Is There a Class War? (1953)

From the February 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many Labour Party leaders and Tory counterparts would agree with “The Economist” that, “today, the class war description of trade union activity is out of date; its spirit is kept alive by the Communists because it is part of the Soviet war on social democracy, by others only because their thought ossified years ago.” (September 6th, 1952.)

“The Economist” could mean that society itself had changed and the class war description no longer applied or else it could mean that the analysis of capitalism as a society based on class conflict had been proved wrong; that today, the working class, through their trade unions, must work hand in hand with their employers to increase production if they want to further their interests.

Whichever meaning is taken the result remains the same. Either view will find many adherents among the apologists for the present system in the avowedly capitalist and allegedly labour parties.

Class war is usually associated with the name of Karl Marx, and the Communist parties pay lip-service to some of his theories; it is true that they preach class war, at times, but they also preach class collaboration, whichever suits the needs of Soviet policy.

Long before Marx, historians and economists recognised the existence of classes and the conflict between them. These facts proved useful in the struggles of the rising capitalist class against the relics of the feudal aristocracy. But in the Munzer uprising in Germany, the Levellers in the English Revolution and Babeuf in the French Revolution, Marx saw the beginnings of class struggle between the working class and capitalist class and put forward the view that the outcome of this conflict would be the establishment of a classless society. To the classical economists the struggle between the working class and the capitalist class was an obstacle to the development of capitalist production and they claimed that a harmonious relationship between capital and labour would develop the productive forces and provide plenty for all. But the wishful thinking of the economists couldn't alter the facts. As Frederick Engels, Marx’s friend and collaborator, pointed out, the struggles of the working class movement in England and France in the early 19th century showed that harmony between the two classes was impossible.

Marx completed the analysis of capitalist society started by earlier economists. He showed that the tendency of capitalist development was for the means and instruments of production to become concentrated in the hands of a smaller and smaller section of society and that the bulk of the population having no other access to the means of living must sell their ability to work to this small group in order to live. They received in the form of wages barely sufficient to keep them and what they produced more than this was pocketed by the capitalist class; this surplus being the purpose behind the productive process. Goods were not produced because people needed them, but because they could be sold at a profit. If the workers demanded higher wages it meant less profits for the capitalist class, if the capitalist class reaped bigger profits it meant greater exploitation of the working class. This gave rise to an antagonism of interest between the capitalist class and working class that would remain as long as capitalism lasts.

Today, the vast majority of the people still have to sell their labour power for a wage often hardly enough to live on. The small section of society, the capitalist class, still own the means and instruments of production—nationalisation doesn’t alter the capitalist class ownership, it only changes the name above the door. At present there is a general demand for wage increases, by the working class through their trade unions; institutions which have arisen for the sole purpose of fighting to improve wages and conditions and are the only means whereby the workers can express their demands. There is also the demand for greater production and wage restraint made by press and parliament, and all the other powerful means of expression at the disposal of the capitalist class.

Yet many claim that there is no fundamental class conflict in society. They are like the ostrich which buries its head in the ground. When the one party is pushing through measures the opposition party criticizes it for carrying on class-warfare and yet they maintain a class war doesn’t exist Why then the resistance? It takes at least two forces to give rise to a conflict And incidentally, most of these measures have nothing whatever to do with the clash of interest between the capitalist class and the working class but where is their logic? They would say that opposition was imbued with the idea of the class struggle. Are the engineering and shipbuilding unions along with the many others demanding higher wages because they are imbued with the theory of class struggle? It is obvious that they are struggling to maintain their standard of living in the face of rising prices.

The more capitalism has changed the more it remains the same; the existence of classes and the conflict between them are essential to it.

There was some justification for the classical economists holding the view that if only capital and labour worked in harmony plenty could be produced for everyone. Capitalism was in the early stages of development; the class ownership of the means and instruments of production hadn't really shown itself to be a fetter on the further development of the productive forces.

But today, Capitalism has forged those gigantic productive forces which if the working class willed it, could lay the foundation for a society that would provide plenty for all.

The experience of the working class movement throughout the world since Engels’ day has endorsed his argument that any concord between capital and labour is impossible. The scientific analysis of capitalist society has proved that no agreement can be possible. The highest expression of this working class experience is the struggle for the abolition of Capitalism, and the establishment of Socialism—a classless society.

J. T.

About Books (1953)

Book Reviews from the February 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

Unfortunately, or maybe, fortunately, we are not on the lists that book publishers use for sending out free copies for review. Being members of the working class we are unable to acquire all the books that are published, and very few books when they are first published. Further, being members of the working class, we have limited time for reading. Invariably we wait until we learn something about a book before we give it a scanning and refer to it in these columns. That means that some books are in their second or third, or even later, editions before we get round to them.

