News in Review: Faversham (1964)

The News in Review column from the July 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

POLITICS

Faversham

In one by election after another the Labour Party continues to notch up successes.

As each result is declared, both sides set their statisticians to work to show the voting figures in the most favourable light for them.

A Devizes sends the Tories into raptures—the dark night, they croon, is passing and brighter days are ahead. A Faversham puts the Labour Party back onto its hopeful feet, sets its mouth watering again at the prospect of power which, they think, is almost theirs.

A lot of this enthusiasm is inspired by the theory that nothing succeeds like success, that a big vote in one election begets an even bigger one at a later poll. That is why a party only rarely admits to having taken a beating in a fair and square fight. There is always some aspect of the poll which, selected and perhaps exaggerated, can take the edge off a defeat, and they play this up for all they are worth.

At Faversham the Tories showed their disappointment by dropping their beaten candidate, Mrs. Olsen. From the reports which came from the constituency, Mrs. Olsen did not seem to offer a very effective counter to the Labour candidate’s earnestly sympathetic appearance, which apparently impressed a lot of voters as sincere.

Mrs. Olsen tried to blow up Nationalisation as an issue, while Labour’s Mr. Boston was playing upon the elector’s preoccupation with food prices, rates and unemployment. In a constituency where the workless are something of a problem, the Labour line proved the better vote catcher.

In one of her statements, Mrs. Olsen revealed one of the prejudices (although perhaps she does not hold it herself) which affects a lot of the capitalist parties’ propaganda. Talking about Nationalisation, she said: “ It is worrying people . . . even housewives who are not supposed to be interested.”

Nobody has yet adequately explained why housewives—or any other women— should not be interested in political matters. This is one of the comfortable delusions which, as part of a wider ignorance and prejudice, helps to keep private property in existence. It is unfortunate that the delusion is as firmly held by many women as it is by most men.

And just like any other social prejudice, it has to go. The ending of the social distinction between the sexes will be one of the aspects of the humane world system in which the political parties which prey upon ignorance will be defunct.

ABROAD

Nehru

The death of Pandit Nehru provoked the customary valedictions from the world’s top statesmen, who are of course no more sincere in their expressed opinions about a man after he is dead than they are when he is alive.

At the Albert Hall meeting where tribute was paid to the dead leader, Sir Alex Douglas-Home said that Nehru was a man of contrasts. Indeed he was—in some ways which Sir Alec could not have had in mind.

Nehru was a professed man of peace who saw nothing wrong in the war over Kashmir, nor in the forcible occupation of Portuguese Goa; He was the accepted leader of what are called the non- committed nations, although he was committed up to his neck in the frontier dispute with China. He was the man who foreswore the production of nuclear weapons—as long as his country had no use for them.

When I asked what sort of conclusions his Government had reached when it studied the future of policy in Asia between a nuclear China and non-nuclear India, he replied with remarkable frankness and warmth that he was afraid that as a Government they had not given it much thought. (The Guardian, 23/10/61.)

He was—and this is the clue to an understanding of Nehru's career—the alleged Socialist who was busily building what he hoped would one day be a great capitalist nation.

It is at this point that we realise there was nothing of contrast in Nehru. He was presiding over the transformation from one type of property system to another in India and it is not unusual for this to be passed off as Socialist policy. Nor is there anything exceptional in the double-talk and double-think inseparable from this process.

Nehru's problems were massive. In his efforts to build capitalism in India he was confronted by a vast population seething with every kind of primitive mysticism and religious prejudice. These delusions do not mix with an economic and social structure based upon complex commodity manufacture; Nehru spent a lot of his life trying to break them down.

In the end, as we all know, the prejudices were not ready to admit defeat and Nehru, the great non-believer, was cremated in the same way as a great religious leader..

But he has made his niche as one of capitalism's innovators. His successors will carry on where he left off, trying to persuade the beggar in the dust that he will be better off as a member of an industrial proletariat, with chains of poverty which are thinner and lighter, but just as real and strong as those which bind him down today.

AT HOME

Epidemic

For the most part, modern society has a pretty tight grip on diseases like typhoid. Capitalism judges everything by its balance sheet and in this case it is preferable to make the initial investment in prevention of the disease rather than to be continually fighting epidemics of it. Sometimes the balance sheet comes up with the opposite conclusion and we all know what happens then. . . .

But the odd concern, in the hope of making a bit more quick money, will occasionally take a chance with the rules of public hygiene. This was the reason for the outbreak at Zermatt (which is now gingerly once more advertising its attractions as a holiday resort). It was also the reason for the lack of precautions in the corned beef factories in Argentina which were apparently responsible for Aberdeen's epidemic.

As in the case of Zermatt the facts are only slowly coming out and they are not pleasant. It now seems that the British government were aware of the risk in the corned beef over a year ago but, in the words of Scottish Minister Mr. Peter Noble, they considered it "not wise" to withdraw the stuff on “the scantiest evidence.”

Presumably the typhoid sufferers take a rather different view on the scantiness of the evidence and on the wisdom of clamping down on the suspect meat.

But when all this has been said, the basic fact remains. Typhoid is a disease of social negligence. Despite what the meat companies say, corned beef is not one of the world's prized delicacies; it is a typical working class food—substandard, mass produced, supermarket sold.

And once typhoid gets a grip it flourishes best in the most depressed living conditions—in the overcrowded rooms, in the shared lavatories and in the slum tenements which have no easy means of heating water for washing.

It is ironical that, in conformity with its profit motive, capitalism should spend so much in keeping diseases in check yet should sometimes be defeated by its very own economic conditions. But there is no irony in the fact that, when this happens, it is the same old working class who suffer.

BUSINESS

Rootes & Chrysler

It has been apparent for some time that Rootes were nervous about the magnitude of their gamble, on their baby car, the Imp, which has tied up so much capital in the factory at Linwood.

The link-up with the American owned Chrysler Corporation is probably a result of this, gamble—a method by which Rootes hope to strengthen their financial foundations to withstand any storm which may follow their Linwood investment,

Chrysler, whose fortunes have only recently been revived in the States, were looking around for just such an opportunity. Now some financial seers are predicting that before long Rootes will be entirely under American ownership and control, like Fords and Vauxhalls.

This is the sort of wicket on which the Labour Party thinks they can make a lot of runs. Their leading batsmen were soon hitting out. Mr. Callaghan wanted to know what steps were being taken to ensure that there would be no further dealing in Rootes shares to take control of the company outside the United Kingdom. Mr. Wilson went even further—he wanted guarantees about not only American but also “ German or other foreign ” interests.

This is the most blatant of playing up to nationalist prejudices. The Labour government of 1945 saw nothing wrong in this country accepting the American encroachments which went tinder the name of Marshall Aid.

The present Labour Party, at any rate while they are in opposition, attack foreign investment in this country as the invasions of money-mad international manipulators. But they also think that the opposite process—British investments and subsidiaries abroad—is an excellent idea, the fruits of good old British enterprise.

This doubtless goes down well enough with patriotic voters who once believed the Labour Party when they used to talk about being an internationalist organisation. Now all that nonsense has been dropped, which may mean a few more votes for Labour candidates.

The deal between Rootes and Chryslers was good business from the point of view of their profit accounts—which is the only viewpoint they are interested in. Capitalism is lubricated by such deals, and is powered by the motive for them.

And if the business deals are something to be expected, so is the dishonest reaction of political parties.

ABROAD

Goldwater

Whatever happens at the Republican Convention at San Francisco this month, Senator Goldwater has established himself as a serious force in American politics.

