as a struggle for freedom against oppression. This propaganda was very effective, especially as the organisations which were putting it out were careful to gloss over the fact that also in the fight against Germany was one of the world's biggest and worst dictatorships. The results of the war showed up plainly what was apparent at the time to only a few— that those who went to fight in the belief that they were defending freedom were cruelly misled.

For all this, democracy is essential to the working class. They can achieve their emancipation only through political action—and to take this they need democracy. This action can be taken only when the workers have consciously accepted the need for it—and to come to this they need the free discussion and the spread of ideas which democracy allows. The tool the workers will use in their action will be a political party—which can exist in freedom only in a democratic system.

Democracy today is a frail thing, surviving only narrowly. Its future depends on the very people who need it and who can use it to build the new society. The choice is theirs; to surrender democracy is a step backwards, almost to surrender all hope.

Ivan

The New, Old Capitalism (1942)

From the March 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many attempts have been made by propagandists to explain the dictatorships of Germany, Russia and Italy, and all manage to find some central theme upon which to build their case.

Some say it is the work of evil men (although Stalin is getting a good press now). Some argue a case for a Capitalist anti-labour conspiracy, instancing Italian and German suppression of democrats and socialists.

The Trotskyists formulate a case in which they allege that Russia had her “Socialist” revolution betrayed by Stalin and his bureaucrats, who have turned Lenin’s "dictatorship of the proletariat” into the dictatorship over the proletariat.

Enough has been said to illustrate the diversity of opinion regarding this vexed subject.

The Socialist views Capitalism as one whole cloth which, although woven into different patterns, and sometimes of mixed materials, nevertheless has one basic texture—the exploitation of the workers by a class that lives on the surplus, over and above that which the worker receives as his wages.

Now whether this class is organised as a bureaucracy as in the dictator countries and adopts such nomenclatures as Communists, Fascists, or National-Socialists, it does not detract from the fact that they are eaters of surplus value, and that the system which they have erected is nothing but collective or State Capitalism. The fact that in the dictator countries the population have had no long democratic experience has made it fairly easy for "great leaders” to be swept into power, and to declare a dictatorship. Moreover, it is no mere accident that some 300 million people have been cajoled to accept the Totalitarian method of running capitalism, for implicit in the cry "away with Democracy” has been the imperative drive for war and the "liquidation” of recalcitrant minorities or independent groups, these being described in Russia as wreckers and Trotskyists, and in Italy and Germany as Jews or Communists. Trade unions are merged into the State set-up—one party rules, the party organising the country for "Total War.”

The setting up of State or collective Capitalism has spelt the end of Liberal or laissez-faire doctrine (the right to do what you will with your own), because private property must fall in line with the needs of the State.

The worker under dictatorship finds that whereas he was dismissed, say, for lateness, by a private capitalist, that now a State ordinance decrees that he shall be fined or imprisoned; his "Trade Union” officials are party bosses, and he has lost the legal right to strike or bargain for the sale price of his labour power. He must listen to State propaganda only, and his power to elect representatives of his own choice is limited to a panel put forward by the ruling clique, which allows of no opposition. Such is the necessarily brief sketch of a regimenting capitalism which the workers will one day break with surprising results; the fight will be more for independence and freedom of speech than for mere bread.

The curtain may go up on a stage set for a real leap forward in human endeavour to solve this age old problem of class ownership of the means of producing wealth, with its privileged position for the few, and social inferiority for the many. The workers will see that this jungle we call capitalism can be organised into different forms going under various titles, with appropriate "ideologies” to match, with its protagonists all proclaiming the virtues of their respective set-up using such euphemisms as "A new social order,” "A new civilisation,” or even "The workers’ state,” which only result in a new set of bosses. There are now indeed few more mistakes that the workers can possibly make.

And now, probably, Socialism—the real democracy which has the common ownership of the means of production and distribution as its basis—will become a real live issue.

Frank Dawe

Africa's Black Hitlers (1975)

From the December 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

On June 11 The Guardian printed a full-page article by one of their African “specialists” called John Hatch. The sub-heading is illuminating: “Tanzania is the model for a participatory democracy that is based on one political party but avoids dictatorship.”

So we can start with a forthright statement. The Guardian are lying hypocrites. Not only are they hypocrites in that they profess to be upholders of freedom and democracy which they clearly are not. They also are inverted racialists too because, despite all their constant preaching about the poor blacks in South Africa (and the blacks there are vilely treated, right enough), they know full well that they could not possibly defend the dictatorships in Tanzania and the other wretched countries described in the article if the victims were white Englishmen or Germans. What they are saying (whether the idiots know this or not) is that it is perfectly all right if a black dictator stamps his rule on an African country and fills his prisons with his political opponents. Real democracy is not for them. They are only ignorant blacks.

At the top of the page are pictures of smiling democratic dictators: “Nkrumah (his party failed him): Nyerere (no dictator); Kaunda (seeking social equality); Stevens (unity through agriculture).” Well, they have all got good reasons to smile except Nkrumah, (who is dead and was probably the worst of them all). They are sitting on the pile of suffering black humanity, and it must make them smile even more to know that the Hatches and the Guardians of the western press are so obliging in apologizing for their regimes and seeing that there are no Orwells around to demonstrate the Newspeak and Doublethink which can tell intelligent readers of the Guardian (all lively minds, they tell us) that dictatorship is democracy if it is black. And the dictators get their propaganda on the cheap. Just a spot of red-carpet treatment for all the “progressives” of the west will fill the leftist press with everything except the one thing that should infringe their much-vaunted principles: How many political prisoners are rotting in the gaols of black “independent” Africa? How long have they been there? Are they ever going to get out? In all the thousands of words in the Hatch page, not a word about these poor devils.