Such a book is “Cry, the Beloved Country,” by Alan Paton published by Jonathan Cape at 10s. 6d. This book was first published in 1948 but the recent film of the story has drawn a lot of attention to it.

It is a story of what may be termed the industrial revolution of South Africa. It deals with the final destruction of tribal life among the African negroes and the drawing away of the younger men and women from the rural areas to. the industrial centres where they become wage workers. It emphasises the difficulties that these people experience in adapting themselves to the conditions of a rapidly expanding capitalism and the crimes that follow from their abject poverty.

The story centres mainly in Johannesburg where theft, prostitution, drunkenness, rape, robbery with violence and murder are rife. The author tells us in his introductory note that his story is a compound of truth and fiction. He says that his account of the boycott of the buses, the erection of Shanty Town, the finding of gold at Odendaalsrust and the strike of the miners is such a fiction-truth compound; that in some respects it is not true, but “considered as a social record it is the plain and simple truth.”

The whole theme is worthy of a better approach. The events narrated are viewed through the eyes of a religious humanitarian and the story is plastered with religious quotes and sentiments. There are passages that reveal a clear understanding of the process that is taking place in South Africa, but the idea that permeates the book is that the solution to the negro workers' problems is to be found in a kinder, more Christian and humanitarian approach, especially on the part of the white population. This is overdone and spoils the reading. This is a book worth reading if it should come your way, but it is not worth going out of your way to read it.

Another book first published in 1948 is “Men, Machines and History” by S. Lilley and published by the Cobbett Press, 10s. 6d. This is volume seven of a series entitled “Past and Present” which is being published under the guidance of an impressive editorial board of professors. We learn that it was the publisher's original intention to complete the series with about forty books but they seem to have petered out after number eight. The eight books of this series that we have read are good. “Men, Machines and History” is exceedingly good.

Fundamental to an understanding of the socialist case is the knowledge that it is the continuous improvement in the tools that man uses that is fundamentally responsible for the changes in the structure of the society of which he is a member. Human society has travelled a long way since the days of the flint sickle and stone hammer—to the days of jet-propelled transport, radar and the release of atomic energy. At certain points in that journey we can observe how a particular discovery or a group of inventions have had an outstanding effect upon the prevailing method of production. We can, for instance, see how the invention of gunpowder hastened the end of the rule of the feudal baron protected by his armour and his castellated walls. We can see how the discovery of steam power released a flood of subsidiary inventions and gave impetus to the industrial revolution in this country, and the social changes that followed it.

Those are the glaring examples. This book, “Men, Machines and History,” takes us from the time of Palaeolithic man with his primitive tools of stone, bone and ivory through the 7,000 and more years to the end of the last war and the release of atomic energy. It refers to many hundreds of inventions between those times and gives us a little of the mechanics, a little of the technology and a little of the social effects surrounding many of them.

The author says that he has made his references to social conditions very brief because other books in the series will provide the social background at greater length. All the same, his references are extremely pertinent.

He tells us of the discovery of copper and the inventions that followed from it and how, by 3000 B.C. it had produced a decisive change in the social structure.

  “The simple communities of more or less equal farmers had been replaced by states in which the vast majority of the inhabitants lived at subsistence level, often as slaves or serfs, while all the surplus product of their labours was used to provide a luxurious existence for a small class of kings, nobles and priests, as well as supporting the civil services and armies which formed the mechanism for extracting from the masses the products of their work. Class-divisions had become the basis of social structure." (Page 11.)

Mr. Lilley then goes on to tell us that a given social structure, having been thrown up by a level of technical development, can then become a retarding influence on further technical advance. He instances the great slave empires that arose in Greece and Rome following the division of society into classes. The stagnation of technique that prevailed at that time was not due to lack of problems to be solved but to the make-up of society into, broadly speaking, two classes; the down-trodden peasants, slaves and serfs who did all the productive work and received only the bare necessities of life in return, and the small ruling class of priests, nobles and kings who did no productive work but lived in privilege and luxury on the fruit of the work of others.

The working class had knowledge and experience of the tools and techniques that were then in existence. They could quite simply have invented improvements, except that they had no incentive to invent since any increase in production would be taken away from them to add to the wealth of their masters. Further, as they worked to the utmost, they had no leisure time to devote to invention.

