What is Behind the Government's Spanish Policy? (1937)

From the August 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many people have been puzzled at the attitude of the British Government, the capitalist Press and the ruling class generally towards the civil war in Spain. It was natural that their class prejudices and their associations with Spanish Conservatives and the Catholic Church would make them sympathise with General Franco’s revolt and hope for its success. Yet it might have been expected that they would quickly see the force of the argument, put forward by the Naval correspondent of a Conservative newspaper, that from a strategic point of view the interests of the Empire are bound up with the defeat of Franco and his German-Italian backers. This correspondent pointed out that German-Italian dominance of Spain and Spanish Morocco, including the approaches to Gibraltar and the control of the Balearic Islands in the western Mediterranean, unquestionably threatens the British hold on the Mediterranean and seriously, hampers communications with East Africa, India and beyond. Mussolini’s military and naval experts have not troubled to keep secret the intention of turning the sea into an Italian lake; and their British counterparts have been compelled to recognise that the threat is not an idle one. The handling of the Abyssinian affair showed that the British Cabinet were not prepared at that time to risk an open clash with the Italian forces. What, then, is the explanation of the Government’s behaviour, apparently so little in keeping with their class and imperial interests ? The attempt to provide an answer must take into account many divergent factors.

Willing But Not Yet Ready For War

First, there is the aspect, referred to above, that the Government was not ready for a possible war with Italy. That was an important factor in 1935 when Italy invaded Abyssinia. It is less important now that British naval and air rearmament has got well under way. It will be noticed that the recent announcements about the building of new or reconditioning of old warships and about the completion of more and more up-to- date squadrons of aeroplanes coincide with a noticeably more aggressive policy towards encroachments on British capitalist interests in the Mediterranean. Where before there was comparative reticence we now have the Foreign Secretary, Mr. Eden, declaring in unmistakable terms that British disinterestedness in the Spanish conflict does not mean indifference where British interests are concerned “ on the land or the sea frontiers of Spain or the trade routes that pass her by ” (Report of speech in Parliament, The Times, July 20th, 1937). He and the Prime Minister issued a plain warning to German and Italian capitalists that the Mediterranean is for British capitalism “a main arterial route, and we intend to maintain our place on it.”

Mr. Eden further warned Italy that : —

It has always been, and it is to-day, a major British interest that no great Power should establish itself on the Eastern shore of the Red Sea.

That the German and Italian threat is a serious one is shown by the information about big guns overlooking Gibraltar erected in the past six months by Franco’s foreign friends. Even the most loyal of Franco’s Tory supporters began to choke at the idea of “The Rock” being dominated by German or Italian guns and, with unconscious humour, they now grow more enthusiastic for strong action to prevent the intervention of foreigners in Spain.

It escapes their notice that to a patriotic Spaniard the most outrageous of all intervention of foreigners on Spanish soil is the existence of this British fortress at Gibraltar.

Mr. Winston Churchill made a characteristic statement. Speaking at Wanstead on July 4th (Manchester Guardian, July 5th) he regretted Mussolini’s recent policy and said: —

If I had been an Italian I should have been on Mussolini’s side fifteen years ago when he rescued his country from the horrible fate of sinking into violent Communism. All the more do I regret some of the recent utterings of Signor Mussolini.

Happily, Mr. Churchill continued, the power and preponderance of the British navy is growing rapidly. It already far exceeds the preponderance we possessed over other European Powers at the outbreak of the Great War.

Spanish Mineral Wealth An Issue

Then, again, Spain for the rival powers is not only the arena of a conflict about democracy and dictatorship, but also and more importantly a country of great mineral wealth. The facts are well known. Frank C. Hanighen summarises them in an article in the New Statesman (April 24th, 1937): —

Spain constitutes a far richer preserve of the basic elements which nourish industry than either Ethiopia or the former German colonies. Iron, the principal staple in munitions making, which both Germany and Italy lack, exists in abundance near Oviedo, near Vigo, and in the beleaguered Basque provinces. The best copper mines in Europe lie in Huelva province. Not far from the mercury of Almaden, the famous Pefiarroya mine produces high-grade lead. Other essential minerals—coal, tin, tungsten, silver, molybdenum, salt, phosphates, pyrites, graphite and zinc—are scattered throughout the peninsula and, across the straits of Gibraltar, Spanish Morocco contains iron, lead and manganese. Under monarchy and republic, foreign interests and, to a lesser extent, Spanish capital developed only a part of these resources. Accordingly, when the republic faced serious civil strife, it was natural that the two most predatory Powers in Europe should look hungrily towards Spain.

Mr. Hanighen. shows how Germany began organising the shipment of iron ore from Spain in 1934, but for a considerable period the trade was interrupted owing to Germany’s financial difficulties. Then, in 1936, by arrangement with the rebels, shipment was resumed on the basis of exchanging ore for armaments. He quotes Edgar Mowrer, correspondent in Spain of the Chicago Daily News, as saying on December 22nd, 1936: “ An entire fleet of ships is engaged in bringing arms to Spain, returning loaded with iron ore for Germany,” and adds his own opinion that “it is not too much to say that the German adventure in Spain saved the German re-armament programme.” He contends that before the revolt occurred in July, 1936, the iron ore situation in Germany had become serious: “Britain had started to compete for Swedish ore, one of Germany’s best sources. The French Socialists, in power in France, had been talking of an embargo on Lorraine ores to Germany. Spanish iron ore for the past year had been unavailable because Spanish exporters could not obtain German import licences as a result of the German currency shortage.”

Here we have Germany’s interest. Italy was likewise concerned to gain control of the tungsten and vanadium deposits, the iron, lead, copper and sulphur near Cartagena, and the mercury mines of Almaden, north of Cordoba.

It is plain enough why German aeroplanes should bomb Guernica, in the north, on the way to Bilbao and Oviedo, and why Italian troops should be engaged in trying to capture Almaden in the south'. Indeed, Hitler and Mussolini have lately been quite candid about it.

Addressing a Nazi gathering at Wurzburg on June 27th, 1937 (News Chronicle, June 28th), Hitler said:

Germany needs ore. That is why we want a Nationalist Government in Spain—to be able to buy Spanish ore.

and Mussolini, in an article in Popolo d'Italia on June 26th, 1937 (The Times, June 28th), wrote: 

 Italy has not been neutral, but has fought, and victory will also be hers.

But while the policy of Italy and Germany has been easy to understand and has been complicated only by possible divergences of interest between the two powers, the situation, from the standpoint of British capitalism, has been more complex.

The private interests of British shareholders in companies working mines in Spain have had to be considered and these have not necessarily coincided with the interests of the British imperial exploiters as a whole.

The Choice for British Capitalists

First consider the difficulties of the situation facing the big and wealthy companies operating in Spain : the Rio Tinto Co., Ltd., which owns great copper and sulphur mines in the province of Huelva; the £2,000,000 Orconera Iron Ore Co., “in which the Consett Company and Guest Keen Baldwins Iron & Steel Co. hold investments of a nominal value of £800,000 each ” (Daily Express, July 20th, 1937); the Barcelona Traction Co. and many others.

The aim of the directors in such concerns is naturally that of protecting their properties and maintaining profit-earning capacities. Beyond that they would incline to hope for a Franco victory as more likely to give a “strong government," which would “stand no nonsense from trade unions,” particularly when they read the declarations of the aims of some of the Popular Front Government’s supporters. How, in fact, have British capitalist interests fared?

The Anglo-Spanish Construction Co., which owns and operates the Santander-Mediterraneo Railway, say that everything has been satisfactory since General Franco took control of the area (The Times, July 9th, 1937).

From Government territory the Barcelona Traction Light & Power Co. tell a different story in a statement to shareholders (The Times, June 26th, 1937).

The company found so many difficulties in its relationships with the Workers' Committees that it withdrew its staff in September, 1936.

They state that since the date of the issue of the two circulars last year the general conditions in Spain have grown steadily worse and have, in fact, developed in such a way that it has been found impossible to obtain any reliable information as to the true position of the affairs of the enterprise in that country in which the Barcelona company is interested. The seizure effected by the Workers’ Committee in Barcelona covers all the properties, funds, and banking accounts of the enterprise.

Representations made through the British Foreign Office against the usurpation of the interests of the enterprise, and protests from time to time by the British Consul-General in Barcelona to the Catalonian Government, have produced no satisfactory results. The funds and cash have been removed from the banking accounts of the enterprise and appropriated by the Workers’ Committee. [Times, June 26th, 1937.) 

