News in Review: Disobedience campaign (1960)

The News in Review column from the November 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Disobedience campaign

It would appear that true to their policy statement most of the CND leaders have completely disowned Lord Russell’s proposals for a civil disobedience campaign. According to Lord Russell the proposals are an appeal to the conscience and intelligence of all men about the dangers of mass extermination. What concerns us is the kind of society reflected in these measures to flout authority. The real tragedy is that at election times the overwhelming majority vote for the retention of Capitalism and consequently for most of the policies which go with it, including the H-bomb. For this reason the Socialist is not being cynical when he makes the remark: “You got what you voted for.”

To those CND supporters still undecided as to their next move it could be pointed out that by supporting any kind of civil disobedience they are fighting and will continue to fight the effects of the present system rather than abolishing it altogether and replacing it with a new and much less frustrating society.

Right to Strike

Patrick Neary has been released after spending six weeks in prison. He was the leader of the recent seamen’s strike, and was sent to jail because he did not comply with a court order which told him (in effect) to give up all connection with the strike. Some newspapers have claimed that he was imprisoned not because he was a striker, but because he disobeyed the court order. This is to reject the substance and catch at the shadow. The reason Neary went to jail was because he had been elected chairman of the strike committee, and had therefore emerged as the figurehead of the strike. The shipping companies wanted to remind the seamen of the Merchant Shipping Act. under which any striking seaman can be sent to jail. As far as the mass of strikers were concerned, the companies were perhaps afraid of having them all sent to jail, for fear of repercussions: and so decided to call in the state machine (which after all they maintain to look after their interests) only against one man, the figurehead, Neary. Therefore Neary has had to endure for six weeks the vile indignities which are the lot of anyone in jail, because he took part in a strike and was elected chairman of the committee which ran it.

And what happened to the protests which we might have expected? The last war (our leaders told us) was fought to defend democratic freedoms. The right to withhold labour is a central democratic freedom. The alternative—sending men to jail because they refuse to work on the terms offered them by the capitalists—is slavery. But our ruling class had no objection to Neary's sentence. Their newspapers applauded it. Let us remember this the next time our rulers want our help to “fight for freedom and democracy."

Kennedy v. Nixon

BBC television has given up an hour of its time to show one of the debates between the rival candidates for the Presidency now being staged in the United States. It isn't clear why, unless it wants to demonstrate to British workers that there would be no point in emigrating. For the debate showed that politics have reached much the same stage over there as they have here. There are two great parties contending for the support of the working class. One of them holds that the system as it now stands is as near to perfect as anything ever devised by man. The other, which has the support of the unions, wants one or two reforms, which would do nothing whatever to change the class basis of society. Each of them has a programme and a policy, the essence of which is that each would run capitalism better than its rival.

In one respect the parallel is even closer. Over here we have become used to the Government of the day (whether Labour or Conservative) attacking any claim made for higher pay made by members of the working class, and treating any strike or threat to strike as if it heralded the end of civilisation. And then at each election, the Government, with superb effrontery, brings out any figures of higher pay won by the workers against the strenuous opposition of that very Government, as if it alone was responsible (and, at the same time, usually skates over any figures showing how inflation has left the workers in much the same position as they were before). In the televised debate Nixon, who has been vice-president for the last eight years, performed this very trick. He brought out the figures of wage increases as if he individually had led the workers in all the struggles which must go before the smallest pay rise. And no doubt if Kennedy wins this time, he will re-appear in four years using exactly the same argument which Nixon uses now.

The Referendum

The South African government has been given a majority vote in favour of a republic—a majority, that is, of white voters, as the vast mass of the population (the Africans, Indians and Cape Coloureds) in this referendum, as in all elections, have no vote. This winning of the referendum has, no doubt, pleased Dr. Verwoerd and his Nationalist supporters, but not all white South Africans are so pleased, although Dr. Verwoerd hoped that the creation of a republic would at last end the bitterness and hostility existing between the Boer South Africans and the English-speaking South Africans, which has remained since the Boer War. But this has not, so far, happened, and one of South Africa's leading industrialists, Mr. Harry Oppenheimer, is frankly worried that the Republic may have a harmful effect on industry, should it not be readmitted to the Commonwealth, partly because of loss of the imperial preference.

Suicides

From a recent meeting of the British Medical Association at Middlesbrough, comes further evidence of the anti-social consequences of competition and production for profit. Dr. Sargent, physician-in-charge of the Department of Psychological Medicine at St. Thomas's Hospital. raised the matter of the 5,000 suicides which occur in this country yearly. According to Dr. Sargent, many patients who go on to commit suicide do so after wrong courses of treatment often resulting from confusion created by drug manufacturers in their publicity campaigns. Recently, advances have been made with a new group of anti-depressant drugs. “Unfortunately intensive competition between drug manufacturers to capture their share of an enormous potential market had resulted in excessive claims being made for them and wrong groups of cases suggested for their use," said Dr. Sargent.

Clearly the human considerations of treatment of the sick are secondary in the drive towards commercial success. Even so, anti-depressant drugs can at best only hope to treat symptoms. A far more satisfactory way of preventing suicides would be to establish a society based on more harmonious social relations and which takes no toll of the individual in terms of emotional stress.

Nigeria changes

Nigerians living in London marked Nigeria's coming to independence by publicly wearing their colourful and roomy national costumes. Was it worth celebrating? At the most, Nigeria will develop into another minor capitalist state; and we have seen enough of those to know that they have no more to offer their workers than any of the older established powers. Dr. Michael Okpara, the President of Eastern Nigeria, stated in the region's Assembly on 8th October that Nigerians would rather lay down their lives than lose their newly won freedom. At a guess this is a correct estimation of the loyalty of patriotic Nigerians who, like any other politically ignorant workers, are wide open to the propaganda of their masters.

But Dr. Okpara's statement gives the lie to those who pretend that the emerging capitalist countries are basically different from those whose power they have replaced. All over the world, workers are periodically called upon to die for the protection of their master's interests—and always they are told that they are dying to defend some high minded principle. British workers, for example, have fallen for this for a very long time. Now, the Nigerians are getting the same treatment. With, presumably, the same results—bloodshed and tragedy.

Blowing their tops

Mr. Khruschev had a rare old time at the United Nations. Hugging Fidel Castro, making violent speeches, banging his desk and shouting. He even heckled Mr. Macmillan, which gave the British Prime Minister the chance to show how an Old Etonian deals with that sort of thing in the House of Commons. Such bad behaviour, it was reported, upset Mr. Eisenhower, who cancelled any intention of shaking hands with, or talking to, the Soviet Premier.

Now diplomatic conferences are not like chats over the garden wall, when boorishness can cause a man to be bad friends with his neighbour. Capitalist powers do not split on points of etiquette—their disputes are over rival economic interests. International politicians know better than to lose their tempers as openly as Khruschev did—unless it suits their purpose to do so. And all of them will willingly hobnob with people guilty of worse than bad manners. If the immediate interests of their capitalist class demand it, they will talk to, shake hands with, embrace, pose with, other diplomats who are little better than murderers.

The disputes of capitalism have always involved a large measure of humbug. The stakes are high—and no trick barred. A dirty game.

On the brink (1962)

From the December 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

The world has probably never held its breath so painfully hard as it did during the Cuba crisis. In some ways life went on as usual. Buses and trains ran, people went to work, played games, looked at television. A West End tobacco store announced that it had already imported its Havana cigars and that supplies would be undisturbed for Christmas. But it all happened under a cloud of unreality. Everyone knew that we stood on the edge of an overwhelming nightmare, perhaps the ultimate in capitalism’s upheavals. One newspaper published a cartoon in which a typist confided to her companion that she would scream if her boss, grinning, greeted them again in the morning with the observation that we were still here. Very funny. But a lot of people didn’t expect to be still here a few days after Kennedy’s broadcast and the point is that if the crisis had developed much further they might have be en proved right.

