Flaming Folly in the Saar (1935)

Editorial from the February 1935 issue of the Socialist Standard

In an editorial entitled “Flaming Patriotism" one of the less vicious of Lord Rothermere’s newspapers, the Evening News, tells us (January 15th) what the Saarlanders have done, and why. Before considering his Lordship’s contribution to world hysteria, let us cast an eye over some other contributions. A great battle has been fought and won. A glorious triumph has been achieved by the enthusiasts for reunion with Germany. The small band of supporters of continued administration by the League of Nations, and the microscopic handful favourable to France are correspondingly depressed. But what are they fighting about, these Saarland workers? What would they gain by any of the three courses open to them? What did they stand to lose? The Communists gave one answer. The Communists, who in Russia suppress every independent trade union or political party, told the Saar workers that Hitler would suppress their independent trade unions and political parties. So little did the workers care about this that they voted in overwhelming numbers for Hitler. The I.L.P., which for years has advocated returning the Saar to Germany, and which denounces the League of Nations as an imperialist instrument, implored the Saarland workers on no account to return to Germany, but to remain under the League. The Liberals and Labourites all wept bitter tears over the awful fate which would befall the workers under Hitler, forgetful of the fact that large numbers, if not a majority of the workers already under Hitler apparently find life so little different from what it was under the German Labour Governments and Coalitions that they do not mind, or are even enthusiastic Nazis. But none of these parties, nor the legions of journalists and expert commentators who have overrun the Saar, have told us what there was at issue which merited the bitter campaign.

Let us, then, seek an answer from Lord Rothermere, for his organ is at least definite. It tells us that the Saarlanders were stirred by the call of race and language and blood. Seemingly this was so attractive that for it “they willingly face the chances of poverty and unemployment.” Mark those last words well. They contain the distilled wisdom of a great capitalist newspaper. They are a mark both of the impudence of the capitalist Press and of the simplicity of the non-Socialist mass of workers who read it. The Saarland workers, we are told, have voted for re-union with Germany, even though it means the “material hardship” of poverty and unemployment! Just think of it. We are asked to believe that members of the working class only suffer poverty and unemployment in Germany, and that if they remained under the League or joined France they would escape these things. The tragedy is that there are British workers, intelligent and experienced in many things, but not yet intelligent in politics, who will read the Evening News and believe what they read, though it flies in the face of all working-class experience everywhere. And there are Saarland workers subject to just the same paralysis of the mind, so that when they read the lying propaganda of their masters, or the stupid nonsense of their Labour and Communist leaders, they believe it. What are the facts of the situation? The Saar is capitalist. It has capitalism to the west of it and to the east of it, north of it and south of it. Everywhere the means of production and distribution are owned and controlled by the master-class. Everywhere the workers produce wealth for others to own. Everywhere poverty and the risk of unemployment are the normal features of working-class life. Yet, knowing this, so-called leaders and counsellers of the Saarland workers, at home and abroad, egged them on to take sides in this master-class dispute about the ownership of the Saar. Members of the working class were thus divided into two bitterly antagonistic groups about the momentous question whether the proceeds of their own exploitation should flow to capitalists under the French or German or League flags!

What was needed in the Saar and what would have happened had there been any organised Socialist (as distinct from reformist) movement, was a clear presentation of the Socialist case. The workers would have been shown that their interests were not at stake in this Capitalist bickering, and that the surface differences between French and German and League capitalism are not vital, and cannot be dealt with by the working up of national hatreds. The workers would have been shown that the prime need of the occasion, as of every occasion, was a demonstration that they could no longer be drawn into capitalist rivalries, but stood for the abolition of capitalism, without conditions and without delay. Even as a minority gesture an organised Socialist refusal to vote for either of the three forms of capitalist administration would have done more to proclaim the message of Socialism, and would have caused more consternation to the capitalists on both sides of the frontier than all the misdirected efforts of the anti-Hitler United Front. The organisers of that movement failed to seize the opportunity of putting the Socialist case because they do not know what the Socialist case is. They displayed their courage and energy in a worthless cause.

The result, in the absence of a Socialist movement among the Saarland workers, is that Hitler and Lord Rothermere, and the capitalists of all the countries in all the world are able to sit back, reassured that they and their system are still safe, safe behind the patriotic and capitalistic illusions of the working class.

Marx on Force (1935)

From the February 1935 issue of the Socialist Standard

“ Force is the mid-wife of progress!” How completely this expression is misunderstood by many who use it! What Socialist Party speaker has not been confronted at some time or other by a callow youth or a bewhiskered old fogey who has either indignantly demanded to know why the S.P.G.B. has thrown the teaching of Marx overboard, or has condescendingly, not to say pityingly, “explained” that nothing can be done through Parliament. To most of our critics, “force” means almost anything but action for the capture and control of the State machine. It may mean the “general strike” or, as Daniel de Leon preferred to call it, the “general lock-out of the capitalist class." It may mean the blind, spontaneous upheaval of an unorganised mass or the deliberate insurrection of an armed minority. It may mean a combination of all these reactions to capitalist pressure; but nowhere does Marx indicate that it is to action on these lines that we must look for deliverance from our fetters.

Let us take a glance at the context of the pregnant phrase as Marx uses it. It occurs in the fifth paragraph of Chap. 31 of “Capital” (p. 776, Swan Sonnenschein edition), which reads as follows: —

The different momenta of primitive accumulation distribute themselves now, more or less in chronological order, particularly over Spain. Portugal, Holland, France, and England. In England, at the end of the 17th century, they arrive at a systematical combination embracing the colonies, the national debt, the modern mode of taxation, and the protectionist system. These methods depend in part upon brute force, e.g., the colonial system; but they all employ the power of the State, the concentrated and organised force of society, to hasten, hot-house fashion, the process of transformation of the feudal mode of production into the capitalist mode, and to shorten the transition. Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one. It is itself an economic power.

The chapter is entitled “The genesis of the industrial capitalist,” and is packed with examples of how the State, in the hands of the capitalist class, wiped out the old classes of feudal society at home (including the peasants and handicraftsmen) and also destroyed the social organisation of more primitive peoples in other parts of the world, in the quest for markets, raw materials and labour power. This was done partly by military and partly by economic measures; for the State, being “the concentrated and organised force of society,” can use either, as the need arises. It is itself an economic power, appropriating and expropriating by taxation, direct and otherwise, the incomes and means of livelihood of the small property owners whose existence stands in the way of capitalist development. At the same time it converts itself into a channel of investment by the huge loans it floats. The holder of State-bonds escapes the risks accompanying the various non-State forms of commercial, industrial or financial enterprise.

There need, therefore, be no confusion as to what Marx and Engels meant when they wrote of “the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions” at the end of the “Communist Manifesto.”

The authors state that, “The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class.”

The State, in the eyes of Marx and Engels, is the supreme expression of force in society. In the hands of the master-class it checkmates every move on the part of the workers which might endanger the property rights of the masters. Let some of the workers seize what few arms they can and it meets their puny force with greater force. Let them indulge in a widespread strike, whether of the stop-in or the stay-out variety, and it mobilises this same force to ensure to the capitalist class the control of the food supplies and essential services.

Throughout the struggle between the workers and their masters the control of the State power decides upon which side victory lies. The capture of this power by the workers, consciously organised as a class for the purpose, is the essential first step towards their emancipation. To choose any other line is, in the words of Marx to the First International at the Hague, in 1872, “To renounce the things of this world.”

Eric Boden