The Passing Show (1948)

From the November 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

The attempts of our rulers and spiritual advisers to formulate the mode of procedure best fitted to keep the workers quiet are becoming so fantastic as to cause even their docile dupes to wonder if there is not some leg-pulling going on somewhere; the hope of heaven on earth promised at the last election has gone with the wind. The way of the transgressing wage-slave is indeed hard; he suffers for the sins committed in Capitalism’s interest and bears all the burdens of his exploiters during the process; he is becoming weary and inclined to flag, but this cannot be allowed. “What we want is more production.”

It will be noticed that during those periods when the worker, driven beyond endurance, ventures to quit, he is always out of order (practically all strikes are unofficial). The Labour Leader of the Union and the Labour politician unite in condemning his rebellious conduct; and the capitalist press wholeheartedly support them. Denounced by the leader of his union, attacked in Parliament by his own Labour member, shown the error of his ways by the Church and universally vilified by the capitalist press, he may be excused if he doubts the evidence of his senses, but in spite of all these handicaps, he still keeps up the fight; he feels he must; his instincts bred of the class struggle he feels to be correct; he is becoming conscious of himself ; he is beginning to realise what history has called upon him to do. Upon the worker’s action rests the fate of humanity and every socialist on the planet is sustained during these perilous times by the firm conviction that he will not fail.

It is interesting to consider the views of the pioneers of scientific Socialism on the functions of the trade unions. Lucien Laurat, on pages 74 and 75 of his book. “Marxism and Democracy,” states that Marx made a number of important statements to Hamann, the treasurer of the Metal Worker’s Union. The discussion took place in Hanover in 1869. Among other things, Marx is reported as saying the following:—

“The trade unions must never be associated with or dependent upon a political group. Otherwise they would never be able to fulfil their task, and they would receive a mortal blow. The trade unions are the schools of Socialism. In the trade unions the workers become socialists because they see every day before their own eyes the struggle against capital. Political parties, whatever they may be, can arouse the enthusiasm of the working masses only temporarily for a time only, whilst the unions hold their loyalty much more securely, and it is only these unions which can be a real working class party and erect a bulwark against the power of Capital.”

This is what Marx is alleged to have said about 80 years ago. It is questionable if he would repeat the statement were he alive to-day.

Long before this, Engels, in his “Condition of the Working Class in England,” stressed the importance of the economic movement, and Marx, in his “Poverty of Philosophy,” fiercely attacked Proudhon for his hostility to trade unions and to strikes.

Wherever the unions are mentioned in Marx’s writings we find he defends them. In another quotation in the book above referred to he stated: “The struggle of class against class is a political struggle.” 

When the Chartist movement was analysed by the old timers the fact that the trade unions did not as a whole support the Chartists was referred to with regret. 

In “Value, Price and Profit,” the part played by the unions was dealt with, their limitations clearly shown, together with their utility, but it is pointed out they could be more successful if they used their power more intelligently: they should have as their watchword not a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work, but the revolutionary “abolition of the wages system.”

Since the founders of the movement passed away the workers have acquired considerable knowledge as a result of their experience..

The wage-slave sells his labour-power to the capitalist, and competing with him is his fellow slave. The identity of interests of the workers on the economic field is obscured.

When labour-power is in demand the sellers of that commodity, by means of their organizations, try and raise the price, but when the demand falls off, and the unemployed become numerous their organizations weaken and the price falls. There is nothing in trade union action that can take labour-power out of the category of commodities. Trade unions are often the means of enabling the workers to obtain a rise in wages before they otherwise would do and also in preventing a rapid fall when circumstances are in favour of the exploiter. They are, in addition, a vehicle for obtaining better conditions which through custom sometimes become more or less permanent, Their value to the worker cannot be questioned, but they cannot emancipate the toiler from wage slavery.

It is not the function of a political party to interfere with the operations of the unions.

The movement in Britain has not been helped by the political levy and the fusion of some unions with the Labour Party: the unions have not benefited: the trade union leader is now often in opposition to the aspirations of the rank and file, and is backed, on almost every occasion, by the Labour politician in resisting efforts to use the organisations for the purpose for which they were originally formed.

It is inspiring nevertheless to see the gradual spread of class consciousness : it is slow, but sure in its coming. Capitalism is up against problems it cannot solve. There is no power that can prevent the advance of the workers permanently, but it can be helped along by socialist knowledge.

The socialist aims at the removal of Capitalism : the trade unionist who is not a socialist thinks he can get something worth while out of the present mode of production. Sooner or later it will dawn upon the working class that trade union action can’t beat the capitalist system.

In 1850, at the time of the split in the Communist League, Marx judged it necessary to tell the workers “You will have to go through fifteen, twenty, perhaps fifty years of civil and international wars, not merely to change conditions, but to change yourselves, and make yourselves fit to take over political power.” He was optimistic; the workers are still in the wilderness, but his vision was clear. A long preparation was necessary before they could be equipped with knowledge sufficient to enable them to take possession of the promised land.

We have now undoubtedly arrived at a point from which the wage-slaves can see where to head for.

Charles Lestor

Blogger's Note:

Lucien Laurat's Marxism and Democracy was reviewed in the February 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard.

Profits of doom - capitalism’s left wing (1982)

From the October 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

The advent of capitalist production in sixteenth- to nineteenth-century Britain was marked by the transformation of the peasantry into wage-workers. Peasants had been isolated, and concerned with increasing their individual land holdings. But as workers, forced off the land into the workshops, survival necessitated some kind of association. The revolt of workers against the conditions they were forced into went through certain phases. At first machinery was destroyed. Riots and arson were, however, easily crushed since they were isolated and unorganised. Destruction proved counter-productive. Then trade unions were formed to ease the downward pressure on wages which resulted from competition between workers. The unions aimed to establish uniform wage scales, to regulate apprenticeships and also, often, to oppose the introduction of machinery. Their role was of necessity contradictory' and sectional. The kind of political association which could potentially overcome this problem of division appeared for the first time on a large scale in the form of Chartism. This was the first attempt by workers to gain direct access to the state through extending the franchise.

The response of the ruling class to previous waves to discontent among their workers had consisted mainly of vicious and brutal oppression to outlaw trade unions and democratic association. The Combination Acts, the Tolpuddle martyrs and Peterloo are the British equivalent of the killings in recent times in Gdansk and other parts of Poland. In the late nineteenth century they began to fear how workers might react to this once they could vote. This fear had a very long history. Two hundred and fifty years earlier, at the time of the English Revolution, the aptly named Colonel Rich had said:

You have five to one in this kingdom that have no permanent interest . .  if the master and servant shall be equal electors, then clearly those that have no interest in the kingdom will make it their interest to choose those that have no interest. . . there may be a law enacted, that there shall be an equality of goods and estate. (Quoted in The Century of Revolution, Christopher Hill. p. 120.)

In addition, employers faced the problem, after the Education Act of 1870, of increasing literacy among their workers which posed the threat of growing knowledge and understanding. So in place of violent suppression, there evolved the idea of social reform. According to many liberal capitalists of the late nineteenth century, the discontent of workers could be placated without revolutionary change, provided their employers were prepared to make minor concessions. This idea was sold to the capitalist class over a period of time by politicians like Joseph Chamberlain, with his question: “1 ask what ransom will property pay for the security it enjoys” (at an 1885 Liberal Party meeting discussing the financing of social services — Life, J. L. Garvin, 1932, Vol. I. p. 549).

The experiences of workers continued to show that the fetters of capitalism prevented their needs from being met. The question of getting rid of capitalism arose, but was drowned by the clamour for piecemeal reform of the system. The formation of employers’ federations in the 1890s and the anti-trade union court rulings around the turn of the century led to the formation of the Labour Party, which then grew from a trade union pressure group to an alternative capitalist government to the Liberal Party, out of which it had in part grown. The lip-service paid by the Labour Party after 1918 to nationalisation is now frowned on by many workers, particularly those who have worked in state-capitalist industries and found it no better than working in the private sector. The Tory statesman. Peel, had already proposed the nationalisation of the railways half a century earlier as a threat against private monopolies, so the idea had a long, respectable history within capitalism.

