50 Years Ago: Cruelty To Animals — And To Humans (1976)

The 50 Years Ago column from the February 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Just before the great Christian festival at Christmas, the Animal Defence Society thought to improve the shining hour by inserting a seasonable advertisement in the newspapers. ‘Christmas is approaching’, they said, ‘and the spirit of Mercy is knocking at the heart of Everyman’. And so the Animal Defence Society suggest that in answer to the knock, why not send them a nice donation . . .

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Now what is wrong with all this? Surely we also are in favour of any movement to lessen the amount of suffering in the world! Surely we are not going to crab any attempt, however feeble, at abolishing avoidable cruelty! Perish the thought. Then where does our grumble come in? Just here. We do believe in first things first. We do insist upon a sense of proportion. We also have our objections. They relate primarily to human beings. Consider recent history. We objected to human beings being torn to pieces by shrapnel and splintered steel. We objected to our boys being taught the proper way to insert a bayonet into the intestines of a fellow human being, and to so twist it as to make the most ghastly wound.

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We were the Human Defence Society. Where were the members of the Animal Defence Society then? Were they weeping over the pole-axed cows and distressed sheep, or were they taking part in the great work of disembowelling their fellow creatures? We fear the latter. It needs little more than the list of Lords, Dukes, Earls and Admirals who figure in the list of contributors to convince us of that.

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Cruelty to animals will go the way of all forms of cruelty, when a real civilised existence becomes a
possibility to everyone. So let us have first things first. If anyone has a thousand pound cheque they would like to devote to the abolition of cruelty to human beings, our address is on the back page.

(From an editorial 'Socialism and the Humanitarians' in the Socialist Standard, February 1926.)

Unemployment: A Chronic State (1976)

From the February 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

When it was announced that the number of unemployed in Britain had reached 1¼ million, the Minister for Employment described the figure as "intolerable”. This apparently meant he would not put up with it a day longer. However, that was before Christmas, and nothing has happened. The question is: what will the Minister (who is Michael Foot) do about it — or, more accurately, what can he or anybody else do?

It is interesting to recall the allegation by Harold Wilson when unemployment rose to 1 million under the Tories in 1972. Pointing out the large number who do not register as unemployed, he said the true figure was "nearer three million” (Financial Times, 8th April 1972). He is not now repeating this, but it has always been the case. Moreover, the people living on unemployment pay include not only those registered but their dependants. In The Road to Wigan Pier, published in 1937, George Orwell says: "A Labour Exchange officer told me that to get at the real number of people living on (not drawing) the dole, you have got to multiply the official figure by something over three.”

Up to 1939 the existence of a million unemployed was regarded as normal. In the inter-war years this was about 7½ per cent, of workers. However, throughout those years it was above that level. In 1919 and 1920 it was 2.4 per cent., but in 1921 rose to 16.6 per cent, and thereafter remained at 10 or 11 per cent, until 1930. In that year it was 15.8 per cent., and in 1932 went up to 21.9 per cent., or 2,745,000 persons. According to The Ministry of Labour Gazette in February 1940, about a quarter of the unemployed in the inter-war period were out of work for at least a year; and of these, 22.1 per cent. were unemployed for five or more years.

Figures for earlier periods are less reliable because, prior to the Unemployment Insurance Acts of 1911, they came almost solely from those trade unions which paid unemployment benefits to their members. From the middle of the 19th century the returns (made to the Board of Trade) show an average rate varying between 2½ per cent. in boom years and 7½ per cent. in bad times. Since they represent chiefly unemployed workers in the best-organized trades, the inference to be drawn is that the position in total numbers was similar to that from 1920 to 1939.

Before the Labour Party fell into the hands of the Keynesian doctrine, it accepted that unemployment could not be eradicated under capitalism. In The Book of the Labour Party (1924) Sir Walter Citrine listed various measures seeking “to alleviate the worst effects of the industrial and economic system", but said:

We are compelled to realize, however, that by no expedient we may devise, short of the abolition of capitalism and the socialization of the means of production, distribution and exchange, can the unemployment problem be permanently solved.

