Civilization? (1972)

Book Review from the February 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

Civilization. A Personal View, by Kenneth Clark. BBC and John Murray. £2.25 (paperback).

Discussing man's transition from dependence on nature to dominion over it, Marx, more than a century ago, gave us a description of civilisation which could have been written yesterday. “Work no longer seems to be included in the production process as man rather stands apart from the production process as its regulator and guardian . . .  In this transformation it is less the immediate labour performed by man himself, or the time that he works, than the appropriation of his general productivity, his comprehension of nature and dominion over it through his existence as a social body . . . that appears as the supporting pillar of production and wealth.” It must be a great pity that Kenneth Clark was not familiar with this passage, as it could easily have set his personal view of civilisation in a more purposeful mould than the philosopher-seeking-after-truth image, which we have here.

Millions of people will recall with pleasure, and no doubt considerable enlightenment, the television epic (a composition in a lofty narrative style) from the script of which this book is compiled. While the author stays in his own field, art, there is no doubt that he knows what he is talking about. When he discourses on the exquisite delights of Michelangelo’s statue of a young man he called "David’’ then, certainly, those who may have cultivated a taste for this sort of thing, will think him well worth listening to; but when he ventures into the realm of political economy, the mask of the truth-seeking philosopher is liable to slip and reveal a sometimes appallingly ignorant prejudice.

Obviously this is most clearly seen when we get to the Industrial Revolution and matters with which we are all. perforce, familiar. It is easy to seize on incorrect details, particularly in one’s own pet subject, and use them to berate an opponent, but it does not need a very profound knowledge of what went on in England in the first half of the 19th century to expose this author’s treatment of the period.

Surely every schoolboy knows today, thanks however indirectly to Marx and Engels, that the sanctimonious Wilberforce got the money to campaign against chattel slavery by sending equally helpless wage slaves, aged about ten, down the mine to get a gutfull of coal dust. Kenneth Clark may like to give us the impression that he has read Engels’ Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 but he shows little evidence of having absorbed any of its lessons in economics; if he had he might have got the title of the book right: among knowledgeable people there is a difference between ‘working class’ and ‘working classes’. Furthermore somebody could have corrected the index error, which has been allowed to persist from the earlier, more expensive, edition. Surely after reading this book nobody could be quite so pathetically eulogistic about the “humane reformers” of the period, nor could he possibly have the breathtaking effrontery to describe the penetrating observation, painstaking research and devastating comment of Engels’ book as “the passionate cry of a young social worker”.

In the story of this period we are also treated to a brief, incredibly brief, reference to Marx. There is no direct comment on his work nor even the suggestion of an argument, but he is there alright, wedged between some more “humane” stuff about Lord Shaftesbury and a few lines of poetry by Wordsworth, who, we are told solemnly, knew all about the workers before Marx even heard of them. Here again it seems unfortunate that Kenneth Clark should suppose that his readers are not familiar with the doings of Lord Shaftesbury. Marx, when dealing with this man, didn’t treat us like a lot of simpletons who can be told any old rubbish, so why should Kenneth Clark? He only had to take a few lines after the Ten Hours Bill, and all that stuff, to tell us that this “great humanitarian” was also a grasping landowner, who helped to provoke the Swing riots by, among other oppressions, taking from the miserable wages of his labourers, exorbitant rents for the hovels they lived in.

Kenneth Clark, almost with the very last sentence of the thousands of words comprising this work, aims an utterly mindless aside at Marx asserting his “moral and intellectual failure”. Perhaps he should read over his own comments on the first half of the 19th century and think again about that one.

F. T. G.

50 Years Ago: The Growing Unemployment (1972)

The 50 Years Ago column from the February 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

The present and future outlook of the working class is extremely gloomy—as gloomy as the murky London fog outside the writer’s window this Sunday afternoon. Prices are still in cloudland, whilst wages are falling rapidly. Unemployment engulfs a vast mass of the working class, whilst the movement for increased production (which in effect means both a lowering of wages and a lowering in the number of wage receivers) promises to further increase the workless army.

Looking at the matter casually, today it would appear that the main objective of the capitalist is increased production. A closer examination of the matter will easily dispose of this false idea.

What are the elements required to produce wealth today? Raw materials, machinery and labour-power of various degrees of skill. Is there any shortage of raw material? The earth is teeming with raw material, and the untapped resources are as relatively unlimited as the development of human ingenuity. Is there a shortage of machinery? There are numerous first-class manufactures of all classes of machinery working short-time for want of orders to execute. Is there a shortage of labour-power? The hundreds of thousands of unemployed of all degrees of skill searching anxiously, and so often, unavailingly for work can provide a complete answer to this question. Finally, the slowing down of production owing to overstocked markets is the overwhelming contradiction to the claims of the increased productionists.

