Editorial: General Smuts (1950)

Editorial from the October 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

As in this century it has become a widely accepted convention for professional politicians to speak well—and indeed flatteringly—of their party opponents when they die it would perhaps be unreasonable to expect obituary judgments to be well balanced and critical. With this in mind we could pass over the exaggerated praise of the work and qualities of the late General Smuts but still demand that those who attempt to assess him should give a recognisable portrait. But to do that the writers need to recognise what part Smuts played and the background against which he played it. In particular they need to see that he was a figure in the world of capitalism, thrown up by class interests and strictly limited in his action by the social system in which he lived and by the forces he represented. Instead many of the writers, including some who might have been expected to have at least some understanding of the reality, try to interpret him as if he had complete freedom of action to behave according to some abstract ideal, and as if therefore his seeming inconsistencies had to be explained as defects of character or courage or as errors of judgment.

A line taken by many who paid tribute to Smuts is that he was a man above class and national prejudices. To Mr. Attlee there was “in his large heart . . . a place for all humanity. His great contribution to the creation of the United Nations is but one example of his breadth of view and world statesmanship." (Daily Herald 12/9/50). The Prime Minister of Canada described him as having “adopted the world as his nation,” and Mr. W. N. Ewer (Daily Herald 12/9/50) credited him with “imaginative genius and liberal instincts . . .  His real greatness lay, perhaps, in his imaginative understanding of wider issues.”

These and many similar opinions explain nothing and merely fog the issue. The picture of the errant genius, usually triumphing over obstacles and the stupidity of lesser men, but occasionally falling below his own high ideals is and must be fundamentally false. The real Smuts started as a representative of the Boer farmers in their unsuccessful war against British imperialism and then came to power in South Africa as a capitalist politician, trying, as all administrators of capitalism must do, to reconcile divergent propertied class interests while defending South African capitalism against white workers and the non-white majority of the population. When we are told that he represented “all humanity” we need only remind Mr. Attlee of his own position as a caretaker of British capitalism—there is no room in capitalist administration for a “Minister for the welfare of all humanity.”

Attlee and Ewer cannot have forgotten how the Trade Union Congress condemned Smuts for his part in the crushing of the striking gold miners on the Rand in 1922. Mr. Ewer does in fact refer to it but interprets it (as also Smuts' attitude towards the natives) as “limitations” of his character. “His iron-fisted handling of the great Rand strike . . . cannot be forgotten in any judgment of him. And, though he opposed the ‘native' policies of Herzog and Malan, he was always a rigid up-holder of the idea of ‘white supremacy.' " 

The miners on the Rand in 1922 faced an attempt by the owners to force down wages and to undercut their standards by employing more low-paid native workers. In the strikes and rioting that followed it was Smuts who declared martial law and used troops, artillery, tanks and bombing planes to crush what he called a “reign of Red Terror.” Many lives were lost and many workers imprisoned.

The aspect of this that interested the writer of the lengthy tribute in the Manchester Guardian (12/9/50) was the bold way in which Smuts handled it. “Smuts’ personal courage and decision in this emergency are still the subject of talk in South Africa; after proclaiming his intention to impose martial law, he made his way secretly to Johannesburg, took command, and within a few days restored order.”

No noticeable evidence of the much praised love of “all humanity” there!

The Times gets nearer to a recognition of the class nature of Smuts’ activities and interests when it points out how his party was defeated at the election in 1924 and he lost his own seat: —

“Of the many charges brought against Smuts, who had been in power for so long a time, two of the most widely circulated and effective were, based on his use of troops in suppressing the Johannesburg strike in 1922 and his connection with the Chamber of Mines, whose agent he was declared to be.”—(Times, 12/9/50.)

The South African workers had not forgotten how Smuts’ intervention strengthened the hand of the Chamber of Mines in their attack on wages.

