This Month's Quotation: Wilhelm Liebknecht (1941)

The Front Page quote from the February 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

  “Every power outside ourselves on which we seek to lean is for us only weakness ”

Wilhelm Liebknecht

Our Difficulty is Your Opportunity (1941)

Party News from the February 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

This appeal is addressed to all members and sympathisers. The Socialist Party is experiencing grave difficulties in the distribution of the Socialist Standard.

Does this mean anything to you? You may have come in contact with our paper or organisation quite recently, or you may be a supporter of some years’ standing—one of the “old brigade"; whichever category you come under we ask you to give your immediate and serious attention to this appeal.

The present position is not due to any fault of the organisation, but to the severe conditions now prevailing, particularly in London. These conditions have so hampered us in the task of distributing recent issues of the “S.S.” that sales have decreased. Not alarmingly, but sufficiently enough to cause us to call upon our readers everywhere to give a helping hand.

Elsewhere in this issue, reference is made to the remarkable achievements of the organisation under circumstances which, though very difficult, are not comparable with the present ones. No attempt is being made here to pander to anyone in a begging fashion, no demands are being made, no excuse is being made; it is just a part of the struggle, and we would be failing in our duty if we took cover and waited until the trouble passed by.

Now, comrades and friends, as many of the usual avenues through which the “S.S.” reached its readers have been closed as a consequence of events beyond our control, fresh ones must be established immediately. This is where you come in! You are asked by us to become agents and sellers of the “S.S.” We suggest that you order bundles of three, six, twelve, or more if you like, Socialist Standards each month.

How many times in the past have some of you missed the chance of handing to a friend a copy of this journal which, you know, would have made him keener to learn more about Socialism ?

Just think, is there one amongst you who couldn’t sell or give away to an enquiring member of your class a copy of the “S.S.”? Why! Most of you, if you tried but little, could sell six to twelve copies a month. (The writer knows of individuals who sell upwards of 100 “S.S.” per month.)

Therefore you are asked to take a job: there ' is no pay for it—except the satisfaction that you have increased your work for the Party and Socialism.

Political parties must be judged by their record—our record is contained in the “S.S.” first published in September, 1904, and in each successive issue right up to the one you are reading now. No other political party in this country has handled the case for Socialism in line with Marxism, that job was, and is, the job of the S.P.G.B. Whether or not this job is to be tackled with increasing vigour really depends on YOU—because the Party is as strong, and no stronger, than the efforts of our members and friends make it.

Apply yourself, therefore, with enthusiasm to the task you are asked to undertake: the Party and its journal must, and will, emerge from this war stronger than ever to carry on the struggle for Socialism. 

In a future issue a report of the response to this appeal will be published, and we hope that it will make all concerned happy in the knowledge that in these difficult times the influence of the “S.S.” is not only maintained, but growing from strength to strength.

Send your orders to:

S.P.G.B.,

42, Gt. Dover Street, London, S.E.1,

to whom all cheques, money orders, and postal orders should be made payable. Money with orders from sellers will be appreciated.

We express our thanks once again to those, who, in the past, have helped the Party, and we feel confident that every friend of the Party is going to see to it that we win this, the most critical battle in our history.

“Let battle commence!”

Angus McPhail

The Post-War Mirage (1941)

From the February 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

Turning aside from the horrors of the present, people are thinking about the world that is to be when the war is over; or, more accurately, a few people are telling the others what kind of world is being prepared for them. Socialists welcome this interest, but are alive to its dangers. It is so easy for those workers who are not experienced in political and economic questions to be taken in by proposals that are useless or worse than useless, and what is at once obvious to the Socialist in all these proposals is that none of them are even fresh—all have been tried before and found wanting.

The inquirer may, however, reply to this criticism by pointing out that many of the public men who support these various schemes claim to be Socialists. This claim need not detain us for more than a moment. Don’t stop to study what the salesman says about himself; look rather at the article he is trying to sell. Is it the genuine thing or is it a cheap and nasty substitute? And just give a thought to the question, whether you have been caught once before by buying the same spurious product from this man or another.