At the time, it seemed rather pointless to speculate upon the background of the affair. Now that the heat is somewhat off, we can take time to look around us.

Was it all a put-up job? Some of the missiles were carried quite openly on the decks of Soviet ships and their launching pads were put down in clearings with no attempt at camouflage. This seems to contradict Kennedy’s assertion that the missiles were sent clandestinely to Cuba. Because of this, and for other reasons, there was some speculation that the Russians were openly moving their rockets to Cuba so that they could use them to bargain with an alarmed American government.

Because (and who isn't relieved at this?) the two great powers of contemporary capitalism are still at the bargaining stage. The Russians might have wanted to use their Cuban bases to get the Americans out of Turkey and Iran. Or at least they might have been able to use them to force Washington to talk about the American bases and to discuss whether they should have them so near to Russia. This would have been a unique situation. Whoever heard of one capitalist power negotiating with its enemy over bases which are designed to attack them?

Another possibility which was bandied about was that the Russians were trying to persuade the Americans to accept the existence of an unfriendly Cuba. This would give the Soviet Union more than a toehold in the Caribbean. Kennedy has, of course, agreed that if the missiles and the nuclear bombers leave Cuba he will guarantee not to invade the island. This presumably means that he will leave it in the “imprisoned” condition which he ascribed to it in his broadcast. Or is that too risky a presumption? Capitalist politicians have broken promises before and there is no reason to think that they will not break them in the future.

Or was Cuba a blind? Was Kruschev trying to create a disturbance at one end of the world while the real dirty work was done at the other? Many eyes were turned to Berlin during the Cuban crisis and there was some fear that the Russians would at least make a definite hostile move there. If that had happened the propaganda machine of Western capitalism was ready. Kennedy mentioned in his broadcast that the Russians were not to interfere with the “brave people” of West Berlin.” How short a time ago was it that we were being encouraged to hope that the Russians would do just that, and with a vengeance ? Or does the world forget so easily the lies of yesterday, only remembering those of today?

All these speculations—and some of the others which were in the air at the time—must have a chance of being near the truth. It has been a feature of Russian tactics in the Cold War that they suddenly create a tremendous racket which convinces half the world that war has all but started. Each year, for example, Moscow seems determined to sign a treaty with East Germany and so provoke a really serious crisis over Berlin. Then just as suddenly they take the heat off and get everyone sighing with relief. But when the dust has cleared it can be perceived that the Russians have advanced their cause somewhat. Last year the Berlin Wall seemed a temporary irritant. Now it is permanent, well guarded. This could have been the tactic which Moscow were playing in Cuba.

Rocket bases

There might of course be a simpler explanation, one which does not rest on the assumption that capitalism's international dealings depend upon the suave, tricky diplomat who does his job as if he were a top-notch poker player. Perhaps the Cuban bases were a purely offensive move by the Russians, intended as a pistol pointing at America's heart. This would have put the Russians on something like an equal footing with the United States, whose overseas rocket bases are about as far from Moscow as Cuba is from Washington. The rockets in Cuba outflanked the elaborate and expensive early warning system which the Americans have built up. They reduced the time which a missile attack would give the American people to wind up their affairs, patch up their quarrels and kiss each other goodbye to the more hurried three or four minutes which we would have in England.

In at least two ways this was an ironical situation. Capitalist nations, whose experts assure us that they know what they are doing, have always spent a lot of effort in building a static defence system for use in wartime. In the days of more leisurely, more personal wars they built systems like the Hindenburg and Maginot Lines and the heavy fortifications at Singapore. Very often, these defences have been useless because the enemy has simply come in the other way—which is what the Russian missiles would have been able to do from Cuba. Which shows, once again, how fallible are the people whose reputation rests upon their being infallible.

There is irony, too, in the American refusal to accept parity with the Russians in missile and nuclear resources. Both sides in the Cold War argue that such things are necessary as a deterrent. But the most effective deterrent is surely one which is equally available to both sides, so that they can frighten each other equally. We need not point out—but we will—that neither America nor Russia ever takes the deterrent theory to these lengths. They are both too busy fighting out the race for bigger and more terrifying weapons. The fact is that the deterrent theory, just like the rest of capitalism's war propaganda, is a lie. Capitalist powers like the USA and the Soviet Union do not develop weapons to keep the peace. They make them so that they can wage war more effectively—more destructively—than their rivals.

If Kruschev was in fact trying to outflank the American defensive system, he has obviously failed. For him, personally, this could be a serious matter. There is ample evidence that the Russian government are deeply divided over the method of sparring out the Cold War and that Kruschev has had some narrow squeaks in these internal disputes. A diplomatic defeat in Cuba might mean the end of him—literally the end, because nobody can be sure that in Russia political defeat does not still mean execution.

These speculations are interesting, but that is as far as they can go. Only a very few people in the world know what was behind the Cuban affair. The international disputes which capitalism is always putting us on edge with do not lend themselves to open and honest dealing. Secrets must be kept and each side must try to hide its intentions from the other. Only now are we learning something of the truth about events which died fifty years ago. Only now are we beginning to learn some of the detail of what was behind the First World War. The 1939 war is still shrouded in official secrecy, although sometimes drops of horrible truth trickle out. Not for a long time will the facts on Cuba come out into the open. Not for a long time will the world know fully of the lies and double dealing, the threats and the power and the fearful, insane risks that were taken.

Secrets

Because in these disputes ordinary people do not seem to count. They are only the people who run capitalism, who keep the system working and who design, make, transport and finally fire off the missiles which all the fuss was about. They are only the people who are essential to the war effort which rounds off the fuss. For who was it who Kennedy and Kruschev called upon at the height of the crisis? Who did they mobilise into their armed forces? Who did they try to persuade, with their propaganda? The ordinary people. The working class.

The working class do not share in the secrets which pass between their leaders. Kennedy refused to publish the vital part of the correspondence between himself and Kruschev—the part which possibly explains the whole thing—for the reason that it was a letter which was addressed to him personally. But that is too transparently fatuous to need further comment. The working class are not asked for their opinion in these matters. Krushchev did not ask the Russian working class whether he should risk all their lives by sending missiles to Cuba and Kennedy did not consult the American workers about starting a war over those missiles. Neither, for that matter, did Macmillan ask English workers whether they agreed that they were behind America—to the death, if need be.

Conditioning

The working class are not asked—and do not expect to be asked—about these matters. They only expect to work, to fight and if necessary to die for capitalism. And, of course, to vote for it as well. Apart from that, they do not seem to count.

Or do they ? What if Kennedy’s call to mobilise bad been met with a blank refusal? What if American workers had refused to man the ships in the blockade? if Russian workers had said no to shipping the missiles? The leaders of capitalism would have been powerless. They could have exchanged insults or compliments for as long as they liked. In the end it would have been the workers, and not the leaders, who counted.

Capitalism's wars are fought because of the economic clashes of its opposing powers. But these wars can only be organised, supplied and fought by the very people who have nothing to gain—and everything to lose—by fighting them. That is why there is such a careful propaganda campaign, all the time, to condition the working class to accept the latest line-up in international capitalism. That is why the workers in this country are now taught to hate the Russians and to love the Germans, when a few years ago we were taught the exact opposite. Yes, workers do count.

Because they could stop capitalism's wars. They could do more than that. They could stop capitalism itself. Not, this time, by refusing to take part in it; but by understanding it. By taking the trouble, to start with, to remember and to put Cuba—and Korea, Formosa, Berlin and the rest—into perspective.

Capitalism marches to chaos upon the ignorance of the people who keep it in its miserable existence. Cuba was only one step along this unhappy road. But who dare say where it will end, if the march and the ignorance continue?

Ivan

Front Cover: Stalin - the God who fell (1961)

The Front Page of the December 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

I don't usually make a habit of dedicating a post to the front cover of a Socialist Standard but, in this case, the Editorial Committee obviously thought it was important to lay out some information on the front cover to pass comment on the Kremlinology of the day.

