The Emancipation of Women (1951)

From the June 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

The radio often provides us with talks, arguments and debates which are alleged to be serious contributions on profound subjects. Actually they are often demonstrations of verbose futility which would be absurdly humorous if the social ignorance they reveal were not so tragic.

"Woman’s Hour,” for instance, recently featured an argument between four male speakers on the question of "woman’s emancipation.’’

Befuddled on the very definition of feminine emancipation, the speakers were nevertheless agreed that up to about forty years ago women were the virtual slaves of their men-folk. Forced to do their household chores uncomplainingly, tied unceasingly to the home, and browbeaten into subservient obedience by their male lords and masters, the women of the pre-emancipation era, according to the speakers, were indeed oppressed.

Agreement was also unanimous on the contention that women are now free of that oppression. They are now at liberty to complain of their household tasks, and they are no longer bound to obey their husbands. Moreover, careers outside of the home are no longer closed to women, and they can now, if they wish, go out to work in factory, office or warehouse, etc. This is the freedom now allegedly achieved by women.

We will credit the B.B.C. speakers with a sense of proportion and assume that when they speak of "men” and “women” they refer to the vast majority of men and women—i.e., the members of the working class. To us it is hard to imagine the average working-class husbands of forty or fifty years ago asserting any great authority over their spouses when the husbands themselves had expended most of their energy in an exhausting working day of twelve or thirteen hours.

The mass of women, like the mass of men, were certainly and completely enslaved, but by something more real, grim and ruthless than the dominance of the opposite sex.

Capitalism, the present social order, brings into being a working class, the members of which must sell their mental and physical energies to the class owning the land, factories and other means of wealth production. Their dependence upon the price (or wages) they receive for these energies (or labour power) places them in a position of continuous bondage to the capitalist class. This was the social system that made slaves of both men and women of the early twentieth century, and remains to enslave both the male and female workers of to-day.

The fact that many women to-day go out to work, though described by some as a sign of feminine freedom, is actually the reverse. The economic compulsion of women into the various spheres of capitalist production—the fact that they, in order to procure more of life’s necessities or, at most, a few extra comforts must augment their husband’s wages by selling their own labour-power to the capitalist class, is proof that working-class women, like their menfolk, are still enslaved.

Only when the establishment of Socialism rids the world of classes and the wages system will the economic and social emancipation of all become a reality.

F. W. Hawkins

Editorial: Mr. Bevan: Another confusionist to fog the issue (1951)

Editorial from the June 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is an old established custom of the reformist movement that the astute rebels of to-day become the leaders of to-morrow, only to be pushed aside in turn by new rebels. The explanation is simple.

The reformist movements such as the British Labour Party are founded on the belief that Capitalism can be gradually improved and humanised if only the right men are put in control. It does credit to their hearts but not their heads, for it is demonstrably false. Capitalism can function at all only so long as those who control the Government enable the capitalists to make profit out of the exploitation of the working class. The most direct illustration of this is shown in governmental policy on wages. Notwithstanding the Labour Government's professed desire to see wages rise, immediately it came into power it had to start discouraging wage increases. If it had not done so higher wages would have eliminated profit and brought the system to a standstill.

So the regular phases of Labour Party internal policy are the election of vociferous rebels to leadership, their rise to governmental office, their loss of popularity through administering Capitalism, and their removal to make way for new confusionists.

And all the time the workers suffer from Capitalism and its wars, pacified by glowing promises of more reforms which end only in more disillusionment.

The latest claimant is Mr. Aneurin Bevan who resigned over the charges for false teeth and spectacles and over what he regards as the over-hasty plans for re-armament.