The mere increase of production is not the objective of the capitalist; his main objective is the lowering of the cost of production.

The capitalist in competing for markets endeavours to undersell competitors by reducing the labour-time spent upon articles to a minimum (reducing the value of an article) and at the same time to obtain the maximum of surplus value by increasing the difference between what the worker receives and what he produces—increasing the amount of wealth a worker can produce and reducing the amount he receives, in other words, increasing the exploitation of the worker.

(From an unsigned article, “Hope Springs Infernal in the Workers Breast,” in the Socialist Standard February 1922.)

Student Unions (1972)

From the February 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Department of Education and Science have published a consultative document with a view to restricting the finance of student unions. This document will effectively limit the activity of organised students throughout the country. Apart from the obvious effect of severely restricting social life for resident students, all extra-mural activities, such as societies and clubs, will be impinged upon.

The reason given for the restructuring of finance is that the public money is not subject to public accountability, and that money entrusted to students unions can easily be abused. It is strange that the schooling of children can be entrusted to student teachers, yet funds cannot be. This is indicative of the common capitalist maxim that money and property are more important than people.

In point of fact, abuse of union funds is an extremely rare occurrence, and is anyway illegal without these new measures, hence the appearance of some of the officers of Sussex University Students Union in Court recently. The measures contained in the consultative document, therefore, can only be seen as an attempt to silence an avenue of protest that might at times embarrass the capitalist class.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain recognises that all unions (trade or student) are only necessary in a capitalist system where workers are in such an inferior position that they have to “go mob-handed” in order to be listened to. As unions are part of a capitalist system, and no more, it follows that union organisation cannot lead to Socialism, but can only try to provide its members with the best possible living conditions under capitalism. However, it is to be remembered that all working class organisation in the form of unions are a gauge to the maturity and consciousness of the working class. For this reason it is quite correct to protect student unions from any attempt by a capitalist government (Conservative or Labour) to restrict to any degree the effectiveness of an organised body of workers, (or unpaid apprentices in the case of many students.)

This particular set of administrators of capitalism have already seen fit to curb the trade unions, and it seems that like treatment is in store for any section of the working class (which includes the overwhelming majority of students) which dares to question the repulsive system of capitalism.

It is to be hoped that the D.E.S. will be unsuccessful in their attempt to restrict students. After this particular struggle however, it is hoped that students would not be content with a victory that would merely enable them to return to a previous level of exploitation and deprivation. In future, when the National Union of Students and individual college unions confront the forces of capitalism concerning grants, fees, residence etc., we urge them to follow the words of Marx —

Away with the conservative slogan a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work and inscribe upon your banners the revolutionary watchword . . . The abolition of the wages system.

 Only when capitalism has been replaced with Socialism, a world without money, governments or exploitation, will students be able to share, with the rest of the working class, the world of abundance which man is capable of producing when he is freed from the restriction of the profit motive and the market economy.

J. P. L.

A good time coming? (1972)

From the February 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

Whatever happens elsewhere there is one industry the output of which never falls off in a depression. Other peoples’ troubles are its golden opportunity, it booms when others stagnate. Its operators are the professional politicians and economists who tell a bemused public how things got where they are, what is happening now and what the stars foretell for the future of what they call the “economy”. What they are dealing with is capitalism though they hardly ever call it by that name and, with a few exceptions, their actual understanding of how capitalism works is minimal.

They are not a united band—indeed much of their effort is directed to exposing each others’ errors—but almost all of them subscribe to one article of faith; that if governments did the right thing at the right time crises, trade depressions, a million unemployed, balance of payments deficits and devaluation need never happen.

At the turn of the year they showed no unusual degree of unanimity in urging us all to take our eyes off present troubles and look ahead to the good time that is coming, provided that no discordant elements such as trade union “greed” or “unfair” competition from abroad or a general world recession upsets harmonious development. “I believe that this year we have a unique chance to begin a sustained period of more rapid expansion with steadier prices”. (Chancellor Barber). “1972 can be the first of four years’ rapid growth”. (Times). “The year that the economy could really take off”. (Sunday Times). “All set for a boom”. (Sunday Telegraph).