From the start, the Labour Party was not united on any principle and attempted to catch votes by empty promises which had nothing to do with the self-emancipation of workers. Labour governments have smashed strikes, supported wars, passed racist immigration legislation, presided over soaring unemployment, cut medical and social services, wages and housing programmes. In fact they have done everything the Tories do, and anything which has been demanded of them by the present, capitalist system which they say we “have to work within”. The last Labour government, for example, imposed a five per cent limit on wage rises through the “social contract”, and at the 1975 Labour Party conference called for wage restraint with the exercise of the "socialist imagination” — in other words, take less but imagine you're getting more. Jack Jones of the TGWU justified his support for these measures with the assertion that "Socialism means being able to take part now and not just dream dreams”.

Alternative Economic Strategy 

At the moment the Labour Party, the Communist Party, the Liberal Party and the SDP are all proposing to deal with the 14 per cent rate of unemployment by the Keynesian policy of increasing public expenditure. Keynes saw himself as the saviour of capitalism; he hoped to prove Marx wrong by showing that the profit system could work in the interests of all. He hoped for 5 per cent unemployment as a "natural” stable level. But the policies of all the governments since World War Two have followed Keynes without success. For example, during the seventies, annual government spending was increased about four times over, and unemployment shot up from under half a million to over two million. This was simply the outcome of one of the periodic trade slumps of capitalism.

But according to the Labour Party we should not yet reject the whole system, for they have a few more policies for us to try. Have we tried them all before? Well, yes, they say. but why not try again, after all. Labour MPs might join the dole queue otherwise. The rest of the "Alternative Economic Strategy” consists of import controls, and controls on wages and other prices. That these measures cannot serve the interests of the majority has been amply illustrated by our own experience.

The situation which an incoming Labour government would face is probably comparable to that of Mitterand in France. The same kind of promises about public expenditure and expansion were dropped very quickly, as the PSF government introduced its austerity programme and wage freezes. The nationalisation they introduced, does not particularly affect the interests of the capitalist class, as was made clear in this announcement in French newspapers. with the heading: Nationalisation. An exchange of holdings.

If you are a shareholder in one of the companies which was nationalised on 11 February 1982, your shares will be exchanged freely for guaranteed state bonds, with variable rates of interest, on 13 April 1982.

The ideals of "industrial democracy” and "workers control" within the capitalist system are simply modern replacements of the older. Tory defence of property as based on freedom and enterprise. They lead to exploitation supervised by the exploited themselves, masking the fundamental class division of capitalism.

Why, then, do the so-called revolutionaries of the Left still involve themselves in the Labour Party? It used to be because it was the "mass Party of the working class”, even though numerically you might just as well describe the Nazi Party in Germany in the thirties in that way. But recently the Labour Party has been in decline, with its individual membership falling by hundreds of thousands. The reason for the Left’s continuing involvement is their sticking to the old-fashioned idea of secret infiltration rather than open persuasion. Leninist groups such as Militant Tendency and the SWP think workers are incapable of understanding socialism — even though their own conception of it is at best vague and often oppressively anti-working class and dictatorial. Because of this arrogant belief that they have understood something which others cannot, the attitude of these groups has been somewhat contradictory. For example, in the February 1974 election the manifesto of the International Marxist Group said "VOTE LABOUR — but rely on your own struggles". Then in their Red Weekly (now Socialist Challenge) of February 22 they said:

Labour's attitude to the working class involves outright lying . . . the (Labour) programme is a big con. designed to trap the working class movement into accepting further cutbacks in its standard of living while prices soar.

On 23 February, 1974. the SWP’s Socialist Worker advised that "every socialist, every worker must spend all the days before polling day shouting two simple slogans at work, in the home and whenever anyone will listen: DEFEND UNIONS — VOTE LABOUR”. A few months later, on 6 July 1974, the same journal slated:

Wilson’s wage cuts will have to be fought with stronger organisation and stronger industrial action — stronger even than the action that booted out Heath and the Tories.

Leninism

These U-turns are made because these parties blindly accept as a dogma the statement made by Lenin in a pamphlet at the turn of the century, that "The working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade-union consciousness”. (What is to be Done?) Poles who know the opening lines of the Communist Manifesto have recently been saying that a spectre is haunting Leninism — the spectre of trade-union consciousness. The irony really is complete, because Leninist groups insist on the need for a leadership to take workers beyond the trade-union struggle, and yet spend much of their time talking about the trade-union struggle, even when the workers they are "organising" find that reformist campaigns which fail to touch the root of the problem cannot be in our interests as the majority class in society. As the “vanguard" repeat their circular slogans and arrogant dogmas and the rest of us find more and more evidence that we must get rid of the system they say we must work within, it is not hard to see why Marx spoke of the need to educate the educators. In the early days of the Russian Revolution, Lenin declared that to establish state capitalism would be a victory (The Chief Task of our Times), and he has been quoted:

If socialism can only be realised when the intellectual development of all the people permitted it. then we shall not see socialism for at least five hundred years. (Ten Days That Shook the World, John Reed. p. 263)

There is in fact no reason at all why the majority of workers could not easily understand that the present system of production for profit must be replaced by production for use, and private and state property replaced by democratic control and common ownership. The abolition of the world market system does require the full development of socialist political consciousness on the part of a majority of workers. We are quite adequately equipped, biologically and socially, for this task of taking political action on the basis of understanding, in order to transform society.

The organisation of the Leninist left epitomises the hierarchy, the bureaucracy, and the deadening nature of capitalist hypocrisy. Much genuine and potentially revolutionary discontent is absorbed and channelled into the kind of rebellion against fragments and details of the system which proves ultimately innocuous. These basic assumptions lead to the state capitalist regimes such as Russia — however much the Trotskyists may try to deny this by dating the beginning of oppression in modern Russia from the time when Lenin died and Stalin took over. And Russia, with its concentration of most industry in the hands of the state and the suppression of trade union activity, is basically a capitalist state:

During the first year of transition to the new system industrial enterprises obtained 3500 million roubles extra profit. The level of profitability rose from 13 per cent in 1965 (in industry as a whole) to 22.5 per cent in 1969 (for enterprises transferred to the new system). (Labour Remuneration, Labour Incentive Funds and Soviet Trade Unions, Novosii Press Agency, Moscow, 1972.)

No Socialism without Socialists

Militant is now in a state of panic over the dreaded Labour Party "Register”. In the end. they will either be kicked out or accommodated. Their history of a reformist leadership holding back the rank and file is an unfounded myth. To support the principle of leadership signifies lack of socialist consciousness. Leaders like Wilson and Foot were regarded as being on the Left at one time. The successive movements of politicians across the wings of the Labour Party merely reflects their stagnating acceptance of capitalism. Society will change through conscious desire, not the eighteenth-century Jacobin tactics of secret conspiracy and infiltration, or through the manipulations of self-styled vanguards. The limited way in which both the Left and Right wings of capitalism define what is “possible” and what is not crushes any real dissent from the prevailing form of society. They are ideological harnesses, holding back uncertain workers from developing the confidence necessary for self-emancipation, as advocated by Marx. The capitalist system has produced four tons of nuclear explosives (TNT-equivalent) for every man and woman on earth, but still leaves an average of one person to starve to death each second. Only a conscious majority of workers, organised democratically, can take the political action necessary to end this tragedy, by sending delegates to take over and dismantle the state machine. Before this can happen we must rid ourselves of any illusions about the outdated and destructive system we live in at the moment.