The picture on the front cover of the December 1961 Socialist Standard dates from March 1953 and it features the then Soviet Communist Party grandees standing guard around the body of Stalin who was lying in state. The text in the top right hand corner of the page above the picture names the grandees and their current political status in 1961:

SCENE: MOSCOW MARCH 1953 The eight most powerful men in Russia stand guard beside the body of their late chief - Stalin.

Dramatis Personae 

Left to right                Status December 1961

Molotov                  Ex foreign Minister (in disgrace)

Voroshilov          Ex President (in disgrace)

Beria                         Late Minister of Interior (shot as traitor)

Malenkov                  Ex Prime Minister (in disgrace) 

The Corpse              The God who fell

Bulganin                   Ex Prime Minister (in disgrace) 

Khruschev                Prime Minister (future?) 

Kaganovitch             Ex Vice-President (in disgrace) 

Mikoyan                  Deputy Prime Minister (future?)

In the bottom right hand corner of the front cover there is a quote from the article, From Lenin to Stalin by Ted Wilmott, which appeared in the April 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard:

From the Socialist Standard April 1953 

Maintenance of power at any price became for the Communist Party a matter of life and death. On a chequer board of political tactics the Old Bolshevik moved, mated and stayed, until the assumption of power rested in one man — Stalin . . . It was Stalin who completed the work begun by Lenin, the turning of Marxism a revolutionary doctrine into its opposite, an authoritarian ideology of state capitalism on a par and at times competing with other state ideologies, i.e. Hitler's National "Socialism" and Mussolini's Corporate State.

The front cover headline, Stalin - the God who fell, was the title of that month's editorial. 

At Home and Abroad . . . (1971)

The Home and Abroad Column from the October 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

At Home

In the thirties (which were, of course, the bad old days which will never return) there was something called the intractable million. This was an economist’s phrase for the figure of a million unemployed which, no matter what the government or the experts did, would not be eliminated. Well now, in the good new days, the figure for the out-of-work is rising steadily towards the million and, when we make allowances for the defects of official statistics, has probably passed that ominous water mark. It is also clear that the politicians and the economists have no more idea of how to deal with this problem today than they had in the thirties, although now, as then, they do their best to sound confident when they produce their pet schemes. And this is what is called progress. Since the war, as unemployment has kept to a comparatively low level, working class poverty has taken some new, less traditional forms. It seems we are about to witness a return of the old, established forms of poverty as well.

And in case anyone thought that the old forms of poverty had completely disappeared. Shelter produced a report on slums which estimated that they will not be cleared in England and Wales for 204 years. At all events, this is a more realistic estimate than the drivel we get from Housing Ministers who promise to deal with the problem within the next few years. Yet perhaps even Shelter are being optimistic; they base their estimate on the present rate of clearance as against that of the decline of houses into slumdom. Capitalism has an established reputation for producing crises which destroy optimistic forecasts. So anyone who thinks that in the year 2176 they will be moving out of their slum had better not make any firm plans.

In any case by that time, if we are to believe some of the panic-stricken interpretations of the crime statistics and of recent events in the criminal scene, we shall all be murdered in our beds. The gunning down of the police inspector in Blackpool, with other highly-publicised cases and some angry statements by high ranking policemen, have fed the popular appetite for retribution against the criminal. Murder, indeed most violence, is an intensely emotional business so it is predictable, that there should be the same sort of reaction when a newsworthy killing happens. In this atmosphere there is little chance of the acceptance of a more rational approach; and certainly almost none of a hearing for the argument that it is capitalism, in one way or another and whatever other factors are influential, which makes our outlaws.

Politics

One of the peripheral battles about the Ulster situation has been on whether Parliament should be recalled. This is good stuff for all the comedians who thrive on apolitical jokes; what a shame to bring the M.P.s back from their labours on the Riviera, and so on and so on. Much more amusing is the notion that recalling Parliament would have any effect on the problem. It would be very difficult to prove from experience that this is likely to happen, since at present Parliament is an organ which administers the affairs of capitalism. As such it is impotent to get rid of the effects of the system; that can only come when Parliaments all over the world are composed of socialists with a mandate to abolish capitalism and with it all its inhumane and murderous offsprings. So as far as socialists are concerned (and if it's any consolation to them) the M.P.s can stay on the Riviera.

Abroad

When Khrushchev was deposed, on the day in 1964 that the British working class were returning the Labour Party to power (there were some theories that if Khrushchev had gone 24 hours earlier Wilson would not have won) a distinct chill of apprehension went around the world. In his years of power over Russian capitalism, Khrushchev had come to be accepted as a politician who was prepared to work towards a more comfortable phase in the Cold War and to ease the grip of the Russian dictatorship at home. One thing to be said about this is that none of this policy was a brilliant idea which sprang out of Khrushchev’s head. As he came to power there were changes in the world power structure of capitalism, with the rising threat of Chinese capitalism becoming ever more menacing. Within Russia, there had been signs of cracks in the dictatorship before Stalin died. As in other capitalist countries, Khrushchev was very much a man of his times, expressing and personalising the needs of his ruling class. It was clear at the time that he was under some political pressure at home, and that this went some way to explain such incidents as the Cuba missiles and Khrushchev’s apparent fondness for shoe-banging, raucous belligerence in public. What was happening was that he was saying one thing in.public while in fact doing the opposite — a common enough experience for capitalist leaders.

In Russia, we are told, we must expect barbarism and terror. But recent events in other countries have confirmed — if it were needed that this does not apply only to Russia. Events like the massacre at Attica prison, N.Y. Like the killings at the new airport in Tokyo. And so far we have not even mentioned Ulster. All the evidence points to the conclusion that capitalism is rotten and should be replaced by a society where people are precious.

Blogger's Note:

From the same issue of the Socialist Standard, see 'The Death of Khrushchev'.

Notes by the Way: The New Lie About Stalin’s Dictatorship (1956)

The Notes by the Way Column from the August 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The New Lie About Stalin’s Dictatorship

Now that the Communists are denouncing Stalin's dictatorship they are putting forward the pretence that his dictatorship was a departure from the principles of Lenin and the Russian Communist Party.

The following declarations made by Lenin and Zinoviev in 1920, give this the lie direct

  "Now we are repeating what was approved by the Central Executive Committee two years ago in an official resolution! Now we are drawn back to a question that was decided long ago, in a manner approved of and made clear by the Central Executive Committee—namely, that the Soviet Socialist Democracy is in no way inconsistent with the rule and dictatorship of one person; that the will of a class is at times best realised by a dictator, who sometimes will accomplish more by himself and is frequently more needed. At any rate, the principle towards one person rule was not only explained a long time ago, but was also decided by the Central Executive Committee."

(Lenin. Collected Works, Vol. 17, page 89. first Russian Edition).

"Every conscious worker must understand that the dictatorship of the working class cannot be realised otherwise than by means of the dictatorship of its advanced guard—the Communist Party."

O. Zinoviev in the Communist International, June-July, 1920).

How the Other Dockers Live

The £24 million Birmingham Small Arms group, manufacturers of motor cars, cycles, small arms and machine tools, has been in the news through the dismissal of Sir Bernard Docker from his position as Chairman and Managing Director and his replacement by Mr. John Sangster. Quite a number of interesting things have come out

First Sir Bernard Docker declared how small is the ownership of most of the shareholders:—

"There are 17,000 shareholders in the B.S.A. group. Anart from half-a-dozen or so big names, the average holding amounts to only a few hundred pounds."

(Evening Standard, 1st June, 1956). 

Then the report of an income tax case brought out how much one of the “big names" owns. Mr. John Sangster, the new Chairman of B.S.A. The following are extracts from the report in the Daily Mail (4 July, 1956): 

 "Mr. John Sangster, 60-year-old millionaire of the B.S.A. group, paid a cheque for £2,000,000 into his deposit account with a Birmingham bank. It caused him considerable trouble."