The ruling class, on the other hand, had no contact with the process of production, was ignorant of the technical deficiencies and had no practical knowledge and experience to effect improvements.

Yet, in this period of stagnation progress did not altogether cease; we learn of the invention of the spoked wheel, improvements in military equipment and the diffusion of the use of bronze over large parts of Europe.

So we can proceed through the middle ages, the industrial revolution and two world wars marvelling at the ingenuity of man. The book is splendidly and copiously illustrated and carries graphs and charts showing relative invention rates and other interesting data. Right at the end of his book the author betrays a sneaking regard for Soviet Russia and boosts the rate of progress in that country. We can overlook that against the excellence of his work.

In “Retrospect and Summary” at the end of the book the author arrives at two complementary conclusions: 

   “. . . the form of society has a very great effect on the rate of inventions . . .  a form of society which in its young days encourages technical progress can, as a result of the very inventions it engenders, eventually come to retard further progress until a new social structure replaces it.”
  " . . . technical progress—invention and the spread of the use of invention—is a fundamental factor in determining social structure and in bringing about the necessity for a change from one social structure to another."

We could not agree more. Hasten the day when the capitalist social structure gives way to the socialist one.

W. Waters

The Struggle for Power in Russia (1953)

From the February 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since the arrest of nine doctors, most of them Jewish, on charges of murder and attempted murder of Russian military and civil leaders at the instigation of foreign governments and the Zionist movement, political commentators in the Western countries have been busy trying to guess what are the hidden forces and personal ambitions that will explain why the Russian Government chose to expose itself to publicity that must gravely damage its prestige and embarrass its Communist supporters in other countries. While the explanations vary and are often contradictory they almost all agree in refusing to accept the validity of the charges and die prisoners’ “confessions.” Most of them start off with the crippling defect of assuming that Communism exists in Russia and that the Russian Government’s actions are dictated by interest in furthering Communist ideas. President Truman carried this kind of examination to its logical extreme by interpreting the trial as a sign of Russian weakness, due, he said, to “ a fatal flaw in their society. Theirs is a Godless system.”

A much more objective approach was made in Manchester Guardian editorials (14,16 and 17 January, 1953). Here there was a serious attempt to compare political methods and motives in Russia with those in the Western Powers. It was frankly recognised that “communism has nothing to do with the struggle” and that the concern of the Russian State “is not with communism but with power; it uses communist jargon to serve its purpose, but that purpose is the maintenance and extension of power.”

Admitting that in this respect “ Russia does not differ appreciably from the ordinary Western State,” the writer singled out as the important difference the fact that in Russia, since there are no political parties able to fight out the struggle for office in election contests, the form it must take is that of plotting, intrigue, and the violent removal of rival claimants. Victory means power, defeat means extinction. The '‘Guardian” writer’s conclusion is that whatever the present grouping of the contestants the likely outcome when Stalin dies is that the generals will move to the front of the political stage:—

“The fears and the hopes, as the life of Stalin moves to its end, may split that political structure as they have split so many before in the history of States. There will not be the authority of a Lenin or a Stalin to hold the ambitious down, nor the prestige of a Generalissimo to check the generals. The lions now under the throne will struggle for the seat on the throne. And in that struggle can the throne survive? May it not be that already the first faint shadow of anarchy and civil war is beginning to fall on Russia?”

It is an interesting speculation, but what is of more concern is to consider what sort of country Russia is that such events can take place there. As a great capitalist power in a capitalist world Russia is subject to the same kind of internal strains and external pressures as other powers; the need to keep an impoverished working class more or less content with wage-slavery; the need to accumulate capital and increase productivity in order to build up modem industry capable of serving the military and civil needs of capitalism; the need to force an unwilling peasantry into collective farms so that by increased production and government requisitions on produce the towns can be fed and manufacture supported; and of course the need to defend and expand its world position in face of the other powers. These are problems much like those of. all governments, but once those in power in Russia had committed themselves to dictatorship by suppressing the Constituent Assembly because it had not a Communist majority and then suppressing all political parties except their own, there was no other way of maintaining power against internal discontents, whether in the inner circle or among the population as a whole, than that of violence and terror.