Following the example of all the earlier rebels who have trod the well-worn path to leadership, he claims that his policy is more truly socialist than that of Attlee. Having himself been occupied since 1945 trying to make Capitalism work he suddenly discovers that his "socialist” conscience requires him to resign and smugly writes to Attlee that “ it would be dishonourable for me to allow my name to be associated in the carrying out of policies which are repugnant to my conscience and contrary to my expressed opinion” (News Chronicle, 23/4/51). Having swallowed Capitalism whole and backed the policy of greater armaments, he strains at the gnats of charges for false teeth and too quick re-armament.

Writing in Reynolds News (6/5/51) he resuscitates the old slogan of “Socialism in our Time," claims that the Labour Party is socialist (he names it the “ Socialist Party ”), and that it has been engaged in building up Socialism and that it is only now that the question arises of “diluting our socialist policies” in order to secure electoral victory.

The truth is that Bevan, like the others, never got into Parliament on a socialist vote and if he had stood for election simply on the programme of establishing Socialism in place of Capitalism he would never have been a Member of Parliament.

How little he is concerned with Socialism is shown by his quaint remark that “the first glory of the Labour Government was the nationalisation of steel" and “the second glory . . . was the free National Health Service. That is a piece of genuine, undiluted Socialism.” (Reynolds News, 6/5/51.)

Political commentators are wondering what will be his future. We can tell them. So long as the working class can be deceived into believing that State Capitalism and reforms of Capitalism are Socialism they will refrain from establishing Socialism and will be content instead to chase after "leaders” each as futile as his predecessor.

Either they will continue to be misled by Attlee, or will choose Bevan (or some other) in his stead, and the difference between the one and the other will not matter the price of a pair of spectacles.

It has fallen to Labour Party peer, Lord Amwell, formerly Mr. F. Montague, M.P., who during the war was successively Parliamentary Secretary of the Ministry of Transport and of the Ministry of Aircraft Production, to expose the hollowness of the claims of both Bevan and those he criticises. Lord Amwell has been thinking back to the time when he was in the Social Democratic Federation and he now writes to The Times (26/4/51) to tell the readers of that journal what he says he has long tried, in vain, to force on the attention of his fellow members of die Labour Party. Here are some of his remarks:—

“Bevan and his friends .... are not socialists, only ‘ sharers-out.’ ”
   "The Welfare State (not originated in 1945) is part of the technique of scientific Capitalism.”
   "Nationalization as part of a scheme designed to capture world markets has nothing in common with public ownership to build a co-operative society.”
    "Nationalization is not what we meant by Socialism.”

It will be seen that on the above questions Lord Amwell has come round to what the S.P.G.B. has been saying for 46 years. Maybe he did hold those views long ago but nevertheless he has remained in the Labour Party and thereby helped to bring about the result he now deplores.

Which all goes, to show how right the S.P.G.B. was and how wrong Lord Amwell and the S.D.F. were on the question whether socialists could enter the reformist Labour Party to any useful purpose. The odd scraps of socialist propaganda delivered inside the Labour Party's ranks have no effect at all on its policy. It is not going towards Socialism and a change of leadership from Attlee to Bevan will not change its direction. The only place for those who do want Socialism is in the ranks of the Socialist Party.

Ernest Bevin (1951)

From the June 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

About twenty years ago, at a Trade Union conference, a delegate who is now a member of the S.P.G.B., rose to speak. The problems before the conference, he said, must be examined from the standpoint of the workers' interests and from no other. He argued that the interests of the workers were opposed to, and irreconcilable with, the interests of the employers: that to view any matter from the angle of national interest, or, the benefit of the industry, was to see it through the employers' eyes and that would not help to solve any working-class problem.

Mr. Ernest Bevin rose to speak. After a few mildly flattering remarks about the previous speaker he declared that he also, at one time, had held similar views. But, he added, with the accumulated wisdom of passing years, he had discarded such notions until now he regarded them as the immature ideas of his youth.

Ernest Bevin died on April 12th of this year. As is usual when a prominent capitalist politician dies, supporters and opponents joined in voicing their praises of the dead man. Mr. Attllee, the Prime Minister, broadcast a tribute to his late colleague on Sunday, April 15th. He said :-

"But his knowledge of poverty did not drive him into a sterile and bitter class consciousness. He understood and could work with people of all classes."