(The “trouble" was about the correct amount of tax payable on the interest, not simply the trouble of owning £2,000,000.)

The Daily Mail explains how he came to have a cheque of this not inconsiderable amount.

"In 1951 he sold his Triumph motor-cycle company to B.S.A. for £2,400,000. He said then: ’The threat of death duties forced me to sell.' "

Then we learned interesting tit-bits about Sir Bernard, from Mr. Sangster and abut B.S..A. from Sr Bernard.

It appears from the statement issued by B.S.A. that 

“in one year Sir Bernard received over £44,000 in fees and expenses. Five special Daimlers he ordered cost the company £50,000. He spent over £2,000 attending the Grace Kelly wedding in Monaco."

(Daily Mail, 17 July, 1956.)

Lady Docker also had some entertaining things to say about her ostentatious ways of living. Her main argument was that it was all good business for the B.S.A.'s Daimler car company. But she also claimed that she did it to please the workers. A Daily Telegraph reporter, who interviewed her, talked about her expensive clothes:—

 "Another dress, of rose, fully embroidered, was stated to have cost £580, Lady Docker said she wore at a company dance. ‘I always like to look glamorous for the workers and everybody there. They expect me to. I always dress up, even when I walk round the factories.’" (Daily Telegraph, 13th July, 1956). 

To the attacks on him and his wife Sir Bernard retorted by accusing the B.S.A. bosses of extravagance. He mentioned the £12,500 Glandyl Castle, bought by the company to hold records and management meetings, on which “something like £30,000 must have been spent" on furnishing. (Daily Express, 18 July, 1956). This latter expenditure was made without his knowledge and he did not approve.

With all this tossing about of large sums of money the workers were not entirely forgotten for in October last Sir Bernard announced that at “high cost to the company" the hourly-paid workers of B.S.A. were being offered the chance of entering Pension and Life Assurance scheme, on a contributory basis. (Economist, 10/10/55). Of course they would not be able to provide for their retirement on quite the same scale as Sir Bernard or Mr. Sangster.

The Daily Herald Editorial (19 July, 1956), joyfully welcomed all the rumpus and disclosures about B.S.A., ending, "Tell us more, tell us more, tell us more!"

Certainly we shall tell the Herald more. All of this sort of thing goes on in what the Herald calls the "Welfare State" and it was in full swing when the Labour Government was in office for six years.

Great Ike and Great Anthony

The Communist Daily Worker often says nasty things about. Eisenhower and Sir Anthony Eden. It had better look out or it may find itself out of step with its new heroes Kruschev and Bulganin, for at a dinner in Moscow on 24 June, 1956, these two were toasting Eisenhower and Eden in more than glowing terms. The following is from the Moscow report in the Daily Mail (25 June, 1956):

 "Another incident of an amazing night was Marshal Bulganin's toast to Sir Anthony Eden: 'Along with such a great man as President Eisenhower, to whose recovery my friend Kruschev proposed a toast, I propose a toast to another great man-our friend Eden.' "

The Daily Worker (25 June) carried a report of the same dinner but not the toast to the great pair. Their reporter did, however, record Bulganin as saying that Eden is “an honest, straightforward person, our friend."

If the great, honest, straightforward Eden is a friend of Bulganin should not the Daily Worker be his friend too?

Edgar Hardcastle

Recent events in Russia (1956)

Party News from the July 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

Report of Meeting at Denison House

As was reported briefly in the May issue of the Socialist Standard a successful meeting to put the Socialist estimate of recent changes in the situation in Russia was held at short notice at the Denison House Hall.

Two speakers stated the Party viewpoint. Comrade D'Arcy devoted his attention mainly to consideration of the international aspect of the question.

Comrade Young dealt chiefly with the Communist Party in this country.

Unfortunately, the raucous and rowdy elements who have been noticed around the Party platform at Hyde Park recently were conspicuous by their absence, preferring not to avail themselves of the opportunity to state the C. P. case inside the hall.

Even so, there were the usual individuals who heard for the first time that the Russian Government borrows vast sums upon which it regularly pays 4% interest

Comrade D'Arcy quoted from the election speeches of Kruschev, Bulganin and Molotov (delivered in 1955) to show that they were still eulogising Stalin a year after his death.

He further drew attention to the impact of the international economic situation on Russian affairs. He thought that the renunciation of Stalin and the appeals for co-existence were the reflection of the Moscow Government's need for a larger share of world trade. The economic development of Russia would be bound to produce its political counterpart. The growth of the working class in that country would make it more difficult to run by simple police state methods.

Several amusing instances were given by the second speaker of the ludicrous position of the British Communist Party throughout the years. After quoting the Daily Worker to show that the articles on the death of Stalin were completely repudiated two years later, the speaker gave examples of the antics of the Communists resulting from their lack of principles. Supporting the Labour Party in 1924—opposing it in 1929—supporting it in 1940 and 1945, supporting the war, opposing it—supporting it.

Calling on the unemployed to march to die military barracks at Burnley and fraternise with the soldiers, only to find them empty, and converted into slum property.

With reference to the so-called “day-to-day” struggle, the speaker read two extracts, one from the Daily Worker and one from the Workers Weekly. 

“Many times we light-mindedly call for strike action without the semblance of preparation having been made, so that in some districts, when workers see our comrades, they are apt to say, 'Hullo, what are we to strike for to-day?’ "—Daily Worker,  January 25th, 1932.

“ The unemployed have done all they can, and the Government know it. They have tramped through the rain in endless processions. They have gone in mass deputations to the Guardians.

They have attended innumerable meetings and have been told to be “solid.” They have marched to London enduring terrific hardships. All this has led nowhere.— Workers Weekly, February 10th, 1923. (Italics ours.)

Both speakers emphasised the repeated declaration of the Socialist Party that the fundamental mistake of the Bolsheviks was their illusion of minority action.

Socialism can only be majority action.—Democracy.

As a result their policies resulted in increasing disaster, throwing “Communists” in this country into even greater confusion and panic.

Numerous questions were answered and an interesting discussion took place in which various points of view were expressed. One contributor thought there might be a likelihood of a genuine democratic advance in Russia due to working class maturity.

Others questioned this view, asking for evidence for the statement that there had been any real change there, seeing in the "new Party line" just one more adroit manoeuvre.

A request was also made for still further consideration of this aspect of the business, which some thought inadequately dealt with by the meeting.

Day-to-Day Runners of Capitalism - Part 2 (1957)

From the January 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

Part 1

The complete lack of grasp of the general political situation from a Socialist point of view, screams from every line of Driberg’s reports. Kruschev, having taken the Labour Party to task for being “reformist” and failing to educate the masses in the “revolutionary spirit,” Driberg enters the defence by saying “though Britain had certainly not been transformed into a Socialist State, the Labour Government had taken substantial steps towards Socialism—taking basic industries into public ownership, introducing comprehensive social security measures, and so on.”

The only “revolutionary spirit" in which workers need educating will come from a knowledge of their class position under the wages system and a realisation on their part of the need to use that knowledge to vote for the abolition of this system. Far from drawing attention to the real nature of Capitalism, at every election the so-called Communist Party uses exactly the same stunts as the rest of them, promising houses, jobs and peace, etc.

As we stated earlier, to the Labour Party nationalisation means Socialism, but perhaps workers are beginning to see that the so-called “public ownership” is two steps forward, three steps back and does not mean that they OWN any more of the means of living than they ever have.

The term “social security” has a nice sound but only INSECURE people need it. No reform can give workers security because their insecurity does not arise from lack of reforms but is basic to their wage slave position under Capitalism.

Krushchev's idea is clearly that of an ignorant mass of people having their interests looked after and their problems solved for them by the right kind of Government. If workers had understood Socialism in 1945 they would not have voted for the Labour Party yet Kruschev assumes the existence of an electorate which wanted Socialism and because the Labour Government did not bring it about, thought they would try the Tories. His actual words were “Yet the Labour Government lost the next elections. Why? Because they did not use their power in the interests of the working-class, and the working-class therefore became indifferent to the Labour Party. The workers' conditions in those nationalised industries you speak of didn't change greatly. Therefore the workers saw no difference between the Labour and Tory parties.” He then added “the Labour Government did not change the State institutions set up by previous Governments, or create conditions in which the social structure could be changed. Therefore, the working-class was not interested.”

