The Conduct of Public Meetings (1934)

From the September 1934 issue of the Socialist Standard

With reference to the editorial “ Reason or Violence?” in the July Socialist Standard, the Secretary of the British Section, International Socialist Labour Party, writes to say that that organisation, like the S.P.G.B., allows questions and open discussion at all propaganda meetings.

Blogger's Note:

Via the excellent Splits and Fusions blog, an article by Mark Shipway on the history and background of the British Section of the International Socialist Labour Party.

[Comments] (1915)

From the September 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our masters could not afford more than five shillings a week as pension for their old and worn-out workers. But they can spend over three million pounds a day to defend their national privileges of exploitation against their fellow capitalists abroad.

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Apologists of the present order professed to be horrified when Socialists admitted that they were prepared, if necessary, to face bloodshed for the liberation of humanity from the horrors of wage slavery. Yet the master class is now shedding the blood of the workers in floods and for what ?

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“Are you doing your bit”. ” Join the Socialist Party and do it !

Running Commentary: Accumulate (1982)

The Running Commentary column from the September 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Accumulate

The chief executive of the Lonrho company, “Tiny” Rowland, has once again demonstrated how wealth is constantly accumulated in the hands of those who already have it. In one week in July, Lonrho’s share price increased from 66p to 83p, and as a result the value of Rowland’s shares increased by £7,600,000 — from £29.2 million to £36.8 million. If one of the workers who produce this wealth were to save £10 out of their weekly wages, it would take 14,615 years to save £7,600,000. Even if somebody on an average wage spent nothing at all. it would still take them 1,826 years to accumulate what Tiny made in a week (The Standard. 7 July).

The point is that fortunes are not made by hard work or thrift, but by persuading others to work hard and be thrifty, with the threat of unemployment if they don’t. Before you can persuade others to work for you and make your fortune, you must possess some capital. But since four-fifths of stocks and shares are held by less than one per cent of the population, most people are condemned to lives of wage-slavery. And what did “Tiny” Rowland do with his little profit? He bought five million more Lonrho shares. His comment on company policy? "We pay a decent dividend because I need the cash” (The Standard, 7 July 1982).

Just wars

The war over the Falklands caused some embarrassment to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, many of whose members were torn between their supposed opposition to war. and their attachment to the very nationalist ideas which make war possible. In CND magazine Sanity, for example, a letter from several CND members complains about their national executive’s call for a negotiated settlement without recourse to force:

Most of our members arc not pacifists and are not campaigning for complete disarmament . . . CND, in our opinion, should point out that the present crisis illustrates the futility of a defence policy based on nuclear weapons (no. 3, June-July, 1982).

The role of CND, then, is that of a would-be adviser to the British ruling class on the most economically and strategically advisable way of waging “just”, national wars, that is, of killing people. The same issue of Sanity carries three separate letters from sailors who are quite prepared to go anti kill fellow workers in Argentina or anywhere else under orders if it satisfies the commercial interests of British investors, but who would prefer this killing to be done with good old-fashioned "conventional” weapons.

In the war in the Lebanon, the true attitude of organisations like CND is being tested more clearly than ever. Phosphorus bombs and cluster bombs are inflicting the most horrific wounds and fatalities before our very eyes. This is not some potential threat, some apocalyptic Armageddon somewhere in the future. It is happening to people at this moment, and CND has nothing practical to say about it. For one thing, nuclear weapons are not being used. But in any case, in order to deal with war we must understand how it is caused. Socialists are not only opposed to every and any war, on all sides, and whichever weapons are being used. They oppose the present system of society which constantly generates military conflict as a natural extension of the commercial conflict of the market.

Violent means

In the wake of the recent IRA bombings in London and similar terrorist attempts elsewhere, those whose interest is in changing society must make their attitude clear. The bombs in question are planted by organisations whose acceptance of capitalist ideas deprives them of the concept of intelligent persuasion. As nationalists, and sometimes Leninists or anarchists, their concern is not to build up support for changing society democratically and by open and unlimited political discussion. Their vicious and destructive techniques of murdering innocent workers in order to advance capitalist causes, such as the setting up of yet another nation state, are learnt directly from governments. Socialists oppose equally both the official state violence, in which millions can legitimately be killed with highly developed weapons, and their makeshift rivals eager to imitate these techniques. The war in the Lebanon, for all the public outcry against its atrocities, is still illogically seen as somehow more respectable and diplomatic than the campaigns of the IRA. The way to change society is not to let the capitalist system "beat” you by despair or "join” it by compromise of principle. The profit system, with its national boundaries and boundless cynicism, must be opposed at every level, determinedly, politically and with the force of understanding and democracy.