For a guide the commentators, instead of looking for explanations in current ideological disputes in Communist circles, could more profitably have looked at Russian “palace revolutions” under 17th and 18th century Czarism or at any European country a few centuries ago. In such conditions current Russian events cease to appear fantastic; everything is possible, including plots to murder generals (almost alone the Manchester Guardian considers that “it would not be surprising if an attempt at medical assassination had in fact been made, from whatever motive”). Whether there ever was such a plot or whether it was the vile invention of the rulers of Russia, either way the event throws a revealing light on the savage political conditions of that country, for these accusations were made by men who know that they can count on wide masses of the population believing that such things are possible and that American-backed Zionism is responsible. So strong are the passions of rival contenders that either one group under cover of medical attention will murder its enemies or another group, those in power, will fabricate a plot and thus bring about the legal murder of innocent men as part of a political manoeuvre to discredit its rivals. This is the political system that Russia’s admirers tell us is so superior to the politics of Western countries!

It should also be noted that the men who are charged have spent 35 years under Communist rule. They are men holding responsible and well-paid positions in the Soviet “Paradise ” and now we must believe either that desperation drove them to political murder or that they are the innocent victims of other men's desperate ambitions. This tells us more about Russia than all the soothing accounts of unruffled progress and happiness brought back by the stream of credulous visitors, not one of whom in the past year or so has given so much as a hint of the bloody struggles for power going on behind the facade.

Labour's lost illusions (1953)

Editorial from the February 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

Right from the formation of the Labour Party the S.P.G.B. opposed it, holding that its doctrine of changing class relationships through social reforms and its hope of abolishing war through international expressions of goodwill were founded in error about the nature of capitalism and socialism.

The S.P.G.B still opposes the Labour Party for the same reasons but in the meantime the Labour Party has undergone a profound change, one that would have surprised and dismayed its pioneers. At its birth it had a genuine belief in its principles; now the fire and inspiration have died and what is left are the vote-catching manoeuvres of a caucus of disillusioned political managers, hardly distinguishable from those who control the Tory Party machine.

Two early themes of the Labour Party propaganda were nationalisation and the search for peace. The words are still in use but the content has changed almost out of recognition. At first, as in Keir Hardie's “From Serfdom to Socialism,” nationalisation was urged (mistakenly but with apparent sincerity), as a stepping stone to Socialism. Then came a later state when nationalisation became an end in itself; and a third stage when “Public Boards” were discovered to be better than nationalisation.

Lastly came the discovery, openly voiced Mr. Herbert Morrison and others during the recent Labour Government's six years of administering capitalism, that the Labour ideal is a co-called “mixed economy,” a partnership between the Government and private capitalism.

Even this does not satisfy Mr. Morrison, for in a speech at Norwich, on January 5th, he rebuked those of his Party colleagues who are so "conservatively minded" as to be reluctant to adapt themselves to the "new" conditions.

"We have evolved a society which is certainly not a socialist society, but which is a changed and more socialistic society compared with that of fifty or even twenty years ago. In these circumstances our ideas, our policies, our language—these things are bound to be somewhat different—require from us adaptability, and modifications are bound to occur as society evolves."

(Manchester Guardian 6 January, 1953)

The other inspiration of the early Labour Party was its reluctance to support war and armaments. At its annual conference in January, 1914, a few months before it was caught up in the war fever, it passed a resolution opposing increased armaments and conscription, endorsing the idea of international working class action against war, and seeking "to replace our present system of armed peace by an alliance between all the workers of the world for the purpose of lifting the burdens of poverty which press upon them today." (Report, Page 121).

Just a week before Mr. Morrison made his speech about adaptability the Daily Herald, mouthpiece of the T.U.C. and Labour Party, showed how well it had learned the lesson—and to what depths the once idealistic movement has fallen. This was in an editorial called 'Partnership," published on 29 December, 1952.

It dealt with the latest version of the Labour Party's attitude to capitalism and dealt in a way with its ideas on peace and war. It should have earned top marks from Mr. Morrison. It began with "warm congratulations"; addressed to all who have had a hand in a recent outstanding technical achievement. And it ended, on the right Morrisonian note, with "all praise to the British industry for a fruitful partnership between public and private enterprise."

The reader will wonder what can have been the sweet (or bitter) fruit that lifted thus the heart of the Herald leader writer. What kind of product could it be that led the writer to say that "it is to such triumphs of skill and planning that Britain must look for victory in her battle for economic survival?"

It was "the new Scimitar jet bomber," described by an equally enthusiastic writer in the Herald's Conservative rival, the Daily Express (28 December) as able to fly "faster, further, higher than any other bomber," with "ten times the power of last war's best."

The only discernible difference of approach between the Labour Herald and the Conservative Express is that the former sees in it a justification for the new Labour Party ideal of "large grants from the Ministry of Supply" which enabled the private firm to get ahead of American rivals.

Workers who still believe that the Labour Party is not like other parties of capitalism should ponder these things and draw the obvious conclusion.