Once he was laughed at, for his quaint notions about Reds under the beds and his itching button-finger. The results of the Presidential primaries have shown that Goldwater’s neuroses are shared by millions of what are usually called normal, decent Americans.

Goldwater stands unashamedly for reaction. He stands for States Rights at a time when American capitalism is trying to resolve many of its problems by increasing pressure, and power, from the Federal centre. He stands against State insurance schemes just as their value to American capitalism is becoming so apparent He stands for an extreme—some would say fatally impetuous—foreign policy towards Russia at the moment when the American ruling class may be on the verge of allying itself with the Soviet Union in face of a possible longer term threat from China.

Goldwater probably appeals to the uninformed and apathetic sentiments of those American workers who are impressed by his rugged frontiersman’s facade. (They presumably ignore the fact that the Senator is descended from a Jewish family, who were not among the now-romanticised pioneers.)

But in his present vein Goldwater does not offer the policies which United States capitalism needs if it is to hold its dominant world position. Said The Economist of June 6th last: “. . . he has not grasped the nature of the power his country wields in the nineteen-sixties.” Yet he could turn out no different from the other demagogues who have climbed to power on extreme propaganda and have then had their wilder notions tamed by the realities of office. Perhaps it is true that, as Governor Scranton—the one time hope of the anti-Goldwater brigade—said, the Senator is “not as conservative as he thinks.”

For the moment Goldwater is "committed to his present line and will, therefore, probably continue to thump it out if he gets the Republican nomination. If— and this is as massive an “if” as ever was postulated—he becomes President he may well alter his line to fit in with the requirements of American capitalism.

We are accustomed now to the policy reversals of so-called Left Wing politicians when they are catapulted into power. A President Goldwater, as a Right Winger doing the same thing, would make an interesting item for the scrap book.

On the pin (1964)

From the July 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

Oklahoma City, USA, has the unpleasant distinction of being the site of an experiment in discomfort. Some Oklahomans are protesting at this and there can be little wonder that they are. But experiments on human beings in the mass are not a novelty; they are, in fact, going on all the time.

Each morning for the past five months, jet aircraft have flown backwards and forwards over Oklahoma City, deliberately breaking through the sound barrier about half a dozen times between seven o’clock and about half past one. This will go on, day after day, until the beginning of next month.

The object of these experiments is to find out the effect which sonic booms have upon the people on the ground. Now that the American aircraft industry has entered the international race to build a supersonic airliner, the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) is trying to discover what would constitute an aircraft “acceptable” to the people it will fly over. There is no doubt that the projected airliner will be an excessive nuisance; the FAA are experimenting to find out the limits to which the nuisance can go. How much noise and other discomfort will people stand ?

There has inevitably been some protest from Oklahoma City, a small part of whose 500,000 people not see why their homes should be damaged (windows have broken, walls have sagged and bulged, plaster has split under the boom), their nerves shattered and their lives endangered (one ceiling which came down in the Negro section of the City narrowly missed a six year old child), in the cause of building a bigger, faster, noisier, more objectionable aircraft than those which already cause considerable disturbance.

The FAA has offered a conciliatory front to the protestors—they even promised to call off the experiments if the City authorities asked them to. But not all of Oklahoma’s citizens dislike the booms (we shall come to the reason for this in a moment), so no such request has been made. In any event, there is little doubt that, whatever Oklahoma or any other community may say, the world is going to be pestered by the supersonic airliners.

The protests of the people who live around London Airport have not been able to reduce the noise nuisance there; in fact, jet flights, which are the main culprits, steadily increase. Occasionally the government pulls off a dishonest trick. As the pace of competition among the jet operators gets hotter, the airlines make frequent application to be allowed to step up their allocation of flights—sometimes night flights. It is not unknown for the Ministry of Aviation to grant only part of such application, and to follow this with such a hullabaloo about their professed concern for the eardrums of the people around the airport that the fact that they have actually granted an increase in flights goes almost unnoticed.

The reason for the popularity of the big jets is that they are one of the cheapest methods of moving people over long distances by air that has ever been discovered. This means that their operator can hope to make big profits from them. If this should apply also to the supersonic liner, then that monster will before long be crashing about over our heads.

The thing which will stop the supersonic project will not be the demonstrations of the people who will be driven to distraction by it. It will not be because the thing is officially considered to be too great an assault upon human living conditions. The airliner will be abandoned if it is proved to be so crushingly unprofitable that the nations who are now racing to build it are persuaded that their economic interests are better served by dropping the project.

This has happened before. The post war years are littered with aircraft—the Brabazon, the Princess flying boat—which did not make the commercial grade. Others—the Vanguard, for example—only scraped in and were immediately an economic embarrassment. The development of the helicopter as an inter city link has been held in check not because it is a deafeningly clacking contraption (which it is) but because its operators have not been able to make it pay.

We may reflect, with a wry smile, upon the fact that up to now the most profitable aircraft have also been among the most objectionable. So we have got the jets, whose throaty scream drowns all conversation as they pass overhead at a height at which the traditional piston engine would hardly be noticed. And we have not got the flying boats, which might have been that much less of a nuisance because their airports would have probably been built on the coast. If this unfortunate circumstance is anything like a constant rule, the supersonic jets will be profitable. And we shall look back wistfully to the comparatively peaceful days when simple 707’s thundered over the roof-tops.

The Oklahoma experiments will then be consigned to embarrassed history. But other experiments, in different fields, will go on. Day after day, for example, we are subjected to investigation by what are officially known as market research organisations. Smooth, earnestly bespectacled young men call at our front doors, flick over plastic pictures of electric shavers, challenging us to identify their makers. (The writer, who has a weakness for electric shavers and who therefore devours all the ads for them, came out with full marks for this, but was disappointed not to receive a prize.)

The same young men may come back again some time later, with other questions about other products. They do not call at every house. They “sample” us, which perhaps makes some people feel like rare sherry, except that rare sherry is more respected by its drinkers than we are by our masters.

The smart young men have even divided us into groups, according to the jobs we do and how much we get for it. A company director is probably in group A or B. A tool maker may be somewhere in Group C. And so on down the alphabet, until somewhere among the E’s are the people, who scrape along on National Assistance.

None of the smart young men seem to see anything wrong in this. Most of them are anxious to identify themselves with the market research herd, dressing, talking and even combing their hair to the same pattern. They could have stepped straight out of those exceedingly irritating advertisements which, by a novel stroke, tell us when not to chew gum. They look out at the world with confident eyes, convinced of their ability to sell it absolutely anything.

The reason for this sort of activity—to use a rather delicate word for it—is that capitalist industry must always be obsessed by its markets. Profit is at the moment the primary objective of production- but although it is made when the goods are produced, profit can only be realised when they are sold. It did not take capitalism long to realise that it had better try to get to know its markets. So they are constantly sampling us, experimenting on us, sending out their smart young men to put us under their microscopes.

They may even try to alter a market, to persuade us to stop buying one type of product and to start buying another. Or they may try to open up new markets, with goods which have not been widely sold before. (Any day now, for example, we shall be swamped with advertisements for central heating systems.)

In Oklahoma, as a matter of fact, some of the business interests descry a market in the sonic booms, The local Chamber of Commerce hope that, if the experiments help to turn out an “acceptable” aircraft, Oklahoma’s airfield will be developed as one of the world's first supersonic airports. Speculating on this prospect, they have already bought up a lot of land around the airfield. Hungrily they look to the business which a supersonic airport would bring them—the contracts to build and to supply, and the extra population which would come to the area. Dazzled by visions of the golden economic boom, the business men of Oklahoma City have no eyes for the distress which the sonic booms will cause to the people of the area.