Clifford Slapper

Why Socialists Oppose Anarchism. Its Fallacies and Dangers Exposed. Part 2. (1911)

From the October 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

[Continued From August Issue.]

The false conception of social laws leads the Anarchists to the unsound and dangerous methods in which they indulge. The wild denunciations of the “State” and “government” and everybody vested with authority turns the heads of their ignorant followers. These uneducated worshippers of Anarchist fallacies, believing that this and that official is the real enemy, plan to make away with them, and they are inspired by the “propaganda by deed” teaching. Of course, they receive direct incitement to do so from the fountain-heads of Anarchist “philosophy.” Jean Grave, in his “Moribund Society and Anarchy,” teaches individual violence thus : “Let us suppose a struggle between employers and workmen — any sort of strike, In a strike there are surely some employers more cruel than others, who by their exactions have necessitated this strike, or by their intrigues have kept it up longer than was necessary ; without doubt these employers draw upon themselves the hatred of the workers. Let us suppose one of the like executed in some corner with a placard posted explaining that he had been killed as an exploiter, or that his factory had been burned from the same motive. In such a case there is no being mistaken as to the reasons prompting the authors of the deeds, and we may be sure they will by applauded by the whole labour world. Such are intelligent deeds which show that action should always follow guiding principle.”

In the flourishing days of Anarchism in England, when they had captured the “Socialist League,” after William Morris, Eleanor Marx and others had left it in disgust., the Anarchists used its organ, the “Commonweal,” to push its reactionary propaganda. Thus D. J. Nichol, the editor, wrote of a Trafalgar Square meeting : “Some people condemned the throwing of the bomb at Chicago ; for my part I think it would have been well in London if a man had been found courageous enough to hurl death and destruction among the ruffians who attacked a peaceful meeting.” (Nov. 11, 1891)

In the next issue they eulogised the Tennessee escaped prisoners who carried on open pillage in these terms : “You have shown the workers of America—aye, and of the world—how to free themselves, not at the ballot-box but with the rifle, the torch, and the dynamite bomb.” It commended the Anarchist, Ravachol, who murdered and robbed an old man and was guillotined, in the following words : “Thus finished another stage in the career of a man who has shaken capitalism to its foundations and shown the workers an example worthy of emulation. We are anxiously awaiting the advent of some English Ravachols.” (July 2, 1892.)

Many other examples could be quoted but one more must, suffice. “We say that individual acts have always been a success. The man who strangled Watrin [a French mine-owner whose men were on strike], Pini, who robbed the banks, have opened more eyes than all the pamphlet writers in a century. Our aims can only be attained by accumulated individual actions against property and the men who hold it.” (Dec. 19, 1891).

When the Anarchist “movement” was less feeble its votaries carried out its teachings. In 1893 August Vaillant, the French Anarchist, threw a bomb into the French Parliament from the public gallery. Over 60 people were wounded and he was guillotined. In 1894 Martial Bourdin blew himself to atoms while fixing a bomb near the Royal Observatory, in. Greenwich Park. In the same year a Deptford “comrade,” Rolla Richards, got 7 years for blowing up several South London Post offices, Emile Henry, too, threw a bomb from the balcony of the Paris Cafe Terminus, and 2 persons were killed arid 21 injured.

The foregoing demonstrate that Anarchism is hostile to working class organisation. While it advocates individual violence, it paves the way for the armed forces of the State to intervene and crush it.

The need of the age is a virile organisation of the toilers, but the murder, violence, pillage, and riot that the Anarchists teach has led to their ranks being honeycombed with police spies. It reminds one of the story told by Alexander Herzen, who upon reaching a little Italian town, found, he said, only priests and bandits, but he was greatly puzzled to decide which were the priests and which the bandits.

Just so with the members of the Anarchist groups. It is often difficult to find out which are the genuine “comrades” and which the spies. Its secrecy and underground working make treachery possible : that is why they have never really started to organise the working class.