It would be interesting to hear from Mr. Kruschev, in what respect “the State institutions" of Russia differ from those which typify Capitalism everywhere. Except for the fact that there is only one Party which exercises dictatorial control, the nature of the institutions, i.e., private property, inheritance, law making and enforcing bodies such as law courts, prisons, police and judges, also a monetary system, army, navy, and air force, etc., remain the same.

The Labour Government did not take office to change the State institutions of Capitalism, but simply to use these institutions to run Capitalism and to make what adjustments they found necessary to run it more efficiently. The one remaining necessary condition for changing “the social structure” is an understanding of why this change is necessary on the part of the majority of the working-class. Living under Capitalism and coming into contact with Socialists' ideas will bring this condition about, but no Government can “create” it.

After the erection and demolition of a few more Aunt Sallies in connection with the Labour Party, Kruschev switched to the so-called Communist Party, saying “the Communist Party is not a mass Party in Britain at present because of certain historical conditions. But times are changing: a revolutionary situation will arise; and the Communist Party will use this situation to educate the mass of the workers and lead them to the victory of Socialism.” Far from their being able to educate anyone the British Communist Party would not know a “revolutionary situation" if they saw one. 

Hypocrisy-Enshrined

This next quotation from Mr. Krushchev will sicken any worker who seriously reflects on it. “Being revolutionaries and Communists, we are interested in the international solidarity of the workers; but we DO NO MORE than GIVE GOOD ADVICE to parties that need it. Every country has its own way. We stick to the principle of strict NON-INTERVENTION. Our work is based on the slogan of PEACE AND FRIENDSHIP. There are various ways of transition. Let us be patient.” (Our emphasis).

The rulers of Soviet Capitalism stand condemned out of their own mouths. The bloody butchery of workers in Hungary since Kruschev made this statement, and on a smaller scale in East Berlin before it, demonstrates how utterly meaningless words are to these henchmen of Capitalism.

Contrasts in Capitalism

The remainder of the interview was largely devoted to comparing methods of running this system. The advantages of two parties as opposed to one, crime and punishment, propaganda technique, and so on. Kruschev had explained that Russia is composed of a number of “ sovereign republics ” and when Driberg asked “could there be capital punishment for murder in one republic, and not in another?” Kruschev replied “it is quite possible. Every national republic has its own criminal code. Even now, there are some differences, but there is some co-ordination.” This to Socialists is a very telling statement, for Socialism and national republics are contradictory terms. Socialism cannot exist in one country only, because it involves a WORLD class-struggle, and a world solution to problems arising from this world system. Socialism is the direct opposite of everything national. Krushchev’s reply poses a contradiction within a contradiction—Socialism in one country itself divided into separate national bodies, each with “criminal” codes and legislature of its own.

Another degree in which British Capitalism varies from Russian is that in the House of Commons there is time for questions and in the supreme Soviet there is not. Russian workers, we are told, can ask questions at Party and trade union meetings. For an exploited class to be allowed to ask questions indeed sounds a good thing but in neither country do workers have any real redress within Capitalism because the problems are such that they cannot be solved little by little. In fact although a lot of questions have been asked, the problems housing, jobs, security, and peace, etc., will last as long as the system which generates them.

One question Mr. Kruschev was called on to answer came from an old woman who lived on a collective farm and had lost a plot of land because her sons who had worked on the farm had gone to work in a factory. This is a private property question and clearly has nothing to do with land being held in common. The woman had asked other officials and after looking into it Kruschev decided “she’d been given the correct answer first time.” Another example was that of a mining engineer sent to jail for three years “for negligent supervision” after “ a worker in a pit that he was in charge of had fallen and died.” Mr. Kruschev asked the “ higher judicial authorities to investigate it.”

We are assured at the end that the Press in Russia can now criticise top Party Leaders and the crimes of the Stalin era have been “put right again by the twentieth Congress.” Said Kruschev “our aim is to prevent any repetition of the cult of the individual and to return to the Leninist position and methods.” Any change that has taken place in Russia since Stalin is more apparent than real, still the H-bomb race goes on, still the struggle for world trade and, like all ruling classes, the Russian State Capitalists show no mercy to weaker powers that oppose them. The horror witnessed in Hungary gives the workers there little cause to rejoice at whatever “cult” persists in Russia, individual or otherwise.

While most workers all over the world have no understanding of Socialism they will tragically toy with alternative parties to run Capitalism and suffer the INEVITABLE CONSEQUENCES.

Harry Baldwin

News in Review: The Budget (1964)

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

At Home

The Budget

Many of the professional economic forecasters came out rather better than usual from Mr. Maudling’s second Budget. The heavier taxes on alcohol and tobacco had been widely tipped and so had some extension of the betting tax. But the Chancellor upset many predictions by not altering the standard rate of income tax, the tax on petrol and National Insurance contributions and benefits.

There is always plenty of advice and prognostication from the financial experts before a Budget. Experience does not encourage us to regard this as very valuable. Said The Economist of April 11th:—

. . . the surge in demand and productivity during this last financial year . . . . has looked astonishingly similar to that in the financial year 1959-60 . . . (when) most economic commentators urged Mr. Amory to raise taxes by between £100 million and £200 million in his Budget . . . but . . . from that first quarter of 1960 demand and productivity suddenly ceased to grow and, apart from minor fluctuations, remained at about the same level for two years. Modern economic computers can sometimes badly overestimate the exact amounts of tax increases that are really desirable in times of boom, because nobody has yet devised a science for gauging the way in which a boom mentality among consumers can quite suddenly be deflated.

This last admission did not, of course, prevent The Economist from offering its own advice to Mr. Maudling.

It is a widely held assumption that tax alterations are bound to affect prices. But the facts show that this is not the case. There have been plenty of recent examples—cinema seats, lawn mowers, some types of confectionery—in which a change in tax has not been responsible for a change in price.

Prices must move as the market allows them to. At one time the market may allow a manufacturer to recoup a tax increase by putting up his price—or perhaps even to over-compensate by putting the price up by more than the rise in tax. At another time selling conditions may not allow such an increase and the manufacturer will have to yield up some more of his profit to the government.

Whatever happens, the government are only interested in raking in the taxes to help pay for the upkeep of the State machine and all its ramifications.

This year’s Budget will probably be unpopular among the working class, who seem to get a real kick out of the couple of shillings a week extra which some Budgets may bring them—and who can be cast into deep depression by a Budget which goes the other way. In this confusion and ignorance, Mr. Maudling may have done enough to set the seal on his party's fate in the Autumn.

A Labour London

The Labour victory in the elections to the new Greater London Council was widely forecast, although even so in some of the contests they were surprisingly successful.

The government at the moment is in very heavy weather and the dissatisfaction with the Conservatives at national level was bound to influence local affairs as well.

It was not so long ago that the Tories were saying that politics were better kept out of local government. The Town Hall was, apparently, the place where local men good and true did their level best for the locality. To introduce party labels into this was ungentlemanly.

The father of the present Duchess of Kent, in an interview with The Observer, once gave a typical expression to this attitude. He was at the time a prominent member of an urban council in Yorkshire. Sometimes, he said, some Labour fellows tried to get on the council, but in most cases they soon learned to drop that stuff and to work for local interests.

Officially, this is no longer the Tory line. None of their candidates for the G.L.C. stood under the old labels of Ratepayers, or Municipal Reform, or anything like them. They were all Conservatives. “I hope," said the leader of their candidates, Sir Percy Rugg, “ there is no Conservative who thinks his vote does not matter."