 Of course this muddled statement shows that Citrine, like other Labour leaders, never understood Socialism. Nevertheless, he knew better than to say the level of unemployment was “intolerable” under government by his party.

The present figure, representing about 5 per cent. of a labour force double what it was before the war, appears less dire than the pre-war ones. We do not know how much higher it may go. In each of the trade depressions since 1950, unemployment has risen to more than the previous time. The full extent is masked in various ways besides the non-registration of numbers of unemployed. The government policy of “putting money into” firms like Chrysler which are victims of the depression amounts simply to providing wages for workers who would otherwise draw their money as unemployment pay. Insofar as Chrysler continue producing cars as a result of this subsidy, the outcome must be unemployment in other car firms in this country as well as abroad; obviously the government is buying time, hoping a general recovery will begin first.

Some post-war social reforms also have the effect of keeping down the numbers of registered unemployed. Before the war the school-leaving age was 14 and is now 16, and more now remain at school and attend colleges after that: a high proportion of over-fourteens would otherwise be out of work. This may be thought a favourable reflection —reform as a means of checking unemployment; but it acts in that way only partly. School-attenders are dependent on “heads of families”. In times of heavy unemployment they are held back from swelling the numbers as compared with pre-war, but they add instead to the larger mass who are unregistered but living on the dole.

The thirty years since the war provide an object lesson to end the supposition that capitalism can exist without its normal consequences. During the war the Tory, Labour and Liberal parties agreed with one another that Keynesian policies would make full employment and economic stability certain. As the post-war era has gone on, there has been a series of increasingly frantic rearguard actions to cover the failures of those policies. The present Labour administration is in a particularly acute dilemma as the result of its efforts to control capitalism. It is urged on all sides, and is itself conscious of the need, to reduce the government spending which has produced inflation. Yet if it does so — if, for instance, it refuses to put money into crisis-hit firms and cuts services like education — unemployment will go still higher.

That is not to say other kinds of policies would do better. On the contrary, Keynes was followed because capitalism’s incessant lurching from boom to slump, and the running sore of unemployment, made political disasters. The fact is that the capitalist system is incapable of anything else, and so long as it continues the working class cannot hope for security and freedom from want. Let us spell out the position. Under capitalism the great majority are called the working class because they own nothing of the means of production and distribution and so are forced to sell their labour-power to those who do. The wage they get is a commodity price: workers can never be better off than that.

But because capitalism produces only for sale and profit, stability is impossible for it. Investment in industry reflects the state of trade. In bad times production is reduced or stops, and the workers are out of work. There is nothing a government can do to change this. Workers themselves can, however. They can view this state of affairs, and decide that employment and unemployment alike are intolerable — that capitalism must end and be replaced by a system of production for use.

Robert Barltrop

As we go to press, it has been announced by the Government that the total of unemployed (20th January 1976) has risen to 1,430,369, or 6.1 per cent. of the work force.

Malady and Cure (1976)

From the February 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

The advances made by medical science in the last hundred years are enormous. Whole classifications of diseases have been eliminated, and people are living longer. But medical progress has to fight against the same barrier that hinders all other attempts at advancement: capitalist society causes health conditions that medical science finds impossible to combat. Even schoolchildren are being affected. In a survey of the London area it was found that 25.4% were suffering from psychiatric disorder (see the Sunday Times 20th July 1975).

One of the most rapidly increasing threats to life in the UK is the heart attack, now killing more people than any other “disease”. The figures are now over 300,000 per year. Doctors of course have been grappling with the problem in the traditional ways known to them by prescribing more drugs, less butter, more rest etc.

But increasingly medical opinion is coming to the conclusion that the heart attack is not a "disease” in the commonly accepted term at all. On 10th July 1975 the Guardian published a report on the present attitude of the medical profession to heart attacks. The survey shows that the medical profession is changing to the opinion that it is caused by the very nature of capitalist society itself.