Clifford Slapper

May Day and the Class Struggle (1958)

From the June 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

May Day demonstrations used to be held on the 1st of May: how they came to be changed to the first Sunday in May is one of life’s little ironies, or should we say one of working class life’s little ironies?

It happened during the first World War when the British and German sections of the working class were killing each other. Then the British Government suggested that in the interests of winning the war it would be greatly obliged if the Labour Party, who were also "winning the war” as well as organising May Day, would hold it on the first Sunday in May. To hold it on a week day would mean thousands of workers might be absent from munition factories and that would mean a drop in war production and what was more vital it would mean a drop in the rate at which the British uniformed workers were killing their German comrades.

It always rains on Sunday

After the first World War the Labour Party, presumably on the grounds that a week day demonstration would affect “peace production,” continued to hold May Day demonstrations on the first Sunday in May. There were also “influential people” who thought that if workers wanted to demonstrate they should demonstrate in their own time and not on a day normally devoted to the bosses. And further, as it could be shown statistically that the first May Sabbath was a case—”That it always rains on Sunday" — or nearly always, and so was likely to dampen the demonstrators’ ardour, everybody that is everybody apart from the workers seems to have reached a happy May Day solution.

The First of the May Days

There are, of course, four May Days historically considered. Two in the past, one in the present, and a hypothetical one in the future. May Days go back a long way, even the Greeks had a word for it, or more accurately a day for it. So did the Romans, Mais was a month of celebration, games and feasting a time when even austere Romans like Julius Caesar and Mark Antony took their hair down.

In Feudal England it was a day of celebration for the return of spring. On that day our forbears consumed quantities of cake and ale and made whoopee. It was sort of “Knees up Mother Brown” of the Middle Ages, and when the warmth of the day had subsided the young men full of cake and ale picked up the young women, also full of cake and ale, and bore them off into the woods, and a new warmth entered into the proceedings. It is even said, and I hope that I do our forbears no injustice that the girls entered the woods as immature maidens and came out of the woods experienced women. It seems that our working forefathers had more definite ideas about May Day than their modern counterparts.

Exit file First May Day

But Feudalism went and those sorts of May Days went with it—as a result of economic development a new class was emerging who were displacing the old Feudal order, a class of merchants and merchant adventurers who burst asunder the dosed Feudal economy and opened up the world. And what with piracy and plunder and the slave trade and colonisation they were so busy amassing vast wealth that they had little time for anything else, least of all for such things as May Days.

But the peasants and draftsmen of England not only lost their May Days, but their immemorial rights. The Land Enclosure increased in severity—as the 17th and 18th centuries went by a vast mass of peasants became landless and in some cases homeless. At the same time economic development led to a bitter, competitive struggle between the old craft guilds and the new merchant class and in the end the guilds went down in ruins before the impact of a new and superior method of wealth production and organisation.

Thus at the end of the 18th century and the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, a landless, unprivileged and unorganised mass were hungry to enter the new factories built by the new factory owners, i.e. the new ruling class which had emerged from this process of economic development. And these new factory owners equally hungry from the standpoint of profits to receive them into their factories. It was this uncouth, unorganised mass who were the nucleus and origin of the modern working class, yet an unorganised mass who were to become organised by the very process of production. And as the weight of misery and oppression bore more heavily upon their shoulders they were involved in the riots and machine breaking and other acts of violence. From this class struggle between owners and non-owners, the workers began to throw up their own class organs of defence, which later emerged as the modern Trade Union Movement. 

The Second May Day

It was out of this class struggle that the idea of a second May Day emerged. Not a May Day merely symbolical of a resurgence of nature, but of labour carrying a promise of a new life. The idea was mooted in France, Germany and England during the 19th century for by this time capitalism had become international and the working class had become international also, and it was felt by groups of workers in different lands that as they had common interests they should also have common aims.

Yet it was not until 1888 that the 2nd International set aside the first day of May to be a day symbolical of international working class solidarity, with an advocacy of the eight-hour day. The first May Day Demonstration was in 1890. On that and subsequent May Days, Negroes, Indians, Chinamen, Germans, Frenchmen, marched in the name of the International working class in different parts of the world, transcending their national boundaries.

In England on May Day, workers marched in various towns and cities and often many of their women marched with them. They marched to the open spaces and parks and those who lived by the sweat of their brow gathered round coal carts and platforms to listen to those who lived or were later to live by the sweat of their tongues. 

Workers of the World unite

It was the high tide of working class international feeling. A time when Marx's slogan, “workers of the world unite” seemed to have more significance than ever before—or since. These workers were not Socialists; perhaps the nearest they got to Socialism was a passionate conviction to remould things nearer to the heart's desire, but they felt a common purpose in face of a common enemy. But this promised spring-time of the working class movement never flowered. The early blush on its cheek, faded before the long, hard winter of growing national sentiment and reformism.

By the turn of the 20th century a change had come o'er the spirit of the dream. The workers still marched, they still gathered round the same coal carts and still listened to the same old speakers. But the old speakers were now saying new things. No longer did they cry, down with the powers that be, for they were trying to start a political movement with the help of the trade unions which hoped to become part of the powers that be and in fact did become part of them—eventually what is more, some of the old agitators and speakers who boasted of their lowly origins successfully took part in that process. So successfully that in their ripe, or rotten ripe old age they recorded their success by writing books like “From Doss House to Debrett" or “From Pigstyle to Parliament," a perhaps not unnatural evolution.

Excelsior!

And so the Labour movement began to carry banners bearing strange signs. There were some in it demanding votes for women. Demands for the nationalisation of the Railways and Mines. Munidpalisation of gas, water and later electricity. The fact that these things came about has little to do with the early demands of the Labour Movement, but for other reasons. There was even a demand for the building of Labour Exchanges.

These things were now represented as being steps towards what was then termed the Millenium. The only trouble was that the more steps they took towards the Millenium the further it got away. In fact, they took so many steps towards it that it finally disappeared altogether and has never been seen since.

Freedom for Everybody

At the beginning of the 20th century there appeared the first of the Freedoms. Big banners proclaimed: "Freedom for the Boers." In due course the Boers got their freedom, but like so many such freedoms it turned out to be the freedom of the few to deny any sort of freedom to anybody else. Then there were demands for freedom for the Poles, freedom for the Slavs, etc., in fact, the only thing the workers never demanded was freedom for themselves, freedom from the servility of class domination.

Then the Labour Movement got mixed up with international politics, but international capitalist politics not international working class politics. They began by declaiming against "secret diplomacy." Then the Entente Cordiale. They demanded "No trafficking with Russia” against "The Big Navy Bill,” "Abolition of the Territorial Army,” etc.

So the Labour Movement, and with it May Days, instead of being the sounding board of international working class sentiment, became a big drum for national rivalries and conflicting foreign politics. A sort of Empire Day in reverse, but much more effective in compounding, confounding, complicating and obfuscating the pattern of working class politics.

After the war, with the advent of the communists in May Day demonstrations and other activities, British Foreign Policy got mixed up with Soviet Foreign Policy and things got in a glorious muddle. Then the communists started the "Hands off Movement" " Hands off China," "Hands off Spain," "Hands off Czechoslovakia," etc., although this did not prevent violent hands from being laid on all of these countries. Then there was the great down and up phase: "Down with Bonar Law," "Down with Baldwin,” "Up with Ramsay Mac and Snowden. “Down with Ramsay Mac and Snowden,” "Up with Cook and Maxton," "Down with Cook and Maxton,” "Down with Churchill," " Up with Churchill," then "Down with Churchill ”—ad infinitum.

Down with Fascism

Then in the years prior to the second world war there was “Down with Fascism" and a demand for a democratic military alliance against Hitler—Russia was then part of the " democratic alliance.” To show how May Days were only consistent in their inconsistency there were at the same time demands for drastic disarmament by the Tory government and devoting the savings to road making and increased doles. There were even demands that future wars should be conducted minus bombers and tanks. Although in demonstrations during the second world war unlimited quantities of both for the Second Front were the subject of slogans.