Hatch starts his article with a flourish by giving a quotation from a speech by Nyerere, the darling of them all. “I am now going to suggest that where there is one party, and that party is identified with the nation as a whole, the foundations of democracy are firmer than they can ever be where you have two or more parties . . .” Hatch gives his seal of approval to this: “This virile commendation of the one-party state was given by Nyerere in 1963.” This expert in virility realizes, of course, that the above is the same as spewed out by Hitler, Musso and Co, and goes on to admit that people might well ponder the resemblance between white fascist swine and the black fascist swine whom these lively minds must now worship. All he is doing is the political equivalent of “find the lady”: he is referring to Hitler & Co. to bemuse the lively minds into thinking that this objection to the African Hitlers had been dealt with. It just isn’t.

Why not allow the Africans a multi-party system, which is what we understand as one of the fundamentals of democracy in normal parlance as distinct from Guardianese? Hatch deals with that one too. He gives a number of reasons, all fraudulent to a degree, and too tedious to demolish in full detail here. Hatch opens on this one: “Tanzania offered unique advantages for the establishment of a healthy, democratic, one-party state”. No explanation how this can be healthy for those who wish to oppose the alleged non-dictatorship of Nyerere. Perhaps Hatch would like to spend a few weeks in one of his hero’s healthy gaols (what’s a few weeks among friends?). And what would happen to the health of any black worker who ventured to suggest that the wealth they produced should not be stolen by the Nyerere thugs on top of the heap? Another reason is that “Nyerere has always been a convinced democrat”. Now isn’t that just ducky? It must be so comforting for the political prisoners — and to the others outside who would like to say boo to a Hatch goose but daren’t because they know that a democratic gaol is waiting for them — to know that Nyerere calls himself a democrat. Marvellous what you can do with words. Another choice example comes immediately afterwards: “Moreover, Nyerere does not refer to the State, but only to the Nation.” So, the non-dictator uses the powers of oppression of the state — and what a state! — but it’s all right, O lively minds! He doesn’t call it a state. He calls it a nation. And that makes everyone feel better, doesn’t it? But the punch line is still to come: Nyerere tells us that his one-party “will be a mass party through which anyone who accepts TANU’s basic principles can participate in the process of government”. This is the sort of trash that presumably satisfies Hatch and The Guardian.

It is worth while mentioning that only a few days ago (i.e. long after the date of the Hatchpiece) the paper ran a leading article in which they actually stated that the regimes of Nyerere, Kaunda and, ye gods, Mobutu, were based on justice. Now the first two have been darlings of the left for years and it is as useless to expect the truth in relation to them as it was to get the truth about Stalin accepted by The Guardian and New Statesman in the ’thirties and ’forties. But the admission of Mobutu to the ranks is something new. I have no private information and the news I get is derived from The Guardian itself. So it would be in that very paper that I read a little story about Mobutu’s justice. A ceremony took place on the lawn of the Presidential palace in Zaire (it may then have still been called the Congo). Certain black politicians were brought before President Mobutu (who elected him President by the way? You must be joking) — trussed like chickens. As part of the act of justice, they were then beaten up before Mobutu’s very eyes. And after they had learned whatever lesson that part of the act was meant to convey, they were then strung up in public. Justice, Act III, I suppose. And our own dear old lady of Gray’s Inn Road, which would probably be voted the greatest newspaper in the world (if you want to get into university and they ask you what you read, tell the Prof. The Guardian and you’re halfway home), is happy with this justice. But, presumably, only for blacks; we couldn’t really have editors strung up at a Buckingham Palace garden party.

It is pertinent to mention an item of news reported in the same old Guardian date-lined Nairobi, June 12. This independent black state of Kenya is run by another darling of the left, who built up a great following of “progressives” like Lord Fenner Brockway (from a base in Manchester, of all places), Jomo Kenyatta. He too runs a one-party state, an empire of graft and corruption which makes Chicago seem like the New Jerusalem. But it seems from the report that within the governing circles there is the occasional silly fellow who objects to some of the things going on. One such MP, who had become rather a nuisance in his criticism, was simply murdered by Kenyatta’s police. Mau Mau, where are you now?

Where does all this point to? The usual way. If the workers of the world, black, white and any other colour, want a world worth living in, it is there for the taking. But they must form their own opinions about the system they live under; and the system they can have when they have thought about it and want it. Meanwhile, they must learn to see the grotesque fraud which is perpetrated at their expense by the ruling classes of all countries and their jackals in the press. Till they can see that, batten down all Hatches.

L. E. Weidberg

Hands off Wadiya! (2012)

Film Review from the August 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Dictator. Directed by Larry Charles

  “Nationalism of one kind or another was the cause of most of the genocide of the twentieth century. Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people’s brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead.” Arundhati Roy

The Dictator (2012) stars Sacha Baron-Cohen as Admiral General Aladeen, dictator of the fictional country called the Republic of Wadiya. The story is loosely inspired by Charlie Chaplin’s character Adenoid Hynkel, dictator of the fictional country called Tomainia in The Great Dictator (1940).  Baron-Cohen’s character is based on Colonel Gaddafi.

Sacha Baron-Cohen built his career on satirising superficial identity politics and testing the limits of tolerance of those identifying with groups who express offensive opinions. In an early appearance he defended the right to be lazy against a rattled Tony Benn’s fantasy of full employment.

Admiral General Aladeen is described as anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist. These are often the main claims made by real-world countries who find support from groups calling themselves socialist. Even in Britain, where most people do not get beyond the position of support for the country they are born in, some calling themselves ‘socialists’ get little further than ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’.

The Communist Party of Britain (Morning Star) has been known to use Marx and Lenin’s support for national liberation movements (a position which Rosa Luxemburg demolished), as the basis of their opposition to wars waged by some countries but not others.

Trotskyist opponents of war, such as the Socialist Party of England and Wales (SPEW), although more critical than Stalinists, are also selective, and support ‘the lesser of two evils’, depending on which countries are waging war. The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) claims to come from the unorthodox Trotskyist tradition and does not automatically or uncritically defend all so-called anti-imperialist countries. Smaller groups such as the Alliance for Workers Liberty claim a ‘Third-Camp’ position and have had a supporter who has been known to fly both an Israeli and Palestinian flag on a demonstration. So all represent a nationalism of sorts, but a nationalism nonetheless. The delusion is that powerful states can be condemned as imperialist but less powerful states murdering workers can be (critically or otherwise) supported as anti-imperialist. When this is couched in anti-interventionist terms, the socialist answer should be to intervene by promoting socialism everywhere, workers have no country.