This taking off the gloves has helped in the notion that the local elections are a sort of primary for the general election which is to come in the Autumn. Certainly, the Labour Party are hailing their victory as a precursor of what is to happen when Sir Alec finally names the day. The Tories, as we may expect, are analysing the voting figures again and again, looking for evidence that they prove exactly nothing at all.

Nobody was anxious to draw attention to another way in which the G.L.C. election resembled a general election—in the glowing promises which were made to the voters. Sir Percy Rugg offered “. . . humane and personal administration as well as efficiency . . . a realistic housing target ”

His Labour counterpart, Mr. W. Fiske, was promising cheaper land for housing and a lower interest rate for house building loans. Council mortgage rates were, indeed, the big electioneering point of the campaign.

Labour are cock-a-hoop at their win and are waiting impatiently for the day when they take over the government. But their chickens are by no means yet hatched.

One of the depressing features of the G.L.C. election was not simply the fact that once again the working class made it known that they are satisfied to choose between alternative ways of running capitalism. It was the simple, almost incredible, ignorance and naivety of the reasons which the voters who were interviewed on radio and television gave for voting as they did.

At the moment these people are largely being fooled into voting Labour. Come the Autumn they could just as easily be fooled into voting Conservative. And while everyone in going up and down on the see-saw capitalism goes grimly on.

Politics

Powell speaks out

Mr. Enoch Powell, who is supposed to be a very clever man, and the conscience of the Conservative Party, has been a source of embarrassment to his leaders for a long time. They must shiver, now, whenever he opens his mouth for fear of what uncomfortable revelation he will make.

But Mr. Powell is the sort of politician whose ideas have little relevance to the hard realities of administering capitalism. In this he is rather like the pacifist in the Labour Party. His speech at the beginning of last month to the East Renfrewshire Unionist Association, in which he attacked the government's attempts to direct industry to the development areas, showed what a dreamland this one time professor of Greek lives in.

If labour were perfectly mobile, said Mr. Powell, if the market were theoretically perfect, the level of unemployment would be precisely the same everywhere.

These are the sort of “ifs” which capitalism has long ago ruled out of the reckoning. Mr. Powell has said more than once that profitability should be the only motive for productive activity. The rulers of capitalism have come to realise that the profit motive is best served by a certain amount of interference with Mr. Powell’s “theoretically perfect” market.

Mr. Powell himself, indeed, appears to have seen the need for this. For some time he was Minister of Health, running the National Health Service, which is anything but a “theoretically perfect” market for, say, the labour power of the doctors and for the hospital services which patients require.

Mr. Powell has yet to say that he favours a health system in which hospitals charge patients as much as they can and in which the patient is free to take his custom to the quack up the road.

Nor has he said whether he is in favour of free enterprise armed forces and local authorities.

All political parties, of course, have their wild men whose ideas, especially when they are out of office, seem extreme enough to rule them out of all chance of ever getting to the top. Aneurin Bevan is one who was once in this category. Yet if he were still alive, he would probably now be the leader of the Labour Party—and perhaps the next Prime Minister. It is certain that, if he had ever made Number Ten, he would have been a different Bevan to the man who once made the Tories' blood go cold.

By the same token we may yet see Enoch Powell at the top, complacently administering the very things which he now denounces.

Abroad

Cyprus

Anybody who is surprised at the continuing struggle in Cyprus ignores the fact that the Treaty which closed the last bout of trouble there was almost bound to break down.

The Treaty took little account of the political complications involved and, like so many of its kind, ignored the nationalistic prejudices of the island's people. Years of guerilla warfare against the British rulers, accompanied by all the usual hate propaganda and brutality from both sides, succeeded in fanning these prejudices to a dangerous temperature.

It would have taken more than a few signatures on a piece of paper to remedy this situation. So the Treaty, as is usual, simply pretended that it was not there.

But certain things are there. The age old clash of interests between Greece and Turkey, over who shall dominate the eastern Mediterranean, is there. So is the British interest in the oil and the Suez Canal and the other strategic potential of the area. And so, in the background, is the American resolve that nothing shall threaten their standing in the Middle East.

The United Nations has shown once again how ineffectual it is when it is up against the confusion of capitalist interests. As in the Congo, it has taken a long time and a lot of argument to get the pale blue flag into Cyprus. Contrast this with what happened in Korea, and later in the Lebanon, when the United States moved in against what it saw as a powerful threat and was determined to have no nonsense about keeping the peace.

The climate of Cyprus, and the eradication of the mosquito there, have made it one of the healthiest spots in the world. It is the inevitable conflict of capitalist interests, and the hate and strife which this arouses, which makes the island a place of such unpleasant memories—and promises to do so for some time in the future.

Business

City & Labour Party

It is a popular misconception that a Labour victory in the Autumn will be bad for the capitalist class; that production, investment, and so on, will be less profitable and that business will, therefore, be in the doldrums.

It is true that the City generally prefers a Conservative government, but this is not to say that their professed fear of a Labour government is sensible. Business men, after all, are as capable of misjudgement as anyone else. And, anyway, there are plenty of industrial and commercial tycoons who support the Labour Party.

Robert Heller, the Business Editor of The Observer, has polled what he calls “influential City men” on their reactions to a possible Labour government. He reported the comments of seven of them on April 12th last.

Two of them thought that a Labour victory would be bad for business; two thought that it would have little or no effect. The other three thought that the policies of a future Labour administration would depend upon the conditions under which it took power—in particular, on the size of its majority.

Three said that investment was being held back by the prospect of a Labour government. The other four said that this prospect was having no real effect on investment.

One thought that the Stock Exchange had not adequately discounted the risks of a Labour victory — had not, in other words, sufficiently rearranged its interests so that they will remain just as profitable when Labour policies are in action. One gave no opinion on this question, but the other five were of the opinion that whatever risk there may be had been adequately discounted.

What this means is that the attitude which the capitalists arc adopting to the prospect of a future Labour government is much as we might expect. Some Labour policies, they think, may be bad for some types of business. In the same way, some of them probably think that some policies of the Conservative government have been bad—the R.P.M. Bill, the attempt to join the Common Market, and so on.

But, as Robert Heller comments: -

With certain extremely forthright exceptions, they don’t regard the prospect as very dreadful. . . . Some top boardroom names not only hope but expect to carry on business as usual. (Under a Labour government).

A Wilson administration may bring some superficial differences in the overall pattern of commercial, industrial and investment affairs.

But the City still expects to be able to carry on and to show some nice profits for the shareholders.

And the City is right.

Because under a Labour government capitalism will still be there.

Two giants

Two of the world’s industrial giants reported last month.

General Motors claimed that world sales of their vehicles were 14 per cent. above the 1962 record. Their total sales were worth nearly $16,495 million; they paid out almost $2,245 million in taxes and $4,313 million in wages.

There are many GM subsidiaries in this country, among them Vauxhall Motors, which, it is claimed, plays a “ significant part . . . in the British economy.” Another way, this, of putting the old crack about what is good for GM being good for the U.S.A.

Imperial Chemical Industries are now in process of writing off a lot of their old plant at the pace demanded by the developing technology of the chemical industry. Their total sales last year were £508.5 million (£10 million of them to the U.S.S.R.). They plan to spend £100 million this year on capital projects.

These figures may not mean much to the people who daily commute to a £15 a week job. But they reflect something which should be obvious to everyone.

It does not take much knowledge of industry to realise that the productive processes of plants like those owned by G.M. and I.C.I. are extremely complicated and require an enormous co-operative effort to keep them flowing.

In their way, they are a testimony to man’s ability to provide for himself. At the moment that ability is restricted by the anarchy of capitalism's commodity production. In a free world, in which all men’s interests were the same, the ingenuity which is evident in modern industry would make its contribution to the common good.

The tragedy today is that it goes to preserve a shareholding minority in their privilege.

When capitalism’s industrial giants trumpet their achievements abroad, what they are really saying is that the skill and the co-operation of their workers has once more done its best and been exploited to the full.