While firms in Franco territory have had to submit to financial losses and such inconveniences as the murder of hundreds of their workers (as happened with the Rio Tinto Co.), it is not to be wondered at if they prefer that to the seizure of their property and funds by Workers’ Committees.

It is therefore hardly surprising that Rio Tinto shares dropped from £22 to £13 following the electoral victory of the Popular Front Government in February, 1936, and rose sharply after the rebels captured Huelva in August, 1936 (New Statesman, April 24th).

About the Orconera Iron Ore Co. and its mines in Bilbao province the position is somewhat obscure. The Times City editor says (July 19th, 1937) that until about a month earlier there had been no interruption of shipments from these mines. Then there was a stoppage during the fighting round Bilbao, which resulted in Franco’s capture of that town. Franco then gave a verbal promise that ore supplies to Britain would not be interfered with. It was, however, reported from Berlin (News Chronicle, July 20th, 1937) that a German treaty with Franco provides that Germany’s much-needed iron ore for re-armament will be supplied from the Basque mines.

This may mean that Franco is acting against the interests of the British companies or it may mean that an agreement has been arrived at between the interested German, British and Spanish companies. The article in the New Statesman, quoted above, gives support to the latter view, although it deals with other companies than the Orconera Co.

While Germany and Italy quite openly fight battles for raw materials, international capital takes a stand which can only be construed as co-operation with these Powers. In the Riff, for instance, British and French mines receive no payments for the ore which is being sent to Germany (all payments, as it has been shown, are applied to Franco’s armament debt). Yet these companies show an odd diffidence about the matter. Not a single protest has been filed by these companies or their governments. On the contrary, the financial elements in London and Paris representative of these companies are known to be strongly pro- Franco.

Consider the extraordinary case of the Rio Tinto mines . . .According to the Manchester Guardian, the output of Rio Tinto is being requisitioned and sold to Germany, at a price of 42 pesestas to the pound, whereas the current rate is between 80 and 90 per pound. Has an international capitalist “understanding” been reached with Franco and his Fascist backers ?

“. . . . Why should not these British and French interests find in a Franco victory a solution of difficulties which have prevented them from being impartially (and prosperously) international ? Currency restrictions and the consequent inability of Germany and Italy to buy freely have kept many companies from profiting from the German and Italian armament booms. But with Franco in power, British and French capital might flow into a newly-organised Bank of Spain, Germany and Italy might borrow from this institution to pay for raw materials, and dividends in Penarroya, Almaden and the foreign companies in the Riff would be amply assured.”

What exactly these various British companies may be doing behind the scenes it is impossible to know, but it is certainly likely that they would seek some such solution as the one suggested by Mr. Hanighen. It must also be noticed that the controllers of these companies are exceedingly influential in British political as well as financial circles and would be able to exert great pressure on Government policy in a direction which would help them strike a good bargain with Franco and Franco’s friends.

There remains to be considered still one more aspect of the problem, that is the dependence of British re-armament on metals from Spain and elsewhere.

Ore For British Armaments

While British capitalists would have no objection whatever to making profit by selling materials to Germany or Italy for their armaments, the British Government, acting for the capitalists as a whole, cannot be indifferent to a stoppage of supplies needed for British arms. Already there is an acute shortage of steel and the loss of well over a million tons a year of Spanish ore (which cannot easily be replaced by poorer-quality ores from English or other mines) would be a serious matter for British capitalism. The Times City editor (July 19th, 1937) summarises the problem as follows (it will be noticed that, as regards Swedish ore, this statement rather conflicts with that made by Mr. Hanighen): —

If imports from Spain were to be cut off through ore being diverted to Germany or for any other reason, the task of making good the deficiency might present serious difficulties. Large deposits exist, it is true, in many parts of the world, but owing to the higher level of freight rates the cost of shipping ore from distant countries like India and Australia is apt to prove prohibitive. Of countries near at hand Sweden has probably the richest deposits, but exports are limited by the Swedish Government to about 10,000,000 tons annually, the bulk of which goes to Germany under contracts that have still several years to run. Except through a direct agreement with the Swedish Government, the scope for expanding supplies from this source is probably limited. In the first half of the current year imports from Algeria, Tunis, and especially Norway, were all higher, and should Germany contrive to satisfy a larger proportion of her requirements in Spain there is a possibility that still larger supplies in these countries would be available to Britain. Meanwhile, as the Import Duties Advisory Committee pointed out in its report, events are stimulating a movement towards the proportionately larger use of low-grade native ores, deposits of which, distributed through Lincolnshire, Oxfordshire, and Northamptonshire, are estimated at not less than 3,000,000,000 tons, or sufficient for an annual output of 10,000,000 tons of steel for 100 years. Substitution of native low-grade ores for foreign ores with high metallic content could not, however, be effected wholesale without considerable modification of existing plant and, therefore, offers no immediate solution to the problem of the scarcity.

How the British capitalists try to solve their problems in Spain is, of course, their own affair, but it is necessary for Socialists to try to understand the main lines of their policy, if only in order to combat the notion, increasingly prevalent in Labour circles, that British capitalism can be trusted to pursue a peaceful, idealistic foreign policy free from the violent and sordid motives which underly the policies of the dictators.

British Government policy at the present time probably runs on the following lines: —

Determination to resist German and Italian control of Spanish territory. A desire to see a Spanish Government ultimately strong enough in armed force and popular support to prevent this. A desire not to see either side in the civil war overwhelmingly victorious, since such a Government would feel less dependent on British capital and British support. And a willingness—on terms—to do a deal with either side in the struggle, the terms to include safety for British investments and guarantees for the continued supply of ore.

Edgar Hardcastle

People in Glasshouses (1937)

From the July 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Manchester Guardian (April 7th, 1937) published a letter appealing for its help and influence in securing the release from a German concentration camp of Anton Hausladen, a German social-democrat, who had been interned for four years without a charge being brought against him. If the Manchester Guardian can help Anton Hausladen it will be doing something useful. It could do something else just as useful. In its issue for the same day the Guardian reported a speech by Mr. Carl Heath at Friends' House, in which it was stated that between 1,500 and 2,000 people were detained in Bengal prisons without charge or trial. They are chiefly trade union and political leaders.

Another Press report, Daily Telegraph (March 10th, 1937), shows how embarrassing criticism of the policies of foreign governments can be to the British Government. The Telegraph quotes from the Italian Giornale d'Italia about:—

Atrocities committed by the British quite recently on the Afghan frontier. There the tribes were bombed by British air squadrons well supplied with poison gas.

The Italian statements were in answer to the British Government’s concern about the massacre of Abyssinians in Addis Ababa by the Italians. The Italian allegation that the British used poison gas on the Afghan frontier was denied by Mr. Eden in the House of Commons. A minor point really. The Italians can teach the British very little in the business of Empire building.

Historical fascism (2024)

Book Review from the May 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blood and Power. The Rise and Fall of Italian Fascism. By John Foot. Bloomsbury, 2023. 416pp.

It has become common for the cry of ‘fascism’ to go up, from both right and left, every time a government or political party enacts or proposes policies which seem destined to increase state control over the system we live under. Some even argue that western capitalism itself is in fact fascism, if a cleverly dissimulated form. One thing historian John Foot’s new book on Italian fascism does is to give the lie to all this. It shows, in the starkest possible terms, how different fascism, in its original incarnation anyway, really was from what many idly give that label to today.

Blood and Power takes the reader on a harrowing journey of violence, torture and murder, without which fascism could never have taken hold of Italy and then ruled the country for over 20 years, only finally collapsing when its leader, Mussolini, made the fatal mistake of allying himself with Nazi Germany and being brought down when Hitler was brought down. Otherwise, the author speculates, the regime may have lasted longer, as did the similar set-up in Spain under Franco. But this book is not just a conventional, linear account (of which there are many) of Italy’s ‘ventennio nero’ (‘black 20 years’), but rather an excavation of that period ‘from below’, seen in large part, that is, via the on-the-ground experiences of many ‘ordinary’ individuals who lived, and not infrequently died, under fascist terror.

And terror it truly was, some of it stomach-churning as we see it depicted on the page. From as early as 1919, those who opposed the politics of fascism, either through declaring themselves ‘socialists’ or ‘communists’ or just voicing opposition to its ‘lawless’ approach, were subjected to brutal and terrifying treatment at the hands of increasingly large and merciless bands of fascist thugs. They were intimidated, beaten, tortured, maimed and often murdered, while the ‘democratic’ state and its authorities (ie, police and military) looked the other way, allowing a sort of ‘state within a state’ to develop. As the author writes, ‘fascism eliminated its opponents with gusto or reduced them to a state of fear’ (…) ‘it was fundamental, visceral, epochal and life-changing: both for those who experienced it, and those who practised it’.