At the end, even Aladeen’s final speech manages to distinguish between real democracy and a situation where both states are milked for oil by local dictators or by states with more powerful militaries. For this reason it is unlikely to be reviewed widely on the British left.

Where Baron-Cohen’s efforts to include romance and politics in his film fall flat, the more talented Chaplin succeeded in including both and was able to sum up his message of social freedom most eloquently – even better than most groups calling themselves socialist:

  “You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy let us use that power – let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfil their promise, they never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfil that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness.”

DJW

So They Say: Corrective Education? (1975)

The So They Say Column from the February 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Corrective Education?

Among the other learned voices raised against the “lack of discipline” within schools is that of Dr. Rhodes Boyson. He is concerned that children are being exposed to

  cells of neo-Trotskyist, new left teachers who wanted to use schools to destroy our way of life. Unless these destroyers and wreckers were watched, every history lesson became a study of some peasant or racial revolt against real or so-called oppression.

(The Times 31st Dec. 74) 

We have no doubt that Dr. Boyson considers himself satisfactorily qualified to do some of the “watching”, having, as a Conservative MP, a clear idea of the correct “order, belief and structure” that society should take. His concern has a practical application for capitalism of course. He feels that teachers have lost sight of what schools are for:

  the three R’s, passing on our culture, preparation for outside work, and a development of individual talent.

There is nothing so useful to private property ownership than reasonably literate workers steeped in the idea of capitalism, and who are prepared to run it. If a worker has particular talent which may be exploited, so much the better.

Lesson Two

This theme is echoed by Dr. Joyce Morris, a BBC adviser on language usage. She said at a conference on education in the North of England on 2nd January, that “crazy and dangerous ideas” in education techniques have led to an increase in illiteracy, and urged those attending to restore reading “to the central pivot of the curriculum.” The dangers she sees in increasing illiteracy among secondary school pupils are similar to those of Dr. Boyson:

  As technology advances the need for unskilled labour decreases and the illiterate must face the prospect of almost certain unemployment in the not too distant future.

(The Times 3rd Jan. 75) 

Her call has not yet reached the eyes of Lt. Col. Stuart Townsend, headmaster of Prince Charles’s old school, Hall House Junior School. Townsend has his own ideas of education and has recently been explaining his views to the parents of his 500 boys, who pay up to £600 a year in fees:

  Today in London many school children have no manners, are destructive, look dirty, slack and lazy. Some Hill House School boys come to school like this and are a disgrace to the uniform. These boys should be removed.

(News of the World 12th Jan. 75)

The punch-drunk Colonel does not say where they should be removed to, but emphasises that good manners and discipline are of paramount importance, not least among members of his staff.

  There’s a battle going on in education. Someone has to make a stand. That’s exactly what I’m doing. I’ll win. I just get rid of anyone who doesn’t agree with me.

One thing which does not appear to trouble the Colonel, however, is illiteracy, at least not in his own case. One parent complains:

  He boasted to me that he never answers letters and when I went to meet him I saw a waste paper basket full of unopened letters.

Unread maybe, but surely not unopened? How could the Colonel have extracted all those cheques for £600?

Patent Mistake

A document for patent assigned to the Secretary of State and filed in 1962 has recently been taken off the secret list and is available to anyone visiting the Patent Office. Its title “Improvements in the manufacture of organic phosphorous compounds containing sulphur” reads like an improved formula for manure. It is in fact a detailed document explaining fully the chemical processes employed in the production of VX, one of the deadliest nerve gases ever to be invented.

In liquid form, a pinhead sized drop of VX on the skin is lethal.

(Sunday Times 5th Jan. 75) 

It appears that the patent was taken off the “classified” list by accident, and that the Defence Department is confused as to how this particularly nasty skeleton emerged from the cupboard. A spokesman attempting to defend what will doubtless be considered an error of judgement said:

  Information on how to make an atom bomb is freely available, but people don’t go around doing it.

That not everyone “goes around doing it” is quite true. However we are all aware that too many “people” have already done it, and continue to do so. In regard to VX itself, the production details were passed to the us some years ago “under a long standing agreement on the free exchange of chemical warfare information” with the inevitable result that the US

  eventually manufactured it on a large scale and put it into store.

Having learned who our friends are, MPs have been writing to Mr. Rodgers, Minister of State for Defence, not apparently concerned with the reasons for the production of this deadly gas, but appalled that the details of manufacture are now public knowledge. They will doubtless be happy to learn that Mr. Rodgers ordered a review of de-classification procedures on 6th January.

Black Power

Leaders vary in the degrees of subtlety they employ to maintain their positions of power. President Nguema of Equatorial Guinea is one who believes in taking the gloves off, straight away. On January 7th his constitution was approved by a referendum. Among other things this

  confirmed his dictatorial powers for life by threatening to torture or kill anyone who voted against it, refugees said in Madrid. The President had made sure of the outcome of the referendum by making members of his single National Workers’ Party the sole election judges. The balloting slips were printed beforehand, the vast majority of them with the word Yes. Anyone bold enough to pick up a slip from the ‘No’ pile and put it in his voting envelope, risked reprisal.

(The Times 8th Jan. 75)

Opposition spokesmen have so far failed to comment. Or materialize.

In the Clouds

Mr. Michael Burbidge of the sociological branch of the Department of the Environment said on the 6th January that many Local Authorities would be housing families in “unsuitable high-rise blocks for years to come”. The reason appears to be the same as that for climbing Everest — because they are there. Families thus housed will be those who are already suffering greatly from poor housing conditions. Speaking with reference to particularly unsatisfactory high-rise estates, he said:

  The more choosy tenants will move out and only disadvantaged families with no alternatives will be persuaded to take up the resulting vacancies.

He does not mean “perusaded” of course, but forced. However an angel of wisdom has since appeared on the scene in the shape of Prince Phillip. His rôle as president of the UK Council of European Architectural Heritage Year (i.e. 1975) led him to make some informed comment on the plight of the poorly housed.