Experiments are not confined to the commercial field. Everyone knows that the great publicity drive which the Conservative Party launched before their victory in 1959 was managed by one of this country’s leading advertising agencies. This agency did not rush out haphazardly, slapping up hastily designed posters in any old place. They first of all took their sample of what they call public opinion, they made their experiments and they thought around it all. Only then did they decide on the line which their publicity should take.

The lessons of that defeat were not wasted upon the Labour Party. They assembled their own force of high powered admen, who gravely discussed which line they should adopt. Should they plug Nationalisation? Pensions? Roads? Out of all this came the Let's Go slogan, and the thumbs up sign— and is it only coincidence that Mr. Wilson is now inseparable from his pipe?

All of this effort has gone into finding out what the people will bear in the way of election propaganda, in the same way as the Oklahoma experiments are supposed to find out what they will bear in the way of thunder over their heads. It has gone into finding out what political image will appeal most to the voters’ ignorance and apathy. That is why the Tories no longer present themselves as the party born with a divine right to rule and why Labour has stuffed away its cloth cap, which is now worn only at events like Miners' Galas.

Nobody is exempt from such investigations—even the investigators themselves. That paunchy, florid sales executive, poring over the latest market research returns, enunciating in careful accents through his teeth, does not escape. He, too, is part of a market, to be assessed and experimented upon. Even the chewing gum makers are after him, along with the car firms and the people who try to persuade him that theirs is the best way of suppressing his ulcers.

Capitalism exploits and restricts its entire working class. But more than that, it degrades us in a multitude of ways. It has us wriggling on a pin on its observation board, and is carefully noting our every twitch and spasm. Does that spasm indicate that we would prefer another sort of pin? Does that twitch mean that we want one with a different shape head? If there’s money in it, capitalism is interested.

Maybe the working class do not object to this. In moments of despair, it even seems that they actually like it. In which case they do not object to, they like, blatant humiliation.

But, as Vera Lynn never tired of pointing out, somewhere there is a silver lining. Whatever the result of the experiments, and whether any notice is taken of them or not, they do prove one thing. We count. Mass opinion is important At the moment, it is all mass ignorance; but if it were mass knowledge. . .  If the people refused to chew gum, or take plastic spoons with their detergent powder, if they said a unanimous No to supersonic aircraft, all these things would have to stop.

There is one obvious qualification to this. If ever people got around to thinking like that, they would almost certainly be on the verge of saying the biggest-ever No. They would be about to say No to capitalism itself, to its grisly experiments, its cynical posturings and its ruthless degradations. There is a moral in this for us all, for the deafened folk of Oklahoma, for the canvassed, sampled, classified, humiliated people of the world.

Stop wriggling and get off that pin.

Ivan.

The Passing Show: Holiday Reckoning (1964)

The Passing Show Column from the July 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

Holiday Reckoning 1.

The residents of Clacton had hardly gathered their wits after the Easter punch-ups, when Whitsun brought fresh outbreaks of teenage violence, but this time at Margate, Brighton and that paradise of retired army officers—Bournemouth. Margate was the worst afflicted, as hoards of “Mods” and “Rockers” descended on Dreamland and other parts and laid into each other without pity, egged on by their girl friends.

One aspect of these outbreaks which has alarmed the authorities is the contempt in which the warring youngsters held the police. “Here come the coppers; let's do ’em! ” was heard at one point and seems to sum up the prevailing attitude. It’s little wonder, then, that the coppers got just as tough and waded in with truncheons swinging. Neither is it surprising that heavy penalties were imposed by the courts on practically all those who were caught.

Just about as sickening was the spate of comments, excuses, call them what you will, in the press and elsewhere. Some people had blamed the poor weather and the lack of teenage amusement facilities at Clacton for the trouble there, but the same excuse could not be used for those which occurred at Whitsun. Nobody seemed to have any real grasp of why the violence had broken out and everybody was shocked and angered by it, forgetting that this was not the first trouble of its kind—neither is it likely to be the last.

When it came to suggesting ways of preventing it, we were treated to a rich variety of uselessness. The Evening Standard featured brief impromptu interviews with people in the street One young woman thought that confiscating their scooters and motorbikes would “immobilise the little horrors and soon put a stop to them,” as if there were no such things as buses and trains. (Anyway, what is to stop them from fighting at home if they want to?) Stiffer penalties, prison, birch and the inevitable “put ’em in the army for a spell’’—all were trotted out, and all equally futile. The army, after all, exists to do just this sort of thing, only on a bigger and more highly organised scale. There is another difference, of course. The army has the sanction of the government in particular, and society in general. When it knocks other people about, it is done in “the interests of peace” or “to establish the rule of law” or “to protect the territorial integrity ” of some puppet state or other. Yobbos do not enjoy such privilege.

We hold no brief for the Whitsun wild ones, but at the risk of being told to turn the record over and play the other side, we say again that they are the ugly product of an equally ugly society. In the main, they are members of the working class—that much is obvious, despite some of the inane suggestions about their supposed riches. Their homes are usually in the drabber and meaner parts of the big towns, and their everyday lives are generally in character with their surroundings. Like most of us, they have to face a monotonous, unfulfilling and insecure existence of going to work for a wage packet.

This faces them with all the associate problems, boredom not least of all. Not just the boredom of “nowhere to go in the evening” but the greater boredom which is part and parcel of the uninspiring life of a wage slave and which does, in fact, colour his every waking minute. If we are honest with ourselves, we will all admit this.

The remarks of some of the “ Mods’ birds” to Daily Mirror reporter Paula James the day after the fights, are illuminating.

Listen—it gives you a kick, a thrill. It makes you feel all funny inside. You get butterflies in your stomach and you want the boys to go on and on . . . You’ve got to get your kicks somehow. You’ve got to make up for all that boring time you're going to spend at work next week.

This, then, sums up their attitude. This, they think, will solve their problems— and the “kicks” have got to be extra hard to give them any pleasure at all. No use telling them that their problems will still be with them long after they are too old for kicks any more. Reefers, Purple Hearts, violence and noise are the empty pleasures they seek. No use telling them either of the broken health which lies only a short way ahead for many of them. The Mods’ birds have a reply to that, too:

We like life the way it is now. We want it to go on and on like this. . . . We want to live today. For here, for now, not next week.

They have yet to realise that they are really at the receiving end of the biggest kick of all, one that lands fairly and squarely on them, so long as they are members of the working class. All the bust-ups in the world won’t alter that. That is the real lesson they have to learn and until then Capitalism has the laugh which really matters.

Holiday Reckoning 2.

Whitsun was warm and sunny, the roads hot and smelly—and dangerous. It was estimated that about six million cars were on the move over the four days, mostly rushing to and from the holiday spots. A record number of cars and road deaths. At least eighty-four people lost their lives. In France the number was one less. Sweden, with seventeen, had its highest total for years.

There were the usual warnings and appeals from motoring organisations and Ministry of Transport Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chesham. Strange though it may sound, these might have had some effect. Apparently overall driving was better, but the relentlessly increasing volume of traffic has a counteracting effect. As The Guardian pointed out: “ The ultimate effect is that we are marching slowly backwards.”

This trite little statement seemed to illustrate neatly the mockery behind the whole problem of road traffic. In this and other countries, a great deal of motorway building has been going on, but the fastest road building does not seem to keep pace with the mounting number of vehicles. It is typical that only capitalism could produce such machines as the motor car, inefficient and unwieldy when viewed from the viewpoint of human interests and then plonk it onto a road system completely unable to cope with it. In addition, only Capitalism would have us all on a ball and chain, and then release us all at once for “a much needed break,” half of which is spent rushing “to get away from it all ” only to find that we have not really escaped, because everyone else has had the same idea.