Now there are no longer cries, such as “ Down with capitalism—" Down with war." Nor even that tanks and aeroplanes should not be used in war. Only the Hydrogen Bomb should be taken off the war list so that war might once again become humane, decent and friendly. Such then has been the rise and fall of the second May Day.

May Day in Russia

One cannot, of course, omit May Day in Russia. No doubt the communists' dialectic skill has more than anywhere else turned May Day into its opposite. The communist boast that Soviet May Days are bigger and better than anywhere else. Unlike any other government they have made them state subsidised ceremonies, replete with the panoply and pomp of circumstance. As a show they probably make even a coronation look like a seaside carnival. All the great ones in Russia occupy the seats of the mighty on this day—symbolical of international working class solidarity. In Czarist times the police and military marched with the workers, but they were only with them, not of them. Now under the formulae of the unity of opposites they are included.

Tanks and jet bombers are also thrown in to show that communist war weapons can kill quicker and faster than bourgeois ones, thus demonstrating the superiority of "Socialism" over capitalism. And perhaps if Engels could have seen these Soviet May Days he might have thought that his aphorism—"the irony of history turns everything upside down," was an historic understatement.

To draw an historic parallel, one might think of the British Government in the 19th century organising the workers' May Day. Of thousands of workers with banners headed by old Queen Victoria in the gilded state coach and as they wheeled into the park massed bands of the guard playing with a row tow row tow to the British Grenadiers. And Gladstone, Disraeli and choice spirits from the House of Lords standing on coal carts with faces grimed for the occasion, proclaiming "Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your brains." Only the communists could turn such a May Day fantasy, into a Russian May Day nightmare.

No doubt in turning back the pages of May Day demonstrations we might laugh at our Victorian working class grandfathers. We tend to laugh at many things in the past especially the Victorian past if only perhaps to prevent us from laughing at ourselves, because that might not be so funny. Whether if they could' see across the years to the present May Day demonstrations they would "look forward in anger” one cannot say. But one feels whatever they did they wouldn’t laugh at us but blush for us instead.

May Days of To-morrow

It might be that when the clock of history has gone forward by establishing a rational society we might so far as May Day is concerned put the clock back and make it once more a day of celebration and merry making. Then there will be no need to demonstrate. No need to cry “Down with secret diplomacy,” because there will be neither secrets nor diplomacy. Nor to call for disarmament, because there will be no need to arm or disarm Neither shall we organise for the abolition of the Hydrogen Bomb because it, or a miniature specimen of it, will have been relegated to the museum of pre-human history. Men will at last have become truly human, and in the light of that development I will conclude by saying—MAY DAY IS DEAD—LONG LIVE MAY DAY.

Ted Wilmott.

Blogger's Notes:

"Yet it was not until 1888 that the 2nd International set aside the first day of May . . . " This might be a typo. The 2nd International wasn't formally launched until 1889.

The May 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard carries a notice for a May Day meeting, entitled "The Class Struggle and May Day", to be held at Denison House, 296 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London. The speakers listed were Lisa Bryan and Ted Wilmott. There's a strong chance that this article by Wilmott is the text of his speech at that meeting.

The Evolution of Revolutionary Burns. (1906)

From the April 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Extracts from a speech delivered by John Burns at the Old Bailey when tried for seditious conspiracy on April 9th, 1886).

These extracts from a speech of the Burns of the Eighties have been reproduced so that the working class may have an opportunity of contrasting the present views of this Right Honourable person with the views he then enunciated. It has been, and still is, the fashion to gibe and jeer at the volte face of another Right Honourable turn-coat (Joseph Chamberlain) and no one has delighted in the exercise more than Burns himself. Yet it has recently been held to be an exhibition of bad taste to bring Burns’ own past up in evidence against him—and no one was more righteously indignant than Burns ! The Burns revolution has been far and away more complete than that of Chamberlain and it is the more conspicuous because of the price Burns received for his apostacy—a price the recipient has so often rejoiced in the size of. The hope that Burns expressed in ’86 that the penalty for the betrayal of the working class would be heavy enough to deter anyone from attempting it has not been realized. The penalty has not been enough—for Burns ! We do not, of course, suggest anything so absurd that a man may not change his view, seeing it is upon that change of view in the working class that we rely for the realization of Socialism. But we are concerned to emphasize the point that the Burns of yesterday, who has secured his present position by virtue of his influence with the unthinking working class, is very far from being the Burns of to-day. It is more necessary to emphasize this difference than many think. Undoubtedly Burns secured his following as the Burns of the Eighties—by his association as a member of the working class with working-class movements. And undoubtedly it was because this following held to the idea of a practically unchanged Burns, an idea insinuating itself into an ever wider circle, that Burns’ services as a decoy were purchased by the Liberal Party. These extracts may help to destroy that illusion. Burns is now engaged in administering that capitalist system to which he at one time traced the poverty of the working class. To-day he urges the usual capitalist argument of working-class intemperance as largely the cause of working-class poverty, where previously he designated as liars those who held such views. To-day he is a member of the same sort of government, adopting exactly the same sort of method that he denounced so roundly in ’86. Yet poverty has only intensified in the interregnum. Burns’ attitude to-day is the capitalist attitude; his method the capitalist method. Only the unthinking section of the working class could fail to note the fact that between Burns and his Tory predecessor there is no material difference. Unfortunately the unthinking section of the working class is very large. Hence these extracts.

__________________

My Lord and Gentlemen of the Jury,

… I expected that at some time of my life I should be brought face to face with the authorities for vindicating the class to which I belong. I have, from my earliest infancy, been in contact with poverty of the worst possible description . . I have done everything I could in a peaceful manner to call the attention of the authorities to the frightful amount of poverty and degradation existing among the working class . . . I heard that there was going to be a meeting of the starving unemployed of London in Trafalgar Square on February 8th. . . I reached the place at 1.30. I was recognized . . . I got upon the plinth and spoke to 13,000 or 14,000 men. . . I pointed out that a remedy could only he found by bringing pressure to bear upon Parliament and the local authorities as I had tried to do 12 months before when I had to walk the streets of London for 7 weeks for daring to speak as to the condition of the workers . . . I ask you, can you wonder at a workman’s language being strong ? I am inclined to think that the day is not far distant when stronger language will have to be used. When the Fair Traders came, I climbed up the balustrade and acted as chairman of that second meeting. Why? All know that the Fair Traders Messrs. Peters, Kelley, Kenny, Lemon and others, are regarded as arrant impostors by the workmen of London and I was desirous that there should not be a physical conflict between the unemployed and those honest but misguided men who are the dupes of these bogus representatives . . . The day of these mercenaries I am pleased to say is now over. The penalty for betraying the workers I hope, will be heavy enough to deter any man from selling their cause, as it has many times been sold. . . I found that the crowd were becoming somewhat turbulent . . and I thought it my duty to listen to the suggestion that we should proceed in procession through the West End to Hyde Park. . . No damage was done by the procession … until we reached the Carlton Club. . . There is a class of men who make it a practice on occasions of political demonstrations to laugh and jeer from the Club windows at the poverty or what they term “the great unwashed,” to to jeer at the misery their own greed has created. . . The crowd were not in a temper to respond to contemptuous jeers by a smile. . . Stone throwing commenced. And that was the result of the stupid, ungentlemanly, criminal conduct of Carlton Club members. I did my best to repress the stone throwing . . . believing as I do that window breaking, except, perhaps, as warning, is useless to effect a change in our system of Society, based as it is upon the robbery of Labour. . .

John Burns in the 1880s.