In part the optimism has as its basis the belief that if consumers spend more money because of tax reductions, increases of wages and pensions etc. this must lead to a corresponding increase of the quantity of goods produced, and a reduction of unemployment. A glance at what has been happening shows how naive this belief is. Between 1965 and 1971 consumers’ expenditure increased continuously, by an average of upwards of £1600 million a year, but at the end of it unemployment was higher by more than half a million. Most of the increased expenditure merely meant paying more for the same amount of goods, and if workers’ productivity is increasing (fewer workers needed to produce the same quantities), the total output of industry needs to be continually rising in order to absorb the unemployed.

Some economists are of course aware of this and their forecasts have therefore to assume that they know how trade will go this year and afterwards, that they know that price rises will lessen, that they know manufacturers will increase output and expand their factories and that when the goods are produced they will be sold at a profit here and overseas. They “know” all these things because their “Keynesian” article of faith tells them so, but in face of past refusal of events to behave as predicted confidence in Keynes is waning. In the House of Commons on 23 November Chancellor of the Exchequer Barber admitted that the government were taken by surprise by the rise of unemployment and Robert Carr, Minister of Employment said:-

We may be entering a period when the old principles of demand management based on Keynes and the rest may no longer be operating as Government here of all parties and governments in many countries had come to expect them, with justice, to work hitherto.

The government holds that the principle key to recovery is restricting the rise of prices and that their policy will achieve this. A leading economist, Alan Walters, Cassel Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, says that they don’t understand the problem and are doing precisely the wrong thing. (Financial Times 1 Jan. 1972). He sees the fundamental cause of the recent abnormally rapid increase of prices in “the vast expansion of the money supply in 1967-8”, an increase that the present government has continued. He rejects the explanation given by Keynesians that the price rise is due to pressure by trade unions and others. He notes that company profits in real terms have been falling while prices rose and he does not expect manufacturers to expand investment while this continues. He thinks the competitiveness of British exports has been worsened by the agreement to up value the pound against the dollar and sees the likelihood of another devaluation of the pound. His own proposal is that the price rise should be curtailed by a gradual restriction on the money supply, but confesses that he does not know whether such a policy “would increase or even decrease the rate of unemployment”.

So much for both the Keynesian and the non-Keynesian beliefs in the possibility of managing capitalism in a way which would obviate booms, crises and depressions, which are not caused by “inflation” (though it can be an additional spanner in the works) but by the normal function of capitalism.

The government and the rest of the forecasters all agree that the discussions with America over international exchange rates will play a part in the ability of British manufacturers to compete in world markets, at least in the short run, but this condemnation of American policies is very much a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

British governments (like many others) have for years been depreciating the currency and putting up prices by excess printing of notes, thereby practising a form of legal swindling on purchasers of national savings certificates and other government securities, since the eventual repayment is in depreciated currency. This is much the same as the American government has been doing extensively in the past few years. The smooth running of trading operations and other financial transactions needs a comparatively stable currency and a means of preventing depreciating. This was achieved first by using gold coin of standard weight and fineness and, as a development of this, using notes convertible by law into gold of fixed amount. This was the 19th Century British system and under it currency depreciation was impossible. Gold functioned as the money commodity because, like other commodities, it has value, proportional to the amount of labour socially necessary to produce it. (It was a writer in the Financial Times 22 Dec. 1971 who came out with the staggering observation that “gold is no longer the symbol of security”)

Notes, British Bank of England notes, or American dollar notes became acceptable, "as good as gold”, because they were by law convertible into a fixed weight of gold.

Britain first, and much later America, abandoned convertibility between the wars. As regards the dollar it was a process of gradually limiting convertibility until, two years ago, it was confined to Central Banks in other countries, who alone could demand gold at $35 an ounce. C. Gordon Tether (Financial Times 17 Dec. 1971) describes how obstacles were put in the way of convertibility so that in the past two years some $20,000 million of paper dollars were unloaded on the world with the loss of only $1,500 million of gold through actual conversion. Then in August last convertibility was ended at the same time that the 10 per cent levy was imposed on many imports into America in order to put pressure on other governments and make them upvalue their currency. Now in return for an average upvaluing of 10 per cent of other currencies against the dollar the import levy is to be withdrawn but the question of gold convertibility of the dollar is yet to be settled. According to Tether the American government’s idea was to keep the dollar as a widely used world currency without convertibility at all. They wanted other governments and banks to accept the dollar as “common denominator by some kind of divine right —and not merely as a stand-in for gold’. Needless to say the French and other governments reacted sharply to this and the latest suggested settlement is that dollar convertibility may be restored but associated with a very big depreciation of the dollar in terms of gold.

To put the matter in perspective in relation to the present depression it should be recalled that crisis and depressions happened just as normally in the 19th Century when the then world currency, the pound, was fully convertible.

