Here Today and Gone Tomorrow (1950)

From the February 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the 14th December,1949, Traicho Kostov, the former Vice-Premier of Bulgaria, was sentenced to death for treason by the Bulgarian Supreme Court. Two days later he was executed—so quickly do the wheels of Bulgarian law turn they did not allow even an appeal. Ten other "Communists” were tried with him, of whom five received life sentences, three got 15 years, one 12, and the other 8 years' imprisonment. All his companions, following the tradition of the Russian trials, pleaded guilty. Kostov, though pleading guilty to "anti-Soviet activities," was unexpectedly awkward and insisted that he was not guilty of the major charges levied against him, of spying for Britain and plotting on behalf of Yugoslavia.

The trial followed the usual lines. All of Kostov's companions were abject in their confessions of guilt, admitting unreservedly that the charges made against them were true. At the same time, some of them tried to make things better for themselves by making things worse for Kostov, accusing him of all manner of things, in particular of blackmailing them into doing what they had done.

The prosecution, of course, did even better. Chervenkov, the secretary of the Central Committee and the present "big-boss" of Bulgaria, coined a new word specially for the occasion—"Kostovism." "Kostovism," he said, "is Titoism on Bulgarian soil, and like Titoism is grows on treason and espionage." Further, said Chervenkov, Kostov had managed to assume the leadership of the Bulgarian Communist Party, thanks to his "devilish duplicity, fantastic hypocrisy, and subtle diabolical methods." (Times, 2nd December, 1949.)

Whether the charges are true or false, we hold no brief for Kostov. What has happened to him he would no doubt have had happen to others if the circumstances had demanded it. But what strikes us as worthy of record is this further fantastic example of the way in which "Communist heroes" are turned into "imperialist blackguards" almost overnight. Turning back the pages of history only a little way, this is what the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party said about Kostov just over two years ago:

    “Great are your achievements, Comrade Traicho Kostov, as the builder of the party, as teacher and instructor of the party members. Under your leadership and your heroic example thousands of party members were educated into absolute loyalty to the party. In the underground, in prisons, tens of thousands of party members studied, and are at present studying at liberty, your lectures and your books; they are learning from the example of your life and career, from your utmost loyalty to the party and the people.
    “Today, as Deputy Prime Minister in the Government headed by the wise leader of the party and the people, Comrade George Dimitrov, you are his right hand; you the direct executor of the economic reconstruction in the country, of the economic plan, of the great construction work in our republic.
   “Your deep Marxist-Leninist theoretical knowledge, your great culture, your famous industry and steadfastness, your modesty, your iron will, your unquestionable loyalty towards the party and the working class are those Bolshevik characteristics which beautify your whole lighting life, forever united with the struggle of the party.
    “A loyal colleague of George Dimitrov, and his first assistant, you are to-day one of the most loved and respected leaders of our party, a great statesman and builder of new Bulgaria.
   “Comrade Traicho Kostov! The Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist party is wishing you good health and strength so that you may go on working just as loyally, unceasingly, and whole-heartedly for the party and the people, for the triumph of the economic plan, and the great historical achievements of the working class.” (Manchester Guardian 15/12/49.)

This effusion, incidentally, is signed by Chervenkov, later Kostov’s bitterest accuser.

As with many other Communist twists and turns, this one has its amusing side. Kostov the "traitor" was, it appears, the author of the Bulgarian Communist Constitution passed in 1947 with great acclamation, and presumably still in force. At the fifth party congress held only a year ago it was he who put forward the party's future political programme, which again was most enthusiastically received. Further, according to the Times correspondent (2nd December, 1949), "All party pamphlets on policy, strategy, and tactics have now to be re-edited as they were almost all written by Kostov."

Finally, to add insult to injury, a Bulgarian newspaper, says the Times correspondent, has recently protested that the official film of the fifth party congress is still going the rounds of the country. In one shot stands Kostov. On one side is Dimitrov; on the other is Suslov, the Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party!

Communists the world over must be kept pretty busy one way and the other. Half their time they spend working out the implications of the new Party-line, the other half scrubbing out the evidence and the effects of the old one.

Stan Hampson

Interpreting Shakespeare (1950)

Book Review from the February 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

New books on the life, works and ideas of Shakespeare are continually added to the enormous literature on the subject. Recent additions have included Ivor Brown's "Shakespeare," Duff-Cooper's “Sergeant Shakespeare" (in which it is suggested that be must have served in the army to have gained his familiarity with military matters), and a reprint of Hesketh Pearson's lively and entertaining "Shakespeare" that Ivor Brown catalogues under the heading "Imaginative.” Pearson seeks to interpret Shakespeare’s writings in the light of political and other happenings at the time, and of Shakespeare's likely reactions to them. Writing during the recent war when, as Pearson puts it, the world had before its eyes in the persons of Hitler, Mussolini, etc., a large number of modem Julius Caesars. Pearson claims that Shakespeare, with a similar example to study at first hand in Queen Elizabeth, had a much better understanding of Caesar and of all dictators than is shown by G. B. Shaw in his idealised version of the ancient Roman dictator.