(News Chronicle, 16.4.51.)

We are a little nonplussed at the Prime Minister's reference to sterility. We should have thought that, if the term sterile was applicable in this sense, it would be more suitably applied to class-unconsciousness. Surely, in comparison, class-consciousness is virile. Further, we can assure Mr. Attlee that class-consciousness, especially when it generates a desire to end class society, is not bitter. He will find more bitterness amongst some of his disillusioned Labour Party members than he will find amongst class-conscious socialists.

We will unhesitatingly agree that Ernest Bevin was not class-conscious. As a Trade Union negotiator he was a man of outstanding merit; as a Labour Party politician he had nothing to offer the workers.

Bevin was born in 1881 of working-class parents in the small village of Winsford on the Somerset and Devon border. He was orphaned at the age of six and he worked as a farm-hand in the west of England from the age of eleven to fourteen. He then went to Bristol where he was employed in a restaurant, later as a tram conductor, and finally as a driver for a mineral water firm. At an early age he became interested in social welfare, local politics and industrial organisation. He became secretary of a "Right to Work" committee in Bristol and he led a party of ill-nourished, poorly clothed unemployed men into a cathedral during a service to demonstrate their need for work.

In 1910 Bevin called a meeting of transport workers in Bristol and from this meeting developed the Carters' Branch of the Dockers' Union with Bevin as its first chairman. He later became this union's first full-time paid official at 2 per week and a few months later he was appointed organiser for the South-West of England. In 1920 he became assistant general secretary of the Dockers' Union with Ben Tillett as his chief. In that same year his advocacy of the dockers' case during a public enquiry into their wages and conditions of work, gained for him the title of "The Dockers' K.C." In 1922 he was largely instrumental in the amalgamation of fourteen unions which became the Transport and General Workers' Union, with himself as the first general secretary. He held this post until he became Minister of Labour and National Service in 1940.

As a trade union chief Bevin was astute. He was wise to such oft repeated tricks of the employers as threatening a wage reduction in order to forestall and stave off a demand by the workers for a wage increase. He urged the members of his union not to fall for such manoeuvres, but to fight against threatened reductions and press forward with their own demands, not be bamboozled into bargaining their claims against the employers' threats.

Despite his defence of the workers' interests on the industrial field, Bevin was not actuated by a recognition of the class nature of capitalist society. His outlook was essentially humanitarian. His political activities are ample evidence of this.

He first stood as a Labour candidate for the Bristol Central constituency in 1918 and was heavily defeated. He became a Labour M.P. for Central Wandsworth in 1940 and why Winston Churchill immediately saw the advantage of having such a popular trade union leader in his war ministry. The workers would accept many things from Bevin that they would resist from another man.

During the early 1930's Ernest Bevin was mildly rebellious inside the Labour Party. Together with Mr. G. D. H. Cole and others, he argued against the "gradualist" policy of that party. He became chairman of an organisation known as "The Society for Socialist Inquiry and Propaganda," but the members of that society, Bevin included, had about as much idea of Socialism as a bull's foot. Bevin and Cole wrote a pamphlet entitled, "The Crisis. What it is. How it arose, What to do." in which they betrayed their complete lack of socialist understanding. To them, the crisis of 1931 was the result of mismanaged  finances: the remedy was to be found in rigid control of the banks and an abandonment of the gold standard. Nowhere in the pamphlet can we find a glimmer of Socialism. The idea that the financial tangles, like the crisis itself, were the result and not the cause of the capitalist process of production, does not appear to have struck them.

At another time Bevin wrote a series of articles in the New Clarion which that paper published as a pamphlet called "My Plan for 2,000,000 Workless." Again he did not look beyond Capitalism for his "plan." All it amounted to was a scheme for raising the school leaving age and paying optional pensions to workers at sixty years of age. This, he anticipated, would remove the very young and the very old workers from industry and leave their jobs vacant for others.