Nor was there any redress for victims, and once the fascist party had taken full power from 1925 onwards, after which elections and any semblance of democracy ceased, it became all the more implacable. So, for example, as the author tells us, ‘it became nigh on impossible to print or distribute any kind of newspaper that wasn’t in full support of Mussolini and fascist rule (…) prisoners were often ‘disappeared’ or ‘committed suicide’ in prison (…) ‘torture was common, ritualised and sanctioned from above.’ The regime relentlessly pursued all its opponents, having no compunction about even sending its spies and agents abroad in pursuit of those who had fled the country and wreaking vengeance on them there. In all, according to the author, Italian fascism was ‘responsible for the ‘premature deaths” of at least a million people, in Italy and across the world’, including of course many thousands of Jews who were transported from Italy to the gas chambers in the latter part of the war.

How does all this compare to what is often referred to as fascism, or at least potential fascism, nowadays, in particular the ‘populist’ politics and regimes that have risen up in recent times? How, for example, does it compare to the current right-wing government in Italy, often labelled ‘neo-fascist’? How does it compare to the politics of Donald Trump in the US and the foreboding about what might be to come if he wins the 2024 presidential election? How does it compare to attempts by the Conservative Party in this country to undermine trade unions or criminalise certain forms of expression or to the apparently racist and ultra-nationalistic policies of right-wing groupings such as the Reform Party? The knowledge that this book imparts of the reality of Mussolini’s one-party state makes it clear that, however retrograde and undesirable it may be, the kind of modern-day populism exemplified above does not bear comparison to the vicious, ultra-repressive, anti-democratic nature of fascism in its original Italian form.

What, however, Italian fascism does share with today’s ‘populist’ ideologies or governments and indeed with the more ‘enlightened’ administrations in most Western countries is that the purpose of them all is to manage the profit system (ie, capitalism). And, broadly speaking, this takes place most effectively, as far as capitalism is concerned, in a political environment where there are democratic elections and scope for relatively free circulation and exchange of ideas. Regimes that do not allow this (eg, China and Russia today), while by no means impregnable in the longer term, inhibit such development and, in the way they operate, are the closest things that exist today to the kind of system excavated and characterised so expertly by John Foot in his exploration of Italian fascism. It should be added that such regimes also inhibit the spread of consciousness necessary for the establishment of the alternative system of society beyond the system of wages, money and profit which this journal calls socialism.

Howard Moss

Do We Need a Bigger Population? (1945)

From the March 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

A revolution in ideas regarding population has taken place since 1798, when Malthus wrote his coldblooded “Essay on Principles of Population.” It had a favourable reception from the ruling class of the day, but the passing of time has shown his ideas to be fallacious, and they have been superseded by ideas which are quite contrary to his conclusions. His doctrine, which declared that there is a universal tendency for population to outrun the means of subsistence, expressed the ignorance of his time.

The only solution Malthus saw to the poverty of his day was to get a decrease in the population and so raise the standard of living among the remainder. He does not seem to have been quite so heartless as some of his contemporaries, who regarded the lower class as a variety of animals requiring even less care than domestic animals. Commenting on one of them, the notorious Count Rumford, who had concocted recipes for cheap soups as a suitable diet for the common people, Malthus writes:

“They (the soups) are excellent inventions for the public institutions and as occasional resources; but if they were once universally adopted by the poor, it would be impossible to prevent the price of labour from being regulated by them . . . perhaps some cold politician might propose to adopt the system with a view of underselling the foreigners in the markets of Europe. … I really cannot conceive anything much more detestable than the idea of knowingly condemning the labourers of this country to the rags and wretched cabins of Ireland, for the purpose of selling a few more broadcloths and calicoes.” (Essay on the Principles of Population, page 232-233.)

So Malthus was not completely unaware of the trend of wages, although he knew nothing of surplus value !

The housing problem was then, as always, acute among the poor, but Malthus saw in it a weapon for keeping down the population.

“One of the most salutary and least pernicious checks to the frequency of early marriages in this is the difficulty of procuring a cottage, and the laudable habits which prompt a labourer rather to defer his marriage some years in the expectation of a vacancy, than to content himself with a wretched mud cabin like those in Ireland.” (Ibid, page 250.)

Portal houses are now to be produced for precisely the opposite reason.

As Socialists profiting by the work of Karl Marx, we realise that workers are short of the means of life, not because production falls short of demand, but because the present anarchy of production is concerned merely with profit-making and not with supplying people’s needs the latter being incidental.

Turning to recent writers on population, we find them arguing in the opposite direction to Malthus. The writers and investigators on the subject—Glass, Carr Saunders of the Eugenic Society, Titmuss, Charles and Ginsberg, to mention just a few—are full of woe and gloomy prognostications. They foresee something like extinction for the Western nations in 200 years time, and for the near future they predict more old people in bathchairs than infants in prams.

They relate it to economics too. D. V. Glass states :

“The population will suffer from a much higher degree of invalidity and the burden of State health insurance will be greater. So, too, will the relative cost of old age benefits. On the other hand, this large section of aged and therefore unemployed people will have to be supported by a relatively much smaller proportion of able-bodied persons. That is, proportionately the amount of taxation per head will rise, while the ability to bear it will fall. Moreover, the position of industry is likely to be more difficult. In the last century the industrial system recovered fairly easily from the depressions through which it passed, and one of the major factors in this case of recovery was undoubtedly the growth of the population. An increase in the numbers of people meant an increase in the demand for the products of industry, and with it the slump period of the trade cycle was shortened. The much reduced rate of the increase of the population of the world since the war has no doubt helped to intensify and prolong the economic crisis, and if population actually falls in the future, the effect of the trade cycle upon economic prosperity is likely to be much more severe.” (“The Struggle for Population,” pages 14-15.)

To a Socialist such fears appear fantastic; to the orthodox economist, however, they are very real : immersed in a vain effort to reform and prevent the worst trends of capitalism, the real solution escapes them. Under Socialism people would not deny themselves the pleasures of children and the play of their normal instincts. Generally speaking, contraception is practised because would-be parents either cannot afford children or wish to do better for the ones they have. The working class, possessing only their power to labour, possessing no resources of wealth on which they can draw in bad times, find the inclination is not strong to procreate merely to create a reserve army of unemployed for the capitalist to draw upon in boom periods and that will languish on the dole during slumps. The worker is not interested in falling populations, but he is well aware that after successful strikes or negotiations for a rise in wages, a usual practice in the times called peace is to turn off many workers and instal bigger and better machines to do their work, and thus reduce the wages bill.

In an effort to stem the falling birth rate (rising temporarily in the present war), the Government of this country are about to institute some form of family allowances. As an inducement to parenthood it does not bear the stamp of originality. Family allowances were first given in France in 1854 but did not become general until 1916, when rising prices were making it increasingly difficult for the parents of children to maintain their standard of living. It was resisted by the trade unions, who claimed that it would reduce real wages. Until 1932, when the Equalisation Fund was set up, the scheme was a voluntary one run on contributions obtained only from employers. We dismiss at once any suggestion that it might be due to their innate generosity or love of little children (for it is not characteristic of employers as a class), and look for a more likely reason. Possibly the following quote fills the bill:

“Among other factors which may have influenced employers is the one given by the Director of the Fund for the Stephanoise Region. He believes that the granting of allowances has effectively withdrawn the family man from the ‘class struggle.’ If this is true, the employers had very strong grounds for extending the system.” (D. V. Glass, “The Struggle for Population,” page 52.)

The Fascist powers, in their rise to domination, in Italy and Germany, made a determined attempt to increase the birth rate. The Nazis made loans free of interest to young couples, cancelling repayments at the birth of each child. Promotion was also given to fathers of families, together with opportunities to obtain the best houses or flats.

The Italian plan, though on the same principle, had different features. A bachelor tax was levied, and financial burdens decreased in large families, by means of tax exemptions. The large family, however, consisted of seven children among State employees and ten children among other workers! In both countries improvements were made in maternity and child welfare.

Methods employed in Russia are akin to the Fascist powers in this as in other matters. A 50 per cent. increase has been made in maternity benefit and endowments given to mothers of six or more children, whilst the mother of ten qualifies for a medal. L. Ginsberg, in a Fabian pamphlet, “Parenthood and Poverty”, thinks, in the Fabian manner, that it is merely an extension of the social services and an attempt to raise the standard of living; we prefer to view them in a more realist manner. The anti-abortion law of 1936 marked the commencement of a new policy regarding population which finds expression in the more recent changes.