Some forty years ago when unemployment reached 2½ million (under a Labour government) many workers were being attracted to a study of Marx precisely because the Marxian explanation fitted the facts of the situation. Then along came Keynes with his glib proposals for running capitalism with guaranteed continuous full employment and Marx was pushed into the background.

Now that the Keynesian myth has collapsed perhaps Marx will come into his own.

Edgar Hardcastle

Stalin Turns Left (1972)

From the February 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

The second in our series on the early history and ideas of the British Communist Party.

In 1930 The Communist Party of Great Britain had just entered the period of "independent leadership" in accordance with the tactical turn made by the Communist International. The new tactics involved the end of working within the Labour Party and the trade unions in favour of outright opposition to them. When the change of tactics was being discussed in 1928 and 1929 a majority in the leadership of the British Party was opposed to them, arguing that the time had not yet come to give up work in the Labour Party and the unions.

In 1920 Lenin had argued that the CPGB should try to affiliate to the Labour Party since this was not an orthodox Social Democratic party but rather a federation of workers' political and industrial organisations; as one such organisation the Communist Party had every right to be in the Labour Party without any compromise of principle. In 1922, in accordance with a Comintern decision of the previous December in favour of "united front" tactics, the CPGB raised the slogan of a .'Labour Government' and began to work, as best it could, through the Labour party and the unions to achieve this.

Seeing that they were only a small party this tactic can be said to have been fairly successful. Through the Minority Movement, set up in 1924, they were able to rally any Leftwing trade unionists behind their slogans. In 1925 the British TUC even agreed to establish with the Russian unions an Anglo/Russian Trade Union Committee. The leaders of the Labour Party, however, hit back. The 1924 and 1925 Party Conferences carried a number of anti-Communist motions barring members of the Communist Party from being candidates or even individual members of the Labour Party. Affiliated unions were urged not to include Communists in their delegations to the Labour Party Conference. Some local Labour parties, already under Communist influence, refused to accept these decisions and were disaffiliated. These local parties, together with others still in the Labour Party, were organised by the Communist Party into the National Leftwing Movement.

The Anglo/Russian Trade Union Committee broke up in mutual recriminations after the raid in 1927 on the London offices of the Russian trading firm Arcos. But, through the Minority Movement and the Leftwing Movement the Party was having some success with its tactic of boring from within the reformist organisations.

However, the end of the General Strike and then the Mond-Turner talks on "industrial peace", together with the anti-Communist rulings of the Labour Party, made co-operating with the Labour and TUC leaders unpopular with a section of the CPGB membership. They found a spokesman in R. Palme Dutt, who had been the founder and editor of Labour Monthly, and was one of the CPGB's leading theoreticians. He, with Harry Pollitt, had played a key role in the committee which had recommended major changes in the organisation of the Communist Party, leading in 1922 to the replacing of the old federal structure by one (involving 'cells' and the like) more suited to the CP tactic of boring-from- within and controlling other bodies by secret caucuses. Trotsky, too, who had fallen out of favour in Russia, was criticising the Stalin leadership for relying too much on alliance with people like the Left in the British TUC and not enough on working class militancy. There is evidence that Dutt sympathised with some of Trotsky's criticisms. In any event his Where is Britain Going? was favourably reviewed.

Dutt became the spokesman of those in the Communist Party dissatisfied with the boring-from-within tactic which, in their view, meant that the Party acted merely as a leftwing ginger group for Labour. These critics, mainly among the younger members, were calling for what in Bolshevik terminology was a "left" turn. They wanted the Communist Party to come out in open opposition to the Labour Party.

The Communist Party leaders, and probably a majority of the members, were quite content with the old tactic. Indeed, some of them obviously thought that being a ginger group for Labour was their party's role. Thus, again in Bolshevik terminology, '.opportunist" trends were strong in the British party.

It so happened that the Stalin group was also planning a "Left" turn in 1928, both in its domestic and in its foreign (and so Comintern) policies. In Russia forced collectivisation began. The Comintern changed its tactics. However, as we saw, tactical changes should only take place in Bolshevik theory when the situation changes. Thus the Sixth World Congress of the Communist International in 1928 proclaimed the end of the period of partial capitalist stabilisation which had existed almost continuously from 1921 and the beginning of another "crisis of capitalism". This meant that the old pre-1921 slogans, suited to “revolutionary situations", were brought out again.