Is it true that capitalism, with its private ownership of the means of life, its rent, interest and profit, its buying and selling, and its system of wage-labour has been abundantly proved to be a wasteful, callous, and out-of-date form of social organisation? Is it not true that only Socialism can meet the needs of our age and abolish once and for all poverty and war and the other products of capitalism? If this is true, and it is, then anything other than Socialism is not what is needed. There is no half-way house. If the world does not go over to socialism it will remain under capitalism.

The Politicians Who Run Away

Judged by this test, all of the social reform proposals, pledges and promises filling the speeches of Liberal, Labour and Conservative leaders, bold as they are claimed to be, may be only ways of evading the plain issue1: “Shall socialism be introduced or shall capitalism remain in being?” The position of the Conservative who says that capitalism is on the whole satisfactory, and is certainly necessary, but that legislation about unemployment, housing, old-age pensions, etc., must be made more comprehensive, is understandable. We know that he is wrong, but we have the satisfaction of knowing as well exactly where he stands. The same cannot be said of those who profess to agree that socialism alone will solve the problem, but who go on to rely upon everything except socialism.

In this group is the Labour Party. “Socialism comes to the City,” says the retiring City Editor of the Daily Herald (December 31st, 1940), but when we read his article it is only to find that what came to the City was “Government control of foreign exchanges, of the new investment market, and of almost all the commodity markets.” Very interesting to those who are concerned with the financial apparatus of capitalism but nothing whatever to do with socialism.

“We are never going to move back to pre-war 1939,” says Mr. Attlee (Daily Herald, January 16th, 1941). “We have got to move forward into a new world.” “Never again must we have unemployment and poverty in the distressed areas.” 

Again very interesting, but those who know that socialism alone can solve these problems are entitled to ask Mr. Attlee to state plainly whether his new world is to be socialism or not. After all, Mr. Attlee claimed in his speech to be speaking for “the British Socialist movement.” The answer he gave was not a very plain one, but its meaning cannot be mistaken. The Daily Telegraph, in its report of the same speech, contains a passage omitted from the report in the Daily Herald: —

    Mr. Attlee, Lord Privy Seal and leader of the Socialist party, speaking at a luncheon of the Labour Book Service and the Fabian Society in London yesterday, said: “We are never going back to pre-1939. We have got to move forward into a new world.”
    He and his colleagues were working with people who disagreed with their Socialist ideas, and “we disagree with many of their ideas.” They had to work together. National unity was not attained by one lot of people putting all their ideas aside and accepting somebody else’s. (Daily Telegraph, January 16th, 1941.)

It is as certain as the rising of the sun that after Mr. Attlee has come to an agreement with people who disagree with socialism, the product of their joint labours will not be socialism.

Look, too, at Mr. Bevin’s declaration that social security and not profit should be the motive of our national life. Some Conservative newspapers attacked Mr. Bevin for his speech, and the Daily Herald, official organ of the Labour Party, came to his defence. The Herald did not show any of the boldness it is always urging upon other people, but hastily repudiated all idea that Mr. Bevin was proposing to abolish the capitalist system of society. Here is an extract from the Herald's editorial (November 25th, 1940):—

     . . . Mr. Bevin is sharply rebuked by a Tory newspaper. He is told, in a patronising tone, that profit must go on playing a part in our lives and that social security is already one of the great objectives of political effort.
     But in that case why quarrel with Mr. Bevin, who admitted that all profit could not be abolished?

Now, why cannot the timid leader-writer of the Daily Herald show some courage and sense of responsibility and say outright that he does not believe that the introduction of socialism is practical politics? Why cannot he quit shuffling and say in a way his readers will understand that the Labour Party believes the only possible new world after the war is a world based on capitalism, shorn of some larger degree of its worst evils?

We, as Socialists, are all for honesty and clarity in politics, and would be interested to hear from the Daily Herald why the profit-making system must be retained, how it is to be curbed, and what results are expected to flow from curbing it. Nazi Germany claims to have restricted capitalist profit to 6 per cent., and Fascist Italy to 7 per cent., while Bolshevik Russia has suppressed profit, while retaining the wages system (with vast inequality of incomes), and a growing burden of bondholding and interest payments to bondholders. Socialists are not at all impressed with any of the three forms of State capitalism or State-controlled capitalism.