A method used by these countries is discouragement of birth control propaganda and sale of appliances. In Italy the latter became illegal, but was avoided in a truly commercial manner by selling certain articles under the heading of preventatives of disease.

Individual capitalists are not concerned with the state of the population in a hundred years’ time; they want their profits now.

Sweden, claimed as one of the most democratic countries, has adopted a saner method. Deciding that wanted children thrive best, birth control information is disseminated, whilst granting allowances and improving maternity and child welfare.

Most Western countries now grant allowances for children. These include Spain, Hungary, Holland and Belgium. So also do Australia and New Zealand. The Baltic countries and Switzerland, Austria and Bulgaria grant them to State employees.

The latter grants seem to indicate the desire of these countries to keep State servants loyal to the government and to induce them to refrain from following their class aspirations. We find Britain only recently tackling her problem. The proposed allowance for each child (after the first) is to be 5s. and not the 8s. suggested by Beveridge.

From Malthus to his modern counterparts, no solution to the so-called population problem along their lines can be effective!. Malthus advised continence among the “lower orders,” the moderns advise the opposite, and neither solves any real problems for the working class.

In a world torn and bleeding by a ruthless and brutal war, it is sheer humbug, cant and hypocrisy to talk of a population problem. Capitalism, which dooms millions to hunger in a world of plenty, wastes the lives of millions in useless toil, and periodically sends millions to their death in futile wars in every part of the globe, will appeal in vain to the working class to solve capitalism’s future population problems. There can be only one answer to such appeals-— a determined purpose to change the basis of society on the part of the workers, and to win a world with natural resources so vast and with productive forces so great that the needs of all can and will be supplied. Intelligent men and women will not then deny themselves the joys that children can give, and no special incentives need be offered to induce unwilling people to procreate. Family allowances and medals are devices of a ruling class endeavouring to solve its particular problems.

Workers should cease looking to family allowances and social services for the solution to their present troubles. Why ask for paltry sums when the world is yours to win ?

W. P.

Editorial: Mussolini: The Reality behind the Shadow (1932)

Editorial from the December 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

The industrial city of Turin has hitherto been known as an area where a large number of workers have maintained unbroken hostility to Mussolini and the programmes of the Fascist Party. Recently, under the heading, “Mussolini Conquers Turin,” the Italian Correspondent of the Daily Express (October 22nd and 24th) described how Mussolini had ventured into this stronghold of his working-class opponents and had won them over by his display of courage. The enthusiasm, according to the correspondent, was immense, stupendous ! The Duce was greeted by thousands of cheering, yelling admirers. Turin lay willingly at his feet.

But the gilt on the gingerbread of Mussolini’s popularity is somewhat spoiled by the same correspondent’s account of the precautions taken by the hero to dissuade his opponents from giving expression to their opposition. Mussolini took no chances. First, there was an army of plain clothes detectives, 5,000 strong, rushed to Turin from all over Italy. Italian Air Force machines circled over Turin with orders to open fire on sight of any foreign aeroplanes heading for the city. (This was because, on a former occasion, Italian exiles showered anti-Fascist leaflets over some Italian towns.) Six hundred “suspects” (i.e., people suspected of not admiring Mussolini) were arrested prior to the visit. The route of the triumphal procession was kept a secret until the last moment. All doors facing on to the streets on the route were locked by police order, and on the night of Mussolini’s arrival all the windows in the streets which he traversed had to be illuminated. Lastly, every Fascist in Turin was fetched out to mount guard.

After all this, it is not surprising that the applause was not broken by one jarring note.

The Coming Triumph of Socialism (1936)

From the December 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is commonly said nowadays that the Socialist movement is in the doldrums, making no headway, and without prospect of doing so. And, indeed, this view has much to support it. What with apathy among many workers who formerly sympathised with the Labour movements—which they thought to be Socialist—and very active hostility among others who now give allegiance to the Fascist Governments, the outlook may be thought to be black indeed. Can it be said in face of these facts that the Socialist movement has any future, except to fight a forlorn defensive action against the encroaching dictatorships?

Yet on closer examination, a very positive and important cause for confidence is found to exist, even if it appears in a curious disguise, that of a misrepresentation of Socialism. For while everywhere the defenders of capitalism proclaim the death of Socialism, they are all compelled in one way or another to pay it lip-service, because of the workers' constantly increasing discontent with capitalism. Never before, not even during and after the War,

were there so many millions of workers actively dissatisfied with the consequences of the existing system of society. Never before was discontent so deep and bitter. The effect of this on politics has been that there are no longer any politicians or parties which can hope to remain popular if they declare themselves unashamedly in favour of capitalism. Look where you will, in Europe, in the Dominions, in the United States of America, all of the capitalist parties have had to disguise themselves so that they can escape the unpopularity which attaches to the name capitalism. Roosevelt has to represent himself as an opponent of the banks and big business, has to seek allies among the Trade Unions and Labour groups, and has to put forward a programme containing reforms which the workers believe to be Socialist. The British ruling class long ago had to cover themselves with a camouflage of Labour leaders (the MacDonald group) and will no doubt be seeking before long to secure other Labour leaders to continue serving this purpose now that MacDonald’s star has waned. In France capitalism had to seek new life under cover of a “ Popular Front," led by a so-called Socialist Party. In Germany Hitler has to call his movement “ National Socialist," and promises that Germany shall become Socialist throughout. Sir Oswald Mosley now has to add these two words to the name of his own organisation, because without them he cannot hope to attract essential working-class support.

Most instructive of all are the shrewd manoeuvres of Mussolini. This ex-Syndicalist, terrorist, defender of the assassination of kings, has never forgotten the need to keep a working-class backing, and. to toy with pseudo-Socialist phrases.

At present he is engaged in explaining away the poverty and unemployment that exist in Italy, and is worried because large numbers of Italian workers believe that life in Russia is preferable to life in Fascist Italy. What does Mussolini do in these circumstances? Externally he tells the world that he supports Hitler’s crusade against Russian Communism; internally, he tells the Italian workers not to be attracted by Russia, because Russia is not Communist, but capitalist. In a Speech reported in the Times (November 2nd, 1936) Mussolini said that the Russian system

is to-day but State super-capitalism carried to its most ferocious expression.

They are, then, all in the same difficulty. They are all seeking to defend capitalism and to resist the only possible alternative, Socialism, but none of them dares to say so. In order to defend capitalism they are all obliged to depict it as a form of Socialism. In order to work up hostility to rival powers they all have to stress the fact that the rival stands for capitalism.

Here lies the sure proof of the coming triumph of Socialism. Men’s minds are looking away from capitalism and towards what they believe constitutes Socialism. Much can happen to delay the worker’s understanding of genuine Socialism, but nothing can now stop it.

The kind of thing that delays the progress we desire does not come only from the Fascists, as a recent action of the Communists will show. A manifesto published by the Communist Party of Italy in an official organ of the Communist International actually proclaims the need for a United Front between Socialists, Communists and Fascists.

The manifesto was published in International Press Correspondence of August 22nd, 1936, and contains the following among other passages: —

Let us reach out our hands to each other, children of the Italian nation. Fascists and Communists, Catholics and Socialists, people of all opinions, and let us march side by side to enforce the right of existence of the citizens of a civilised country, as ours is. We have the same ambition—to make Italy strong, free and happy. Every trade union, every workers’ organisation, every association must become the centre of our new-found unity, of our will to destroy the power of the small group of capitalist parasites who are starving and oppressing us.

The concrete proposal in the Manifesto is that the various Fascist and anti-Fascist groups should unite on the basis of the 1919 Fascist programme, which contained a number of proposed reforms of capitalism. Doubtless the scheme is promoted by Moscow in an endeavour to weaken the Italian Government, and a similar scheme is now being advocated by the German Communists. But whatever the motive behind it, such a policy is opposed to the interest of the working class and of Socialism. Seeing that the defenders of capitalism can only succeed by pretending that they stand for the workers and for Socialism, the one thing needed above all others is a concentrated effort to show the workers that the claim is false, and that an unbridgeable gulf exists between Socialism on the one side, and all kinds of reforms of capitalism on the other. Instead of which the Communists, by their action, are causing the workers to believe that it is possible for Socialists and Fascists to combine and work together.

As against all confusion and betrayals, the Socialist Party stands for independence and for clear-cut Socialist principles.