It may be that Smuts had what Mr. Ewer calls liberal instincts but a capitalist politician cannot serve two masters, he cannot sacrifice the interests of the class for whom capitalism functions in order to serve the interests of those whom capitalism exploits. His love of all humanity did not include the white workers and the native population when their actions in their own interests clashed with those of the ruling class, and it would not be far wrong to say that a large element in the universal scope of Smuts’ vision was the necessarily world-wide interests of a country the main economic basis of which is the production of gold for world trade. South Africa had grown from a Boer farming community to an expansionist capitalism and Smuts’ horizon expanded with it.

What future for the Beautiful Island? (2010)

From the September 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

A look at the 'other China'

Start with Hong Kong. A bouquet of modern capitalism. Concrete, glass, steel. Banks, hotels, skyscrapers. Streets bedecked with anti-pollution face masks. And residents who advise visitors come to marvel not to drink the water. Then escape to a leaf-shaped island of some 24 million population which became known to untroubled, disinterested people outside only because it was the country of origin of much of the cheap electrical equipment they bought from their local branch of Currys or Comet. Once reliant on the export of cheap textiles or consumer goods the island rose to be among the world’s leading manufacturers of computer software and hardware. Not to overlook bicycle parts, some of which are used at a London East End branch of the not-for-profit Social Enterprise to help train locals who are homeless, isolated or unemployed (or perhaps all three) to make a kind of living as bicycle mechanics.

Within the island’s demographic stew there are some half a million descendants of about a dozen aboriginal tribes, settled with others who came over from mainland China. Together they can claim to be now one of the most peaceful societies in Asia. So – welcome to the island of Taiwan, to Ilha Formosa (beautiful island), to the Republic of China – a misleadingly splendid name for a state which is no longer a member of the United Nations and is recognised by only the likes of Belize, Malawi, the Vatican… Welcome to the beautiful scenery, the mountains, the golden beaches. To the flyovers whisking you above the factories and past the driven schools. To the nation state which exists by, through and in with, one tough work-ethic.

Martial Law

Of the competing mercantile powers it was the Portugese who, about 1590, “discovered” Taiwan – and gave it the name Ilha Formosa. A long period of war, rebellion and murderous poverty while Taiwan was a “province” of China ended in 1895 when the Japanese occupied the island. This was supposedly “in perpetuity” but it came to an end in 1945, after a half century of martial law. Japanese rule was harsh – an estimated ten thousand people were killed – but not corrupt and it developed an educational system as well as roads, railways and industry. In 1943, as the Allied leaders were carving up the Far East in expectation of Japan’s defeat in World War Two, a “peace” conference in Cairo decided that, as a spoil of war, Taiwan would be “returned” to China under Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT). United States Vice President Truman’s response described the island as “America’s unsinkable battleship”.

Towards the end of the war there was a subtle change in the vocabulary of the Allied powers’ intentions; Taiwan was to be “temporarily occupied” on their behalf by the KMT. But this was soon undermined when civil war broke out on mainland China between the KMT and Mao Tse Tung’s “communist” forces. Preoccupied by those more pressing events, Chiang left the running of Taiwan to his deputy Chen Yi, whose regime was barbaric enough to provoke many “liberated” Taiwanese to regret the end of Japanese rule. In 1947 a minor incident connected to the state monopoly of the tobacco trade inflamed a series of widespread protests which were crushed with mass arrests, torture and execution of up to 30,000 people. (The day when it started – 28 February – is now a national holiday in Taiwan and New Park in the capital city Taipei was re-named 2-28 Peace park). That horror was a foretaste of things to come

White Terror 

By 1949, as the KMT on the mainland were facing defeat Chiang Kai-shek took refuge in Taiwan, where he continued to insist that one day he would prevail. Meanwhile martial law returned under The White Terror, with mass arrests of those alleged to be “attempting to overthrow the government”. Over 90,000 were taken in this way and at least half of them were executed. The scene of much of this was Green Island Lodge – a prison on a volcanic island separated from Taiwan by a few miles of nausea-inducing Pacific Ocean. Here there is lush scenery, one of the world’s three seawater hot springs, golden beaches, pristine coral reefs and dazzling tropical fish. This is where many Taiwanese come to enjoy a short break – if they can ignore that close by are a museum and a human rights memorial in place of the notorious prison where so many victims of The White Terror suffered and perished.