Majorcan Holiday

Situated in the Mediterranean about five miles off the Spanish mainland, Majorca has become tremendously popular in recent years as a holiday centre. With its warm climate and beautiful rugged mountain scenery, it attracts tourists from many parts of the world. It is noted, amongst other things, for its cultivated pearls, its cathedral at Palma, and the Valldemosa monastery where Chopin stayed for just a few unhappy months.

Many workers manage a fortnight there by travelling tourist class on a “package holiday,” some spending most of the daylight hours lying on the beach frying themselves in the sizzling sunshine, concerned less with the benefits of sunlight than with getting a tan to take back home and show their friends. They may get heatstroke for their trouble, but the prestige of a golden brown skin is obviously considered worthy of the risk.

Despite the warmth and the comparatively relaxing atmosphere, it is interesting to note the number of people who, even there, never let down their guard for a moment. Here is the woman with pointed sunglasses and a loud affected voice, trailing an enormous dog behind her. Over there is the man who boasts constantly about his “good job” and high income and, most laughable of all, some of them even get patriotic about the English weather.

Their hotel is quite well appointed and perhaps this is what has gone to their heads a little. They seem to miss the point that it is by no means as exclusive as they like to think. For exclusiveness you go to another part of the island, such as Formentor, where the cheapest hotel room will cost you about six guineas a day, where the beaches are superb and serene in their peacefulness. It is the playground of royal families and other rich types.

Some of the better-off have settled in Majorca and live the usual life of ease associated with their wealth. But for most Majorcans it is the usual story of working for a wage packet as a means of living. This is the lesson which stands out just as much among the beauty of the Balearics as it does amongst the dirt and bustle of London.

Eddie Critchfield

Blogger's Note:

A short Panorama video about Mods and Rockers from 1964 gives you a flavour of the period. Failing that, you can always check out Sting as a Bell Boy.

Finance and Industry: U.S. bogy (1964)

The Finance and Industry Column from the July 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

INVESTMENT

U.S. bogy

The recent Chrysler/Rootes deal, discussed elsewhere in these pages, has again revived the usual talk of American financial encroachment—not least among our Labour politicians. They raised a similar sort of fuss, it will be remembered, when American Ford increased its stake in U.K. Ford from 55 to 100 per cent, a few years ago.

Similar heartburnings were caused in France last year when Chrysler took over control of Simca, and the French government actually stepped in to put to stop to the deal when they heard that U.S. General Electric was after a stake in Machines Bull, the big electronics firm. But the significant thing to note about the last affair is that the French government eventually relaxed their opposition and allowed a modified arrangement to go through.

For the facts are simple enough. American capitalism is in search of outlets for its capita], and in many cases European firms have not sufficient resources of their own to finance their expansion. Yet expand they must if they are not to be left behind in the race for sales and profit. Bootes with Chrysler’s resources behind them are a far different proposition than they were on their own—for years, in fact, the speculation has been whether they could really survive for long against the bigger units of BMC, Vauxhall, and Ford. Similarly, Machines Bull plus General Electric is in a vastly stronger position to face up to IBM and Elliott than it was on its own. To see the facts as they really are, it is only necessary to observe that IBM’s turnover is twenty times that of Machines Bull; that National Dairy Products, an American milk firm, has a bigger turnover than I.C.I.; that United States Steel produces more steel than the whole of West Germany; that the turnover of General Motors is greater than the whole of the “gross national product” of Holland, and its profits bigger than the national product of Eire.

One way or another, American capital will keep coming into Britain and Europe. Capitalism hates a vacuum. As usual, it is bigness that counts, and bigness that will win the day. And, just as important for European capitalism, if one country refuses it—it will go elsewhere. Modernisation of the Moselle 

STEEL

The Moselle canal

The recent opening of the Moselle canal is a wonderful example of the hard economic facts behind politics.

Just as German capitalism always had envious eyes for the iron ore of French Lorraine, so did French industrialists seize every opportunity to lay their hands on the iron and coal of the Saar. In 1920, the Versailles treaty gave France control of the Saarland for 15 years—as well as handing back Lorraine. In 1945, again, the Saar was incorporated in the French zone of occupation; later, in 1947 it was set up as an independent state though linked economically to France. In 1950, France granted it complete self- government—but in return for its coal output (15 million tons) for fifty years.

Came the Common Market. In 1956, French capitalism was forced to play yet another hand. In return for the handing back of the Saar to Germany, the latter was to participate in the canalisation of the Moselle. By this hard bargain—for both sides—barges of 1,500 tons are now able to travel 170 miles from Thionville to the Rhine, and French steel will be selling more cheaply in South Germany than even Ruhr or Saar steel. The greatest opposition to the canalisation of the Moselle came from the Ruhr steelmakers—it is easy to see why.

So determined was France to get the project through, and so reluctant the Germans, that even with the Saar thrown in the French government had to pay £48 million towards the project, compared with Germany’s £22 million. But already they are planning to extend the canal southwards to Metz and Nancy. Eventually, the plan is to link the Rhine with the Rhone and form one great waterway between the Mediterranean and the North Sea. With huge barges plying along this thousand mile canal, transport costs will be cheapened for French industry in particular. Already German, Dutch and Belgian shippers are competing with their French counterparts for traffic, and the German and French railways threatening to cut their tariffs.

Under capitalism the big get bigger, and the small are forced more and more to the wall. At first sight, there seems little connection between Chrysler moving into Rootes and 5,000 ton barge convoys moving along the Moselle. But the connection’s there alright. Just call it size—plus the prospect of profit.

Stan Hampson

Rot about Rootes (1964)

From the July 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

Early in June the newspapers and the radio and TV announcers told us that we were all getting hot under the collar about the news that Chrysler, the car firm, was paying £12 million for part ownership of Rootes Motors. Those who were telling us how excited we were had two versions of the facts, one designed to raise our temperature to fever heat, the other to reassure us that all is well. The head of Rootes, along with government spokesmen, said that it is a commendable thing, bound to benefit us all, that Chrysler should be helping Rootes with cash and experience to sell more cars than before. The Labour Party leaders and leader-writers denied this and asked us to view the event as a very sinister thing from which we shall all suffer.

We were all supposed to know that the supreme significance of the deal lies in the fact that Chrysler’s is an American firm and Rootes is British. Probably three quarters of the population didn't know and don't care, but with a general election not far away, any stunt that can scare a few thousand voters into changing their allegiance is important to the professional politicians. 

So we are asked to believe that it is bad for British workers that an American firm should buy shares in a British company because the next step may be that Chrysler's will gain control of Rootes and be able to determine its policy and activities. Mr. Harold Wilson, leader of the Labour Party, led the attack, and, with minor degrees of emphasis, most of the newspapers committed themselves to the opinion that, whether or not control of Rootes is in danger of passing to America at the present time, it would certainly be a serious matter if that ever happened. The Daily Worker, on June 10, took a line quite indistinguishable from that of the Labour Party spokesman in an article with the title, “It may be good for Chrysler, General Motors and Fords, but . . . It's no good for Britain.”

If the whole uproar is regarded as no more than an attempt to exploit anti-American feeling in order to win over some voters from Tory to Labour, there is no need to delve for any deeper argument; but in fact those who made the running for the protest were only too anxious to justify themselves with what purported to be reasons in addition to jibes about foreign control.