During the Walsall trial in 1892 it leaked out that the man who informed the police of the proposed bomb outrage was a trusted “comrade” named Coulon, who actually managed Louise Michel’s Anarchist school in Fitzroy Square !

Their clubs all perish owing to the one cause. The “Autotomie,” the “Grafton,” the “Scandinavian,” are cases in point. The “comrades” spend a lot of time accusing each other of being police spies. David Nicoll (of the “Commonweal”) bitterly denounced two of the leading members, “Dr.” Netllau and “Dr.” Macdonald, yet many others testified to the genuineness of these men. A late editor of the “Commonweal” came under suspicion, and is still under a cloud, though he left the “cause” long since.

As the Anarchists’ numbers have declined their methods have been somewhat modified. They do not appeal with the same frequency to individual violence, yet they cannot stop their ignorant supporters from forever harping on its necessity. Indeed, the extent to which the Anarchist followers gloat over deeds of violence, high-sounding threats and the fury they delight in, prove a distinct menace to the true revolutionary movement.

Emma Goldman’s (the American Anarchist) manager, Ben Reitman, visited this country a short while since, and the wild, idiotic advice he gave his audiences — urging them to break policemen’s heads, etc. — could not been have surpassed by an agent-provocateur, for it openly invited the suppression of public meetings, and the condemnation of any anti capitalist movement to lasting persecution.

The Anarchists are frequently the best friends the capitalists have. Whenever they consummate one of their melodramatic outrages the police and Press use it to brow beat the Socialists. The working class are shown how the “foes of capitalism” avoid any civilised weapon at their hand, and appeal to the fruitless and insane personal attack, street battle, etc.

How thoroughly dishonest the Anarchists arc when attacking Socialists may be judged from their plea that Parliament has been tried and has failed ! Listen to the voice of ” Freedom” (Aug. 1911):

“The complete failure of the Labour Party to bring to the toilers any relief from the burdens of capitalist exploitation and the barefaced lust of personal aggrandisement shown by the majority of Labour M.P.s have compelled the workers not, only to again resort to the strike to resist the capitalists, but to realise with more or less certainty that other means than Parliamentary action are needed to help his cause.”

Who expected the labour leeches to advance the cause of the workers? Only those who, like the Anarchists, ignored the facts around them. “Parliament has failed !” the Anarchist bleats. Seeing that it has been filled by supporters of the present system — Liberals and Tories and their allies for centuries, what else but continued working-class enslavement could result ?

“The political machine has been used for the exploitation of the worker,” says the Anarchist, and it is therefore useless to our class.” One might as well say that because a cotton weaving machine has been used for the exploitation of the workers, it cannot be used in their interest when they control it.

As with the loom, so with the political machine. Controlled to-day by the capitalists, it is worked in their interests as far as possible, but upon the working class controlling it, they will use it for their purposes.

The whole of the writings of Anarchists teem with the condemnation of political action. Marx and Engels are denounced by every leading Anarchist, from Kropotkin to Malatesta, for their far-seeing and scientific conception of the value of political action to the proletariat. Malatesta — perhaps the best known Anarchist in Europe speaking at their International Congress in 1907 said (“Freedom” report) : “He often heard Political Action referred to as if it involved Parliament. This was a great mistake. What, for example, was Bresci’s act (killing a king) ? Was it economic? No! it was political. Marx was responsible for this confusion.” In order to see whether it is confusion let us review the facts.

In the “Communist Manifesto” Marx points out that “the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy.” What does “political supremacy ” and “political action” mean? Are they necessary ?

The growth of private property in society led to the parting off of those who possessed it from those who did not. A section of the possessors gradually became installed into offices of State, and their reign lasted until changes in the material conditions favoured the rise of a new class to power. The struggle between those who own and those who do not manifests itself as a class struggle, and its final purpose is the seizure of the political machine by the submerged class. The class struggle is waged also on the field of modern industry, and is typified by the suppression of discontented workers, the attempt to reduce the worker’s share and the workers’ resistance to those attempts.

This action relating to the field of industry is rightly termed Economic Action. Action pursued through the channels of local and national control and government is Political Action. For politics is but the science dealing with the laws of the control of society.