Postscript

B.B.C. European News

“Mr. Krushchev has said that as well as the moral stimulus of Communism, workers in the Soviet Union also need the material stimulus of being able to earn more when they work harder. He told a special agricultural committee of the Communist Party Praesidium that the more workers on state farms turn out, the more they must receive. ’We must struggle resolutely against wage-levelling,' Mr. Krushchev declared, 'and advance boldly along the path of material encouragement for quality and quantity produced ’.”

50 Years Ago: The Death of Krushchev (2021)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The former dictator of Russia, who died last month, was not a member of the SPGB so this is not that kind of an obituary. Nor is it a salute to the passing of a “great man” in the manner of the capitalist press (whether so-called left or right). Rather do we take the opportunity of the passing of the former despot (one of the rare cases in the Soviet Union of an ousted top man who managed to die of old age), to point out that this man, who started to climb the ladder of Russian power nearly fifty years ago, has contrived to die with his country as far from justifying its assumed title of socialist as ever it was. In fact it is probably true to say that nowadays there are far more people around who fail to register shocked surprise at our contention that Russia is a capitalist country, like all other countries in the modern world. The fact that it is state-capitalist (instead of only partly thus and partly private enterprise capitalist like England) is a matter almost of indifference compared with the salient fact that it is not socialist and has never remotely justified its claim to that title. Khrushchev’s country is just as much a wage-slave economy as the USA.

The capitalist papers (such as the Morning Star and the New Statesman) can safely be left to recount the career of the Stalinist today who danced the gopak for his master (and also acted as his henchman in the slaughter of untold thousands of his fellow countrymen). (…)

There is no Socialism in Russia and all the millions of deaths have been merely to establish a capitalist tyranny where, pre-Khrushchev and post-Khrushchev, the propagation of Socialism is punished as treason. A grisly and tragic story.

(Socialist Standard, October 1971)

Editorial: This Fearsome World (1960)

Editorial from the June 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

We live in a fearsome and threatening world.

A world in which the two dominant capitalist Powers, Russia and the United States, compete frenziedly with each other to pile up huge stocks of guided missiles and atomic warheads. A world of four-minute “count-downs” and weapons which can be projected even from under the sea to land on targets thousands of miles away with pin-point accuracy. Rivalling these in frightfulness are other abominations—chemical poisons and bacteria, as well as viruses capable of carrying diseases hitherto unknown. Some of these are so virulent, according to recent reports, that one speck would suffice to wipe out the world’s population.

Vast sums of money are spent on armaments of all kinds, only for these to be superseded in a matter of years by others even deadlier and more costly. Some weapons, such as missiles and aircraft, can be out-of-date by the time they become “operational,” or even before. Millions and millions of pounds are wasted by the smaller Powers such as Britain on fiascoes like the Blue Streak, or by France in setting off insignificant atom-bombs in the middle of the Sahara. In such ways are Mankind’s capacities for scientific achievement perverted and mis-used under capitalism.

Apparently unmoved by all these signs of a society gone mad, the peoples of the world go about their daily business, seeking to forget or ignore the grim dark shadow that hangs over their lives.

But capitalism will not allow them to forget or ignore its terrible realities. As though to drag them willy-nilly to face these realities came the news that the Russians had shot down an American plane caught spying over their territory. Denying the story at first, the Americans admitted the accusation when they realised the Russians had captured the pilot alive. And then gradually the details came out—not from the Americans, be it noted, who still took refuge in saying as little as possible—but from our newspaper pundits who had been so quiet previously.

The Observer proceeded to tell us that it was not a weather plane, as the Americans had first contended, but a specially-built Lockheed jet with abnormally large wings (presumably for gliding long distances with the engine cut off) and capable of cruising at 550 miles an hour. Such planes, it added, had been mapping Russian territory for months and this one was not the first to have been hit.

The Guardian took up the story to recall that there hud been similar incidents in 1958 involving the shooting-down of American planes over Russia. This incident in its opinion was “much like the affair of the British frogman who was presumably sent to have a look at a Russian cruiser at the time of the Bulganin-Khruschev visit to Portsmouth—a reference to the ill-fated Commander Crabb whose disappearance caused so much speculation but which was never cleared up.

It was left to Chapman Pincher of the Daily Express, however, to brush aside all the hypocrisy by quite bluntly saying that ‘'though Intelligence is a dirty game every nation plays it. Why, we even spy on our allies.” According to Pincher, British reconnaissance planes had only recently been briefed to fly over French territory to monitor their atom-bomb tests. And as for Britain’s own tests in the Pacific, he added, they had been monitored by both the Americans and the Russians, the latter from submarines.

Of the few who reflected on the possible serious consequences of all these manoeuvrings. Paul Johnson in the Evening Standard noted the significant fact, that it was Khruschev himself who had given the order to destroy the aircraft. It was for Khruschev personally to decide, according to Johnson, whether the plane was just another intelligence mission or really the harbinger of a full-scale nuclear attack. In the event, “his nerve seems to have held, and he chose merely to destroy the aircraft rather than unleash the retaliatory deluge.”

Over-dramatic—and quite possibly an exaggeration of the situation. But the essential warning is there. Nobody can be certain that one day someone might not press the button, even in error, and “unleash the retaliatory deluge.”

A fearsome, threatening world, indeed—which only Socialism can transform info a secure and peaceful one.

Russia drops the pretence (1992)

From the February 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" (or Union of So-called Socialist Republics, to be more accurate) is no more. When, on 25 December, the red flag over the Kremlin was lowered for the last time, the 74-year association of Russia and “socialism” came to an end. In each of the member-states of the new Commonwealth of Independent States nationalism has replaced Leninism as the official ideology.

Socialists can only welcome the abandonment by the Russian authorities of any claim to be socialist. That claim was never justified, not under Lenin any more than under Stalin, and did uncalculable damage to the cause of genuine socialism. Now Russia can be seen as what it always was in reality: one other capitalist state in a world of capitalist states.

What has happened in Russia—the emergence of a political regime relying more on the consent of the ruled than on their coercion—was bound to happen sooner or later since a developed capitalist economy cannot be run for any length of time on police-state lines, at least not without creating serious economic difficulties.

A modern industrial economy requires an educated working class to operate it, and such a working class cannot be bullied into working efficiently. Their co-operation has to be sought, and to this end they have to be granted certain rights both at work and in society generally, such as the right to form trade unions that can bargain over wages and working conditions and the right to have a say via the ballot box in the choice of political leaders.

State capitalism

All developed capitalist countries have been forced to grant the working class such rights. So it was possible to predict that this would happen sooner or later in Russia too. but not precisely when and how. We detected the beginning of this process in Russia under Khrushchev in the late 1950s and early 1960s and it seemed then that some sort of political democracy would emerge there within a decade or so. But then came Brezhnev. And we must confess to being as surprised as anyone else at the speed with which events have moved in Russia and Eastern Europe over the past three years.

The point is that the actual course of events depends on the precise historical background and on the choices made by those involved—the ruling class and their political representatives, and the working class. Those who seized political power in Russia in 1917 used it to force the pace of capitalist development there. The state was used not only to drive the peasants off the land and into the factories, mines and construction sites (as had happened in the early stages of capitalism in England too) but also to organise the extraction of surplus value from the newly-created working class and its accumulation as more and more capital, a task which in other capitalist countries had been left to the private initiative of capitalist enterprises.

As a result the type of capitalism that emerged in Russia was one where the state was the capitalist. As the state was monopolised by a clique of Party and state officials, known in Russian as the “nomenklatura”, this made them the effective owners of the means of production, even if collectively as a body rather than as individuals, and enabled them to enjoy a privileged lifestyle.

From the point of view of Russian capitalism, this system was relatively successful in that it built up an industrial infrastructure which allowed Russia to emerge from the Second World War as the second greatest military power in the world. However, by the 1950s there were signs that it was beginning to become a drag on further capitalist development in Russia in the same way that previously the Tsarist regime had been.