  The public should complain if they disliked a building. He wanted people to say ‘Look, we don’t like living 16 furlongs up and the ideas of having more open space at the bottom is totally useless to us.’ 

After such practical advice, we viewed with some suspicion the comments of Lady Dartmouth, chairwoman of the executive committee of the European Heritage Year campaign, who remarked the following day:

  Architects and planners thought the best thing was to raze everything and start again. But now re-cycling was the vogue and the aim of conservation should be to re-cycle buildings.

(The Times 3rd Jan. 75)

A. D'Arcy

Are the Japanese ‘Barbarians’? (1937)

From the November 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nobody – not even the Japanese Government – denies the inhumanity of ruthless air war on defenceless civilians such as the Japanese are waging in China and Franco’s airmen in Spain. The almost universal protests against the former (but not such widespread protests in the case of Spain) are, therefore, natural. Nevertheless, they conceal a good deal of muddled thinking. In the first place, the ghastly consequences of air attack do not justify indicting the Japanese people as a nation of barbarians. The double standard of conduct which can abhor private murder but glorify the mass slaughter of “the enemy” is not a peculiarity of the Japanese. It is a characteristic of all the capitalist powers and is deliberately fostered by governments, newspapers and churches in every land. Moreover, it is a feature of all military training and action, but especially of aerial warfare, that the individual who fires the shell or directs the blockade or drops the bomb does not see and is discouraged from contemplating the results of what he does. All soldiers, sailors and airmen of all countries are potential baby-killers, slaughterers of civilians, perpetrators of Guernica or Lusitania massacres – but they are trained not to regard their highly-skilled and often dangerous activities in that light.

When, therefore, Bishop Boutflower asks (Times, October 11th, 1937), before joining in the protests against Japan, for assurances that aerial warfare can be anything else than the slaughter of civilians and that “our own nation would forgo the use of counter-attack by air on enemy territory where any like risk (to civilians) was entailed,” he puts questions the British Government will have difficulty in answering. In short, for what purpose are the British bombing fleets being built if not to turn some European Shanghai into a shambles? And when the Labour Party demands the boycott of the Japanese because they bomb civilians, how do they square this with their endorsement of British rearmament? Instead of boycotting the British ruling class, they are prepared to enter into an unholy pact with them in the event of war.

The Labour Party themselves have times without number denounced Mr. Baldwin’s Government for refusing to agree to the outlawry of air bombing, and the Japanese militarists are able to quote a similar refusal in 1923 in their defence now. Writing to The Times (October 6th, 1937) a number of Japanese notabilities say:

  We would add a word on air bombing. Japan always disliked and reprobated this new method of attack, precisely on account of its inevitable danger to civilians. She pressed earnestly for its entire abolition on the occasion of the official commission of jurists assembled at The Hague in 1923, when her proposals failed to be adopted before French and British opposition.

We need not accept their statement as to the motive of the Japanese Government in proposing the abolition of air bombing, but we are faced with the fact that the British ruling class are in no position to protest. Have we not the late Lord Thomson’s description of the appalling destruction of life when the British Air Force bombed natives in Transjordan during the first Labour Government’s term of office?

War cannot be humanised. Its brutalities will cease only when capitalism, which is the cause of wars, has been brought to an end. That demands action by the international working class, the first step towards which is that the workers in each country should accept the existence of the class struggle as the basis of their organisation and line up in opposition to their own ruling class and its government. The excuse for deserting internationalism being used at present by the British Labour Party is that the working-class movement has ceased to exist in the dictatorship countries. While this is largely true as to facts, it overlooks the point that loyalty to internationalism by the workers in the democratic countries is needed to inspire the oppressed workers in Germany, Italy and elsewhere to renewed efforts. Actually, despite the dangers and difficulties, the workers under dictatorship are doing their part, as the continuing, arrests and trials in Italy and Germany prove. One case of many is reported from the small industrial town of Empoli, 25 miles from Florence, where the police recently arrested 130 persons for illegal organisation. One of their activities was collecting money to help the Spanish workers (Manchester Guardian, October 14th, 1937).

The same issue of the Manchester Guardian reports from Japan that the combined youth organisations, with eight million members, have divided into two equal groups, one of which has so far steadfastly refused to endorse the war on China.

Only by fierce pressure has the Government induced the Social Mass Party to vote for the emergency war budget. The party’s defence for so doing is that “they voted virtually with bayonets at their backs.”

When the ruling class talk war it is more than ever necessary for the workers in this country to remember that the workers in other countries have as little direct responsibility for their callous ruling class and bloody-minded military castes as we have for ours.

Edgar Hardcastle

Notes by the Way: The Low-down on Dictators (1937)

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

The Low-down on Dictators

The famous pamphlet, “Killing No Murder," published in 1657, might have been written to-day for its acute analysis of the ways of dictators. It was a direct incitement to the assassination of Oliver Cromwell and is believed to have been written by Colonel Sexby, a leveller who had gone over to the Royalists. Here, in an abbreviated form, are his fourteen points on Tyrants, derived, as he admits, from Plato, Aristotle, Tacitus and “his Highness’s (Cromwell's) own evangelist, Machiavelli." (It is not for nothing that Mussolini, too, is an admirer of Machiavelli).