Apart from his willingness to commit atrocities, the defeated Chiang Kai-shek became something of an embarrassment to the Americans. In 1971 President Nixon and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger offered an “opening” – a carefully chosen word of flexible interpretation – to China and, as if that was not enough, Taiwan lost its membership of the United Nations to China. During the following year the US and China met and agreed on a “communiqué” which, while not actually saying that Mao had won the civil war, “acknowledged” (more of those careful words) that the new China was a unified country of which Taiwan was a part. This betrayal of what was supposed to have been an unshakeable commitment was settled after the negotiators had been pleasured by an especially sumptuous meal, encouraging Nixon’s odious chief arm-twister, replete, to assure his hosts “After a dinner of moatal and Peking Duck I’ll sign anything”. Well, he was Henry Kissinger wasn’t he…

Elections

Chiang Kai-shek died in 1978 and his son Chiang Ching-kuo took over with an easier, less repressive hand. While martial law was still in operation it was possible in 1986 for the first official opposition – the Democratic Progressive Party – to be formed and to win a significant number of seats in the next election. In process with these changes in 1987 martial law was brought to an end; free elections are now an established part of political life on the island and the election of 2000 brought an end to KMT rule. It should be said that it is not unknown for elected members to try to sort out their differences through a punch-up in the Chamber and for political business to be obstructed through allegations of corruption. In 1991 the KMT claim to link Taiwan and the Chinese mainland was formally abandoned. Symbolic of the clearing away of a lot of the obstructive anachronisms imposed on the Taiwan of the 1940s, many of the statues of Chiang Kai-shek were vengefully torn down. It was symbolic too of Taiwan feeling its way into place as an independent competitor in global capitalism.

Part of this process is Taiwan’s promotion of itself as a tourist attraction to rival the best offered by the likes of Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia. “Where else” bellows a full page ad in a Sunday newspaper colour supplement “would you find time-honoured traditions that thrive in perfect harmony with the chic and the avant-garde”’. Apart from its “breathtaking scenery” the island’s vibrant ambition is testified to by “the city’s skyscrapers” – among them Taipei 101, the world’s second highest building, with the fastest elevator to whisk you from ground level to the top viewing spot in a matter of seconds so smoothly that you are unaware of moving. All of which demands that the Taiwanese people live by a patriotism manufactured as surely as those computer parts. And it all soaks down to the children, who devotedly learn the officially sanctioned Mandarin language – often along with English and Japanese – during an average 12 hour day in the classroom with extra tuition in Maths and Science at private cram schools on a Saturday.

Unemployment 

But hard work, to whatever degree, has not been able to insulate Taiwan from capitalism’s chaos. The present world recession has cruelly broken the dream of ever-flowing Taiwanese prosperity. Unemployment is an encroaching problem no longer confined to the poorer, under-educated families but now also affecting graduates. A government subsidy intended to persuade companies to take on graduates has had the effect of worsening poverty at large by forcing applicants to accept lower starting wages – at about half the national average. Many employers – as in England – have pressed their workers to take temporary unpaid leave, or have stopped taking on new staff altogether. And there remains a serious problem of youth unemployment, with the rate for 15-24 year olds about twice that for the workforce as a whole and looming over it all is the real prospect of them being sucked into the ranks of the long-term unemployed.

After a history of savage repression, Taiwan is struggling now for a place among the trend-setters of Twenty-First Century global capitalism. For example they are trying for admission to bodies such as the United Nations and there are missions working for unity with China. As one guide (Robert Kelly and Joshua Brown, Lonely Planet ) put it: “So is Taiwan at a crossroads, or a precipice?” And it may also be asked – what will this do to a beautiful island which has already suffered so grievously? Will it turn out to be a modern capitalist power as frantic, as restless and as abrasive as Hong Kong?