Against this system of Society, I frankly confess I am a rebel, because Society has outlawed me. I have protested against this state of Society by which at present one and a half millions of our fellow countrymen, adult males, are starving—starving because they have no work to do. Talk about strong language ! I contend my language was mild when you consider the usage they have received and that the patience under severe provocation displayed by the workers is almost slavish and cowardly. . . We come before you not as paid agitators . . . but as men anxious to change the existing system of society to one in which men should receive the full value of their labour, in which Society will be regarded as something more than a few titled non-producers who take the whole of the wealth which the useful workers alone produce. . .

If you want to remove the cause of seditious speeches, you must prevent us from having to hear as we hear to-day, of hungry poverty-stricken men, who from no fault of their own, are compelled to be out of work. . . . I have not one single word of regret to utter for the part I have taken in this agitation. . . I say we cannot have in England as we have to-day five millions living on the verge of pauperism without gross discontent. . . . I am sorry to say that it seems to be a characteristic of the Government and the governing classes to be influenced only by fear—at least Mr. Gladstone, Lord Randolph Churchill and Mr. Chamberlain say that their Governments are not susceptible to reason or appeals unless the Hyde Park railings are pulled down and the club windows broken. . . Mr. Chamberlain prior to the riots denied that exceptional distress prevailed; but about a fortnight afterwards he admitted that it was exceptional and severe. . . It (the riot) also made the landlords and capitalists surrender to the Mansion House Fund some of the proceeds of their past robbery in the shape of charity. . . That meeting of Feb. 8th called the attention of the people of Great Britain to this fact that below the upper and middle strata of Society there are millions of people leading hard degraded lives—men who through the unequal distribution of wealth are consigned to the criminal classes and women into the enormous army of prostitutes whom we see in the streets of our great cities. And as an artisan I cannot see poor puny little babes sucking empty breasts and honest men walking the streets for months at a time—I cannot hear of women of the working class being compelled to resort to prostitution to earn a livelihood—I cannot see these things without being moved not only to strong language but to strong action, if necessary. . . And when the Attorney General says we incited to riots, I say that the Social system is to blame. It prompts men to thieve and it prompts women of the working class to resort to dishonest acts by not giving all a fair start in life and not giving them an opportunity to get honest work. Society journals demand our imprisonment. Why ? Because £11,000 worth of windows have been broken. But how about the sacred human lives that have been and are being degraded and blighted by the present system—of capitalism?. .  . . 

I shall serve my cause as well inside a prison as out. The word prison has no particular terror for me. Through the present system of Society life has lost all its charm, and a hungry man said truly (as Isaiah, said in the Holy Book) that there was a time in the history of our lives when it was better to die in prison or better to die fighting than to die starving. . . The wonder is that there was not more destruction, of property and that no life was lost. If we had given the word, not a single inmate of the Carlton Club would have been alive to-day . . .

Capitalism and the Illusion of Freedom (1995)

From the December 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

The right to vote may be taken for granted by many workers today but it should never be forgotten that we had to struggle for it in the past

In Britain ideas concerning freedom, liberty and democracy can be traced all back to the 17th century. Between the 1640s and 1688 the propertied classes struggled to free themselves from the economic constraints imposed upon them by an absolutist monarchy.

The English Civil War was a class war and despite the rhetoric of the leaders of the parliamentary army that they were fighting for the liberty of the individual against an unjust government their major purpose was to establish a measure of self-government for the propertied classes. It was the men of property who gained new freedoms in the 17th century . Christopher Hill states what these freedoms were and who most of them were at the expense of:

“The men of property won freedom freedom from arbitrary taxation and arbitrary arrest, freedom from religious prosecution, freedom to control the destinies of their country through their elected representatives, freedom to buy and sell. They also won freedom to evict copyholders and cottagers, to tyrannise over their villages, to hire unprotected labour in the open market ” (The Century of Restoration 1603-1714, p. 265).

The mass of the population failed to make any gains either political or economic. The Duke of Albermarle is quoted as saying that “the poorer and meaner people have not interest in the commonweal but the use of breath".

The capitalist class, their representatives and spokesmen in the 17th and 18th centuries at least made no pretence of applying liberty, freedom and the right to elect governments to the mass of the population. These rights were restricted to property-owners and a conscious link was recognised between property and the role of government. John Locke, for example, argued that the executive would forfeit its rights if it endangered the stability of property, for its very existence rested on its role to maintain property.

Glorious for some

The reforming political grouping of the late 17th and early 18th centuries was the Whigs, in opposition to the Tory ideology which argued for a monarchy standing above the law. The Whigs wanted government under the Rule of Law by a parliament consisting of Monarchy, Lords and Commons. They were not democrats and did not advocate political democracy for the mass of the population.

After the so-called “Glorious Revolution” of 1688, and the receding of the threat of an absolutist monarchy, the Whigs became less reforming. When confronted by the idea of an extension of the political franchise to the so-called lower classes the Whigs were quite clear as to who they considered had the right to decide on who formed die government: those who owned freehold property. Thus one Whig argued: “It is owned that all governments are made by man and ought to be made by those men who are owners of the territory over which the government extends. It must likewise be confessed that the FREEHOLDERS of England are the owners of the English territory, and therefore have a natural right to erect what government they please ” (Quoted in H.T. Dickinson, Liberty and Property, pp. 86- 90).

By the late 18th century', and following the French Revolution, the property-owning class showed what they thought of democratic movements. Both inside and outside parliament many favoured the imposition of repressive measures to prevent the spread of radical ideas. Several showed their contempt for ideas concerning the sovereignty of the people. Edmund Burke argued:

“The sovereignty of the people was the most false, wicked, and mischievous doctrine that ever could be preached to them . . .  The moment that equality and the sovereignty of the people was adopted as the rule of government, property would be at an end, and religion, morality and law, which grew out of property would fall with it."

The useful majority in society had a long time to wait before their struggle for democratic rights would make some progress. Until 1867 in fact, when the Reform Act added 400,000 borough voters nearly doubling the borough franchise (but women, paupers and farm labourers were still denied the vote).

Safe to extend the vote

The question is why was it at this point that the franchise was extended to a large section of the working class? The early part of the 19th century had seen militant working class agitation both industrially and politically. This period saw the Luddite risings and mass demonstrations seeking political reform, including the famous Peterloo massacre of 1819. Following several unsuccessful strikes by various groups of workers in the 1820s the idea of general unions also began to gain ground.

The failure of the 1832 Reform Act to give the working class the vote added further momentum to ideas about general militant industrial organisation. This movement culminated with the formation in 1834 of the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union. For Bronterre O’Brien the aim of general unions was to bring about: 

"an entire change in society—a change amounting to a complete subversion of the existing order of the world. The working classes aspire to be at the top instead of at the bottom of society—or rather that there should be no top or bottom at all."

The 1830s also saw the development of the largest and most important working class political movement up till then. Chartism. However the defeat of Chartism in the 1840s signalled the incorporation of militant organisation into the mainstream labour movement which was itself being integrated into capitalist society.

Thus the 1850s saw the development of the so-called “New Model Unions”, more centralised, bureaucratic and more eager to protect their funds than to engage in militant action. By the 1860s the leaders of several of these trade unions had set themselves up at the head of the movement. This group, known as the “Junta”, sought acceptance for the trade unions into the capitalist order. In 1862 they formed the Manhood Suffrage and Vote by Ballot Association declaring: 

“Let our advocacy be firm, intelligent and persistent, not a sowing of the seeds of discord, but a promotion of the growth of union; not an exciting of class against class; but an endeavour to extend the welfare of all."

Therefore by 1867 the extension of the franchise to sections of the working class was no longer fraught with danger. In fact with fresh agitation breaking out in 1866 for parliamentary reform many members of the ruling class felt that denying the working class the franchise was providing workers with an issue to unite around. A further consideration was that granting the franchise to a section only of the working class would divide and weaken them.

Real democracy

Political democracy and the law developed from the seventeenth century according to the needs of a property and developing market economy. In other words, they developed in line with the interests of the property-owning class and had nothing to do with anything like the moral superiority of democracy over dictatorship.