That the workers are scientific in using their political power (i.e. possession of the suffrage—the weapon) to obtain political supremacy is clearly seen by surveying the class struggles of the past and their lessons for us.

Constitutional history — the only appeal — tells us that the bourgeoisie in every land, though holding some economic power (i.e., means of production), were compelled to prosecute a long and often bitter struggle against the feudal nobility and the Church in order to secure political supremacy (executive power) and so rid themselves of the hindrances and embargoes put in their path by the nobility.

The Hansa towns, the staple cities, etc., had to petition the King and his feudal co rulers for charters granting them the privilege of trading, in certain merchandise and in certain districts thus showing the value of political control.

The political machine is represented by different institutions according to the state of the country ruled the material condition. As every land advances out of Feudalism into Capitalism, it sooner or later throws off the “absolute,” and finally all, rule of King and Court, and is forced to delegate power to representatives of the now enfranchised ruling class. These latter possess money which makes kings bow — therefore they finally prevail over the effete aristocracy.

Germany, Japan, Persia, Turkey — as each of these countries has emerged from Feudalism proper, it has had to introduce a Constitution with a Parliament as its central feature. The Executive later is chosen from this assembly and becomes a Cabinet.

The powerful nature of political control is shown by the light in England between merchant and noble and the victory of Parliament over the Crown. The Crown was re-introduced later, but shorn of its power, privileges, and noted prerogatives. All specialists in Constitutional history — from Gardner to Professor Dicey and Lord Courtney — are agreed that Parliament is the real arbiter, and that survivals such as the House of Lords are trimmings that matter not.

Political machinery, then, in modern society, includes, as its central feature, Parliament, and the Socialists, in urging the workers to displace their enemies from that citadel, are but pointing the right road. Parliament controls “supplies” — the force against Court and Bureaucracy alike. Through its control over “supplies” it rules the Army, though it employs a War Minister, and he in turn an Army Council, to arrange details. Political control relies eventually upon power over the armed forces, and these are under the control of Parliament.

Therefore Politics DO include Parliament.

Adolph Kohn

[To be continued.]

The Catholic Church and the Spanish Workers (1936)

From the October 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

As the civil war drags on through its third month, many things stand out even more clearly than at the beginning. The rebels lack popular support in most parts of Spain but the outcome does not depend on popular support. It is fighting strength that counts. Correspondents of several British newspapers, including the Times (August 26th and September 4th), have reported that a majority of the conscript soldiers in the rebel armies, and the mass of workers and peasants behind the rebel lines would be . disposed to desert to the Government side if given the opportunity. The rebel commanders, however, take care not to let the opportunity arise and when, as happened in the Alcazar at Toledo, rebel men, women and children tried to give themselves up, the rebel commanders did not hesitate to slaughter them, women and children as well as men—“a fusillade from the insurgents cut them down”—so wrote an eyewitness, Mr. Harold Pemberton, correspondent of the Daily Express (September 21st). The rebels dare not rely on conscripts but they can rely on their mercenary Moorish troops for as long as the money lasts. The position, therefore, is that the Government forces are being slowly strangled under the combined pressure of foreign Governments, mercenary troops, and lavish supplies of money and munitions. If the money and the munitions continue then the rebels will prove, as has been proved before, that a military force can, for a time at least, dragoon a hostile civil population by sheer ruthlessness. How ruthless the Military-Catholic rebels are has been exposed in an earlier despatch from Harold Pemberton, published in the Daily Express on August 27th.

Basing his statements on what he had actually seen with the rebel armies, he wrote: —

While the Communists are committing atrocities, the rebels are killing wholesale, mathematically and methodically—as a military expedient. No one must be left alive as a possible threat to the rear of their motorised columns. There is no attempt at a trial. Killings in Seville average 30 to 40 a day. After Merida was captured 1,000 were killed. Village killings average 10 to 15 a day—until the supply of victims is exhausted. It is estimated that there will be half a million deaths before peace comes . . . On leaving Merida with Photographer Tovey we were offered “Communist ears” as souvenirs.

It is no wonder that the rebels in due course expelled a number of British journalists, including the correspondents of the Times, Morning Post and Daily Express. They were anxious that the world should not know how they carried on their fight for “ patriotism and religion.”