Ivan

Classic Reprint: Under Martial Law. (1954)

A Classic Reprint from the September 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Those of our friends who lend support to our outdoor propaganda meetings will be aware that for the past week or two those meetings have been suspended. Also, readers of this issue will notice that the Lecture List which until this date has appeared on the back page of this our official organ, has now been withdrawn. These occurrences demand some few words of explanation, which are offered here.

"When the war broke out in August the Socialist Party unfalteringly proclaimed the Socialist position in relation to it. From our platforms and, at the first opportunity, in the columns of our organ we took up the clear and definite attitude dictated by Socialist principles and working-class politics. This attitude, it is quite needless to say, was neither popular nor free from peril. It drew down upon us on the one hand the hostility of the rampant jingo hooligans of the streets, and on the other hand the “patriotic” fury of certain parasites “dressed in a little brief authority.”

"Our object was not to bid defiance to a world gone mad, but to place on record the fact that in this country the Socialist position was faithfully maintained by the Socialists. With this object in view we placed our backs against the wall and fought. Our platforms were smashed up and our members injured by mobs egged on by bourgeois cowards who, as usual, had not the spunk to do their own fighting for themselves. Not this only : one of our speakers was arrested and imprisoned, while others were dragged before the magistrates and “bound over to keep the peace.” In some instances the proceedings were rounded off by the victims being discharged from their employment by their “good, kind masters” for daring to hold political opinions of their own.

"We fought this fight long enough to achieve our purpose. In the columns of the last four issues of the Socialist Standard stand recorded our actions in this crisis, showing to the working class of the world that the Socialist Party in this country, acting in accordance with its declared principles, kept its hands clean in this, the most momentous crisis of its history. That is an asset to carry forward to the time when the war is finished.

"But now we are faced with a new situation. On the 28th of November last were issued Orders in Council (Defence of the Realm [Consolidation] Regulations) which render the prosecution of our propaganda a work of extreme peril. The following extracts from the Regulations will serve to show the nature of the impediment we are up against.

"27. No person shall by word of mouth or in writing or in any newspaper, periodical, book, circular, or other printed publication spread false reports or make false statements or reports or statements likely to cause disaffection to His Majesty or to interfere with the success His Majesty’s forces by land or sea or to prejudice His Majesty’s relations with foreign powers, or spread reports or make statements likely to prejudice the recruiting, training, discipline, or administration of any of His Majesty’s forces, and if any person contravenes this provision he shall be guilty of an offence against these regulations.

"57. A person found guilty of an offence against these regulations by a court-martial shall be liable to be sentenced to penal servitude for life or any less punishment."

"In face of these restrictions and penalties the Executive Committee of the Socialist Party decided to suspend propaganda meetings for the time being, and called a meeting of Party members, at which meeting their action was endorsed.

"We are aware, of course, that we lost an unique opportunity of indulging in heroics. We shall be told, perhaps, that we ought to have gone on in defiance of the powers that be till we went down in a blaze of fireworks. Our view, however, was the sane one dictated by our avowed principles. We have always held that the supreme power is in the hands of those who control the political machine. The most we could hope for by going on was to prove that contention. But it is not for us to prove our contentions by acting in opposition to them.

"There was no question of fighting for Socialism or Socialist principles. The Regulations were not, as far as we could judge, in the nature of anti-Socialist legislation. They were merely the precautions ordinarily resorted to by countries embroiled in a serious war. For this very reason we had nothing to gain by running counter to the Regulations, for just as the temper of the working class is, at the moment, such as to prevent them benefiting from our propaganda, so it would prevent them learning anything from our victimisation or martyrdom. Clearly, then, it was our tactics to place ourselves in such a position that only by the Regulations being strained to the point where they would become obviously anti-Socialist could we fall victims to them. These tactics demanded, in view of the risk of having our spoken words twisted and distorted in the Courts, that we suspend propaganda meetings for the time, and confine our activities to such forms of propaganda as would secure us from any attack that did not reveal the deliberate intention of our opponents to crush us under the cloak of the present situation."

(The above article appeared on the front page of the Socialist Standard for January 1915.)

Who Are the Looters? (2006)

From the August 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

A year after hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans we look at what was a media obsession at the time.