Edgar Hardcastle

North Africa, Italy and Capitalism (1944)

From the September 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

Because the Socialist Party of Great Britain is composed of members of the working class who, like most workers, are tied down to the place wherein they sell their labour power, we have not been able to do much to propagate Socialism directly to peoples of other lands. But although we have continually stressed the capitalist evils existing in this country, it does not follow that the S.P.G.B. is blind to the stultifying effects of capitalism in other countries. Indeed, those who have studied our case know that we have always stressed the universal nature of capitalism. Go wherever you will, you will find on one hand a privileged class that, without the necessity of working, can enjoy every luxury and comfort, and even dodge many of the worst effects of war, and, on the other hand, a far larger class composed of those who are forced to work to gain the bare necessities of life. Go where you will and, side by side with the wealth of those who produce nothing, you will see the poverty of those who produce all wealth—the workers.

With this fact in mind, the present writer would address those men and women who have been drawn into some branch of the Services and eventually sent abroad.

Possibly for the first time in your lives you have seen the sordid and nauseating effects of capitalism in countries other than England. You have, perhaps, been to North Africa and seen the dire poverty, squalor and hunger rampant in that vast terrain. You have seen disease-ridden Arabs dragging out an existence on tracts of land where the soil produces nothing that is edible. You have possibly wondered, with science at its present advanced state, why chemical fertilisation of the soil has not been undertaken. To the Socialist the answer is simple : Capitalism does not think such a step profitable.

Side by side with the poverty of the Arabs you have seen the wealth of Continental parasites, who can live in palatial, comparatively hygienic houses that are protection against the flies, mosquitoes, and stinks that beset the major part of North Africa’s population.

Possibly you have been to Italy and witnessed there the abject poverty and hunger of the many and the wealth and plenty of the few. You have seen the Naples slums—and maimed men and women begging in the dusty streets. you have learned, perhaps, that when Mussolini rose to power he ordered the patching up of these slums and the arrest of all beggars seen upon the streets. Thus to the tourist and casual observer slums and beggars did not exist in Italy. The grand facade of brightly coloured house exteriors and streets without beggars did its work in advertising what Fascism had done for the workers, yet merely hid the filth, insanitary conditions and destitution that actually existed.

By learning this, perhaps, you have realised that a Fascist administration, by a ruthless eradicating of visible signs of poverty and squalor, may give a grand exterior to capitalism, but can do nothing towards actually curing the evils inherent in the social order.

You have seen, perhaps, Italian workers too poor to buy the food that will give them proper nourishment. You have seen shops that, through the background operations of prospering, well-fed “black-marketeers” are able to sell, at prices beyond the reach of the. workers, a bountiful supply of food, clothing, and other necessities. You have seen the rich satisfy their wants by paying the prices asked. You have seen the poor, half-fed and in rags, because they are unable to buy.

Fellow workers, many of you have seen these things now. Is it not obvious that the poverty-stricken, stultifying, disease-breeding conditions of the workers are not confined to Britain, but exist in every capitalist country? Does not the magnitude and far-reaching nature of this outworn social order convince you of the importance of abolishing it, with all its contradictious, anomalies and insanities ? Are you not convinced that capitalism should be replaced by a social order wherein all co-operate in producing and distributing the needs of society—wherein there is no master class exploiting a slave class—wherein the whole of society has free access to the products of society ?

Workers! what are you going to do about it?

Frank Hawkins

50 Years Ago: The Friends of the Russian Government (1983)

The 50 Years Ago column from the August 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some recent activities of the Russian Government which received little notice in the Press are of sufficient importance to be placed on record. They should be studied by those who believe that the friction between the Russian Government and some other governments is different in kind from the trade quarrels which are always taking place between national groups of capitalists and the governments they control.

We refer to agreements just made or renewed between Russia, on the one hand, and the three open dictatorships on the other — Italy, Poland and Germany . . . we have here a pretty picture of the Russian Government making agreements and seeking to cultivate “normal" and “friendly” relationships with Italy. Poland and Germany, while the governments of Mussolini. Pilsudski and Hitler carry on their normal brutal repression of all opposition, including Socialists and Communists. Are the Communists in the prisons and concentration camps of these countries expected to rejoice when they read that Russian envoys received "a very warm welcome” and that Pilsudski has graciously condescended to receive the Soviet Ambassador, and that Russia undertakes “not to participate in any economic or financial boycott" of Hitler’s Germany?

(From an editorial “The Friends of the Russian Government", Socialist Standard, August 1933.)

The Rise and Fall of Mussolini (1943)

From the August 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

Most of the accounts of Mussolini, by himself, by his friends, and by his enemies are a compound of myth and misrepresentation. Many of those who now denounce him as a monster of cruelty and treachery used not to regard him in that light.

Mr. Churchill was reported to have said in 1927 : —

“If I had been an Italian, I am sure that I should have been wholeheartedly with you from start to finish in your triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism.” (Times, January 21st, 1927.)

And did not the late Mr. Neville Chamberlain say in the House of Commons (May 2nd, 1938) : —

“To-day there is a new Italy, an Italy which, under the stimulus of the personality of Signor Mussolini, is showing new vigour, in which there is apparent new vision and new efficiency in administration and in the measures which they are taking to improve the conditions of their people.”

We may also recall the, unbounded enthusiasm for Mussolini and Hitler displayed by Lord Rothermere in his Daily Mail when he was backing Mosley’s Blackshirts and urging young British men and women to emulate the “spirit of patriotic pride and service which has transformed Germany and Italy.” (Daily Mail, January 15th, 1934).

Even the New Leader, organ of the I.L.P., was not quite sure in 1922 whether the workers should support Mussolini or not. In the issue dated November 10th, 1922, an article from an Italian correspondent was published urging cooperation with the Fascists in the national reconstruction of Italy. The Editor, while not associating himself with the idea, did not feel able to reject it out of hand. He doubted the feasibility of the idea, but said:

“Only events can test our correspondent’s optimistic reading of its (Fascism’s) new spirit.”

It is only necessary to recall these now-forgotten enthusiasms and aberrations to perceive the fallacy of the argument that those German and Italian workers who swallowed the absurd and brutal doctrines of their leaders must be punished and kept under, in order to save the world from further dictatorships and aggressions. If it is a crime for the workers to be taken in by the demagogy of a Hitler or a Mussolini, what of the illustrious statesmen and public men who were taken in too?

One myth about Mussolini, still held by many who denounce him, is that he was the creator of modern Italy, the inspired and dynamic leader who moulded events to his will and took power by a brilliant and forcible “march on Rome” in October, 1922. Mr. Bernard Shaw is an outstanding believer in the “great man” myth. If it were true that the great man could so mould events to his will, why the undignified and craven exit from power? Mussolini’s path to power was not through any bold and godlike master-stroke, but through the connivance and desire of those who had control of the political machine, in Italy in 1922. Is it not related how General Badoglio offered at the time to “scatter this Blackshirt rabble with a whiff of grapeshot,” only to be ordered by the King of Italy to let the rabble take office. Mussolini’s exit has been like his entry, for, according to the Daily Telegraph (July 27th, 1943), this giant among men resigned because, after a meeting of the Fascist Grand Council lasting ten hours he was voted down by 19 voles to 7!

The truth is that Mussolini and his Fascist Party had outlived its popularity under the stress of economic hardship and military defeat, and could no longer fulfil the prime function of those who take on the job of harnessing the exploited working class to the capitalist State in the interest of the exploiting class. Discontent had grown and the workers would not go on believing and obeying the leaders in whom they had once placed their trust. Long ago it was admitted by leading Fascist journals that things were in a bad way. The Fascist Party, which they admitted had “become an enormous, top-heavy organisation with a rigid bureaucracy” (Manchester Guardian, September 3rd, 1941), was no longer able to serve its purpose. Mussolini and his Fascists did not mould events, but were the astute exploiters of events which moulded them. In particular, they gained their opportunity to rise to office (and to the luscious fruits of office) because capitalism in Italy after the last war could not solve its own problems or satisfy the mass of the population. Their later policies were similarly dictated by the contradictions of capitalism. As Sir George Paish, the economist, pointed, out, it was the world-crisis of capitalism which determined Italy’s aggressive foreign policy. Writing in 1935. he said:

“If the difficulty between Italy and Abyssinia is to be settled, is it not essential to discover its real cause and remove it? Clearly its cause is similar to that which induced Italy to attack Abyssinia in 1896. At that time the world was suffering from a severe economic and financial crisis, and the distress of Italy caused her statesmen to seek relief in a policy of conquest. The world to-day is suffering from a crisis more severe than 40 years ago, and Italy is in even greater distress than she was then. In consequence, Italy desires a colony to give her a market for her products, to which her people can emigrate, and from which she can obtain food, raw material and gold.” (Times, August 31st. 1935.)