It is well that workers should take notice of this further example of the ruthlessness of a propertied class fighting to retain its privileged position. The lesson to be learned from it is not that workers should try to emulate their savagery but that we should realise that while power is in the hands of a panic-stricken ruling class they will stop at no atrocity to gain their ends.

The Catholic Church Commits Suicide

Forefront among those who glory in the rebellion, justify the rebel atrocities, or seek to blacken the Government with misrepresentations are the Catholic Church in Spain, the Pope, and the bulk of the prominent Catholics in England along with their Press. The Universe has vied with the Daily Mail in gutter journalism. The Catholic Bishops, like Bishop Amigo of Southwark, have assisted in a widespread campaign to whitewash the rebels. Bishop Amigo was able to discover that they and their Moorish mercenaries “are fighting for God and their country” to prevent its “total destruction" (Manchester Guardian, September 4th). The Catholic Tablet, wholeheartedly on the side of the rebels but above the disreputable behaviour of such papers as the Universe, was nearer the truth when it admitted (August 1st) that the rebellion was begun by the rebels for “economic and class reasons ” and could be broadly described “as a class war.” The Tablet, however, was more far-seeing than Bishop Amigo, and has backed the rebels with a certain amount of misgiving: fortunately, a well-founded misgiving, for the civil war is going to do the Catholic Church in Spain more harm than 30 years of propaganda. Whether the rebels win or lose there are millions of Spanish workers and peasants who will never forget that when they tried to climb out of hideous poverty the Catholic Church helped the landowners and military leaders to grind them down again, by force of arms and with the aid of Moorish troops and every device of modern warfare. For every Spanish worker who hated the Catholic Church before the rebellion for its century-long exploitation of the poor and defence of oppression, there will be ten in future.

One Catholic and Protestant lie needs to be nailed down, that is that the Government forces wantonly organised attacks on non-combatant Priests and Nuns. The Catholic Church right from the beginning openly sided with the rebels and gave them every material and other support in its power. Does the Catholic Church, in face of that, really expect to enjoy the rights of a neutral? And having taken the side of the rebels against the Government and its working-class supporters, does the Catholic Church expect to be received everywhere with open arms? Nevertheless there has not been a scrap of published evidence that the Spanish Government encouraged or condoned any such attacks. Where attacks were made they were the actions of individuals or groups, blindly hitting out at those whom they regarded as their enemies.

One argument used by the defenders of the Pope is that he protests always and everywhere against attacks on Priests. It is only a pretence, as can be shown from very recent history. Where and when did the Pope ever protest against the killing of Abyssinian Christian Priests by the Pope’s friends, the Government of Italy? It was reported in the Daily Telegraph on September 2nd that the Bishop of Dessie “has been shot by a firing squad on the market-place, the chief square of Addis Ababa.” His crime was precisely that of many Spanish Priests, “inciting a group of Abyssinian warriors ” to resist the Italians. When and where did the Pope protest? Or the Universe? Or the Daily Mail?

Before leaving the subject of the Catholic Church it must be said that a minority of Catholics in this country who saw the economic and class character of the Spanish conflict have resisted the mass pressure of the Catholic authorities and have continued to stand on the side of the republicans. In view of the difficulties of their position the fact that they stood their ground deserves recognition.

A wider problem, of which the reactionary nature of the Catholic Church is only a part, is the power of the capitalist Press and political parties to stampede large numbers of workers whenever an issue affecting property rights arises.. The trade unions which voted money for the relief of the victims of the rebellion were immediately faced with opposition from members misled by the Rothermere newspapers and others of like character. In passing, it is important to notice that condemnation of the Daily Mail did not come only from sources sympathetic to the Spanish Government but also from the Conservative Spectator, which charged the Mail with exhibiting ”a colour-blindness which leaves atrocities invisible except when Reds commit them.”

There is only one remedy for the evil of lying, propaganda. Changing the policy of those who control the Press is out of the question. All that can be done is the slow work of enlightening the workers, teaching them to discriminate and apply their own critical judgment to everything presented to them. Only when the workers are immune to the effects of lying propaganda—and not before— will the evil cease.