Most of the attempts at argument were remarkable chiefly for their vagueness and obscurity, but here and there some writer or speaker committed himself to something definite. So, for example, the Daily Herald on June 9. For the Herald's leader writer it was not an objection to American firms investing money in this country: on the contrary, the Herald agreed with the Government's claim that such investment deserves to be welcomed. But suppose, said the Herald, the investment is increased and eventually Chrysler's controls Rootes as Americans already control Fords and Vauxhalls. And suppose further that there is “ a slump in international markets,” what will the American owners do then? (It may be recalled here that the Herald seem to have overlooked its own belief that governments and economists now know all about preventing international slump, anyway).

Well, what will happen if the American motor firms with British subsidiaries find that they cannot sell all the output both from America and from Britain? The Herald thinks it knows that the answer is obvious.

If output and jobs were at stake, obviously preference would be given to American output and American jobs—not British.

So far from being obvious it is patently untrue and absurd. It asks us to believe that American employers are motivated by the wish to do good to American workers and that in order to have the motor firms in this country conducted in the interest of British workers we must have them run by British, not American employers.

How silly can newspapers get? If the Americans who own Chryslers are anxious to give jobs to America’s four million unemployed, why are they putting their £12 million into a firm in Britain instead of in a firm in America?

And if the Herald believes that British investors invest here for the good of British workers, how would they square it with Mr. Harold Wilson’s statement about Conservatives generally that “their interest is not in production. They are too busy drooling at the mouth at the prospect of increased share values which benefit the investors or speculators and bear no relation to national needs.” (Sunday Telegraph, June 7, 1964).

The whole thing is nonsensical. The capitalist, British, American, or any other, invests in order to make profit. He does not care whether he sells motor cars (or anything else) at home or abroad. He is equally willing to sell whole factories for erection abroad—and up to this point the Labour Party protestors about the Rootes deal say it is a very good thing; but it suddenly in their eyes becomes a very bad thing if the motor car or other article is made in Britain to the order of an employing company in America.

The Wilsons will tell us that “our” motor firm is passing under foreign control, as did Fords of Dagenham, but as far as the workers are concerned it is not “our” motor firm, whether control is located at Dagenham or Detroit: it just makes no difference. And Rootes does not belong to the British workers and they therefore cannot be deprived of the ownership they do not have.

The capitalist nature of the world is not changed, is not made better or worse, by changes of ownership of companies, or by changes from private capitalism to state capitalism (nationalisation). Those who claim that these are issues of “moment to the workers” are simply misleading them.

Edgar Hardcastle

50 Years Ago: Forecasting (1964)

The 50 Years Ago column from the July 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

Opposition at Socialist meetings often takes the form of asking for a detailed plan of Socialism, and on receiving the reply that none can be given, the opposer declares triumphantly that Socialism is impracticable.

Now, as a matter of fact, any forecast of the details of a future system of society will be vitiated by its being coloured by conceptions engendered by our present environment. As all our ideas are suggested by our material surroundings, past and present, we cannot mentally project ourselves into a form of society that has never yet been in existence.

Further, no detailed plan is necessary for the attainment of Socialism. We know that Capitalism was brought about by the revolution that destroyed the old society. Feudalism. Were the pioneers of that revolution, the men who fought the battle of the rising bourgeoisie against the feudal nobility, prepared with a plan of capitalist society? Had they in mind such details as wheat corners, massacres, and Liberator swindles ? No, it was sufficient for the purpose to wrest the political machinery out of the hands of the feudal nobility. The details of Capitalism have been settled by the capitalists themselves as they have arisen. Similarly, it is sufficient for the working class to capture the political machinery and to seize the means of production and distribution. The details of Socialist society will then be settled by the people as they arise. The broad basis of Socialism, viz., the common ownership of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth, and their democratic control by the people, is sufficient for the present.

[From 'A Common Objection Answered' by H. T. Edwards, Socialist Standard, July 1914.]

Branch News (1964)

Party News from the July 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lewisham Branch is continuing its propaganda activity in Bromley and the Branch has especially asked that as many comrades as possible would be welcome to support their Thursday evening meetings at the Market Place, Bromley (outside Dunn's). These meetings commence at 7.30 p.m.

Glasgow Branch held a Seven Days for Socialism (June 6th-June 14th). Comrade Gilmac went up for the week to assist the Branch and we will have a review of the events in next month's issue.

Three weeks in America. Comrade McClatchie (Gilmac) reports: “I recently spent three weeks in America, most of the time in Boston, but I spent three days in New York. In Boston some members occupy Monday nights at their Head Office doing the routine work—dealing with correspondence, sending out literature, attending to subscriptions, etc. On Friday evenings there is an economic class and on Sundays they hold their fortnightly Executive Committee meetings. In between times Rab, Morrison and Fenton (the latter is also General Secretary) are engaged in writing and going through articles for the “W.S.” As far as I remember, the meetings on Boston Common had not recommenced. They have had very bad weather.

I attended an N.A.C. meeting and the Economics Class the first week I was there. At the second meeting of the Economics Class I spoke on the Materialist Conception of History. There was no time for advertising this meeting but about 80 letters were sent out to possible attenders. As a result about 30 turned up, and there were a number of questions.

I noticed one welcome change from my previous visit. A number of young people are interested and some have joined the Party.

Whilst in Boston I stayed, very pleasantly, at the Rabs. One evening they had a party which enabled me to meet some of the young people who have joined, and some who are interested. I also spent some pleasant evenings in the homes of Comrades Morrison, Ellenborgen, Blake and Gloss. One lovely evening Com. Gloss took me to dinner at a restaurant by the sea. Although his bookshop was burnt down he is carrying on quite well. I stayed with Comrade Orner and met the New York comrades. One of these (Charley David) was mentioned in a paper on account of his weekly discussions in a Square there. Another (Jack Kilgore) I was told, drives over one hundred miles to attend their Branch meetings in New York! In New York I had some lengthy discussions with Comrades Davis and Coombs. Another Comrade was there part of the time. Sam Orner is as full of beans as ever and proposes attending our next Conference. Charley Davis expressed the same intention. Comrade Fenton of Boston also proposes making a visit and Rab has it in mind.

In conclusion, I must record my appreciation for the comradely welcome I received everywhere. In particular, the warm and friendly atmosphere in the two places where I stayed; the Rab’s home in Boston and the Orner’s home in New Jersey. They could not do too much for me and for my comfort. I must add that Comrade Rab took me for a delightful three day trip through the New England States, which, to me, had an advantage historically as well as the appreciation of beautiful scenery and houses, villages and towns containing shadows of time gone by."

West London Branch have planned a visit to Brighton on Sunday, July 5th. This visit has been arranged in conjunction with the Brighton Group. All are welcome—meeting place—West Pier, Brighton, noon, Sunday, July 5th.

Wood Green & Hornsey Branch will meet in future at 17, Dorset Road, N.22, on Fridays at 8.30, All enquiries and correspondence to E. L. McKone at that address.

Phyllis Howard

SPGB Meetings (1964)

Party News from the July 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

Flights of Fancy (1964)

Book Review from the July 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

To The Keepers of the Slaughterhouse, by Walter Gore. Mitre Press, 14s.

This book consists of two short stories—“Novellas” the publisher calls them —which are “. . . addressed to all those who think that fundamental problems may be settled, once and for all, by the application of violence.” The theme of the first story is not new. The world has become divided into two massive armed camps, each under the domination of a military clique although ostensibly governed democratically. Eventually they go to war and the result is the obliteration of the human race by nuclear weapons. Not quite, though, because somehow about six dozen people manage to survive on one or two islands miles from anywhere, and start the painful job of reconstructing their lives and the rebuilding of humanity.