The extension of the vote to the working class was not “given” but was won by years of struggle. It was conceded, even if only partially, only at a point when it would probably have been more dangerous for the ruling class to continue to deny it and at a time when large sections of the working class had been integrated into capitalist society.

Extending the vote to workers under capitalism is not the same thing as establishing real democracy. Meaningful democracy in a world where the means of producing and distributing the things we need to live are owned and controlled by a tiny minority is at best a sick joke. Real democracy under capitalism is an illusion. The limited democracy we do have can however be used as a tool to bring about a worldwide system where the Earth’s resources are owned and controlled by its inhabitants. When that goal is achieved, and only when it is achieved, can we start to talk about living in a true democracy.

Ray Carr

The Chartist Legacy . . . 175 Years On (2023)

From the April 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

On 10 April, 1848, the grounds of Kennington Common shook as 150,000 working men and women assembled to present a petition to Parliament demanding political rights. The rights for which they campaigned, radically democratic for their time, were enshrined in a document titled ‘The People’s Charter’. These Chartists, as they had become known, were described by historian Dorothy Thompson as the world’s first working-class political party and had existed since the first drafting of the Charter by a joint committee of London working men and Members of Parliament in the winter months between 1837 and 1838. The document itself called for six main demands: universal male suffrage, the abolition of the property requirement for MPs, equally sized constituencies, annual parliaments, a fixed salary for elected MPs, and the secret ballot. While their campaigns were unsuccessful at the time, the spirit of Chartism suffused the Victorian working class with the irrevocable knowledge that they had political rights of their own. Now, 175 years later to the day, supporters of the Chartist legacy in Great Britain gather again at Kennington Park, on that same ground that rallied the democratic hopes and dreams of an entire working nation.

Chartist historian Malcolm Chase called Kennington Common ‘a major piece of political theatre’; an apt description for an assembly that was intended as a display of solidarity more than a show of force. The arrayed forces of the Victorian state employed Royal Engineers, special constables and retired generals to turn London into an urban fortress, with the Royal Family displaced to the Isle of Wight to avoid any outbreak of revolutionary violence. Such violence, however, was never to be forthcoming. In contrast to the overt militancy of the establishment in seeking to suppress the Chartist cause, the arrayed workers on Kennington Common that day were exemplary in their peaceable, moral and orderly conduct. Feargus O’Connor, Chartism’s leading orator and Parliamentary spokesman, declared to the assembly that ‘We are Chartists, not pickpockets, and we will not jeopardise our cause by a single act of wickedness or folly’.

After the rejection of the 1848 petition, signed and supported by roughly a third of Britain’s population, Chartism entered a decline from which it would not recover. Most of the movement’s support was split between Marxism and popular Liberalism as the century went on, both benefiting from the grassroots organisation and ideological conviction that had sustained the world’s largest mass political movement throughout the ‘Hungry Forties’. One of the greatest strengths of Chartism’s organisation was that it was both democratic and highly literate; subscriber-funded newspapers such as the Northern Star were filled with pages of working-class poetry, lectures in Chartist localities and open letter columns through which readers could correspond with one another to strengthen Chartism from within and without, as political strategy was both disseminated and debated by the membership itself rather than being proclaimed by diktat or decree. Not only was Chartist literature journalistic, but the movement also created a thriving literary counterculture with both poetry volumes and popular novels that turned radicals like T.M Wheeler, Ernest Jones and Thomas Cooper into both household names and vital spokespeople in the movement’s developmental processes, described by one Chartist historian as ‘thinking out loud’. This is the legacy that Chartism leaves to us, and one that bears honouring in our radical press; the democratic power of the written word.

Modern grassroots movements owe a lot to Chartism. Progressive for their time, they provided an example of a functioning democratic framework for mass organisation and were millions-strong when Engels and Marx wrote both The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845) and Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848). Chartism was also directly responsible for introducing Marxist philosophy to the English-speaking worker; Engels himself contributed several articles to the Northern Star and an English [translation of the] Manifesto appeared first in the Chartist press thanks to the translation efforts of Helen MacFarlane, a fact that pays due homage to the thousands of female radicals who also fought for the Charter. The movement has ample reason to be celebrated today, with the anniversary of Chartism’s largest assembly turning Kennington Park into an annual site of radical pilgrimage. In recent years, the Kennington Chartist Project and Friends of Kennington Park have regularly marked the anniversary of the assembly with a small rally of their own at which all are welcome. Other Chartist history events are also held occasionally in the Park, with recent examples including an introduction to William Cuffay, a London Chartist leader and important figure in the history of Britain’s black radicals. The Friends of Kennington Park and the Kennington Chartist Project inform us that, by way of marking the 175th anniversary of the protest, they are in the final stages of developing a Chartist History Trail around Kennington Park with an optional audio guide and posts dedicated to covering the events of the Chartist rally. This trail will open on 10 April as a permanent fixture in the park and will be supplemented by larger, more permanent monuments in due course.

It is worth adding that, while having a well-organised national executive and leadership, Chartism was also local to its core. Integrating a vast, extant network of recognised and respected regional activists gave the movement a sense of familiarity and widespread appeal that allowed the mill workers of Manchester, the miners of Durham and the farm labourers of Dorset to unite behind the Charter. An elective system of district delegates (that, in some cases, were organised street by street) meant that Chartists campaigned for local issues alongside their struggle for national political recognition. Kennington Park is ably supported by Newport, Blackstone Edge, Kersal Moor and many others, these being sites of equal importance in honouring the memory of a decentralised and democratic workers’ movement. Many will doubtless have good reasons for being unable to attend the commemoration at Kennington Park; it would therefore be well worth the time of local Branches to both research and attend sites of Chartist significance in their own localities where possible.

Duncan Hamilton

The failure of the Co-operative Movement. (1927)

From the January 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

In many minds the co-operative movement as it exists to-day is associated with Socialism and the struggle to overthrow the Capitalist system of society. In continental countries it is customary for the trade unions, the co-operatives, and the “Labour” parties to work in very close contact and it is vaguely understood that their joint aim is “Socialism.” In fact, their unity is only possible, because the so-called Labour Parties are actually concerned not with the abolition, but only with the reform of Capitalism.

When English co-operators speak in this strain they have some apparent justification in the fact that Robert Owen, whom they usually claim as the pioneer of co-operative principles, did during part of his life actively preach to the workers the necessity of finding means of escape from Capitalism. Owen lived in an age when machine production in factories was first making its brutal way in England. A new era was opening, an era of amazing profits for the fortunate few and of almost incredible suffering for the masses. He saw that the workers were helplessly enslaved to the owners of the land and the factories, and he thought that he had discovered a way out. If to labour in another man’s factory or on another man’s land meant hideous poverty for the labourer, then surely the remedy lay in securing land and machinery for the labourers to work themselves. So far it was sound enough, but Owen soon had to realise two things. The first was that the then ruling class had no need to solve the poverty problems of the workers, and certainly did not intend to give up freely their own right to own and to live by owning. The second was that at that time when the workers were uneducated, voteless and unorganised, it was unthinkable that they could hope to obtain possession of the wealth of the country against the opposition of their political rulers. In due course, therefore, Owen announced his solution.

He proposed that small groups of workers should aim at establishing self-supporting “villages of industry” in which there should be no employer, no master—little oases in the desert of Capitalism. They were to own the “land and means of production in common,” and it was anticipated that the idea would spread, until finally the workers would all have achieved their emancipation.

The initial difficulty, of obtaining the necessary capital, was to be overcome by the formation of “union shops” which would buy goods wholesale and sell them to the members at retail prices. A surplus would accumulate in the hands of the society which would otherwise have gone into the pockets of shopkeepers. Then, in due course the fund would be used for the setting up of “villages of industry.”