Indeed, if you were to come across certain extracts from the report at random, you would be forgiven for thinking that the survey was written by the Socialist Standard. Take the following extracts as an example:

  In an office situation a row with the boss, the anxiety of losing your job, the humiliation of not getting promoted, the exhaustion of too much success — these are the factors that raise the cholesterol level in the blood.
  For too long the coronary patient has been rested and then sent straight into the same environment that caused the first one.
  The heart attack can be seen as a glaring symbol of all that is wrong with the way men have been socially conditioned.

To be accurate, the report does say that these ideas are still causing controversy in the medical world. But any layman who sees the sort of pressures many workers face could tell that it cannot do them any good and that health must suffer. Who can doubt, as unemployment soars, that the worry over keeping or getting a job can cause many health problems, only one of which is the possibility of the failure of the heart.

Capitalism as a society built on production for sale has crises of what is callously called "over production” by economists and politicians. What they mean is that the recurring results of the boom/

slump cycle which is as inevitable to capitalism as gravity to earth, have struck again. Those in the growing dole queues know it. And if they have families to support, mortgages to pay, h.p. commitments to keep up etc. etc. it is small wonder that more and more hearts are refusing to co-operate.

Even in “normal times,” the problems that capitalism brings of conflicts, pressures, rush-hour etc. must seriously damage that most adaptable of organisms, the human being. Competition between worker and worker (for jobs, scarce houses, schools etc.) must bring in its wake damage to the human body.

So as you dash off on Monday to the office, the factory or the college, and spend your day in frustration, ponder this: Socialism is a different way of life, where human beings will organize their society harmoniously and co-operatively for the good of all. As all wealth will be owned in common, there will be no competition, stress, or strife between human beings. The aim of all will be the satisfaction of the needs of all. And as science has produced the possibility of production in abundance to the very highest standard, the needs of all, in a Socialist society will be satisfied. Man will be freed from the degrading task of “making a living” and free to explore possibilities in human development and social relations hitherto unthought of.

The alternative is to continue with capitalism and all its attendant problems and heart attacks. Let the Guardian remind you of what this means:

The coronary spiral follows the curve of economic crises and anxiety over jobs, money and investment in a way of life that is resting on a tightrope.

Ronnie Warrington

Obituaries: Mark Miller and Sammy Cash (1976)

Obituaries from the February 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

M. Miller

Just before Christmas members in London heard that Mark Miller had died suddenly. It was hardly believable that this lively, lovable man would no longer be among us.

“Dusty” joined the Party in 1935, after being in the Labour Party. Throughout his membership he was in the Lewisham Branch. He never ceased working for Socialism, and was very knowledgeable. After retiring from work he attended a social centre for elderly people in south-east London, where he made the Socialist Standard well known and chatted to everyone about Socialism. What he will be specially remembered for by members is running the canteen at Head Office for several years after our move to Clapham in 1951.

He was a barber by trade. Though his life was an uphill struggle against poverty, he was always cheerful and full of jokes—the usual greeting was “Here, have you heard this one?” In the last few years his chief pleasure besides Party meetings was going to the BBC theatre to listen to concerts of light music.

The like of Mark Miller are the true backbone of the Socialist movement, and his death makes us all sad. Our sympathies go to his brother, with whom he lived.

Sammy Cash

We have learned also of the death of Sammy Cash. He resigned from the Party in disagreement in 1955, but continued to turn up at Conferences, and his amiable, eccentric personality kept him a place in the affections of many older members. He first joined the Party in the mid-twenties, and spoke at countless meetings for us over the years.

Division in the I.S. (1976)

From the February 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

The organization which miscalls itself International Socialists has become a casualty of the system which it claimed was in the last process of decay. They unfortunately buried capitalism before it was dead.

This self-styled ‘revolutionary spear-head’, within the short time of its existence (1960) has done incalculable damage to the genuine Socialist cause. At a time when clarity and explanation and patience was needed, they spread confusion. There is not one original idea in their battery of arguments and policies that has not plagued the working class movement in this country for over 75 years. Advocacy of the General Strike; smashing the state; repudiation of the Parliamentary method as a means to Socialism; the cult of leadership and support for every type of industrial activity, as well as being utterly steeped in reformist policies.