Tho Soldier Who is Not Afraid

While the so-called “Socialists” in the Labour Party are busy repudiating any belief in the practicability of socialism, a touch of boldness sneaks into the columns of the Daily Herald from another quarter in an article by Captain Liddell Hart, described as “the world-famous writer on military affairs."

At the end of an article on winning the war, he writes: — 

       . . . Our new order should combine a guarantee of economic security, based on the free provision to everyone of the material necessities of life, with the largest possible measure of individual freedom outside the economic sphere. (Daily Herald, January 7th, 1941.)

Captain Liddell Hart may or may not have considered what would be the consequences of his proposal. It would at one stroke end the profit system. It could only be carried out by instituting socialism, the system of society based on common ownership, advocated for 36 years by the S.P.G.B.

Apart from a letter written to the Daily Herald by Mr. F. Montague, M.P. (January 11th, 1941), the implication of Captain Liddell Hart’s proposal appears to have passed unnoticed by the Labour Party and its organ, the Daily Herald. (It would have been appropriate if Mr. Montague, when he claimed that he had advocated this "for years, without much support,” had added that the S.P.G.B. had consistently preached socialism throughout its existence.)

So much for the bold planners and reformers and builders of new worlds. The new world will be socialism, or it will be remarkably like the old one in all essentials.

Edgar Hardcastle

The Suppression of the 'Daily Worker' (1941)

Editorial from the February 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

It was announced in the Press on January 2nd, 1941, that the Home Secretary, Mr. Morrison, had suppressed the Daily Worker and a journal known as The Week, because of their "systematic publication of matter calculated to foment opposition to the prosecution of the war to a successful issue." This action was taken under Regulation 2D of the Defence (General) Regulations. The Times (January 22nd) gives the following further details : ―

  "The effect of the Orders (the announcement continues) is that if any person prints, publishes, or distributes, or is in any way concerned in printing, publishing, or distributing either of these papers, he will be committing an offence.   The regulation provides that an Order under it, specifying a newspaper by name, shall have effect not only with respect to any newspaper published under that name, but with respect to any newspaper published under any other name if the publication thereof is in any respect a continuation of, or in substitution for, the publication of the newspaper named in the Order.   Orders have also been made under Defence Regulation 94B by the Home Secretary directing that the printing presses and other apparatus shall not be used until the leave of the High Court has been obtained, and authorising the police to take such steps, such as the taking possession of the plant or premises as may appear necessary for securing compliance with the Orders."

Most of the daily papers had editorials giving approval to the suppression, even if, in some instances, with a certain uneasiness. Hardly anywhere in the Press did the Daily Worker find a friend. Even the Manchester Guardian, which might have been expected to take an independent line, did not do so. Its reason is interesting. The Guardian (January 22nd, 1941) held that the Daily Worker's activities "might be excusable if the motives were honest, if it were really desired to help the country in its struggle to keep democracy alive in Europe. But the Daily Worker did not believe in the war or in democracy; its only aim was to confuse and weaken, We can well spare it."

This is a curious justification for suppression. Are the Communists dishonest? If by dishonesty is meant that they sought to gain members, influence, and power by exploiting every conceivable grievance, small or great, while not worrying whether the supporters thus recruited understood and accepted the more distant and fundamental aims of the Communist Party, then indeed the Communists are dishonest; but is not some degree of such dishonesty an old English custom among all political parties except the S.P.G.B.? And is it not obvious that the only way of limiting the influence that can be gained by such a group is to keep them right in the open where the very reticent Communist leaders and speakers can be constantly called upon to explain their motives and inspiration, their somersaulting policies, their associations, their tortuous methods and semi-secret organisation? Even from the declared standpoint of the Manchester Guardian one might have supposed that there is much to be said for the view of the "Londoner" in the Evening Standard, who says: "The Daily Worker does less damage when printed than when suppressed " (January 22nd, 1941).

The S.P.G.B. has its own, quite different, point of view. True to our basic principle we do not support suppression of opinion, however false we believe that opinion to be.