Between 1825 and 1834 some 400 or 500 of such shops were started, but the whole movement turned out a failure. They failed chiefly because enthusiasm waned with time, and there was no other attraction to secure the continued loyalty of the members once they lost faith in the ultimate end. In addition it was difficult, if not impossible, owing to the existing law for a body of workers to secure protection for their funds.

In 1826 one such store was formed in Brighton, and it is suggested in the cooperative “People’s Year Book” (1926, p. 13) that 1926 should on that account be celebrated as the centenary Year of the movement. The writer in the Year Book says of the Brighton cooperative store that in it “the co-operative movement had definitely started on the lines still followed more or less closely by every consumer’s co-operative society now existing in the world.” In his opinion, however, even so early as that, the pioneer co-operators at Brighton and elsewhere had already lost their interest in the more ambitious and far-reaching plans of Robert Owen : “The schemes of Owen were as much unlike the aims of the first co-operative societies as chalk is unlike cheese.”

But whatever may have been their intentions the shops founded by the early co-operators in England did not prosper, and it was a renewed effort in 1844 at Rochdale which contained the novel feature which was to lead to the modern developments.

The Rochdale innovation was the “dividend on purchases.” This provided a permanent inducement to members to remain loyal irrespective of their views on the desirability of reforming society. Great and growing numbers of workers have thus been drawn into the co-operative movement until to-day it is claimed that in Great Britain there are nearly 5,000,000 members, with £140,000,000 share and loan capital and an annual surplus of over £21,000,000.

In face of these imposing figures, and in view of the continued expansion of the movement, how can we seriously speak of co-operation as a failure?

It is a failure because it has not, will not, and cannot, solve the basic economic problems of the working-class. Owen saw, even if he failed to realise all its implications, that the dominance of capital was the root evil. He sought a means of escape, but although the modern co-operators praise him, they have long ago abandoned the intention of carrying on the work he planned.

“Union shops” were to be a means to an end. The co-operative movement has made “divi-hunting” an end in itself. The funds accumulated in the shops were to be used for the foundation of societies in which all the members would co-operate in working their own property held in common and share the proceeds on a footing of equality. The modern movement accumulates funds for the purpose of making further profit out of the employment of wage-workers.

The one, Utopian though it was, aimed at abolishing the wages systems, private ownership and profit-making. The other merely aims at redirecting the stream of profits from the private trader to the cooperative members. It has not and cannot solve the poverty problem either of its members or of its employees.

The basic fallacy in the co-operative idea is a wrong explanation of rent, interest and profit. Yet the position is simplicity itself to all who have missed or have won through the haze of mystery shed by the professional economists. Because the means of production—land, factories, steamships, etc.—are privately owned, the workers who wish to operate these instruments must first enter into a one-sided bargain; one-sided because the goad of semi-starvation forces their hand. They bargain to produce wealth for the owners of capital and receive as the price of the energies they sell wages or salaries which, over the whole field of Capitalism, are only a small proportion of the values they produce. What the Capitalists get is a property-income, something which arises from their monopoly and not from their services, and which varies according to the size of their capital. Rent, interest and profit, if the terms are cleared of some looseness which surrounds their common use, are merely names for this income which goes to the owners of property because they are owners.

Co-operators want to eliminate the middleman and redirect the flow of profit—but what is profit? Profit is the child of private ownership and is obtained by the exploitation of the workers. Co-operative “divi.” is derived from the exploitation of the cooperative employees. The relation between the latter and the societies is precisely the same as that between other workers and their employers.

Owen wanted to eliminate capitalist ownership. The extent to which this could be done by the co-operative movement is illustrated not by the fact that it has five-million members, who with their families make up perhaps a third of the population, but by the contrast between the numbers it employs and the total number of wage-earners. It employed in 1924 about 200,000 persons out of about 16 million workers in Great Britain. Its employees were only 4.16 per cent. of the whole number of its members, and that percentage was actually less than the 1914 figure of 4.85 per cent. Its capital looks large, but against the great mass of capital in the hands of the Capitalist class it is insignificant.

The co-operative movement has all the trappings but none of the substance of success. Its members are still wage-earners, still exploited by the Capitalist class and still, therefore, poor; its employees are in the same condition. If the societies as at present constituted extend until they cover the whole working-class that will still be true.

It has made no inroads into the Capitalist system, and it could not if it would. As the Scottish Co-operator pointed out (23.8.23.) the movement was then weaker than it had been before the war, “weaker financially and weaker administratively.” It does not challenge the Capitalist class or the principles of Capitalism. As Mr. J. A. R. Marriott, M.P., said at the Jubilee celebrations of the Oxford Co-operative Society (Oxford Chronicle, Oct. 13th, 1922): “If he thought the co-operative movement a menace to the private trader he would certainly not be there. But there was plenty of room for both to live and flourish.” This is true inside Capitalism, but under Socialism there will be room neither for private, nor co-operative, nor municipal, nor State Capitalism to continue the exploitation of the workers.

Co-operation has solved no working-class problems and discovered no new principle. It does not abolish profits and interest: it only “defines the rights of capital” (Co-operative News, July 10th, 1926). “It says to the capital-owner . . . ‘ we pay you interest and our obligation to you ends with that.’ ” Sir Thomas Allen (C.W.S. Director) wants to see “those who had capital, those who had labour, and those who had intellect and organising power” to “work in a real co-operative way . . . ” (Co-operative News, July 3rd, 1926).

It has disputes with the employees, strikes and lockouts, sometimes pays less than its private Capitalist rivals (see Co-operative News, 18.8.23.), and has even been known to call in a Capitalist Labour minister in a Capitalist Government to settle its differences with its employees.

When trade is slack it sacks members of its staff, introduces all the familiar speeding-up and wage-reducing devices of its competitors, and in short, behaves like any other joint-stock Capitalist concern, that is, it behaves as it must, being a Capitalist organisation inside a Capitalist system of society.

Some there are within its ranks who look further, but these are learning by hard experience that they are, if anything, less able than Robert Owen to achieve the object which he set before him. “The Rochdale pioneers desired to solve the land and housing problems of their generation. . . . Co-operators now realise that these problems can only be solved by Parliament. They have entered politics to realise the ideals of the pioneers” (Daily Herald, April 24th, 1921). This is part of a speech by Mr. Barnes, Co-operative M.P., in which he explained why a Co-operative Party was formed and was necessary.

Co-operation has not and cannot emancipate the working-class. Only Socialism will do that. The workers cannot escape from the effects of Capitalism by joining cooperative societies. Neither can they escape Capitalism by retiring into Owen’s “villages of industry.” They must obtain for society as a whole the ownership of the means of production and distribution which are now the property of the Capitalist class. For this they must organise in the Socialist Party for the purpose of controlling the machinery of government. Once possessed of power they can then reorganise society on a Socialist basis of common ownership. Owen’s ultimate aims can only be achieved by Socialist methods.

Edgar Hardcastle

Economics and ideas. Their influence on political institutions (part 6) (1925)

From the September 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Continued from last month).

The workers demand the franchise.

But the revolt of the workers though it could be repressed could not be destroyed. In spite of all opposition their Trade Unions, though declared illegal by the Combination Acts, persisted and waged a never-ceasing war of resistance against low wages, the extension of the working day and intolerable conditions of labour.

Side by side with the industrial struggle went on a ferment of political ideas at length issuing in demands that were the outcome of the antagonism between the social relations of capitalist economy— fostering ideas of “equal rights” and “individual liberty”—and the actual oligarchic form of the state with its assumption of unequal rights and of different grades of social status.