An educated urban working class had emerged that could no longer be treated in the same brutal way as the dispossessed peasants who had been slave-driven into building Russia's basic industries. A section of the Russian ruling class realised this and under Khrushchev a number of reforms were made: Stalin's methods were criticised, the labour code was made less strict, and central state control was relaxed in both the economy and the field of ideas. Another section of the ruling class, however, saw where this would logically lead: to some measure of political democracy and the end of the nomenklatura system and their privileged position in society. Khrushchev was deposed in 1964 and Brezhnev took over.

Brezhnev pursued the policy of trying to carry out economic reform while leaving the political structure—the one-party state and its privileged nomenklatura—unchanged. It didn’t work. The working class in effect refused to co-operate. "They pretend to pay us. and we pretend to work", as a popular saying of the Brezhnev era put it. Industrial development and productivity continued to stagnate. It eventually became clear to the dominant elements within the Russian ruling class that the process begun under Khrushchev in the 1960s would have to be resumed if economic stagnation was not to undermine Russia’s military strength. Gorbachev was chosen in 1985 as the man to preside over this process.

Ruling class split

Glasnost (“openness”) was introduced and the working class was allowed a degree of freedom of speech such as they had never known before, not even under Khrushchev. Gorbachev and the section of the ruling class he represented wanted to use the working class against another section of the ruling class which opposed his policies and wished to retain the old political regime. It was a classic case of the working class being drawn into the political arena by one section of the ruling class to settle scores with another section, as had occurred in Britain in the 19th century when the industrial capitalists sought the support of the working class against the landed aristocracy.

With the benefit of hindsight, we can now see that, once in the political arena, the working class were not going to settle for anything less than the complete elimination of the nomenklatura as a privileged ruling class. They didn’t know what they wanted to put in its place but they did know that they wanted the privileged Party bosses, who had exploited and duped them for so many years, off their backs. In this respect. Yeltsin who embraced this view at a relatively early stage proved to be a shrewder politician than Gorbachev who continued to believe that the old regime could be gradually phased out of existence without upsetting the nomenklatura too much.

In the event it was the stupidity of the conservative wing of the nomenklatura that precipitated events. In staging a coup in August against Gorbachev, they brought about the complete destruction of the old political system. Most of the armed forces refused to follow the putschists and Gorbachev returned to power. Within a few days the Communist Party had been banned. As this party wasn’t a party in the conventional sense of the term but the political institution which allowed the nomenklatura to control the state and maintain its privileges, this amounted to the abolition of the nomenklatura. With this act in September 1991 Russia’s political structure caught up with its economic base.

Decolonization

Effective power passed into the hands of Yeltsin who had been elected President of Russia in a country-wide poll (whereas Gorbachev had merely been appointed by a parliament largely composed of nomenklaturists). Yeltsin's analysis of what to do to save Russia's status as a great power in the capitalist world was more radical than anything Gorbachev was prepared to contemplate: granting independence to Russia’s colonies in the Caucasus and Central Asia as well as to the Ukraine and Belorussia.

This represents the break-up of the Soviet Union as a single political unit, but since Russia made up 90 percent of the former territory and 72 percent of the former population of the USSR it is not all that of a sacrifice. Of the 10 (11 if Georgia is included) new stales only the Ukraine (population 52 million, making it the fifth largest state in Europe after Germany, France, Britain and Italy) counts for anything and will be a serious loss if it really does go its own way. The others, all apart from Belorussia and Moldavia in Asia, are unviable statelets which will remain as dependent on Russia as France's ex-colonies in Africa have on France.

Russia may have lost its super-power status—which, in any event, was based on a military might well beyond its economic capabilities—but it remains a world power still armed with many more nuclear weapons than any of the other nuclear powers except America. Strengthened by a popular allegiance the old Soviet Union never had, Russia will eventually re-enter the world arena to compete alongside greater Germany and Japan against the currently world-dominant America. At least it won't be doing so in the name of socialism, not that that will make the capitalist world of competing stales a safer place.

Adam Buick

Twisting and turning (1996)

Book Review from the May 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

L’URSS et la contre-révolution de velours. by Ludo Martens. EPO, Brussels.

Normally we would let the dead bury the dead. And this book (“The USSR: The Velvet Counter-Revolution”) clearly comes into this category, written as it is by someone — the leader of a Maoist party in Belgium — who believes that Stalin was a Great Man and Trotsky a Hitlerite agent. But it reveals an interesting twist to the argument over the nature of the social system in Russia when the Communist Party was in power there.

In the course of their disputes with the rulers of Russia, the rulers of China (Mao) and of Albania (Enver Hodja) came to characterise Russia as “state capitalist”. This was largely name-calling but Mao and Hodja got their State ideologists to work it up into some kind of theory; which, in Martens’s words, went like this:

  "In the Soviet Union, Khrushchev’s coup d’Etat marked the capture of power by a new big-bourgeoisie, made up of the high officials of the Party and State, who de facto own the means of production and who appropriate the surplus value created by the workers. The Soviet State is a collective capitalist".

As it happened, this description of who the Russian ruling class were and how they owned the means of production and exploited the workers was substantially correct, except why did this suddenly come to apply only in 1953 when Khrushchev took over after Stalin died? Since the political and economic structure was the same, if it applied to Russia under Khrushchev it ought logically to apply to Russia under Stalin too. Indeed, it ought logically to apply as well to China under Mao and Albania under Hodja.

As we pointed out at the time, in characterising Russia as capitalist the Maoists were more advanced than the Trotskyists who still clung to the absurd view that Russia was some sort of “workers state” . However, in so doing they were also underlining their own defence of the Chinese and Albanian regimes which of course were also examples of state capitalism.

And this is what happened. After the so-called Cultural Revolution some ex-Red Guards came to apply the same analysis to China under Mao. Others went further and applied it to Russia under Stalin. As Martens describes it from his point of view:

  “The whole French New Right, of the “former-Maoist-New-Philospher” type, started from the analysis of the restoration of capitalism under Khrushchev to then discover that the “bases” of this restoration had already been laid by Stalin”.

Some went even further, such as Michael Volslensky in his book The Nomenklatura (recommended reading, incidentally, for anyone wanting to understand the ancien régime in Russia) whose views Martens quotes as the final proof that the new class/state capitalist analysis of Russia was wrong and should be abandoned:

  “Neither the Leninist party nor its core has ever been the vanguard or even a simple part of the working class . . . In the event of the revolution they were preparing being victorious, this small group would automatically become an organisation of professional leaders. It is thus that Lenin created the embryo of a new ruling class”.

Mao, Stalin and Lenin as advocates and practitioners of state capitalism, this is where the theory Mao and Hodja patronised in the 1960s and 70s led! This has proved too much for today’s Maoist remnants who have now decided to abandon it as a “leftist” deviation. Martens backtracks on a view which he says he held and ardently defended for twenty years, in these terms:

  “We believed at the time that Khrushchev had established a new specific mode of production, state capitalism, a higher form of capitalism where the “nomenklatura” collectively owns the means of production. This thesis isn’t tenable”.

He now believes that Khrushchev didn’t after all “restore” capitalism in 1953; all he did was to embark on a course that would eventually lead to “the restoration of capitalism” but that this didn’t actually occur till Yeltsin came to power in 1991; in the meantime the Russian economy remained “basically socialist”.

So the Maoists have now retreated to the same absurd position as the Trotskyists they hate: that Russia from Stalin to Gorbachov was still basically socialist even if those at the top were feathering their own nests (as if the absence of a privileged group in society wasn’t the essence of socialism).

This view has the added advantage—and is probably a major factor in their U-turn—of allowing the ex-pro-Chinese Communists to make it up with those ex-pro-Russian Communists who haven’t become open reformists, so that they can both rally round the remaining “socialist countries” (Cuba, North Korea, China, Vietnam and Laos). On reflection, perhaps we should have left the dead to bury the dead.

Adam Buick