Well, it is a distinct possibility. The destructive power of nuclear bombs is massive, but in putting the proposition, the author has ignored some rather important facts. First of all, the military do not exist as a separate entity, answerable to no one but themselves. The capitalist class of this and other major powers have long ago brought the armed forces firmly under governmental control. Even the popular General Macarthur found this when he urged the use of atomic warfare against China during the Korean War and was promptly recalled by President Truman.

Then again, never has the fate of the world depended on the maniacal whims of a single man (Field Marshal Van. Rogen, Chief of Staff of one of the armed camps in the story), and there is no evidence to suggest that it ever will be, never mind the contrary propaganda with which we have been assailed from time to time when it suited our masters. Admittedly a short story cannot cover every point, but Mr. Gore has left far too many gaps in his narrative for us to take it all that seriously. The prospect of any war, big or little, nuclear or conventional, is a horrifying one, but when we have said this we have not said anything very original. Modern war is capitalist society in conflict, not just a few high-ranking, trigger-happy brasshats in the Pentagon or Kremlin. If the author could even have hinted at that, his book would have been of more value.

His second story is a bit more off the ground than the first. A sort of modern Noah’s Ark tale. A space expedition reaches a far distant planet and finds a form of conscious plant life. That is to say, the beings have similar shaped bodies and move around just like humans, but are constructed of plant matter, not animal protein. It is an entirely non violent society yet it plans to destroy the human race, which is regarded as a threat to its existence. So the space travellers hurry back to earth to warn us of the approaching disaster.

Quite honestly, we find it hard to take any part in this one seriously, despite vaguely expressed ideas earlier on about “international cooperation’’ and “world government." The write-up on the dust cover assures us of the author’s ' . . . numbing bitterness against the social forces around him, awakening to the discovery that if man is to cope with those forces he must first carefully study their nature." Fine. But what is their nature? Socialists have grasped the answer to that one. and we gladly offer Mr. Gore the benefit of what knowledge we have, for we realise the vital urgency of the task before us. First of all, however, let us keep our mental rockets firmly in orbit, and not lose control of them in far off flights of fancy.

Eddie Critchfield

Russian Diamonds (1964)

From the July 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

For some years Russian diamonds have been sold in the world market through the South African, De Beers diamond organisation.

The Chairman of the De Beers Company, Mr. H. F. Oppenheimer, recently announced that the agreement they signed with the Russians in January, 1960, is not being renewed, but that is only half the story. All the sellers of gem and industrial diamonds have an interest in keeping prices high and stable, and in wanting to protect themselves against a heavy price fall, which might happen if somebody broke away and flooded the market with diamonds at cut prices. So although the contract with the company is ended, there is no likelihood of any Russian attempt to undersell the Central Selling Organization which regulates the market. As Mr. Oppenheimer puts it:—

  . . .  On account of Russian support for the boycotting of trade with S. Africa, our contract to buy Russian diamonds has not been renewed. These changes will not, however, disrupt the centralised marketing organisation in London, which is essential in the interests of all diamond producing countries, whatever the political differences between them may be. (Guardian, 16 May, 1964).

During the past year the diamond market and the price level were threatened from another quarter, the Congo. Owing to the breakdown of governmental control diamonds were being illegally mined and exported and offered at prices below the world levels. This danger to profits now seems to have passed:

  Fortunately, the Congo Government, which risked incurring severe losses, both in taxation receipts and on foreign exchange, is taking energetic steps to restore law and order in the main diamond-producing area with very satisfactory results.

There are no doubt people in the Congo who take a different view about the “satisfactory" nature of these “energetic steps," but as far as De Beers are concerned the whole year was more than satisfactory, total diamond revenue being up by about 30 per cent, at a total of nearly 82 million Rands (about £41 million).

De Beers ran up against other problems with several African governments because it was politically awkward for these governments to allow the locally mined diamonds to be sold through a company registered in South Africa. The solution has been found. All of these diamonds are now bought “by companies registered and managed outside the Republic of South Africa and which are not subsidiaries of De Beers.”

It matters less to De Beers to keep direct control of the subsidiary buying companies than it does to keep up the world price of diamonds, and in 1963/4 they recorded a rise in the price of gem diamonds of about fifteen per cent.

Edgar Hardcastle

Obituaries: Percy Hallard and John Boucher (1964)

Obituaries from the July 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is with regret that we have to report the death of two members. 

Percy Hallard

Percy Hallard died in June after a long illness at the age of 70. He joined the Party in 1914 and was secretary of West Ham Branch for 35 years. It was said that Comrade Hallard and West Ham Branch were synonymous, and this was not far from the truth. He was his branch's bulwark, and his hard work and capable organising bore splendid fruit. He helped the Dagenham Branch in the early 1930's to get going, and contributed enormously in the East Ham electoral campaign which culminated in the Party contesting East Ham South in 1951.

He will not be forgotten by the many West Ham members he encouraged and stimulated into Party activity. Other members will remember him as a West Ham delegate at Party Conferences, where his contributions were constructive, good humoured and always to the point. Percy Hallard was an unassuming man, open and friendly to everyone. He will be sadly missed. Our sympathy and regards go to his wife, and our comrade, Mag Hallard.

John Boucher

John Boucher died suddenly on June 3rd. He collapsed after 'phoning Head Office to say he was not feeling well and would not be at the Executive Meeting that night. He was 52 and joined the Party in 1933, and apart from seven years in South Africa, he had been a member of Wood Green Branch (under its various names) all that time. For his branch he tried his hand at everything. Before the war he spoke outdoors regularly at Jolly Butchers Hill. He did not find public speaking easy, but by carefully preparing notes before each meeting he spoke to attentive audiences. At times Wood Green Branch activities were centred on his home.

John Boucher was General Secretary of the Party for a short time at the beginning of the last war until he was imprisoned for refusing to obey Government direction. He served on the Executive Committee off and on for a number of years. He had been a most able member of the Finance Committee and also a Party Auditor. He was always willing to carry out routine office work, typing reports and efficiently doing the endless jobs that are essential to an organisation like ourselves.

He was without guile, direct in speech and behind the reserve very human. Our comrade Boucher will be remembered for many things: especially for his entire devotion to the Party and his constant concern in improving its efficiency and well being. The Party will be the poorer and sadder without him.

Peruvian Tragedy (1964)

From the July 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

Football matches are not usually connected with carnage, but the massacre at Lima showed that human passion can cause untold misery and horror in almost any social activity or in any place, if the conditions happen to be there.

With a death roll at over three hundred, the newspapers brought us a wider picture of the tragedy, with stories of police firing on rioting fans, the exits covered with steel barriers to keep out gate crashers, and riots continuing outside the stadium while the dead were being identified or removed.

Many blame the police, who arrested a certain rabble-rouser nicknamed “Bomba.” Probably many Peruvians will not bother to ask why the police were necessary in force at a football match, why there were steel barriers, why the fans threw concrete lumps and fencing rubble to express their displeasure. One could be excused for dismissing the whole affair as just another example of human stupidity coupled with Latin temperament, but the temptation of such cursory examination must be resisted.