At first the workers’ aspirations for political and legal rights were inarticulate and unorganised, but the spread of workers’ associations, of discussion and reading and the growing ease of communication facilitated the growth of an organised movement. Political groups aiming at constitutional reform sprang up in the cities and these, though dominated by intellectuals and bourgeois radicals had considerable influence amongst sections of the working class. One of the earliest was the London Corresponding Society, founded in 1797 by Hardy, a bootmaker. With it Paine and Godwin were associated. Its leaders nearly all suffered imprisonment or transportation. At a later date Cobbett carried on a vigorous agitation amongst the workers :

“When he reduced ‘The Weekly Political Register’ from a shilling and a halfpenny to twopence, 50,000 copies were scattered over the country, and everywhere men gathered in clubs to hear the paper read by one of them who had schooling” (Green’s “Short History,” p. 846).

But the great political movement of the period was that of the industrial bourgeoisie. Their struggle for the Reform Bill was undoubtedly instrumental in rallying masses of the workers. But the political demands of the working men had roots independent from and antagonistic to the basis of the bourgeois movement. To them electoral reform was primarily a means of alleviating their economic miseries. At the same time it is impossible to separate, in the stimulus behind their demands, the economic discontent that was the chief spur to action, from the force of the political ideas which gave their discontent expression in aspirations towards political democracy and demands which spoke eloquently of the extent to which they had moved from their old confirmed belief in the necessity of “status” and the inevitability of political privilege.

The details of the Reform Movement need not detain us, but it was a severe and a bloody struggle in which the workers bore the brunt of the fight. After forming the backbone of the struggle for the Reform Bill of 1832 which enfranchised the new capitalists but excluded themselves, the exasperated workers threw their strength into their own Chartist movement and carried on the conflict afresh. Again we may note that, though the Chartist working men meant political reform as a means to economic ends, the purely political demands of the Charter—manhood-suffrage, vote by ballot, etc.—indicate how widespread “democratic” and “libertarian” ideas had become.

Though the Chartist movement broke down and its demands were resisted, the concepts that it had done so much to popularise were now permanently rooted and could not be eradicated. But for a period the agitation for political reform died down. After the worst excesses of the factory-system had been alleviated by the Factory Acts, after a period of comparative prosperity due to the rapid extension of British production and its supremacy in the World Market and to the rising strength of their Unions, the workers had become reconciled to the system. Their Trades Unions, now tacitly recognised by the masters, became benefit societies and means of diplomatic negotiations with the employers. Their leaders declared the common interests of Capital and Labour, and counselled conciliation and mutual good-will between the classes.

But in the “sixties” events revealed the legal insecurity of the Unions and their funds, and a strong demand ensued for their definite legalisation. Along with this movement began an active revival of the agitation for the franchise. Reform Leagues sprang up spontaneously all over the country. The “International,” founded in 1864 and led by Marx, actively supported the new movement.

“All through the autumn and winter (1866-7) great meetings were held in the great towns and cities to promote the cause of reform. A most significant feature of these demonstrations was the part taken by the organised trades associations of working men.” (McCarthy— “Our Own Times.”)

At length, as Engels says, “the workers’ claims to the franchise gradually became irresistible,” and the ruling class gave way.

Significantly enough, it was the Tories who passed the second Reform Bill of 1867, which enfranchised a great mass of the town workers, thus demonstrating that even the most traditionally, cautious party of the master class had seen “the writing on the wall,” and were convinced that working-class suffrage was inevitable. In 1872 the secret ballot was instituted, and in 1885 the vote was further extended to the counties and the agricultural workers.

The ruling-class had made in 1867 what Lord Derby called a “leap in the dark,” but, to their relief—though this must have been half-expected — the plunge proved harmless. It was soon overwhelmingly apparent that the working-class — though jealous enough in the defence of their immediate interests—had no thoughts of disrespect to or revolt from the “rights of property,” and that they believed and acted on the assumption that “capital” and “wages” were eternal categories, and the only practical basis of social life.

Before this, in America and in France, the workers had already achieved the franchise, and since then all over the capitalist world an enfranchised working-class has been recognised as the indispensable basis of stability in the State.

The Great Illusion.

With the vote, with his Unions legalised (1871 in England) and other legal rights established, the workers seemed to have achieved what bourgeois historians regard the be-all and end-all of social evolution—full “civic rights and liberties.” They had in actuality reached the very fullest “freedom” as a class that they could achieve or even conceive so long as their ideas and aspirations kept within the bounds of the capitalist system. The facts of law and politics now no longer seemed in contradiction with the “liberty” and “individualism” of economic life. Did not the “people” now “rule the country,” did not they decide the fate of statesmen and governments, did not the politician plead and struggle for their support and tremble at their indecision? At last, the son of toil seemed truly a free man, and he could sing “Britons never, never, never !” with never a twinge of conscience.

That the overworked, ill-fed slave of the factory-blast can live in the same city with the gilded drones who live in luxurious leisure upon the product of his toil— and yet believe in the reality of his freedom— in liberty of contract and the reward of enterprise seems a ghastly joke. Yet the positive reality of the belief is a fact to which anyone who knows the workers can testify.

The wage-slave does not perceive that the unequal distribution of property into which he is born exercises as compelling a tyrannical control over his destiny as any law that the State can make. He is blind to the fact that freedom for property means slavery for those who possess none. He explains the inequality of wealth op the theory that the rich have been “lucky” or particularly clever. The man who has “got on” he admires, and he lives in the shadowy hope of following in his steps. His hero is the “self-made man.”

It is essential to clearly understand that the resignation of the average worker to the capitalist system and, indeed, his active support of it arises directly from the fact that he accepts private property in the means of life without question. Once this basis is granted, the support of the whole system follows of necessity. The worker may and does desire economic security, but this only results from control of the means of life. In the early, days of the system the workers did endeavour to return to the measure of such control that the hand-tool period allowed them. They fought the machines and tried to turn back the wheels of history. But with the generations that had grown up amongst and known nothing other than the machine system, such aspirations could have no place. The means of production were now giant mechanisms jointly operated —no one worker used them. So long as the traditions of individual ownership persisted, therefore, the workers could not own or even with sense think of owning the instruments they operated. The social productive mechanisms of modern society can only be owned by the users in common —and the idea of social ownership had not yet taken wide and deep root.

But the impossibility of security for the workers did not prevent them continuing to seek for it—but as they accepted the system they had also to accept the only method of aiming at security that the system offers — increase of income, through collective bargaining largely, but also through—if only as a vague but persistent aspiration—”getting on,” if possible, accumulating property—processes that naturally foster the outlook of individualism.

R. W. Housley

(To be continued.)

Bronterre O’Brien (2008)

Book Review from the February 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bronterre O’Brien and the Chartist Uprisings of 1839 by David Black. (Radical History Network, 2007)

James O’Brien contributed articles to the Poor Man’s Guardian under the pseudonym “Bronterre” and eventually adopted it as his middle name. O’Brien soon became the Poor Man’s Guardian editor as it campaigned for universal suffrage at the time of the 1832 Reform Act. This Act however merely redistributed the vote amongst the ruling class, leading to the drawing-up of the People’s Charter in response (“essentially a program for universal male suffrage,” according to Black) in 1838 by the suppressed its leader, John Frost, was sentenced to death (later commuted to transportation for life) and O’Brien was sentenced to eighteen months in prison for making seditious speeches.

Black’s short tract on this particular episode reads like a Trotskyist analysis of the event as a failure of leadership (in Trotskyist literature working class setbacks are always the result of a betrayal of leadership). Thus Black argues: “if the Rising in Monmouth had not been led by John Frost it might well have succeeded.” Succeeded in doing what? Taking and holding Monmouth? Creating a revolutionary situation? Such fantasies were dismissed by O’Brien who had withdrawn from active involvement by this stage. According to Black:

“He explained later that he could not conscientiously take part in secret projects which could only at best produce partial outbreaks, which would easily be crushed and would lead to increased persecution of the Chartists.”

The Chartist campaign lasted another 10 years before collapsing in failure.

Lew Higgins

Blogger's Note:

David Black replied to Lew's review.