1. "Almost all tyrants have been first captains and generals for the people, under pretences of vindicating or defending their liberties."
2. "Tyrants accomplish their ends much more by fraud than force. Neither virtue nor force (says Machiavelli) are so necessary to that purpose as . . .  a lucky craft . . . Their way is . . . with cunning plausible pretences to impose upon men's understandings, and in the end they master those that had so little wit as to rely upon their faith and integrity. It is but unnecessary to say, that had not his Highness had a faculty to be fluent in his tears, and eloquent in his execrations; had he not had spongy eyes, and a supple conscience; and besides, to do with a people of great faith but little wit, his courage, and the rest of his moral virtues, with the help of his janissaries, had never been able so far to advance him out of the reach of justice that we should have need to call for any other hand to remove him but that of the hangman."
3. “They abase all excellent persons, and rid out of the way all that have noble minds . . .  they purge both Parliament and Army, till they have few or none there that has either honour or conscience, either wit, interest, or courage, to oppose their designs. . . ."
4. “They dare suffer no assemblies, not so much as horse-races."
5. “In all places they have their spies and dilaters . . . to appear discontented, and not to side with them, that under that disguise they may get trust and make discoveries. They likewise have their emissaries to send with forged letters. . . . "
6. “They stir not without a guard, nor his Highness without his Lifeguard."
7. “They impoverish the people, that they may want the power, if they have the will, to attempt anything against them. His Highnesses’s way is by taxes, excise, decimations, etc."
8. "They make war to divert and busy the people, and besides, to have a pretence to raise moneys, and to make new levies, if they either distrust their old forces, or think them not sufficient. The war with Spain serveth his Highness to this purpose, and upon no other justice was it begun at first, or still continued."
9. “They will seem to honour and provide for good men—that is, if the ministers will be orthodox and flatter, if they will wrest and torture the Scriptures to prove his Government lawful, and furnish him with title, his Highness will likewise be then content to understand Scripture in their favour, and furnish them with tithes."
10. “Things that are odious and distasteful they make others executioners of; and when the people are discontented, they appease them with sacrificing those ministers they employ. I leave it to his Highness’s major-generals to ruminate a little upon this point."
11. “In all things they pretend to be wonderful careful of the public, to give general accounts of the money they receive, which they pretend to be levied for the maintenance of the State and the prosecuting of the war. . . ."
12. “All things set aside for religious uses they set to sale, that while those things last they may exact the less of the people. . . ."
13. “They pretend inspirations from God, and responses from oracles, to authorise what they do.  . . ."
14. “Lastly, above all things they pretend a love to God and religion. . . ."

It is unnecessary to point to the abundance of parallels in contemporary Europe under Hitler, Mussolini, Schuschnigg, Stalin and the rest. Except with regard to religion, which is not so useful a handmaiden as it was, the nature of dictators and dictated seem to have changed but little.

Even the Drains are Muzzled in Italy

Mussolini, like Hitler, boasts that he has the population behind him. Mr. Harold Brust, in his book, “Plain Clothes" (Stanley Paul, 18s.), tells of the elaborate precautions the Fascist leader has to take to postpone the day of reckoning. The following is from a review of the book in the Daily Telegraph, October 12th: —

  Italian police, he says, apart from attending to such duties as examining the food supplies to the Duce, carefully inspect all his correspondence, and particularly parcels which might explode by the mere cutting of the string.
  Before Signor Mussolini enters any vehicle it is rigidly inspected, for on one occasion a bomb was found affixed to his motor car. More than 300 plain clothes “shadows" look after him, in addition to many Fascist and military guards.
  During his short journey from his home to his office the route is closely guarded as his car flashes past at high speed. Sometimes he rides his motor cycle, goggled and crash-helmeted, and he always drives furiously.
 When he is scheduled to make a public appearance the police inspect all lamp-posts, and householders are compelled by law to bar access to the roofs of their dwellings. All along the kerbs the drain slits are covered with a fine mesh to prevent the concealment of a bomb.
  When Signor Mussolini is making a public speech he always uses a balcony or a specially erected tower. Once a would-be attacker was discovered at a window with a rifle that was fitted with a telescopic sight.

Poverty and Squalor under Fascism

Colonel T. F. Tweed, Mr. Lloyd George’s experienced political adviser, recently toured Italy to find out conditions there. This is what he says: —

  “But for Mussolini's imperialistic astigmatism Italy might have avoided economic collapse," Colonel Tweed told a reporter, “but the cost of that war, not yet fully met, and the heavy sacrifices demanded in maintaining the illusion that an impoverished agricultural people have become a first-class military power are proving too great a strain on the Italian internal resources now that foreign loans are no longer forthcoming.
  “The middle class are learning to dispense with even modest luxury, but the artisan and the agricultural population, much the lowest-paid in Europe, are compelled to forego simple necessities like butter and meat, because of scarcity and price. In every province and commune one heard the same comment, 'Too mucha da macaroni,’ which is as near to criticism as most dared permit themselves.
  “Mussolini has achieved a remarkable psychological rehabilitation for Italy and at the same time reduced masses of its people to a subsistence level only comparable in squalor and monotony with the standards of Asia."—(Manchester Guardian, October 4th, 1937.)

If in Fascist Italy there is no butter or meat for the workers and peasants, in Nazi Germany the Minister of Agriculture is appealing to the people to eat less bread and make up with potatoes.

(Manchester Guardian, October 4th, 1937.)

The dictators—and their democratic capitalist rivals—show a remarkable similarity in their threefold policy of luxury for the capitalist, guns for the army, and poverty for the worker.

“I’m Chosen by God"—Mr. Aberhart

The Social Credit Premier of Alberta, Mr. Aberhart, after two years’ failure to keep his promise of an extra £5 a month for all, is hankering after dictatorship. His latest revelation is that he has God behind him, the implication being apparently that he should not be fettered by newspaper criticism, which he proposes to suppress by legislation:—

  I believe God wants me to occupy my present position. I shall not be moved by any other consideration.—(Daily Express, October 11th, 1937.)

It was observed centuries ago that would-be dictators have a habit of claiming divine guidance and assistance. But why can’t Mr. Aberhart, with God’s help, produce that promised £S a month?

No Unemployment in Germany?

Dr. C. R. Fay, Reader in Economic History, Cambridge University, has just toured Germany and was amazed at “the real joy of everyone in their life . . . no trace of unemployment, the spirit of confidence and unity on every face." His letter relating this was published on October 7th by the Daily Telegraph and Morning Post.

Surely, as the Doctor saw the complete absence of unemployment with his own eyes, it must be so?

Only, unfortunately for Dr. Fay, Hitler, two days earlier (October 5th), had officially opened the German Winter Aid, which is a vast compulsory-voluntary collection of money, food and clothes for the relief of the unemployed. The opening speech was fully reported in the Manchester Guardian on October 6th, 1937.