Peru seems a distant land that only figures infrequently in the news; a country that most know little—and care less— about. The economy and politics of the country are something of a closed book to the popular press. Recently a book by John Sykes called Family in Peru was published. By no means a profound work, it is an impression of the outlook and attitudes of some of the people the author met during his stay. He points out that 1.6 per cent. of the population own 76 per cent. of the land—an important enough factor in a country where agriculture is one of the principal occupations. The bulk of the population are Indians or “half breeds,” large numbers of them living on the great estates in feudal conditions, or working in the foreign owned mines. Their social environment is poverty, brutality and despair. Their escape is religion and the chewing of the coca leaf, the latter appearing to have an even more stupifying effect on their minds than the former.

Many of the Indians in some areas, Sykes tells us, were and are free peasants, but they have been tricked out of their land by the big ranchers. They have sold land after bad harvests, or to build churches. Some of them, in the last throes of poverty, have drifted into Lima, which is now surrounded by shanty towns full of unemployed and of employed slum proletariat.

In the towns the professional and student groups, along with the urban working class, have often given their support to a party called APRA whose policies (though Sykes does not say so) seem to be typical of the rising native capitalist class that is also known in many other countries. The main props of APRA’s aims are land reform, greater Peruvian industrial expansion, improved conditions for workers and peasants, more democracy, greater need and opportunities for technical skill. The Peruvian working class is still undeveloped by European and North American standards, weakened and weighed down by peons and peasants and a democracy that is strictly confined to paper. Because of this APRA which, like all political parties, can only rule on mass support, were in 1936 and 1945 turfed from power by the generals and the army in the interests of the large land owners.

Sykes felt the sense of frustration in a land suffering from industrial growing pains, a feeling of simmering violence about to erupt at any instigation. By understanding such conditions, one can get some small idea of the reasons for the pointless violence which spewed up in the football stadium. Sporting events to these people are an outlet for all their hates and fears, which they do not, or are unable to, express in a collective fashion. The blind fury of the depressed mob seeking revenge on any scapegoat was often a feature of 18th and 19th century Europe, and it has not by any means disappeared from the present social scene.

As industry and capitalism develops in Peru the workers will learn to canalise their protests into trade union and political action. Improved though many aspects of life will be for them, they will still be the class that produces wealth for a minority. Poverty, relative and real, will be their lot and frustrations in new ways as well as the old will always be there. They may renounce the escape routes of football violence and coca leaves for less spectacular narcotics, such as bingo and purple hearts, but while they and workers in other lands remain a subject class, that will be their lot in life.

Jack Law

The Labour Party illusion (1964)

From the July 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the coming general election the Socialist Party will be contesting two seats. We will be standing in opposition to all other parties, Conservative, Labour, Liberal, Communist. Nationalist, and the like. When we contest elections we put only one issue before the working class—Socialism or Capitalism. We only seek the support of those who wish to have Socialism now.

We hold that a Socialist party must base its policy on a recognition of the class struggle which goes on between the working class and the privileged owning class. It must not compromise with other political parties which, because there can only be one Socialist party in any one country, only stand for Capitalism in one form or another. This is why we arc opposed to those parties, like the Labour Party and the Communist Party, which claim to stand for Socialism.

Although we don't regard these parties as Socialist and hold that they stand either for a reformed Capitalism (Labour) or State capitalism (Communist), we do recognise that they are in a way different from the Liberals and Conservatives. These openly proclaim that they stand for Capitalism. The Labour Party does not; it claims to be a party of the working class.

Under Capitalism there is inevitably working class discontent. The more politically conscious workers organise to seek a redress of their grievances. But as long as they are not Socialists, no matter how “ radical" they may be, their programme will be one of capitalist reform. They will form the "left-wing" of capitalist politics. This was the origin of the Labour Party; it was the party of working class discontent, vaguely protesting against the effects of Capitalism but having no understanding of their causes. “Labourism " preached the need for a Labour government which would somehow be different from a Conservative or a Liberal government. Liberals and Conservatives could not be expected to sympathise with or understand the workers, it was argued, but a Labour government would be different This belief was based on the assumption that Capitalism could be administered in the interests of the working class.

The experiences of the first two Labour governments should have shattered this delusion, but there was always the excuse that they were in office but not in power. There was no such excuse in 1945. Once installed, the new Labour government settled down to the task of running Capitalism. This inevitably brought them into conflict with the working class. Thus we found them using troops as blacklegs, prosecuting strikers and, in the end. trying to impose "wage restraint" and a " wage freeze" on the ground that wage increases would harm exports. Their foreign policy was based on protecting the overseas interests of the British capitalist class. To help them in this task they continued conscription and began production of the British nuclear bomb. As far as the working class were concerned there was little difference between this Labour government and previous Conservative ones. Their attempts to get higher wages were, as always, resisted. As before they were sent abroad to die defending the interests of the British capitalist class.

At the 1951 election the working class threw out the Labour government. The Labour Party had failed to produce Utopia. What changes they had made left the position of the working class much as it had been before. Once again experience confirmed our analysis that a Labour government would be no more able to solve working class problems than would an avowedly capitalist government.

The fact that the Labour Party failed did not mean that its leaders were consciously dishonest. It just meant that their theories of how Capitalism worked were wrong.

The Labour Party believed, and still believes, that social problems can be solved piecemeal—first defence, then housing, then redundancy, and so on. This again is a delusion. The social problems of Capitalism—bad housing, boring work, lack of educational opportunities, increasing crime, increasing mental illness, shoddy goods—arise from the fact that the workers do not own the means of production. This means that these problems cannot be solved within the capitalist system. Attempts to alleviate them will fail, for no sooner is one aspect cleared up than another appears.

There are many examples of this. In housing the answer to exorbitant rents was thought to be found in Rent Control. This affected the problem temporarily, but it has led to another; as a result of Rent Control the landlords have neglected their property so that today a major aspect of the housing problem is how to renovate decaying houses. One of the measures the last Labour government introduced was dividend restraint This led to a situation where companies had large reserves and low share values. As a result some time later, amid Labour protests, there was a spate of takeover bids. Then again, the Street Offences Act has merely led to the spread of the call girl racket. Trying to alleviate Capitalism's social ills is like doing Sisyphus' task. No sooner do you roll the stone to the top of the hill than it rolls back down again.

In recent years a change has come over the Labour Party. After losing three elections on the run the party decided that old-style Labourism was out of date. The image of the Labour Party as a backward-looking trade unionist party had to go. It was to be replaced by that of a modern, progressive, radical, national, dynamic, scientific, party. This change means that the Labour Party now accepts the capitalist system without qualification. It is the end of the road for "Labourism." At one time the Labour Party could be said to hast had some principles even though they were hopelessly mistaken. Once it had a vision of a New Society. It had a strong pacifist and anti-militarist tradition. This is no longer so. Today the Labour Party is one of the two great electoral machines competing for power against the background of the capitalist system. It is Tweedledum to the Conservatives' Tweedledee.

Mr. Wilson and his colleagues can hardly wait to get into office. But this time their party will not be coming to power as an avowed workers' party but as a party determined to stand no nonsense in its attempts to modernise British capitalist industry. It is unlikely to look with tolerance on unofficial strikes and restrictive practices. It is likely to impose an “incomes policy"—in other words, wage restraint. The wording class have nothing to gain from backing the Labour Party. But they can't say they haven't been warned what's in store for them.

Adam Buick

More about Trotsky (1964)

Book Review from the July 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Prophet Outcast, by Isaac Deutscher, Oxford University Press, 45s.

This is the last of the three volumes of Deutscher's magnum opus -  the biography of his hero Leon Trotsky.