Crises, wars and dictatorships are possible only because of the lasting inability of capitalism to meet the needs of the population of the world. The remedy is not to seek new inspired leaders or new ways of managing capitalism. but to abolish the capitalist system from the face of the earth.

Notes by the Way: The Italian Fascists and Their Former Apologists. (1941)

The Notes by the Way Column from the May 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Italian Fascists and Their Former Apologists.

Before the war our newspapers and public men told us remarkably little about the real nature of the Fascist racket led by Mussolini, they were chiefly interested in telling us that it couldn’t be so bad because under Fascism the hotels were improved and the trains were running to time and Mussolini had preserved ancient monuments and built splendid motor roads—a typical tourist view of things. They forgot that 40 million Italians don’t spend their day visiting the sights and living in expensive hotels or touring about on motor roads. Mr. Bernard Shaw shows the same kind of mental blindness when he gives as a reason why Rome should not be bombed, our common interest in that city’s ancient glories. “In Rome,” he writes, “no one is a stranger and a foreigner; we all feel when we first go there that we are revisiting the scene of a former existence.” (Times, April 28th, 1941.) Mr. Shaw forgets that 40 million British workers, under this beneficent capitalist system, never had the time or money to go to see their ancient heritage.

Amongst the steadfast admirers of Mussolini was the late Lord Rothermere, who wrote in the Daily Mail (July 10th, 1933) dismissing the brutalities of Italian Fascism as mere “incidental extravagances” and glorifying the Fascist and Nazi regimes.

“Now that Italy has been for ten years not only peaceful and progressive, but, by comparison with other lands, even prosperous, the incidental extravagances of the early days of Fascism are forgotten. In the same way the minor misdeeds of individual Nazis will be submerged by the immense benefits that the new regime is already bestowing upon Germany.”

It was only after the war broke out that the Daily Mail and some other newspapers could discover the brutalities of both regimes. Similarly with regard to the qualities of their leaders. In the article quoted above, Lord Rothermere was full of praise for the virile youthful Mussolini. It was only in 1940 (Daily Mail, May 9th) that the Daily Mail could relate that Mussolini’s more middle-aged virility took the form that when he addressed a meeting of Italian industrialists about the British blockade, “he leant over the table and literally foamed at the mouth.” Hitler’s hysterical outbursts are by now well-known, but Lord Rothermere was able only eight years ago to describe him as a man who “will stand out in history” as one of the three “founders of a new Germany,” “The world’s greatest need to-day,” said Lord Rothermere (Daily Mail, July 10th, 1933), “is realism. Hitler is a realist.” (Lord Rothermere’s two other youthful heroes were the senile Hindenburg and the German Crown Prince.) If the world needed Hitler the world has certainly got him, in full measure, and it is worth bearing always in mind how large a part in getting the world to accept Hitler was played by men and newspapers like Lord Rothermere and the Daily Mail.

Another aspect of the Fascist racket, which answers Lord Rothermere’s argument that Fascism and Nazism rooted out corruption, is given by the Evening Standard (April 22nd, 1941). It discloses that Count Ciano, the husband of Mussolini’s daughter, Edda, “prevailed on the Banco di Santo Spirito, of Rome, to sell him building sites between the Lower Aventine and Ostia, port of Rome, at half a farthing a square yard. He resold the land to the Committee for the ‘Rome Exhibition of 1942,’ at 12s. 6d. a square yard.”

Rome may be, as Bernard Shaw says, the heritage of the whole world, but it looks as if the more immediate landlord gets the biggest rake-off. Note by the way the name of the bank which put the deal in Ciano’s way.

Incidentally, there has been much complaint in the Press recently about land speculators in this country.

Another interesting story about the supporters of Fascism appeared in the diary of the late William Dodd, who was American Ambassador in Germany. The following extract was reproduced in the Sunday Dispatch (March 9th, 1941): —

“In 1924 Hearst, who had been violently opposed to the Mussolini dictatorship, sent a man to Rome to negotiate a deal with Mussolini by which he would be paid a dollar a word for anything he would dictate for the Hearst Press.

It was widely known that Gianini, president of the Bank of America in California and an ardent Mussolini supporter, had loaned Hearst some millions of dollars.

Thereafter, Hearst’s newspapers praised the Italian dictatorship and Mussolini received large sums of money.

From 1924 until now Hearst has supported the dictatorship in Italy.”

* * * *

The Sunday Opening of Theatres

The Sabbatarians’ itch to interfere with other people’s lives always finds support among the Clergy and others whose living is bound up with the churches from the purely business point of view. For them the Sunday cinemas, theatres and public-houses are rival commercial establishments and curbing them is legitimate business practice. One novelty about the recent campaign which stopped the opening of theatres on Sundays was that the brewers were siding with the parsons, for them it is better that workers should not have opened up an additional Sunday entertainment which might affect the takings of the public houses as well as the revenue of the churches. Now, however, emboldened by their success, it looks as if the Sabbatarians are going to have a shot at closing the public houses as well, for the duration of the war. Thus ends another short-lived eternal pact of non-aggression.

One pained complaint comes from Mr. R. Wilson Black, President of the Baptist Union, this time directed against the Radio. “The Radio was made by many an excuse for remaining at home, where they could listen to just as much or as little of the broadcast service as they chose.” —(The Times, April 29th.)

It looks as if Mr. Black’s problem will only be solved by a law making it compulsory for everyone to attend Church services and to listen in silence to the whole of the sermon whether they like it or not.

The Manchester Guardian (April 24th, 1941) tells an entertaining story from U.S.A. The State of Delaware has on its Statute Book a law passed in 1740 prohibiting all “worldly” activities on Sunday. The Delaware Senate recently passed an amendment to permit each community to decide for itself the extent of Sabbath observance, but the House of Representatives refused to agree to the amendment. At this point the Attorney General comes on the scene. He thinks the 1740 law is all nonsense and he decided that the best way to prove it to its defenders was to enforce it to the full, and he did !

“So the police went out and arrested bus-drivers, tram-drivers, taxi-drivers, newsboys, restaurant-owners, milkmen, drug-store clerks, sweet-shop proprietors, garage hands, and even a strike picket and a man shovelling snow from the pavement. The manager of a radio station was taken up, and a Sabbatarian parson whose sermon had been broadcast was warned that he had become an accomplice in law-breaking. The next morning hundreds of people appeared in the courts. The House of Representatives became alarmed and protested but declared that it would not be coerced into repeal. The Attorney-General replied that “each Sunday will grow worse until the laws are amended.” Within four days the law was repealed.”

* * * *

Stalin Meets Matsuoka

We have had Hitler sending birthday greetings to Stalin, Stalin being photographed in a friendly party with Ribbentrop, Molotov all smiles with General Goering, now comes Stalin and Matsuoka, the Japanese Foreign Minister, who was in Moscow late in April. Here is the story from the Evening Standard of what is reported to have occurred when Stalin saw Matsuoka off on the train : —

“According to Mr. Hasegawa, the two statesmen were then apparently overcome with emotion and embraced one another to the amazement of the foreign diplomatic representatives present. —(Evening Standard, April 28th, 1941.)

It sounds too touching to be true, but, no doubt “dialectically considered,” as the Communists would say, it is a further piece of Socialist propaganda designed to clarify the ideas of the world’s workers and show them which of the representatives of capitalism are their true friends.

Those who still imagine that the Russian Government’s foreign policy is governed by internationalism should note the following, reproduced from the Bolshevik journal Pravda:—

“The foreign policy of the U.S.S.R. is guided exclusively by the interests of the U.S.S.R., exclusively by the interests of the peoples of the U.S.S.R. This policy dictates to the U.S.S.R. the desire to develop as widely as possible trade and economic relations with those of its neighbours who correctly appraise the importance of these connections with the U.S.S.R. for their own interests. The Soviet-German Treaty and Agreements of 1941 confirm with perfect clarity the absolute truth of this proposition—(Reproduced in the Anglo-Russia News Bulletin, January: 18th, 1941.)

Edgar Hardcastle

Notes by the Way: The Little Corporal: Then and Now (1941)

The Notes by the Way Column from the March 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Little Corporal: Then and Now

One of the curious by-products of the rise of Hitler has been the revision of formerly accepted views of his predecessor, Napoleon. Typical of this swing-over are the following: —

On August 12th, 1940, the Daily Telegraph published an article by Mr. E. C. Bentley entitled “Hitler’s Mirror can reflect no Napoleon”; with the sub-heading “The Corsican, for instance, was a gifted and constructive despot: To his vassal states he brought order, not a gang wielding whips of persecution.”