But for Socialists a much more profitable study is "Shakespeare—A Marxist Interpretation,” a short work by A. A. Smirnov, translated from the Russian and published in 1937 by the “Critics Group” (96, Fifth Avenue. New York).

Smirnov set out to relate Shakespeare's views to the basic economic and political changes and class struggles taking place in the 16th century.

He argues alike against those who see Shakespeare as "the ideologist of the feudal aristocracy” as against those who see him as "the ideologist of that section of the nobility which was acquiring bourgeois trappings.” To Smirnov, “Shakespeare was the humanist ideologist of the bourgeoisie, the exponent of the program advanced by them, when, in the name of humanity. they first challenged the feudal order, but which they later disavowed ” (Pages 92 and 93). According to this interpretation, which Smirnov supports with many quotations from the plays, Shakespeare in the early years portrayed in a favourable light the absolutist monarchy needed by rising Capitalism as a protection against the warring feudal barons. Later, that need became less urgent, the Monarchy and Court degenerated and leaned towards feudal reaction, and at the same time the narrow Puritan group emerged as a representation of capitalist interests and outlook.

Then Shakespeare, who was particularly antagonised by the Puritan hostility to the theatre, found himself, like other "humanists,” faced with the dilemma of the contrast between early bourgeois ideals and the sordid money-grubbing of the bourgeois way of life. To some extent he then "surrendered his former position and yielded to the taste of the reactionary aristocracy which held such triumphant sway over the London stage in 1610.” (P. 85.)

The evidence adduced by Smirnov is necessarily partly speculative and may or may not convince the reader; but those who follow his argument will at any rate appreciate that here is a serious study worth many of the more usual superficial interpretations.

It is not made clear whether Smirnov is, or was. a supporter of the Stalin regime in Russia and he wrote very guardedly when expressing dissent from views on Shakespeare held by some Soviet writers. But one of his tributes to Shakespeare would certainly now give offence to Stalin worshippers. He praises Shakespeare for having had the insight to realise "three centuries before the appearance of scientific history,” that the battle of Agincourt was not won by “a little group of well-born heroes, but by the English soldiers.” If Shakespeare lived in Russia now and wrote plays dealing with the war he would have to reshape his ideas and become a groveller. He would have to pay slavish tribute to "the great leader and supreme commander of genius. Generalissimo of the Soviet Union. Stalin." “the greatest man of our planet." "creator of Soviet military science.” etc., etc.

Edgar Hardcastle

Fifty Years Mark-Time (1950)

Book Review from the February 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Francis Williams, one-time Editor of the Daily Herald, has written a history of the Labour Party. "Fifty Years' March, The Rise of the Labour Party", published by Odhams Press, Ltd. We suspect that Mr. Williams wrote with a distemper brush. He has certainly given the Labour Party an unblemished white-washing. The main theme of this history is summed up by Mr. Attlee in the foreword to the book. He says:-

"It is a story very characteristic of Britain, showing the triumph of reasonableness and practicability over doctrinaire impossibilism."

Mr. Williams insists that the Labour Party is a Socialist Party, claiming that after years of endeavour by the Independent Labour Party, the Fabian Society and the Clarion Scouts, it finally became a Socialist Party when it was re-organised by Arthur Henderson following the war of 1914-18. He says that the programme contained in "Labour and the New Social Order" put the seal on its Socialist character. But Mr. Williams does not give us even an attempt at a definition of Socialism. He writes on various pages of Christian Socialists, Marxist Socialists, Guild Socialists, reformists who were Socialists, industrial actionists who were Socialists, in fact, all sorts of different Socialists until we are forced to wonder if the word Socialism has any meaning at all for Mr. Williams.

Here, according to Mr. Williams, is Keir Hardie's brand of Socialism : —

"Only if men were moved, he believed, by the warm hearted, idealistic gospel of Socialism could there be created a new social order . . . " (page 13.)

The author quotes Bruce Glasier : —

. . . "It is from the prophets, apostles and saints, the religious mystics and heretics, rather than from statesmen, economists and political reformers, that the socialist movement derives its examples and ideals . . . Socialism means not only the Socialisation of wealth, not only the Socialisation of the means of production and distribution, but of our lives, our hearts—ourselves . . . " (page 105.)

That Mr. Williams tells us, "was the spirit that made the early I.L.P.". That spirit, he continues, "when harnessed to the intellectual integrity of the Fabians and the practical idealism and economic experience of the trade unions" made the Labour Party. Well, we knew that there was something wrong with the Labour Party, but we did not know that it was that.