What is the first priority of government in the wake of disaster? Saving lives? Looking after the survivors? Disposing of the dead and preventing epidemics? Think again. At best these things come second. The first priority of government in the wake of disaster is exactly the same as its first priority at other times: maintaining or restoring “order” – that is, its powers of coercion.

 Moreover, the first purpose of “order” is to protect and enforce property rights. From this point of view, the main threat posed by disasters like Hurricane Katrina is not the threat to human life and health, to the environment, or even to the economy. It is the threat of “chaos,” the threat to “order” and “civilization,” but above all to property, arising from the temporary breakdown of government.

 The “looter” symbolizes and dramatizes this threat, conjuring up images of Viking warriors on the rampage, barbaric violence, evil incarnate. Of course, these particular “Vikings” were all the more terrifying for being black. In the days that followed the hurricane, the media stirred up racist fears of the poor black people of New Orleans, spreading rumours (the fashionable expression is “urban myths”) later shown to be exaggerated out of all proportion, if not completely unfounded. For example, in the week following Katrina the number of murders was average for the city (four) (see Ivor van Heerden and Mike Bryan, The Storm, pp. 124-8).

 All in all, we shouldn’t be too shocked or too surprised to learn that at 7 p.m. on Wednesday August 31, 2005 martial law was declared in the flooded city. Mayor Ray Nagin told police officers to stop rescuing people and focus solely on the job of cracking down on looters. This was just two and a half days after the hurricane made landfall and with thousands of people still stranded in attics and on rooftops.

 In one typically heroic encounter, police officers chased down a woman with a cart of supplies for her baby, handcuffed her – and then didn’t know what to do with her. All the jails were flooded. By the end of the week that problem was solved. A new makeshift jail was set up at the Greyhound bus terminal, with accommodation for 750 prisoners. This was the first institution in the city to resume normal functioning.

 True, it could have been worse. After the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 people were shot dead as looters while foraging in the wreckage of their own homes (see G. Hansen and E. Condon, Denial of Disaster, 1989). .Why did people loot? Or to use less loaded language, why did they take things that didn’t belong to them without paying for them?

 One man answered a TV interviewer who had asked him why he was looting by asking in turn: “Can you see anyone to pay?” The stores had been abandoned by their operators, but people still needed the things stored there. They needed food and fresh water, dressings for their wounds, new clothes to replace those ruined by exposure to the “toxic gumbo” of the floodwaters. Most of the so-called looting was of this kind – for the satisfaction of desperate need. In any sane society that would be a good enough reason for taking things.

 

Two paramedics from San Francisco who found themselves trapped in New Orleans wrote about the Walgreens store on the corner of Royal and Iberville Streets in the French quarter. The owners had locked up and fled. Milk, yogurt, and cheese could be seen through the window in the dairy display case, spoiling in the heat.

 Should we expect the parents of hungry and thirsty children not to break in, even at the risk of being pursued by the police? Would they have been good parents had they failed to do all in their power to see to their children’s needs? And what of storeowners who choose to let food go to waste rather than give it to needy neighbours? My first impulse is to wax lyrical about the sheer meanness of their behaviour. But probably they made no such conscious choice. As businesspeople they must have thought of the food and drink in their store not as products for assuaging hunger and thirst, but merely as commodities for profitable sale. If they could no longer be sold they might just as well go to waste.

 There were looters who acted not just for themselves and their families but for the benefit of the local community. For instance, the young men who collected medical supplies from a Rite Aid for distribution among elderly neighbours. Or the man who distributed food from a Winn-Dixie store to the 200 or so people holed up at the Grand Palace Hotel. “He was trying to help suffering people, and the idea that he was looting never crossed his mind.”

Socially responsible people of this kind are sometimes described as “commandeering” or “requisitioning” the goods they seize. That may well be how they view their own actions. In legal terms, however, only government officials, as representatives of duly constituted authority, have the right to commandeer or requisition property in an emergency. Private citizens who do so, whatever their motives, are engaging in theft and may be penalized accordingly.