Even on the subject of war he was all haywire. During August 1939, he delivered an address at the Convocation of the Teachers' College, Columbia University, in New York. This was also published as a pamphlet and called "Forward Democracy." In it he sees as an obstacle to democracy and peace-

" . . . . the inherent primitive fear of man--fears which have prompted man to exercise his predatory instincts.
"It is understandable how primitive man and pioneers in the development of the world, driven by hunger, the desire to expand, striving for security, fighting man and beast, developed and perpetuated these traits."

If he really believed this, he failed to observe what many workers in more humble stations in life consider to be obvious—that war is the result of an economic struggle between sections of the capitalist class to gain control of markets and raw materials.

With an outlook like this it is easy to understand how a man like Bevin could undertake office as Foreign Secretary and do the job to the complete satisfaction of the capitalist class of this country. Like his Labour Party predecessors, Philip Snowden and Arthur Henderson, he was applauded for his defence of British capitalist interests.

Mr. Churchill once called Bevin a "Working Class John Bull." Mr. A. J. Cummings re-echoed the idea in the News Chronicle on April 16th. The inference is, of course, that Bevin was a tenacious, determined, strong man. Another writer, Alaric Jacobs, who claims to have observed Bevin at U.N.O. conferences and elsewhere, has a far different view. In his book "Scenes from a Bourgeois Life" he states how, on March 12th, 1947, at the Moscow Conference, Bevin has declared that the principle of reparations out of current production could not be conceded at all. It would ruin Germany and "make her an economic slum in the heart of Europe." But when Jacobs and other paper men saw him at the British Embassy in Moscow on April 25th of that year, Bevin produced an entirely contradictory argument. He then said that reparations would make Germany too powerful because the flow of reparation goods would help to expand German industry to such an extent that it would be a competitive menace to the rest of Europe.

Alaric Jacobs is most unkind to Bevin. He says of him—

"His is a most plausible demagogue who combines the Simple Simon air of Stanley Baldwin with the tenacity of Snowden, the capacity for intrigue of MacDonald and the shrewdness of J. H. Thomas. Like Baldwin, he can stimulate integrity without possessing it and can make ignorance look like honesty. Enormously vain and self-righteous, he is in the tradition of great English humbugs who are beloved of the people . . . 

"Bevin seemed to me to be a bumble whose reputation had been won in too easy a school . . . This is a clumsy fellow, I thought, as I watched him in action. England needs a man with a rapier. She is ill-served by this Shakespearian clown who bats his opponents over the head with a bladder inflated with his own hot air."

("Scenes from a Bourgeois Life.")

Bevin was like so many other labour leaders, full of good intentions and plans for improving the lot of the workers, but failing to learn that Capitalism sets narrow limits to the improvements that can be effected. When in office they find that capital dictates to the politician, not the politician to capital. Then they rationalise their thinking. They consider that they are getting wiser with experience. That accounts for such statements as the one by Bevin mentioned in the opening paragraph. It is not true that they get wiser. They become better trained for the particular job that is allotted to them. They turn from one hopeless plan to another, always trying to make Capitalism work the way it won't. They never get wise to the fact that the solution to working-class problems lies in the abolition of Capitalism and the establishment of a society without classes, without capital, without wages and without labour leaders and politicians.

Many workers who knew Ernie Bevin were genuinely sorry when he died, for they liked him and remembered him as their trade union colleague and chief. But he is more likely to be written down in history as a Foreign Secretary and in that capacity the measure of  his success as a workers' advocate can be gathered from the tributes of the workers' enemies when he died. To be praised by the spokesmen of the capitalist class in no commendation for a workers' champion. The finest epitaph a socialist could have would be one from his opponents which said. "Thank goodness he is out of the way."

W. Waters.