The present split, with the expulsion and loss of membership, is alleged to be because the Central Committee was autocratic and intolerant of ‘grass roots opinion’. What else can you expect in an organization based on leadership? The Guardian (12.1.76) quotes an expelled member as saying ‘ . . . the leading theoretician Tony Cliff—[our italics—God help us] and founding member assumed a messianic exclusiveness of doctrine which he believes encapsulates historic truth . . .’ In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king and it is depressing to learn that this muddled ‘intellectual’ still persists in spreading confusion disguised as revolutionary tactics.

The real reason the I.S. has split is very old. An opportunist organization which plays politics by ear and has slogans instead of principles, emotional appeals instead of argument, may have a certain appeal to the unthinking. But events have overtaken them. The militant I.S. shop stewards are being rejected by the workers because capitalism is in a depression and workers want to keep their jobs. They fear that industrial unrest may close a factory or give the employers an excuse to clamp down on working conditions. In that case, the militant is an embarrassment.

In the field of reformism, militancy and pressure groups are irrelevant if the intentions of the capitalist are flatly against social reform. After all, the capitalist has to pay for reforms and it is his judgement and timing which count.

The instant reformer will never learn. Unsound on basic theory, religious in their approach to historic development and arrogant in their contempt for the workers’ thinking capacity, they believe that the intellectual few can lead the great mass of ignorant workers to socialism. But their concept of revolution is based on getting control of the political machinery without a mandate for Socialism. That is without a recognition that only by patient discussion and argument can workers be persuaded to get rid of their ideas of dependance on a wages system and the institution of buying and selling and that society is run by a force outside of themselves.

The path to Socialism is difficult but not impossible. The split in the I.S. has brought forward another organization—The International Communist League and another mass party has been promised for the autumn —The Socialist Workers Party. These will just as surely go the way of their parent. Founded on Trotskyism which they have never abandoned, these anti-cammassars have learnt nothing. They all support the big battalions of social reform—The Labour Party although it is fashionable to pretend that they are further to ‘the left’. They are nothing of the kind. They wish to take over the role of the Communist Party—another worshipper at the Labour shrine—in the Trade Unions. What a sad commentary when so-called revolutionary organizations have to depend on the shifting sands of industrial support. The SPGB is a revolutionary movement in its own right, completely independent from any outside influence. We don’t rely on trade union support or demands for reforms or any other outside influence. Our Party will not split, because its members agree on the major principle—that is that Socialism cannot be established with out the working class understanding its implications and the necessity of political action.

The I.S. and other misguided people who live in a world of euphoria where facts play little part, want to bring forward the social revolution by a series of short cuts. They are well-intentioned but disembodied creatures who present a positive danger to Socialism and the quicker they realize this the better. You may try to abort the social revolution before the period of class consciousness has developed but as everybody knows instead of bringing forth a healthy child you get a monster.

Jim D'Arcy

Leigh becomes a Recruiting Officer! (1976)

From the February 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why I Joined the SPGB (1976)

From the February 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

I was, of course, not the only one to leave the Communist Party. My main claim to distinction is that I was for many years a national official of the Young Communist League—its National Organizer, in fact. During most of the 'twenties I was the official representative of the YCL in Moscow, and subsequently, a member of the five-man secretariat of the Executive Committee of the Communist Youth International, the "Sanctum Sanctorum".

The manner of this was (as always) mainly the result of outside circumstances. You see, my older cousin, Fred Peet, was the acting General Secretary of the newly formed Communist Party in 1920, while Inkpin (the Secretary) was doing twelve months for publishing the Theses of the Third Congress of the Communist International.

Even as a fourteen-year-old kid I was a regular listener to the numerous meetings at Highbury Corner, near my dad's bicycle shop. There I heard Alex Anderson and Adolph Kohn—though the man who impressed me most of all of them was Charlie Lestor: he burst in on the London scene like a Canadian bison.