We have always thought and always said that the activities of the Communist Party have been a continual menace to the Socialist movement and the interest of the workers, not least the calculated dishonesty of their manoeuvres. It was not for nothing that Lenin urged Communists to resort to "strategy and adroitness, illegal proceedings, reticence and subterfuge, to anything in order to penetrate into trade unions, remain in them and carry out Communist work within them at any cost." The Communists have applied these unprincipled tactics in every field of their activities and propaganda. Among their schemings may be mentioned their support for the present war in the early weeks and their alternate support for and opposition to the Labour Party and its leaders. Since 1920, when the Communist Party was formed, it can truly be said that they have on some occasion or other urged the workers to support and then to oppose every prominent Labour leader, from MacDonald and Thomas to Morrison and Bevin. More recently (Daily Worker, March 30th, 1939) they were appealing by personal letter to Churchill, Sinclair and Attlee to get together to overthrow the Chamberlain Government and form a Government of their own in order "to save the country in the rapidly deepening crisis." It may well be said that they got the war they wanted (and then soon ceased to want it when Russia decided to be friends with Hitler) and got the Government they asked for and now it has got them.

So tortuous are the ways of the Communists that it is by no means impossible (the contents of the Daily Worker in recent weeks rather suggest this) that for some obscure reason they now no longer wanted the immunity from prosecution they sought last year by setting up a board of "influential persons" to run the Daily Worker but wanted to be suppressed.

All the same the S.P.G.B. is opposed to suppression of opinion. In our view the way to counter any kind of propaganda, and in the long the only way, is to meet it in the open in unfettered discussion. We are entitled to add that we practise what we preach and have always thrown open our platform to our opponents.

A further point to be noticed is that the Communist Party, while giving lip service to democracy in this country ― at least since they discovered that their early propaganda for dictatorship was not popular ― has never on any single occasion criticised and denounced the rigorous suppression of all independent parties and journals by the Bolsheviks in Russia. It is one of the unfortunate consequences of the suppression of the Daily Worker that the Communists, who are enemies of democratic methods, will be able to pose as martyrs in the struggle for democracy. Fundamentally an anti-Socialist organisation, they will be able falsely to represent themselves in the eyes of many workers as victims in the fight for in Socialism.

Marxism and Democracy (1941)

Book Review from the February 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

A useful addition to Socialist Literature

Lucien Laurat’s Marxism and Democracy (Gollancz, 1940, 7s. 6d.) was first published, in French, early in 1939 under the title "Marxism in Bankruptcy" (Marxisme en Faillite). It is a useful addition to Socialist literature and cannot fail to be of help to students of Marxism. While the author has decided views on the many controversies he deals with, he states a reasoned case and almost always gives the source of his many pointed quotations from the writings of Marx, Engels and others. He is not a doctrinaire, to whom Marx's writings are a text to be studied word by word and followed as a kind of Bible. As he says: "A Marxist cannot be orthodox unless he continually questions even the truths he has already acquired, including the words of Marx himself " (p. 48). But having considered the theories of the Bolsheviks, as well as the criticisms levelled at Marx from various hostile quarters, he shows once more how well the mature ideas of Marx and Engels accord with the developments and experiences of the years since their death.

The book will be of special interest to those who have read THE SOCIALIST STANDARD for a number of years. While on a few (but important) points his views differ from those of the S.P.G.B., it is remarkable to find him meeting one after another of the many misrepresentations of Marx with precisely the same arguments as those worked out in the ranks of the S.P.G.B. during its 36 years. Stating that one of his aims "is to disentangle the real ideas of Marx and Engels from the incredible confusion caused by their commentators," he summarises his conclusions as follows:—

"Firstly, that the ideas of Marx and Engels changed and developed as they learned from historical experience; secondly, that it is false to present them as apostles of violent methods at all costs; and thirdly, that whoever ascribes ideas of non-violence à la Gandhi to them would be equally wrong. In the light of the experience gained in the course of their lives as militant Socialists they decided that under a democratic regime the workers would be able to achieve their aims by peaceful means, providing that Capitalism did not itself destroy that democratic legality without which there could be no question of the successful adoption of peaceful means." (p.37)