Once again the Social Democratic parties were seen as openly counter-revolutionary outfits pledged to help maintain capitalism by confusing workers and diverting their discontent into peaceful reform rather than into civil war and revolution. For this the notorious phrase “social fascists" was coined. But the turn went further than this. Not only were the Social Democrats “social fascists" but the “main blows" ought to be directed against them since they had more influence over the workers than the ordinary fascists. The most dangerous kind of Social Democrat, said the Comintern, were the "Lefts" who mouthed revolutionary phrases to cover up their treacherous role of diverters of the workers' discontent into reformist channels. The ILP in Britain fell into this category and among the first to receive the main blows were Cook and Maxton for their 1928 Manifesto.

Naturally, such a sharp turn caused misgivings amongst those who had joined the Communist Party thinking it was just a part of the Labour Movement. The leadership of the Party tried to resist the change but, once the Comintern had decided, they had to abide by it. Then they tried to interpret it in a not so anti- Labour manner: Did it really mean that Communists in the unions should no longer pay the political levy to the Labour Party? Yes, it did, replied the Comintern. Gradually the leaders of the British party were driven further and further to the left till they had to publicly proclaim before the 1929 election that Labour was "the third capitalist party" and to put up their own candidates in opposition to Labour. This clearly went against the grain for some and the Comintern knew it. They resolved that a new, more reliable leadership was required to carry out the new policy faithfully.

In the British Communist Party there were those who had criticised the old line and were enthusiastically in favour of the changed tactics. It was from their ranks that the new leadership would be drawn. The Tenth Party Congress in January 1929 was the last more or less democratic Communist conference. It elected the same old names to the Central Committee. After pressure from both the Comintern and the Left in the party another Conference was held in Leeds in December of the same year. This time the delegates were given a recommended list to vote for, a list which omitted several of the old leaders. Not all of them were dropped since it was recognised that they had the political experience that would be a valuable aid to the inexperienced new men who were being brought in. The post of Secretary was up-graded so that the man who filled it would be the recognised "Leader" of the Party.

The man chosen by the Comintern was Harry Pollitt. He had all the qualifications: an industrial worker (Pollitt was a boilermaker by trade), with a record of militancy (the Jolly George incident in 1919), reasonably well-known at Labour and TUC Conferences, an experienced party official of many years standing, tough-minded and, finally, thoroughly reliable. Till 1929 the CPGB had had what amounted to a collective leadership. After the Eleventh Congress of December 1929 Pollitt was the recognised Leader with Dutt as his deputy in charge of theory.

The names of Dutt and Pollitt had in fact already been linked in the title of a document calling for and justifying a change to open opposition to Labour. This was the Dutt/Pollitt Thesis, though it was obviously mainly the work of Dutt.

There were two reasons why the Communists had been pro-Labour: (1) Lenin's view on the federal nature of the British Labour Party. (2) A dose of Labour government would rid workers of their reformist illusions.

Dutt, therefore, had to refute both of these. Naturally, he was not going to challenge them head on (though of course he could have said they were mistaken all along). He merely argued that conditions had changed.

First, the Labour Party had changed from a federation of workers' organisations into a disciplined party of the Social Democratic type. Dutt brought forward as evidence the anti-Communist rulings and the con- sequent expulsions and disaffiliations. Thus he was saying here that it was no longer possible for Communists to bore-from-within the Labour Party, at least not very effectively.

Second, the failure of the 1924 Labour government had disillusioned the workers who were now looking for revolutionary leadership. This was a more dubious proposition, but Dutt justified it by reference to the General Strike and, oddly, to falling Labour votes at national and local elections. The Labour Party, the thesis was saying, was finished and on the way out.

We need not say much on the first point except that when after 1935 the Communists returned to the pro- Labour tactic they were quite successful in getting into the Labour Party, the "bans and proscriptions" not- withstanding.

But the second point was patently wrong and could have been seen to be so at the time. Labour was by no means finished (and, if it was, why wait till 1928 to change tactics, why not 1925 or 1926?). Indeed they emerged from the 1929 election as the largest Party (despite Communist opposition) and once again took over the administration of capitalism. This miscalculation meant that, from the viewpoint of Bolshevik tactics, the CPGB zigged while the masses zagged. The "revolutionary vanguard" was moving in the opposite direction to the workers and as a result became “isolated" from them, a terrible fate to befall a Bolshevik party.

Of course, it is not quite correct to say that this was a "miscalculation" for what was happening in Britain was not the only relevant factor for the Communists. What was happening in Russia was just as important and the Stalin government had its reasons for turning to the left-collectivisation, fear of growing hostility towards Russia by other States.

Adam Buick

 Next month: how the Communist Party used revolutionary phrases to disguise its reformist practice.