Then on December 15th, 1940, 100 years after the ceremonial burial of Napoleon’s ashes brought home from St. Helena, The Times wrote similarly, saying: ”English historians have assessed scarcely less highly than French the value of Napoleon’s contribution to the structure of European civilisation.” The Times finds the following distinction between Buonaparte and Hitler: —

“The difference is that, whereas the opinions that Napoleon’s arms carried across the Continent were in their origin noble, and only became debased by the manner of their propagation ; we fight to-day against opinions that are evil in their very conception.”

If this is true it prompts the two-fold reflection that the British ruling class contemporary with the French Revolution and Napoleon held very different views, and that quite a number of their successors who witnessed the progress of Nazi brutality in our time were convinced that there was a lot of merit in Nazism.

On February 13th, 1941, the Manchester Guardian also explained that “in a great many cases his [Napoleon’s] own ideas were, of course, more enlightened and more just than the arrangements in force in old Europe.”

Now contrast these views with the abuse heaped on “Boney” by all and sundry when he was rampaging across Europe and Russia and threatening invasion of England. Not much then about his “enlightened” views.

Mr. Seymour Cocks, M.P., speaking in the House of Commons on December 19th, 1940, recalled the words applied to Napoleon by the Allied Powers which defeated the French armies over 100 years ago—”having broken every pledge and treaty, had placed himself outside the bounds of civil and social relations and, as the general enemy and disturber of the peace of the world, was abandoned to public justice.” Mr. Cocks wants the British and Allied Governments now to issue a similar declaration about Hitler.

William Cobbett, in his letter written in 1803 urging the Government to issue an appeal to the British public to resist Napoleon’s invasion, used words curiously like those now applied to the Nazis : 

“Now, like gaunt and hungry wolves, they are looking towards the rich pastures of Britain; already we hear their threatening howl, and if, like sheep, we stand bleating for mercy, neither our innocence nor our timidity will save us from being torn to pieces and devoured. The robberies, the barbarities, the brutalities they have committed in other countries, though, at the thought of them the heart sinks, will be mere trifles to what they will commit here … no man, woman, or child would escape violence of some kind or other. . . .”

If the capitalist historians could wash off all those blemishes from Napoleon it looks as if the principal qualification required of them is a capacity to wield a whitewash brush. What will they be doing with Hitler 20 years ahead ?

Merchant of Death

In years past the Communists have been among those who have expressed their horror at the spectacle of munition firms making profit by supplying weapons and materials of war to both sides engaged in a war. Now it seems that circumstances alter cases. The Russian Government is interested in the profits to be made out off international trade, including trade in essential war materials, and when the Russian Government cynically supplies such materials to those whom it denounces as the enemies of the working class and of democracy its apologists can see nothing wrong. A case in point is a letter written to the Manchester Guardian by Mr. Albert Inkpin, Secretary of the Russia To-day Society. Here is what Mr. Inkpin says:—

“Germany is importing oil products, raw materials, and grain from the U.S.S.R. Commenting on the recent new agreement, the official Soviet newspaper, “Izvestia,” states the willingness of the Soviet Union to trade “with other States, both belligerent and non-belligerent,” thus showing its readiness to trade also with Britain.” (Manchester Guardian, January 21st, 1941.)

A somewhat similar line is taken by Mr. Pat Sloan, though he was dealing with the fact that while the Italian Government was destroying Abyssinian troops and civilians by aerial bombardment the Russian Government went on supplying Italy with the necessary oil fuel for their aeroplanes. (It will be recalled that at the time the Communists were very indignant at the suggestion that this was happening.) This is Mr. Sloan’s statement, in a letter to Reynolds News (February 16th, 1941): —

“According to your book review, “Nazi Ways in Russia,” Arthur Koestler has written a novel the U.S.S.R. in which an “Old Revolutionary” goes anti-Soviet because the U.S.S.R. sold oil to Italy during the Abyssinian war and trades with Germany to-day.

As one who was in U.S.S.R. during the Abyssinian war, I may say that the Soviet people were proud that their Government was the first to apply sanctions against Italy, and that it proposed the application of further sanctions. I never met a single individual who advocated unilateral sanctions without the cooperation of the other States.

I may also say that nobody I ever met in the U.S.S.R. objected to trading with Britain so soon as the British Government adopted a reasonable attitude to the U.S.S.R.”

Now it is quite true that the Russian Government offered to support international action to stop oil supplies reaching Italy, but how does the refusal of other states to take action relieve the Russian Government of its responsibility in the matter ? Take the parallel case of the munition firms, they use precisely the same argument and excuse. British and American munition firms have repeatedly excused their action in selling arms (in peace-time) to all and sundry on the ground that if they did not get the trade somebody else would. The one difference between the Russian Government and the munition makers is not in their action but in their professions. The “merchants of death” admitted that they were concerned with trade and profit; the Russian Government affects to be guided by loftier motives.

There was a time when the Communists were demanding a world boycott of the Fascist countries and condemning the international trade union movement for its failure to make such a boycott effective, but we have not heard what reply, if any, the Communists and the Russian Government have given to the appeal made by the Greek trade unions (reported in The Times, November 2nd, 1940) asking workers in Russia and other countries to insist that their governments forbid exports of raw materials to Italy.

A Labour Peer on Profit

Writing to the Picture Post (January 11th, 1941), Lord Strabolgi, a Labour Peer, put in its briefest form the attitude of mind of the Labour Party as a whole on the subject of Capitalism and Socialism. He wrote: —

“I agree with Douglas Jay that monopolies should be broken ; but we are not ripe for the complete abolition of the profit motive.”

It is true enough that the majority of the workers are not yet ripe for Socialism, but whose fault is that ? What has the Labour Party been doing to make them ripe ?

Graziani Flatters Them

When Marshal Graziani, Italian Commander-in-Chief in Libya, retired with his defeated army from a village near Cyrene, he is reported to have told the village priest that the Italian settlers had nothing to fear : —

“The British are gentlemen. . . . They will treat you kindly and leave you to work in peace. . . .” (Daily Herald, February 7th, 1941.)

This was all right but we cannot help feeling that Graziani’s final words betray a slightly wrong idea if they are intended to apply to the British “gentry” as a whole. What he told the priest was: “If you want anything, ask them for it.”

Graziani cannot have seen the stony glare that some of the very best people in this country can put on when their workers ask them for another few bob a week.

“The Niceties of Civilization”

Fears have been expressed that tribesmen in Abyssinia may exact a savage revenge on the Italian settlers in Abyssinia when Italian control of the country breaks down. The tribesmen have bitter memories of the way the Italian invaders, armed with all the latest weapons of the modern arsenal, treated them five years ago. But what exactly did the Daily Mail Services Correspondent have in mind when he wrote (February 5th, 1941) that some of the tribesmen have “little regard for the niceties of civilisation” ? Niceties is hardly the word we would apply to modern war between “civilised” countries.

What is “Economic Democracy”?

The Labour Party has always fought shy of committing itself to any explicit proposal for the abolition of capitalism and its replacement by Socialism. That is why in the last 20 years Labour speakers and writers have made so much use of the term “economic democracy” as a description of their aim. It appeared to say a great deal but was capable of any number of interpretations.

Now comes Mr. J. A. Cecil Wright, M.P., writing to The Times (February 5th, 1941) to say that he, too, is all in favour of it. But before jumping to the conclusion that Mr. Wright is declaring for Socialism read the following: —

“If we are going to retain a capitalist system, and I hope we shall, because with safeguards it is the fullest system of life in an industrialised world (in fact it is economic democracy), then we must see to it that the essential ingredients of capitalism and democracy are there . . . .”

Edgar Hardcastle

Letter: Mussolini and Parliament. (1927)

Letter to the Editors from the May 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

To Editorial Committee:

I read with interest your reply to Kett re “Mussolini and Parliament.”

You state that Mussolini was returned to Parliament with a majority of his supporters. Surely, comrades, you have made a grave mistake, as he gained power through the now well-known “March on Rome.” His majority came at an election after he had changed the election laws of Italy and crushed the organisations which opposed him. He cares little for majorities as he frankly states, as long as his own followers are well armed in support of the present system. However, it does prove the foolishness of supporting leaders, as at the time of the coup d’etat in Italy, his party was more republican, and its home policy different to the present one ; it has changed to suit him and the Capitalist interests.