Among the points he deals with on precisely the same lines as the S.P.G.B. are the Bolshevik claim that Marx and Engels advocated dictatorship on the Russian model (pp.38-43)—in passing he raps the knuckles of Mr. G. D. H. Cole for the same error; the Bolshevik claim that Marx favoured the smashing of the machinery of the capitalist state (p.44); the notion that Marx and Engels preached nationalisation (p. 45); and the claim that Bolshevik organisation and tactics were Marxian. Laurat shows, as did the S.P.G.B., that "the Bolshevist organisational theory . . . although labelled Marxist, in reality represents a lapse into Blanquism, and has its roots in the backward state of Russia in general and of the Russian working classes in particular " (p.122)

He points out interestingly how the Great War, 1914-1918, had as one of its consequences that it stirred into activity and drove into some of the workers' organisations great masses of workers whose political experience and understanding were not superior to the experience and understanding of workers who had been in such organisations before 1914, but greatly inferior. "Unacquainted with the ideas and methods of Socialism, except for a few ill-digested slogans," these inexperienced raw recruits were the material on which the Communists, with their theory of an intelligent minority leading the unenlightened masses, were able to work successfully. The backwardness inside Russia and the backwardness of these workers outside Russia combined to produce results which have been deplorable for the working class and Socialism.

One of the questions on which Laurat holds a different view from that of the S.P.G.B. is that of Socialists collaborating with capitalist parties. His argument is that in the period of ferment after the last war "the strength of the Socialist parties had very considerably increased. Socialism judged, with very good reason . . . that it was now strong enough to exercise a considerable, if not decisive influence on the Government. However, it was nowhere strong enough to take power alone " (p.152)

There were three alternatives: (1) To share power with bourgeois parties whilst waiting until they had won over a majority of the electorate ; (2) to entrench themselves in intransigent opposition and decline the responsibilities of power until the situation was ripe; and (3) to try to seize power by force.

The last solution was the Bolshevik solution. It failed to produce Socialism and necessarily failed to do so:—

"Even in power alone, ruling by terror, and no longer hampered by the resistance of their bourgeois colleagues, the Socialist ministers, or commissars of the people, would still find themselves face to face with hard economic reality, peremptorily forbidding the immediate establishment of Socialism." (p.153)

The second solution he likewise rejects, because "when a Socialist party has between 40 and 45 per cent, of the seats in Parliament it is impossible for it to abstain from participation except at the price of feebly handing over power to a bourgeois coalition in which the extreme Right would have every chance of seizing the principal levers of government and weakening democracy " (pp.153-4)

“Nothing remains in practice but the first solution: Socialist participation in the Government, in spite of all the risks attached to it " (p.154)

Laurat here fails to face up to the fact that his first "solution'' led to the discrediting of the parties that adopted it and in doing so it helped to weaken parliamentary democracy and to turn the workers to Fascist or Communist doctrines of dictatorship. The weakness of his argument should have been obvious to him. He concedes (p.153) that refusing the responsibility of office (which means in all these instances refusing the responsibility of administering capitalism) is conceivable "in countries where the parliamentary representation of Socialism was still relatively feeble." He also concedes (p.152) that much of the support on which the "Socialist" parties relied was that of "immature" masses who had declared for "Socialism" "often by instinct rather than by knowledge and reflection." All of which boils down to the simple fact that the "Socialist" parties (by which he means such parties as the Labour Party) had made the fundamental error of building up their membership and fighting elections on a programme which attracted instead of repelling the "immature masses" who did not understand Socialism. In other words, the parties with 40 to 45 per cent. representation in Parliament had it under false pretences.

It is surprising that Laurat is blind to this, because elsewhere he stresses the importance of real Socialist understanding. As he puts it on page 119, these workers are "in need above all things of a strong dose of Socialist education."

Readers of THE SOCIALIST STANDARD will appreciate Laurat's final plea that the working class "must reject the ' leader ' cult more and more categorically. Unfortunately, far too many workers are still addicted to this cult, though it reeks of both Fascism and Bolshevism, and has nothing whatever to do with Marxism (pp.253-4)

As there are other important points in the book it is hoped to return to them in a further article.

It is a pity that the book costs 7s. 6d., and has no index. The translator, Mr. Edward Fitzgerald, is to be congratulated on his work.

Edgar Hardcastle