 

Consider the feat of Jabar Gibson. This resourceful young man, purely on his own initiative, found a bus that was still in working order (the city authorities assumed that all buses had been ruined by the floodwater), took charge of it, filled it up with evacuees, and drove them to Houston. This was the first busload of evacuees to reach Houston after the storm (at 10 p.m. on Wednesday August 31). The police were forewarned that a “renegade bus” was on its way; if they had intercepted it Jabar might have been arrested and charged with theft. Fortunately he was in luck: he got through to his destination, to be greeted by Harris County Judge Robert Eckels. Presumably his crime has been forgiven.

 Of course, not all looters were responding to real personal, family, or community needs. Some were simply taking a rare opportunity to acquire coveted though non-essential consumer goods. For others looting (and shitting in) fancy stores was a form of social protest or “empowerment,” an outlet for pent-up anger against the endlessly advertised world of affluence from which they felt excluded.  

Finally, there was a phenomenon that I propose calling “entrepreneurial looting.” Entrepreneurial looters gathered assets with a view to later sale. As they got stuff for free, they could sell at any price and still make a profit. For example, “urban foresters” went after valuable lumber. Other entrepreneurs sold looted liquor. The cases of large-scale organized looting by armed groups (their weapons also probably looted) that received so much publicity must, I think, have been of this character. 

Brinkley reports an interesting conversation between Lieutenant Colonel Bernard McLaughlin of the Louisiana National Guard and a man selling liquor at a makeshift bar. When McLaughlin tells the bartender he is shutting him down, the man replies that he is “just being entrepreneurial.” Why shouldn’t he make some money? McLaughlin gets angry at this appeal to “true American” values. “This is looting. You looted that … That’s a 15-year felony. That’s a 3-year mandatory minimum sentence.” The man submits and McLaughlin proceeds to smash his bottles one by one. And yet the preceding account makes clear that McLaughlin’s real objection to such bars has nothing to do with the provenance of the alcohol. He doesn’t want the locals drinking alcohol because it makes them more quarrelsome and disorderly as well as further dehydrating their bodies. Would he have allowed the bar to stay open if it was selling – or giving away – only looted fruit juice, soda, and bottled water? Legally, however, looting remains “a 15-year felony,” be its social consequences good or bad. Property is sacred.

 The bartender might also have tried to point out in his defence that historically all capitalist enterprise is based on looting. Early capitalism looted land and other resources from peasants (in Europe) and from indigenous peoples (throughout the Americas and other colonial territories).The looting even extended to the kidnapping and enslavement of millions of human beings, such as the ancestors of most victims of Hurricane Katrina. Marx called it the primitive accumulation of capital.

 Looting is as American as cherry pie; the looters of New Orleans are keeping up an old American tradition and should surely receive all due credit as good patriots. But… it depends on whose possessions you loot, doesn’t it?

Stefan.

(WSPUS)

(Sources: Douglas Brinkley, The Great Deluge (New York: HarperCollins, 2006); Understanding Katrina website (understandingkatrina.ssrc.org), Kaufman.)

Editorial: Poland - crisis of state capitalism (1982)

Editorial from the January 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

The crisis in Poland is not a crisis of socialism. They are not socialist military dictators who have formed a junta to coerce the Polish workers into what the Western press sickeningly calls ‘moderation’. They are not socialist banks that are banging on the door of the Polish Politburo, demanding the repayment of financial loans. They are not socialist journalists who compose the propaganda which the Polish media pours out in order to blind workers to their real interests. They are not socialist bureaucrats who sit in luxurious offices in the Kremlin and applaud every measure by the Polish rulers to subdue and humiliate the workers they exploit. It is not socialism which has been tried and found wanting; the social system which has led to misery for millions of Polish workers is STATE CAPITALISM.