After mucking about in the Herald League for a bit I joined the CP in 1920, and was offered a job in the bookshop at 16 King Street. The Communist International was anxious to get a Communist youth movement going in Britain, and sent someone over to jog the CP into doing it. The procedure was quite simple. All CP branches were instructed to send delegates to a convening conference. This took place at the old International Socialist Club in East Road, City Road, in 1921. To my considerable astonishment, I was elected chairman. An Executive was elected, which at once appointed me National Organizer.

I should add here that despite (or more likely because of) my youth I had already taken to the outdoor platform, and made the grade as a Communist Party rabble-rouser. There were occasions when speakers didn't turn up (like now), or organized groups tried to break up the meetings. Up I jumped, and repeated most of what Charlie Lestor had said the last time I heard him. What was lacking in knowledge was covered by youthful enthusiasm; and at a comparatively early age I was in demand for meetings with the best of them.

I tried to look unconcerned when Zigi Bamattre (the Swiss CYI representative) announced: "You are coming back to Moscow with me." The gigantic upheaval in Russia had stretched out its mighty arms to Islington! In November 1922 I pinched myself to ensure that it really was me listening to Lenin and Trotsky in the marble and gold halls of the fabulous Kremlin in Moscow.

Rushed back to England, I did a speaking tour from Penzance to Aberdeen for six months, forming YCL branches (it was all done on one Tourist ticket costing £5). Back again to Moscow, to take part in the first major crisis for the British CP: the sacking of Inkpin and MacManus to replaced by Pollitt and Dutt.

So it went on for six years. Of course I knew the SPGB—hadn't I encountered those over-logical pests at many a meeting? At the Communists' 5th Congress there was an almost unique specimen—an SPGB-er who had joined the Communist Party, Frank Vickers from Tooting. I recall many times when members of the SPGB debunked my oratory: at Wood Green Corner, Tottenham, a little bloke murmured in my left ear "If they won't vote for it, they won't fight for it!"

A disturbing thought—but I was too busy predicting the imminent collapse of capitalism. In Moscow we were privileged members of the famous Dynamo sports club, with the best instructors and equipment: we were the golden boys, the Youth of the Revolution, destined to take over the world. Among them were Jacques Doriot, to become founder of the French Blackshirts; Liebknecht's son; and Naygen Ali Ivak, later known as Ho Chi Minh. In naval uniforms we lined up outside the Comintern building and marched back to the Lux Hotel singing "We are the Young Guard of the Proletariat".

Yet the writing was on the Kremlin's wall. 1925: struggle between Stalin and Trotsky. 1926: Trotsky's expulsion. 1928, and I resolved to return to England and refuse to accept any more paid employment in the CP. I did—I remember Eddie Fitzgerald, the translator of Mehring's "Life of Marx" saying to me "You must be mad! What job will a Communist agitator get in England?" I found a job as a foreign language telephonist (to be demoted by the Post Office when they found out).

There were the Great Depression and the National Government. Mosley's Blackshirts: Pollitt issued his call to break up opponents' meetings, and the CP formed the Workers' Defence Force, drilling with broomsticks in Epping Forest. I declared it ridiculous, and by 1934 was in active opposition to the Central Committee. I was summoned to a disciplinary court of the CP, to which the officials never turned up.

During this time I was still editor of the English-language edition of the CI's official monthly, the Communist International. When the Spanish Civil War started, Harry Pollitt asked me to go and see him: Would I proceed to Spain immediately as interpreter to the British battalion of the International Brigade? It dawned on me that all those in opposition to the CP's Central Committee were being cleared off to Spain, like my bosom pal Wally Tapsell who was shot in Galicia. It was to be a political execution. This was the end. To hell with you!

I obtained employment with the Workers' Travel Association as a courier, spending most of my time until the war in 1939 in Switzerland, Italy and France. Then, one balmy evening, I strolled in Hyde Park with a girl friend. We listened to Groves, Turner and Rubin on the SPGB platform destroying all the pretensions of the CP. This was it! I joined the Party the following week, and soon after that took the platform myself for the first time, One result of my advent was the discomfiture of the Communists who used to bawl at Party speakers: "Have you been in Russia?"

"Have I been in Russia?" I used to answer. "Listen, mate, I grew up there!"

Horatio