One lesson taught again by the events in Spain, that can never be emphasised too strongly, is the danger of going ahead in advance of what is justified by the degree of understanding and unity achieved by the mass of the population. The Spanish workers were, and still are, divided by their outlook, and by their allegiance to rival organisations. This encouraged the rebels to begin the rebellion and now, day by day, it enables them to win battles owing to the terrible lack of co-ordination among the Government militias, born of mutual mistrust as well as of inexperience. One ominous feature is that the Spanish Fascists are now setting out to win over the Syndicalists to their side. Imitating Mussolini, who successfully won over thousands of Syndicalists to the Fascist ranks in Italy, the Spanish Fascists are calling their Movement a National Syndicalist one, and giving it aims such as those Hitler used with big effect to gain working-class support in Germany. They appeal, particularly, to the Syndicalists’ traditional opposition to Parliament and political action. Should this succeed, Spain may sooner or later go Fascist with the backing of large numbers of workers, as did Italy and Germany. Here, again, the only remedy is the slow one of Socialist education, and until the necessary preparatory work has been performed any attempt to force the pace spells reaction—on top of failure—from which it may take years to recover.

Edgar Hardcastle

Material World: Chairman Gonzalo: Leader and Butcher (2026)

The Material World Column from the October 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

This month a forum for ‘socialists’ asked you to light a candle. ‘5 Years Ago Today, Chairman Gonzalo of the Communist Party of Peru Died In State Custody’. Died in state custody. The way it’s framed you’d imagine a prisoner of conscience, a man punished for loving the workers too much.

Five years after Abimael Guzmán died in a prison cell, his followers want you to remember him as a martyr.

The Workers?

Start with Lucanamarca. April 3, 1983. A Quechua-speaking village of about 2,600 people in the Andes, mostly farmers. Shining Path fighters descended on Lucanamarca and surrounding settlements with machetes, axes, knives and guns, and killed 69 people. More than twenty of them were children. The youngest was six months old.

One witness, Orfelinda Quincho, lost nine relatives that day, including her mother and son. Another woman, Heraclides Misaico, lost her husband and four children aged nine, seven, five and four. Families were so terrified of reprisals they would only formally report the massacre to Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación or CVR) eighteen years later, in 2001.

When his party’s leadership were confronted with the massacre, Guzmán didn’t denounce it. He called it bad politics, said it could have ‘grave political consequences’, and disgustingly ‘Excesses can be accepted’. Dead children are an excess.

Lucanamarca was not an aberration. It was the method. The CVR found that fighters were ordered to hack victims to death with machetes to save ammunition. It found the movement deliberately provoked state reprisals against the very population it claimed to be fighting for, without caring what that suffering cost. It found proclamations calling for a ‘blood toll’, talking about ‘inducing genocide’, and announcing in 1988 that ‘the triumph of the revolution will cost a million deaths’.

The toll, in the end, came to an estimated 69,280 dead and disappeared. Seventy-five per cent of them spoke Quechua or another indigenous language. The Shining Path killed more of them than anyone else: the CVR attributed 54 per cent of the deaths reported to it to Shining Path, the largest share of the killing, ahead even of the state’s own counter-terror. Around 600,000 people were driven from their homes.

The poorest people in Peru, indigenous peasants, the constituency a people’s movement claims to speak for, were murdered in greater numbers by the self-proclaimed vanguard than by the army. The CVR stated: Shining Path ‘sees classes, not individuals’ and this led to ‘its absolute lack of respect for the human person and for the right to life, including that of its militants’.

This vanguard ate its own children. In the CVR’s words, it had ‘contempt for life, punished differences, and demanded full submission’. Young people who joined out of genuine revulsion at Peru’s injustice were locked into a vertical, totalitarian structure. Many of them died ‘uselessly and cruelly’.

A plague on both their houses

In 1986, the government of Alan García sent troops into Lima’s prisons and massacred hundreds of Shining Path prisoners. Torture and disappearances were routine. The army would answer village massacres with village massacres of its own: 123 indigenous peasants were killed at Putis in 1984. Both forces competed to terrorise the same countryside.

Guzmán did die in state custody. But the Leninist tradition he claimed, the tradition that says the workers’ movement must seize the state, has no retort, because the state is also the problem. Guzmán spent his life building a state of his own. The whole tragic logic of vanguardism, the party, the chairman, the militarised elite claiming to act on behalf of a working class deemed too backward to act for itself, reproduces the division between rulers and ruled inside the revolutionary movement itself. And movements built on that division end as rulers, every time.