Hitler mentioned in his speech the German Freedom Party, an organisation of anti-Nazis which has lately been conducting propaganda in Germany. Hitler, therefore, unlike the simple Fay, does not believe there is unity on every face in Germany. Fay, doubtless, did not look at the right faces, in prisons and concentration camps.

A Catholic Priest Wants Press Censorship

Father F. Woodlock, addressing the congregation at Farm Street Church, W., on October 10th, said that he would welcome a temporary censorship of the Press, because statements criticising the dictators might annoy them and provoke war (News Chronicle, October 11th, 1937). But Father Woodlock expressly confined his remarks to the anti-Fascist Press and to Hitler and Mussolini; he does not ask that his Catholic friends be prevented from annoying Stalin. (This is an unintended compliment to the latter, who, while he suffers from that occupational disease of all dictators, known as “conspiracy mania" apparently does not also experience periodic outbreaks of “international jitters” like Hitler and Mussolini.)

Father Woodlock does not like anti-Fascist newspapers making cruel, contemptuous and insulting remarks about sensitive dictators, but he is hardly in a position himself to throw stones at others. His method of Press controversy against his opponents is about as irresponsible as it could be. On September 18th, 1936, The Times published a letter from him in which he related that he heard, “on excellent authority," that an Anglican clergyman (name not given) visited a Communist Sunday School (date and place not given). “He found that, not only were the children being taught blank atheism, but, at the end, they filed before a picture of Christ and spat upon it. . . . Can any of your readers supply reliable information as to the number of these ‘Sunday Schools' at work in England to-day and the number of children attending them?"

Note the disingenuousness of all this. Father Woodlock did not himself witness this alleged incident. He did not even get it from the alleged Anglican clergyman, but only third-hand from an unnamed “excellent authority."

Perhaps the incident happened; although Father Woodlock’s informant may well have been misinformed. Such things do occur, even to “excellent authorities.” But even if it did happen, even the most uncompromising opponents of the Communist Party (i.e., the S.P.G.B.) could not believe them capable of making a deliberate policy of something so infantile and harmful to themselves. But observe the consequences of publication of the letter. Nobody could write to The Times denying it because nobody knows where or when it is supposed to have happened. So, in default of repudiation, thousands; of Times readers will now believe that it happened, is typical of Communist Sunday Schools, and is not denied by the Communists.

The real offenders are The Times for sinking so low as to give currency to such stuff. The Times editor would, of course, reply that The Times impartially publishes letters from all sides; but the claim is, none the less, patently untrue.

The Times, like other newspapers, is guided by the political outlook of the letter and the social position of the writer. Father Woodlock is an influential person, with a great organisation behind him. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that The Times received from a nobody a letter stating that, at a certain Catholic institution, in the year 19—, at —— , it was customary for the authorities to wink their eye at the fact, known to them, that supplies they received at a very low price were stolen. “And can any reader supply reliable information as to the number of such institutions at work in England to-day?”

Would The Times publish it? They would rightly say that it was an underhand and cowardly attempt to blacken an organisation in such a way that it could not defend itself.

Father Woodlock, on reflection, should recognise that his zeal against the Communists led him to overstep the mark.

The Unco-operative Co-ops.

The Co-operative Wholesale Society, which is nearly as far removed from Robert Owen’s conceptions as Hitler’s “National Socialism” is from Socialism, declines to go to arbitration over a claim by the employees for a ten per cent. increase of pay, so the latter threaten a strike.

Simultaneously a proposal was made that the directors be given increased salaries, but this was rejected by delegates from the retail societies at a meeting at Manchester on September 25th, 1937. The proposed directors' scale of pay was £875 on commencement, rising by five annual increases of £50 to £1,125 (Sunday Express, September 26th, 1937). Delegates from Barkworth and Eccles Cooperative Society contended that £1,000 should be enough for any director.

Labour Governments and Wages

Nothing brings out so clearly the uselessness of trying to administer capitalism for the benefit of the workers than the attitude of the Labour Govenments towards strikes and demands for higher wages. In 1924, just before the first Labour Government took office, their official organ, the Labour Magazine (January, 1924), made this appeal to the miners: —

  We are sure that the miners will not embarrass the first Labour Government by pressing untimely demands. . . .

Notice the tell-tale phrasing. Those who undertake to keep going the system based on the exploitation of the workers by the capitalists are necessarily “embarrassed” by the demands of the former, and regard them as “untimely."

Similarly, in France, we had Blum's Popular Front Government, after the first gains the workers made through their stay-in strikes, appealing to them to give up the strikes and agree to a “pause" in their demands for a higher standard of living. After the appeals came the threats of the use of force to eject strikers.

Now, in India, we see the same attitude on the part of the Congress Party towards Indian workers’ demands. Pandit Nehru, the Congress leader, who calls himself a Socialist, has just warned his followers against the belief that Congress Government automatically means higher wages. These are his words:—

  The Bombay Labour organisation has lost much of its vigour by its overindulgence in strikes. Workers get their wages out of the profits of the industries, and if the industries suffer the millowners will have no alternative but to close the mills. The management of mills has a right to dismiss inefficient workmen.—(From a report of a speech telegraphed from Calcutta on October 11th. Daily Telegraph, October 12th, 1937.)

It will be noticed that the minds and words of Labour leaders in East and West are as like as two peas. Perhaps Pandit Nehru is not uninfluenced by the fact that his Congress Party obtains much of its funds from the mill-owners.

Labour leaders who try to administer capitalism are “embarrassed" by the workers' demands. This is nothing to the embarrassment the workers will cause them when they see through the Labour leaders' policy of continuing capitalism.

Shadow-Boxing about the Former German Colonies

When the German ruling class feel strong enough they will doubtless try to grab their former colonies and anything else they think they can get. At present, however, they are in the preparatory stage of arming and of working up German public opinion. So Hitler and his British rivals are full of arguments about "rights" and “wrongs," and other irrelevant considerations.