The crisis of Polish state capitalism has its immediate origin in the investment boom of the early 1970s. In 1973 Poland had the third fastest national growth rate in the world. To pay for this investment it was necessary for the Polish government to borrow from the Western banks: in 1971, Poland’s foreign debt stood at 700 million dollars; by 1975, when the boom was in full swing, the debt had reached 6,000 million dollars. The interest on the loans was so great that the Polish government had to borrow more from the Western banks in order to pay its previous debts: by 1980 Poland owed approximately 27,000 million dollars to Western capitalists. With the shortage of consumer goods on the market, Poland’s private farmers — who own 80 per cent of all agricultural land — refused to sell their produce in return for money which could not buy them what they need. The scarcity of agricultural produce — meat in particular — led to price rises. The Polish workers, having been pushed to breaking point in a productive drive to produce enough profits to pay off their masters’ debts, regarded the increase in the cost of already scarce food as the final straw.

All of these problems were direct consequences of world capitalism: the farmers could produce enough food to feed everyone; the industrial workers could produce consumer goods and have plenty to eat; but under capitalism, financial debts come before food (profits before needs) and that is why the military has attempted to crush the working class organisation, Solidarity, while the wealth producers of Poland arc suffering, many on the verge of malnutrition.

The distortion of the idea of socialism has been one of the greatest political crimes of our age. So-called socialists who were once praising Stalin from the distance of Western Europe are now claiming to support Solidarity, even though many of them have not repudiated their Leninist sympathies. Yet as early as January 1918 the Leninist attitude to trade unions was clearly expressed by Zinoviev: “trade union independence is a bourgeois idea . . . an anomaly in a workers’ state”. In November 1920 it was Trotsky who proposed the sacking of the elected leaders of the Russian railway union so as ‘‘to replace irresponsible agitators . . . by production-minded trade unionists”. Even in the midst of the great strikes of August 1980, the New Communist Party’s newspaper referred to Solidarity as “the Gdansk wreckers” and stated that “irresponsible individuals, anarchic and anti-socialist groups are attempting to exploit work stoppages . . . for their own ends”. In the 1930s the Socialist Party of Great Britain had its meetings smashed up by members of the British Communist Party because we dared to expose the anti-socialist activities of their hero, Stalin. Today in 1982 we are still as hostile as ever to the pseudo-socialists of the Left who advocate state capitalism.

The only alternative to the system which oppresses the workers of Poland and all other lands is WORLD SOCIALISM: a society without frontiers, classes, property or rulers. Only democratic political action by the working class, without leaders or dogmas, will lead to the of a socialist society. By their actions, the workers in Solidarity have won the admiration of socialists, even though we strongly oppose their nationalist and religious illusions and even though we recognise the limitations of trade union action. Having defied their masters and combined together, the next step which the Polish workers must take is to organise a class conscious democratic political party to aim for the common ownership and democratic control of the means of wealth production and distribution. To this end, the Socialist Party of Great Britain offers support to our fellow workers in Poland.

Editorial: The New Year Outlook. (1915)

Editorial from the January 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

We write on the eve of a New Year. It is no fault of ours that the strings we touch respond with doleful note. Only hypocrisy can furnish at such a time as this the light words which are considered seasonable and appropriate to the completion of another round of the calendar. Even the thoughtless mob, into whose pates it is so difficult to get an idea, take on the gloomy mental tone which the wholesale butchery now in progress everywhere impresses, and find escape in judicious circumspection from the obviously ridiculous. Thus by general consent the customary "Merry Christmas" of our greeting has been reduced to a "Happy," and we are wishing and being wished the ominously qualified "Brighter New Year."

Alas! the "vanity of human wishes"! Any discerning mind can see that, black and lowering as is the visage of the year departing, that of its successor is infinitely more threatening still. All the fighting and bloodshed of the past four months, terrible as it has been, has not in effect been a part of the main struggle, but only the fight for the field whereon the main conflict is to be decided. The real butchery us yet to come. Not for such preliminaries as have so far been worked out have the resources of nations been strained for half a century; not for such military child's-play as has comprised the war up to now has invention been added to invention in the making of the instruments of mechanical slaughter. For the full exploitation of these the ground had to be prepared by long and strenuous toil. The late fighting has been no more than a cover for this preparation It is left for the New Year to provide that appalling welter of blood in which the awful efficiency and progress of modern armaments are about to prove themselves.