Peru’s government cremated his body in secret and scattered the ashes, fearing a pilgrimage to the shrine of a monster.

Let’s remember. Remember Lucanamarca. Remember the six-month-old baby and the woman whose five-year-old was killed alongside her father. Remember the 69,280 dead. And when someone tells you a chairman is coming to set you free, remember what the chairmanship actually costs and who pays.

A.T.

The Passing Show: The Psychologist (1962)

The Passing Show Column from the September 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Psychologist

 

Psychology has the answer to all the world’s problems. If only we all became psychologists, if only we all studied psychology and learned to understand the hidden springs of each other’s actions, then the difficulties and injustices of society would all melt away.

No doubt psychology has its part to play in the modern world, at least under capitalism. Certainly many individuals have been and can be helped by psychiatric treatment. But, wars, exploitation, poverty, and unemployment, arise not from any defects in man which could be cured by psychology; they arise from capitalism, and the resulting break-up of society into irreconcilable classes.

If you don’t believe that, you may care to reflect on conditions in what is perhaps the only country in the world which has a psychologist at the head of affairs. It is the near-Fascist republic of South Africa. Dr. Verwoerd, the Prime Minister, is a former Professor of Applied Psychology at Stellenbosch University. But the people of South Africa are not any better off for that. Dr. Verwoerd is the representative of the ruling landed and farming class of South Africa, and he and his Government run the country in the interests of that class. The fact that he is also one of the country’s leading psychologists makes no difference whatever to conditions in South Africa.

Mosley

Whatever may be the right way to deal with Mosley, to go along to his meetings and knock him down is merely foolishness. Firstly, it gives him and his party country-wide publicity in press, radio and television. Secondly, it is resorting to the very weapon—violence—that Fascists and Nazis prefer above all others. Violence is what they plan for, what they train for, what they hope for. To reduce political argument to the level of people knocking each other down in the street is to descend to methods which the Fascists and Nazis would probably use better than any others. As for Socialism, violence is totally irrelevant, even if there were no other objection to it; for the establishment of Socialism depends on an educated working class, which really understands what goes on in the world. Our weapons are argument, knowledge, and reason. Anyone with an understanding of the Socialist case would have no difficulty in pricking Mosley’s bubble.

Race-hatred

Equally irrelevant is the measure now proposed by some MPs of all three large parties to ban incitement to race-hatred. Acts of Parliament cannot kill ideas. If the ruling class of this country decided to bring in the Fascist form of capitalism, or a near-totalitarian system such as our rulers introduced in the last war, no Act of Parliament could stop them. It has been said before, but it will bear repeating, that the only sure safeguard against Fascism is the establishment of Socialism.

In fact, many of those now agitating for a Bill “against race-hatred” were in the forefront of affairs in the last war, writing articles and making speeches which had the single aim of inciting race-hatred against the Germans, Italians, and Japanese. If such a law as they now propose had been in existence from 1939 to 1945, they themselves would have been its most frequent transgressors. And in any future war, whether “conventional” or nuclear, we shall (if there is time) have to listen to the usual flood of propaganda inciting race-hatred against the Russians, or whoever the “enemy” happens to be. And any law there may be which makes incitement to race-hatred illegal will either be repealed or ignored by our rulers.

Militarism

This war-time propaganda is, of course, intended for us, the workers, only; it is hard to believe that the ruling classes of the world fool themselves. For example, the Anglo-American line in the last war was that the Germans and the Japanese were incurably militaristic, that they loved uniforms, drilling, and fighting, and that they rushed into the army at the least opportunity. This, we were told, was one of the “real reasons” for the war. At the end of the last war, the American ruling class insisted, as it had to do if it was to be consistent, that the Japanese should adopt a constitution which renounced totally and for ever any armed forces. But, of course, the realities of capitalism soon caught up with America. Within a few years the American capitalists saw that their next enemy would probably be Russia, and that Japan was almost certain to be America’s ally in that war. So, against strong Japanese opposition, the Americans themselves insisted on Japan renouncing its American-sponsored constitution, and setting up again a strong army, navy and air force.