British apologists led off with the remark that colonies are worthless, anyway, just a white man’s burden. Hitler countered smartly by calling this “drivel,” and said: —

  They say colonies are of no value, but in spite of this they will not in any circumstances give these worthless things back to their rightful owners.— (Speech at Berlin on October 3rd. Times, October 4th, 1937.)

As the mention of "rightful owners" reminded many people that, presumably, the rightful owners ought to be the native population living there, the British apologists fell back on the latter's right to be consulted. Imperialists, like Mr. Amery, trotted this out, and some of them actually claimed that, although it is true that the natives are not allowed to decide that question, or any other, for themselves, they are making advances towards self-government under British rule.

Then General Hertzog, Prime Minister of South Africa, made a speech at Pretoria on September 28th (The Times, September 29th, 1937), telling the natives in plain language what their rights in the land of their birth really are: —

  Natives must obey the white man’s law. Referring to criticism of the Government in dealing with the natives, the Prime Minister reminded the people that natives were living in a land of the white man, where the white man’s law ruled. If the native did not obey the white man’s rule he would be forced to obey, even if this had to be carried out by the imposition of more rigorous punishment or by stricter supervision of the native’s freedom of movement. He warned natives not to expect equal authority with the white man.

The muddled Labourites and Communists, who are already speaking of war against Germany in defence of native population’s democratic liberties, may wake up one day to find Hitler and Mussolini posing as defenders of the natives against South African white tyranny, and if the German workers are as silly as some of their British fellows, they may fall for it.

On the other hand, some influential South African politicians have declared that if Germany tries to recapture German South-West Africa they won't raise a finger to prevent it. The explanation of their attitude is that they fear, more than anything else, the growth of a native movement demanding Africa “for the rightful owners,” and look with favour on the return of the German dictatorship to Africa to help keep the natives in subjection. They prefer Germany to France because the absence of a colour bar in French African territory puts ideas into the African mind.

Edgar Hardcastle

Mr. Shaw and the Dictators (1948)

From the July 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

After Mr. G. B. Shaw’s article in the Daily Herald on 13th May and the attack on him by Mr. Michael Foot in the Tribune, Shaw wrote to the Tribune on 28th May and again on 11th June. Some of his points deserve comment. He admits his support of the dictators in the following terms:

   “I may remind Mr. Foot that we all very properly stood by Hitler and Mussolini until they went wrong, exactly as we stood by Ramsay MacDonald. The first years of a dictator are always to his credit. Power corrupts, but not in five minutes.” (Tribune, 28/5/48.)

The last sentence raises a nice point. The other dictator, Stalin, has been in power for nearly a quarter of a century and must therefore have had time to be corrupted by power but Shaw has not withdrawn his approval as far as we know. In the later letter (11/6/48) Shaw tells us why the early years of a dictator are good. He tells us that Hitler put an end to unemployment and tore up the Versailles Treaty, and Mussolini drained the Pontine Marshes, started rebuilding Rome and made a Concordat with the Pope. It is, of course, the silliest of arguments for it justifies support of every kind of government, past present and future. They have all claimed credit for other peoples’ work and lent their names to monumental projects and the making or breaking of Treaties. Are we to give blind support to Roosevelt for the Tennessee Valley Scheme, to Napoleon and to those who destroyed him, to the Pharoahs under whom the Nile waters were used for irrigation and the Pyramids built, to all the rulers of the slave and feudal and capitalist regimes? Incidentally, if the tearing up of the Versailles Treaty shows how good dictators are, what about Stalin’s part in the agreements for the plunder of the defeated at the end of the second world war. Does Shaw now execrate him for lunacies worse than Versailles, and get ready to hail the new German dictator who will tear it all up?

Shaw is angry with Mr. Foot for reminding him that Mussolini had Matteoti assassinated, and says that he (Shaw) was not a party to it. If the Labourites are in the absurd position of deluding themselves with the notion how nice capitalism would be if only it were freed from the evils that necessarily accompany it, Mr. Shaw is in the same silly position about dictators. He says in effect, how nice dictators would be if only they didn’t do the brutal things to their opponents that all dictators have to do.

Of course, when it is a question of flooring Mr. Foot, Shaw is on an easy thing. Arguing for industrial conscription (”compulsory civil service ”) he asks Mr. Foot what a Labour Government has to offer to make the workers work, in place of the whip of starvation. What he ignores is the fact that we still have capitalism, and as Socialists have always said, you can’t have an exploiting system without some bludgeon to drive the exploited to work. But what has this to do with Socialism?

Mr. Shaw gives his own version of events when he. tells us that “the careers of Mussolini and Hitler were produced solely by the disgust and disillusion of the proletariat with party parliaments . . . ” This is a gross misinterpretation, What made the workers disillusioned in Germany was not Parliament as such but the inability of the Social Democrats, alone and in coalition, to make capitalism function in the interests of the working class; but every Socialist knows that this is always impossible. If Mr. Shaw had added Lenin and Stalin to his list of dictators his argument would have exposed itself, for the Russians never had any experience of parliament and therefore could not be disillusioned with it.

On Shaw’s general argument that Parliament is too slow and faulty, and dictators speedy and efficient, do any of his dictators give proof? Hitler and Stalin were just as helpless as any Parliamentary government to prevent capitalism engulfing their countries in war. If dictatorship is swift why is it that 30 years after Lenin said that they must immediately introduce virtual equality of wages from top to bottom, we find Russia not only not doing so but producing greater and greater inequality between the privileged rich and the poverty-stricken masses? If dictatorship is sure and efficient how comes it that Russia, after spending years developing co-education, ease of divorce, and legalised abortion, then discovers its “errors” and sets about reversing all those trends in greater or less degree?

Mr. Shaw's defence of capitalism run by dictators is as weak as his opponents’ defence of capitalism run by Labour Governments.