On the eve of such a catastrophy every sound must he a note of mourning, and the very atmosphere must lie heavy and stifling with the presence of Doom. Tho air in charged with ruin for victor and vanquished alike and millions of working-class homes this unhappy Now Year will pay in blood and tears for capitalist greed and working-class ignorance.

To tho Socialist, however, every capitalist operation, however foul and bloody it may he, has some element of working-class good in it. The present tragedy is no exception to the rule. The workers will learn from the conflict many things which tho “fog of war,” together with tho fog of our pastors' and masters' lying and deceit, cannot obscure. Thoy will learn, for instance, just tho value of working class lives in tho estimation of those who have grabbed the world. They will learn— those who come through it alive, whose interests they hate really been fighting for. They will learn many other useful lessons also, which will readily suggest themselves to the mind of the initiated.

In a matter more directly connected with our propaganda, too, the war will certainly have the beneficial effect of clearing the atmosphere. It has for long been the habit of the Labourites and others in this country, and those occupying a similar position abroad, to boast that they held in their hands the instrument which would make it impossible for the ruling class of Europe to carry on a great war. This instrument was the General Strike. We all know how persistently it was stated that the organised workers of the various countries would, immediately on the outbreak of war, paralyze the war mongers by “downing tools"! Yet where is there to be found a single instance, in the whole vast war- stricken expanse, of this "heroic” policy coming to fruition ?

The "fog of war,” we are aware, hides many things from our view. Wo know, for instance, that we have not been told the truth with regard to the attitude of tho German Social-Democratic Party in relation to the war. Hence we are chary of criticism in cases where we may possibly not be in possession of all the facts. This, however, is obvious: If any attempt was made in Germany to put the policy of tho General Strike into operation, that attempt, in its utter failure to even so much as become an item of news, is as destructive to the theory as would be the failure to make the effort. But with regard to tho advocates of the General Strike as an anti war measure in this country we are not in tho dark. Mr. Keir Hardie, for example, one of the more prominent of those at home who have toyed with the idea, has written to tho Press denying that he has told the workers not to enlist, adding : “I know too well what is at stake.” It is not out of this frame of mind that anti-war strikes are developed.

In this direction, as in many others, events have proved the truth of what we have consistently contended, namely, that the political conquest is the essential preliminary to any action involving the defeat of the present controllers of tho political machinery. No wild words or frenzied ravings about "taking and holding” on the one hand, or “general striking” on the other, can replace political control. At the very outset this is shown in the adoption of martial law. more or less stringent according to the necessity of the case, by every country involved in the war. By this simple means the ruling class, through their servants the “heads of State” can deprive the people of every constitutional right if they so desire—can compel them, even, to go into the field of battle and there offer their bodies to the bayonets of tho "enemy.”

What sheer rubbish, then, the war has proved all this talk of anti-war strike to be. To its advocates the opportunity came, and it found thorn powerless to avert war. The reason of the failure is easily seen. No matter whether the proletariat proceed against the master class by way of General Strikes or political conquest this one condition is essential to the carrying out of the operations—knowledge of working class interests, or, as we say, class consciousness. Only this can save the workers from being swayed by national sentiment when war is let loose. For this reason it is impossible, quite apart from the question of whether the step could be successful, to initiate a General Strike against war.

The only thing that can undermine the power of the ruling class is working-class political knowledge; the only way in which the political control can be wrested from the ruling class is by political action based sternly upon sound working-class political knowledge. The spectacle of the impotence of the so-called Socialist parties of Germany, Austria, and France, has proved this, whatever splits and quarrels may be revealed with the passage of time, and it is for us to drive home this further lesson of the war.

Meanwhile, the capitalist Press is travestying the position of the Socialists. Aided by treacherous reactionaries of the M Beer type, our masters’ newspapers play tho game of pretending that the Macdonalds in this country, and the Vanderveldes and Bernsteins on the Continent, are the Socialists. We hope next month to issue a strong repudiation of the actions of these men.