Of Ramsay MacDonald, a man who, we are told on page 169, was suspected by trade unionists of being too Socialist, we learn that "he was a Socialist of a peculiarly philosophical and inactive—indeed one might say non-political—kind. His Socialism was not based on an understanding of the economic forces at work in society. He had little knowledge of economics . . . What made him a Socialist was a romanticized conception of natural history, acquired during his early biological studies and transformed without amendment to the political struggle" (pages 198-199).

Later in the book, the author quotes with approval from Robert Blatchford: "We can't have Socialism without Socialists" and, Mr. Williams says: " . . . that was the true answer . . . " Having read in his book of the different brands of "Socialism" expounded by Bernard Shaw, Sidney Webb, Robert Blatchford, Victor Grayson, Tom Mann, J. H. Thomas, Philip Snowden and a shoal of others including the Communism of John Wyclif, we are left astounded that the author can quote that short passage from Blatchford and continue to call the Labour Party a Socialist Party.

One thing the author does make clear, although possibly without intending to do so. That is, that the founders of the Labour Party wanted to build a political Party with a substantial numerical strength and they were quite prepared to sacrifice their respective "Socialist" principles at the altar of a large membership. He tells that most of the prominent early workers in the Labour Party were far-seeing enough to build an organisation with numerical and financial strength and a firm foundation of mass support. He proceeds to show us throughout the pages of the book, how the so called Socialists of the Labour Party have had to compromise, twist, wriggle, turn, betray and mis-lead the non-Socialist mass support in order to hold it together. And after studying that sort of thing for years, seeing the struggle between the mass support and the leadership, the desertions, the betrayals, the collapses, and the failure to prevent the evils of capitalism, Mr. Williams still thinks that the Labour Party is a Socialist Party. He still has not learned that the strength of a working-class Party lies not just in its numbers but in its understanding of its objective and its determination to achieve it.

The first few chapters of the book present an interesting story of the early struggles of the workers in this country and of the efforts leading up to the foundation of the Labour Party, although the author betrays his prejudice when he writes of men like Hyndman and Karl Marx. Altogether the book is very readable providing the reader does not get as confused as the author as to what Socialism really is. If this book can be read in conjunction with the SOCIALIST STANDARD for the years that are covered it makes instructive and interesting reading.

W. Waters

The People You Meet No. 4 — "George" (1950)

From the February 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

Every morning you'll see old George on the 8.45 from Ilford to Liverpool Street, with his neatly rolled umbrella and Daily Express. The affairs of the world are decided in his compartment. Lately they have come to the conclusion that the workers are very lazy, impudent in insisting on wage increases, and in need of the "big stick" of unemployment.

"But didn't you say George came from Ilford where one pawnbroker alone left a million pounds? They've got branches of Woolworths', Montague Burton's and every other chain store. They've even got a labour exchange."

Yes, George's district has all those things, and George is a worker too; but never tell him I said so. He'd throw a fit. You see, George has got on in the world. His old man was only a factory hand but he's "something in the city." Where poor old Dad only produces the goods, George has the job of adding up the profits their common master makes on them. He's got his own house in Ilford, or a least will have in ten years' time when he's finished thirty years' mortgage repayment; his own car, only a Ford, but still a car, and his boy is at a fifth-rate public school.

Wage slave? Not at all, says George. George gets a salary cheque. He's very proud of that. Of course, he doesn't realise what this constitutes. Far from being the value of his services, it is no more than the cost of his production. In other words, enough to provide him and his wife and child with food, clothing and shelter with just a little over for entertainment. Of course, he gets more than Dad. He has required more training and it costs more for his upkeep. Imagine the look on the boss's face of George bowled up to work in dungarees; he must wear black coat and striped trousers, well pressed and neat. He must live somewhere respectable. It enhances the good name of the firm.

Yet George knows poverty—an insidious genteel poverty. In Stepney the kid tells the insurance agent that "Mum says she's out." In Ilford George's wife tells him she hasn't cashed his pay cheque. In slumland the poverty is constant and open, in Ilford it hides behind the curtains and a shining door knocker. And George knows other features of capitalism too. Several hundred of his kind recently were axed from the civil service. As the conditions of capitalism grow tighter the administrative workers are the first to be pruned. What then?—addressing envelopes for football pools or going from door to door trying to sell vacuum cleaners on the never-never to workers as poor as himself.

Yet in spite of it all George still won't have it that he's a worker. And it pays the capitalist to foster this belief, to persuade George that he is a member of the mythical "middle class." The squabbles between "officers and employeeds," "staff and hands," "black coat and dungarees" all tend to hide the real struggle between capitalist and wage-slave, irrespective of the form his slavery may take.

But he's in for a shock. The breeze of economic troubles is fact becoming a tornado, and what will he do then? Maybe the shock will do him good, clear the mist from his eyes, and show him his correct alignment—in the ranks of the workers striving for Socialism.

Ronald.