P. S.

Bloodsucker flees (1986)

Book Review from the March 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Haiti: Family Business by Rod Prince Latin American Bureau (London. 1985)

The recent political unrest in Haiti, resulting in the flight of pitiless dictator "Baby Doc" Duvalier. makes this study particularly timely. A byword for terror and corruption, the country has a history of armed intervention by governments and an undeveloped political system in which presidents have been wholely corrupt. Prince shows that the people of Haiti have been suppressed by arrest, brutality and imprisonment and that this pattern has been consistent since its establishment as a French colonial possession in the seventeenth century.

Haiti has been independent since 1804. although it was in debt to France until 1922 and has been financially dependent on the United States throughout the twentieth century. François Duvalier was elected president in 1957 and proclaimed life president in 1964. The dynasty was continued after "Papa Doc" died in 1971 and his son Jean-Gaude ("Baby Doc") was proclaimed President-for-Life in the same year.

Prince describes Duvalierism as "a black nationalist ideology with a radical rhetoric" which claims to be opposed to the "ideological intolerance of a levelling and inhuman communism" (p.28). The regime controlled national finances for personal gain without feeling a need to reveal the extent of its tax income or disbursements. As Prince points out:

the continually widening gulf between the corrupt and luxurious lifestyle of the elite and the wretched conditions of the mass of the people has produced further tensions, (p.34)

Duvalier's power base was dependent on the United States and the business elite of Haiti. Security was maintained by the Voluntaries de la Securité Nationale, who did not receive salaries and consequently practised widespread extortion of cash, goods and crops. Their efforts tended to concentrate on political party leaders, journalists, trade union activists, church figures and community development workers. After 1977 there was some cosmetic relaxation of oppression but in May 1984 all political activity, except that in support of Duvalier. was banned. In April 1985 there was a concession allowing political parties, but subject to the guarantee of Duvalier's Presidency-for-Life. There was a promise of elections in 1987 but only approved political parties would be allowed to participate. In other words, the system did not permit serious opposition but only variations of Duvalier.

According to the World Bank, 78 per cent of the rural population and 55 per cent of the urban live at or below the level of absolute poverty. In a country where the state is the largest landowner the Duvaliers were the main beneficiaries. At the same time Haiti is the recipient of massive foreign aid. primarily from the United States. This actually adds to Haiti's problems for, according to Prince, the distribution of free food undermines the market so that "aid actually exacerbates problems of poverty and dependence" (p.46). There is also the problem of "free" food being sold in the market place.

Haiti epitomises the corruption of capitalism at its most blatant:

One pet cent of the population receives 44 per cent of national income but pays only 3.5 per cent in taxes. An IMF team which visited Port-au-Prince early in 1981 found that US$16 million had disappeared from various state bodies over the previous three months They also found that President Duvalier had obtained US$20 million from government funds for his personal use in December 1980. and the central bank had been instructed to pay his wife Michèle a salary of US$100,000 a month, (p.51)

This is a country whose gross external debt in 1983 was estimated at US$859 million and in which 90 per cent of the population live in destitution and squalor with an income of less than the minimum wage of US$3.00 a day.

The United States has an uneasy relationship with Haiti, condemning its corruption and incompetence yet maintaining close ties because of its "friendly government" status.

One grotesque aspect of Haiti's poverty was the export of blood. With infant mortality so high, surviving Haitians are rich in anti-bodies:

At different times an estimated 6.000 donors sold their blood at US$3.00 a litre, and five tons of blood a month were shipped to US laboratories run by companies such as Armour Pharmaceutical. Cutter Laboratories and Dow Chemicals. (p.80)

There is no depth of poverty that capitalism is not capable of exploiting

Philip Bentley

The Silliness of Bernard Shaw and the Webbs (1956)

From the July 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

Reynolds News (10 June, 1956), in the course of publishing condensed extracts from “Beatrice Webb’s Diaries 1924-1932,” had the following about Beatrice’s disapproval of Bernard Shaw for his admiration of Mussolini:—

  "October 21st 1927. G. B. S. has created something of sensation; be has gone out of his way to certify to the excellence of Mussolini's dictatorship—to its superiority over political democracy as experienced in Britain and other countries. . . .  G. B. S. fortified in his admiration of Mussolini by spending eight weeks and £600 in a luxurious hotel at Stresa; in continuous and flattering interviews with Fascist officials of charming personality and considerable attainments . . ."
 "From the published correspondence in the English Press and still more from a private correspondence with Adler, it appears that G. B. S. puts forward the Mussolini regime as the New Model which all other countries ought to follow!"

Of course later on, in the second world war, Shaw hedged about his admiration for the Italian dictator, but in the meantime the Webbs had made the pilgrimage to Moscow, fallen for the same blandishments and published their massively misguided book “Soviet Communism—a new Civilisation." One of its unintentionally humorous chapters is that on "Is Stalin a Dictator?" “Sometimes it is asserted,” they wrote (second edition, 1937, page 431), “ that, whereas the form may be otherwise, the fact is that, whilst the Communist Party controls the whole administration, the Party itself, and thus indirectly the whole State, is governed by the will of a single person, Josef Stalin.”

They hastened to point out (doubtless remembering their earlier disapproval of Shaw and Mussolini) that Stalin, unlike Mussolini and Hitler, was “not invested by law with any authority over his fellow-citizens. . . .  He is, in fact, only the General Secretary of the Party... ." 

In their solemn-silly way they concluded that there wasn’t any truth in the stories about Stalin!

  "We have given particular attention to this point, collecting all the available evidence, and noting artfully the inferences to be drawn from the experience of the past eight years (1926-1934). We do not think that the Party is governed by the will of a single person; or that Stalin is the sort of person to claim or desire such a position. He has himself very explicitly denied any such personal dictatorship in terms which, whether or not he is credited with sincerity certainly accord with our own impression of the facts."

How Stalin must have laughed up his sleeve at such simplicity; and how his “reformed” successors must laugh at the simplicity of the Webb’s successors.

Of course the biggest deception of the Webbs’ book—a deception still being practised by Stalin’s heirs—was that Russian dictatorship-ridden State capitalism was a “new civilisation." It deserves that title as much as did Mussolini's Italy deserve Shaw’s belief in h as a New Model.

Edgar Hardcastle