Although I keenly support the need for a majority of Socialists in Parliament (if possible), yet I see the danger of such methods being used here in this country. The boss class may “close down” the House if it suits their purpose. This may come, as in Italy, through confusion in the working-class organisations.

Yours fraternally,

S. W.

Reply:

The “grave mistake” lies with “S.W.” Had he read the description of the so-called “March on Rome” at the time it took place, he would know that the half-armed rabble that followed Mussolini on that occasion bore no comparison with the better-armed and more highly-drilled body Mussolini commands to-day. When this rabble reached Rome, they were not allowed to enter the city, as the regular soldiers denied them admittance. The commanding officer of these soldiers who offered to clear Mussolini’s crowd out of the place in an hour, found to his disagreeable surprise that not only was he not to drive them out, but received orders to let them in. It suited the Capitalist government to let Mussolini take charge of affairs owing to the strained conditions of the time. It still suits them to let him continue in charge.

When the Capitalists no longer need this opera-bouffe hero as a “smoke-screen” between themselves and the Italian workers, Mussolini will be kicked out like an office-boy.

“S.W.” is also wrong about the election laws. These were altered after Mussolini had been elected by a majority of those voting. Conditions here are different from those existing in Italy, and the “closing down” of the House of Parliament, apart from a special temporary crisis, a much more difficult matter.

Editorial Committee

New Phases of the War—What Will Italy Do? (1940)

From the June 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

The conflict now raging on the Continent has awakened the average worker to some extent from the lethargy of a decade, but the serious character of the world’s situation he does not, in general, as yet perceive. When his friends or relatives are called up he is induced to try to follow world events, but in regard to them his attitude is one of resignation: he leaves political direction to others : he may have a vague feeling of uneasiness but he relies absolutely upon those in authority for guidance: what is involved is too much for him to grasp: in the main his mental blindness condemns him to be controlled solely by circumstances and be obedient to the will of those in authority.

All the same, 1940 is not 1914. Subconsciously the working class have imbibed knowledge from bitter experience; it may be latent, but it is there, and it can, and will, eventually find a means of expression.

The Tablet, a Catholic paper, has in its current issue summed up the Nazi power in strong but correct language : “Its weapons are the weapons of fear and falsehood. Debauched by the vision of authority acquired by the bomb, and maintained by the jack-boot and the whip, the German people have placed their strength and their abilities at the mercy of a ruthless gang, who are using that strength to enthrone themselves as the masters of an enslaved continent.”

The Government here has come into being as a result of various groups arriving at a tacit understanding, anything may happen as a consequence, even a new orientation on the part of Russia and the Communist Party.

The Labour ministers of the Crown, newly appointed, can hardly do anything for the working class: their business will be to show that they can run the system efficiently and well; the leaders of the older parties found themselves in difficulties, the leaders of Labour are to help them out. ‘Twas ever thus.

The paper quoted from above has something to say which lends colour to our viewpoint: “Some of the appointments are conspicuously good. Mr. Herbert Morrison at Supply and Mr. Ernest Bevin at Labour are both men with proved reputations as organisers well able to defeat obstructions and delay. What is more important, they can go ahead without the feeling that they may impair national unity and incur charges of Fascism (if they ask for suspension of the ordinary privileges and safeguards, normally enjoyed by business firms and trade unionists). The old Government had to walk very warily, simply because opposition journalists and speakers had for so long been blackening its character.”

The Tablet, being an upholder of the old religion, is naturally opposed to Stalin and Co., but it may be right when it surmises that the suppression of the Communist Party in France has greatly hindered the work of the Russian Foreign Office. “We must be wary of attaching any importance to signs and rumours of estrangement between Stalin and Hitler. They may be true, but they may equally be intended to restore more freedom of subversive action inside Britain and France to the hidden army.”

The Daily Mail is jubilant over the Discipline Act.

We are told it is the most revolutionary law that Parliament has passed in modern times. “At one stroke we relinquish our right to choose our own tasks or to dispose of our own property as we think best.”

The wage slave has, in reality, had few rights in regard to choosing what he should do and as to property: he has few possessions. Why the Daily Mail should see anything revolutionary in the Discipline Act is beyond us : it makes little difference in the lives of those who live by selling their labour-power. . . .

The invasion of Holland has brought about certain international complications. The latest news at the time of writing is that Germany, Russia and Japan are to hold a conference to discuss and decide what to do about the Dutch East Indies. This is likely to bring the United States directly into the war and induce Roosevelt to run for a third term.

The readers of the Socialist Standard will be alive to the importance of these developments, but, to refresh the memories of our readers, we would remind them that 15 per cent. of the world’s bauxite comes from Dutch Guiana and over 17 per cent. of the world’s tin from the Dutch East Indies. In rubber also, the Dutch East Indies produce a third of the world’s supply and they are also the most important source of copra and produce a quarter of the world’s palm oil. The petrol produced in the Dutch East Indies is not inconsiderable in amount and, what is more, Dutch interests in the oilfields of Roumania and the Near East have been placed unreservedly at the disposal of the Allies.

Japan is finding China a problem, the war game there is not worth the candle: the exploiters of the wage slaves of Nippon perceive that, if their hands were free, they could make large profits by taking advantage of their industrial rivals’ troubles in Europe: the markets are waiting, but the war in China absorbs all the efforts of the industrialists of Japan and the gains from the conflict are not perceptible.

The Evening News of May 21st says: —

“American and European fears that Japan might interfere in the German campaign against Holland is easily understood in view of the pronouncement of a number of Japanese naval and military authorities.

Behind it there is the economic question of oil.

The Japanese Navy, like every other, has turned exclusively to oil fuel; and the tremendous enthusiasm for Diesel engines in the Merchant Service, only recently checked by Government decree which demanded the return to coal wherever it was economically possible, has increased the shortage of oil.

Demand Now Greater.

Even in peace-time Japan consumes two million tons of oil a year—the greater part of it by the Navy and Merchant Service—and can produce less than a quarter of a million tons herself.

If she obtained complete control of the oilfields in Sakhalien, which Russia would prevent to the limit of her forces, it would mean rather less than half a million tons more.

That was in peace-time, but the campaign in China has greatly increased the demand for the Navy, Air Force, and Merchant Service which is caring for the supplies.

Rubber, Too.

The greater part of this excess demand has had to come from the United States. This is paid for in silk, but the mobilisation of the Army has depleted the supply of peasant labour available for its production.

So the exchange with the United States is not nearly as advantageous as it might be.

Possession of the Dutch East Indies would supply Japan with all the oil that she would require, as well as other commodities, of which the principal is rubber, which Japan has to import to the tune of 100,000 tons a year.”

Before concluding this article we must draw attention to events in the Mediterranean. The situation appears to be dangerous to the peace of the Near East. Mussolini, however, is not having all his own way. The Italian papers do not give us the true opinion of the Italian people. When Italian journalists get their instructions, and understand what the Government line is, they must not go against it, and the only way they can distinguish themselves is by their zeal for it. The organ of the Vatican, Osservatore Romano, solidly supports the Allies. It has a circulation of 300,000 and is supported by a following strong enough to cause Mussolini to pause before lining up on the side of Germany.

If Italy does enter the war on the side of Germany, and the resistance of the Allies becomes too strong for the Germans to overcome in Northern France, Germany will, no doubt, invade Switzerland with Italy’s aid. Hitler is pressed for time : he had to win quickly or he could not hope to win at all.

From what has been written the reader will be able to perceive that, owing to the inter-relations prevalent in the productive world of capitalism, all countries are likely to be involved in the conflict sooner or later. Marx says : “Force is the midwife of an old social order pregnant with a new one, that it is the tool by the means of which social progress is forwarded and foolish, dead political forms destroyed.”

When the smoke clears away from the battlefields, and we can calmly view the results, we can better judge the outcome of force in the present instance. In the meantime we continue our task of striving to bring into being a new social order “in which there shall be neither rich nor poor, neither master nor master’s man, neither idle nor overworked, neither brain-sick brain-workers nor heartsick hand-workers, in a word, in which all men would be living in equality of condition and would manage their affairs unwastefully and with the full consciousness that harm to one would be harm to all—the realisation at last of the meaning of the word commonwealth.”

The quoted words are from William Morris, who hated with all his heart “the dull squalor of capitalist civilisation,” whose fruit is so often war. In the commonwealth of Morris there is no cause for conflict—when we establish Socialism we establish peace and plenty.

Charles Lestor