It is not likely that many members of the working class of our affluent society will be able to afford to buy it. Nor, in truth, is a great deal of its bulk (nearly 500 pages) worth ploughing through. Much of its value is of a rather negative kind, demonstrating the type of thought and action we should avoid. And, willy nilly, the author tells us at least as much about his own mental processes as a "trotskyist" (the inverted commas are essential; one is no surer at the end than at the beginning what kind of an animal a trotskyist is) as about the career of his subject.

The book takes us from the banishment of Trotsky from Russia by Stalin in 1929 to his butchery (the phrase is literal enough; the end was achieved with an ice-axe) by a Stalinist thug in 1940. It consists of a record of his life in the various countries of his refuge (Turkey, Norway, France and Mexico) and of his personal and family hardships and tragedies, which were indeed many and moving. At the same time, it recounts the story of his political and action during those eventful years. It is, of course, with these that we are mainly concerned here.

Immediately, we are up against the negative aspect of the whole Trotsky saga. The first thing any student of politics would like to know is: what was the real difference that divided the hero of this book from the villain? What profound principle formed the basis of the murderous feud between these two men, both of whom called themselves communists? Well, here is one reviewer at least who is no wiser now that when he started.

On the contrary, time and again we find that on issues which appear to be really burning matters like the forced collectivisation of the peasants, for example, fierce invective against Stalin for doing the opposite of what Trotsky in exile advocated, is followed by bitter criticism of Stalin for in due course altering his tactics and doing the very thing that Trotsky advocated. As usual among politicians this leads not to gratification but to sour frustration and accusations of stealing clothing (or thunder, as the case may be).

How familiar all this is to us in England; and how excruciatingly boring. How often have we heard the Labour Party moan that all its best policies are pinched by the wicked Tories? It never seems to occur to them that either way the masses they are supposed to represent are going to get the "benefit" of the policies they claim will be so good for them. Nowhere in this book do we get the slightest hint that either Trotsky himself, or Deutscher, or any other of the characters that flit across the pages has the faintest realisation that there must be something odd about their policies if a monster like Stalin can adopt them, even tardily. And, above all, if the result of this adoption left all the evils of capitalist society as prevalent in Russia as they could be.

Trotsky was undoubtedly a man of considerable intellectual capacity. The author proudly tells us at the end that a postmortem on his hero's brain necessitated by the murderous smashing of his skull, revealed a brain weighing two pounds and thirteen ounces, which is apparently very much larger than normal. His ability is revealed all through the book in copious quotations from his writings. And it is impossible to dispute the fact that Deutscher, too, has a brain of some weight. But what does all this amount to? For practical purposes, it all adds up to nothing of any moment at all.

One searches in vain for some sort of focus to find out what all the fire and fury was about. In all the thousands of words not a word to tell us what is this "communism" that the two great protagonists were supposed to be fighting about. On the contrary, it is made abundantly clear that both sides agreed that State capitalism was Socialism. And Deutscher makes no secret of the fact that he, too, is satisfied to swallow and indeed to propagate this flagrant contradiction.

On page 55, for example, he makes it clear that he agrees with Trotsky that the working class in Russia cannot be exploited because there is no class which owns the means of production. He apparently does not even begin to see the truth of the matter which is that the Russian worker has to get up to the sound of a similar alarm clock as wakes his British counterpart, and do his stint by the day or the week for a wage which will enable him to keep himself and his family until the next wage comes along. That his only choice is to do that or starve. And that, as the fruits of his labour are removed from him in the same way as they are here, then someone must be enjoying the fruits of that exploitation.

Instead, Deutscher blinds himself with talk about power being in the hands of the proletariat—without, of course, a tittle of evidence to show that this is anything other than a grotesque fraud and that the proletariat in Russia is as powerless as in England; more so in fact, since it has not even the power of a free vote in a semblance of a democracy.

It is as a result of such a basic misconception that we get episodes which are merely farcical, but to Deutscher are intensely puzzling—such as the difference between groups of Trotskyists as to whether they should support Russia or China over the possession of the Manchurian Railway. Or, still more breathtaking, the spectacle of Trotsky supporting the treacherous grabbing by Stalin (by arrangement with Hitler) of Eastern Poland and the Baltic States because the local capitalists were thereby expropriated. It never seems to occur to these intellects that whenever the workers of such countries get a chance to show what they think of their "improved" position as a result of such happenings, they vote with their feet by the hundred thousand so that the communists have to build walls and barbed wire fences to keep the faithless ones in their compulsory heaven.

Running through this book like a grisly thread is the story of the terrible purges which Stalin was perpetrating in this period, and which indeed went on long after Trotsky's death. Trotsky's friends and his children were, of course, among the prominent victims of this appalling holocaust and it is impossible not to feel profoundly moved by his sufferings, even though one is ever conscious of the fact that the basic philosophy of it all, the reign of terror and the slogan that "the end justifies the means," was born of the basic flaw which we exposed right back in 1917—namely, the theory that a small clique of elite communists can capture power for the purpose of giving Socialism to a non-socialist working class. Trotsky himself was one of the arch-perpetrators of the Bolshevik reign of terror and he himself must have been haunted by the ghosts of those who he had sent to their doom.

The purge trials, in which Stalin staged the judicial murder of all the famous old bolsheviks he could lay his hands on, may seem like a dim and distant history to most people, but some of the names in the book make one realise that it is all not so long ago and that there are still people very much with us in England today whose attitude while the murders were actually being committed was to justify them. Trotsky complains bitterly, for example, about the equivocal attitude of Kingsley Martin who was the editor of the New Statesman in those days and who defended the stand taken by the then Labour M.P. and barrister D. N. Pritt, Q.C., the man who appointed himself the apologist-in-chief in this country for Stalin's murders. The former would no doubt like to forget, but Pritt is still being trotted out by the communists here at their rallies and it really is quite eerie to see, as large as life and as brazen as ever, one who insisted that the confessions were genuine of people who are being resuscitated (though not revivified) by Stalin's former accomplice Khrushchev.

But one turns quickly from such people to Deutscher himself. And here we must find room to single out one case which throws a lurid light on the whole dreadful business and on the attitude of Trotskyists and Stalinists alike, the case of Krestinsky, a former Soviet Foreign Minister. This leading Trotskyist did something that apparently nobody else did in all those fearful years; he retracted in open court and in the presence of foreign journalists the confessions that he had made to the secret police. The sensation this made at the time can well be imagined and, of course, this very episode gives the lie to all those apologists who said that the unanimity of the confessions made them beyond reproach. What happened as a result of Krestinsky's avowal that his confessions had been extorted from him by the police? The judge, instead of ordering a full enquiry into all the facts, hurriedly adjourned the proceedings. And next day, after a night in the hands of his tormentors, Krestinsky came back into court and retracted his complaint about extortion.

This one instance threw the whole thing into the open and Krestinsky's heroism was plain for all to see—as well as its tragic futility. But although one does not expect anything from the apologists of the time, what of Deutscher, who would presumably have saluted this gallantry in the part of his fellow-Trotskyist? He refers to Krestinsky's gesture as "feeble." This is written now, long after the revelations of the Khrushchev "secret" speech in which he made it clear that Stalin extracted his confessions by barbaric torture. And to add to the dreadful irony of it all, one reads in a recent issue of the New Statesman an article, by this same Deutscher, in which he mentions that Khrushchev has just "rehabilitated" Krestinsky as innocent of the crimes for which he was hanged and whose confession was the basis of the charges for which Bukharin and Rykov and so many others were hanged with him. Incidentally, this is, we believe, the first case of a prominent Trotskyist leader being exculpated. If the masters of Moscow get round to rehabilitating the arch-enemy Trotsky himself, then our tame communists will really have some words to eat.

L. E. Weidberg