Endanger the alliance

This, of course, is now history. But exactly the same thing is currently happening with those other “incurable militarists,” the Germans. The German capitalist class has made immense profits since the war, helped by the fact that they have not had to pay very much out on armaments. The German rulers feared attack only from Russia; such an attack, they thought, was almost impossible because the United States would immediately counter-attack with atom-bombs. But the American capitalists have been getting increasingly unhappy about having to shoulder the burden of Germany’s arms-spending as well as their own. Germany already has 350,000 men under arms, and has been persuaded to try to raise this figure to 500,000; but now the Americans are urging Germany to increase the Bundeswehr to a strength of 700,000. This suggestion, however, is very unpopular in German official circles. The German ruling class would much rather go on keeping its large profits and letting the Americans find most of the money for the arms build-up against Russia. In particular, they are relying on the American H-bombs in any future war. In a recent television broadcast, Herr Strauss, the west German Defence Minister, criticized the idea that Western Europe could rely on conventional weapons alone, and said that the theory that the United States would use its nuclear weapons only if American territory were attacked was false. But what he said next showed that he really meant he hoped it was false: “If this were the official view in Washington,” he said, “it would endanger the (Nato) alliance.”

So the present position is that the German ruling class is doing its best to avoid having to build up its armed forces, while America is doing its best to persuade it to do just that. It all seems a very long way from the propaganda we had thrust down our throats in the last war.

Alwyn Edgar

Anti-fascism (2026)

Book Review from the September 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bye Bye Blackshirt. By Mark Krantz. Bookmarks. 2026. 114pp

This book is a well-researched account of the opposition to Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (BUF) as that grouping rose to prominence in the 1930s on the back of similar movements in Italy and Germany. It offers a powerful evocation of the context and the atmosphere of the time it investigates, focusing in particular on the various ways in which, up and down the country and mainly in the years 1934-36, BUF activities were violently countered by left-wing groups and their supporters.

Taking their cue from Hitler’s Nazi party, Mosley and his BUF were virulently anti-semitic, portraying Jews as a malignant force in society – the enemy-in-chief. In a period of severe economic depression, they found a significant number of recruits among frustrated workers looking for ‘others’ to blame for their plight and sense of hopelessness. In London and up and down the country (for example Manchester, Newcastle, Glasgow, Gateshead, Leeds, Swansea, Plymouth, Gillingham), the BUF organised large-scale meetings, both indoors and outdoors, often with Mosley at the helm and sometimes bringing along several thousand supporters dressed in black shirts who paraded slogans like ‘Perish the Jews’ and were primed to deal violently with protestors. At one of their rallies in 1934, Mosley announced that ‘Jews more than any single factor are undermining the prosperity of the British people today’.

The anti-BUF protests that took place were organised mainly by the Communist Party and the Independent Labour Party who themselves encouraged violent means to prevent meetings taking place or speakers being heard. Their tactic was what the author calls ‘direct confrontation and disruption’. So at a meeting in Gillingham in 1934, when Mosley appeared outside the meeting hall, we are told that ‘he was spat upon and missiles were thrown, including bottles’, and likewise, in Liverpool, he was ‘knocked unconscious by stones thrown at his head’.

Police were present at these events in numbers with a brief to facilitate the marches and meetings on ‘free speech’ grounds and thereby effectively siding with the Fascists in trying to prevent or ward off protests. The result was that protestors themselves were often dealt with violently by the police and arrested and charged with public disorder, in some cases leading to prison sentences.

At the most well-known of these events, ‘The Battle of Cable Street’ in October 1936, Mosley and his followers set out on a provocative march through what was known as the Jewish quarter of the East End of London. But the thousands of police seeking to ensure the BUF’s passage found themselves outnumbered by larger numbers of political opponents and locals who had put up barricades, mainly consisting of furniture, to block the procession. They charged to clear the way but were met, the author tells us, ‘with milk bottles, stones and marbles’ and ‘a brick went clean through the window’ of Mosley’s car’. The police gave it up as a bad job and Mosley and his followers had to turn back. The book describes the Battle of Cable Street, perhaps a little over-excitedly, as ‘the apex of the mass anti-fascist protests that stopped the advance of fascism in Britain’. And it is certainly true that, following this, support for the BUF began to wane and, by the time war broke out three years later, it had gone down dramatically, especially as it was seen by the British state as a potential ally to the Nazi enemy.

The book’s key argument is that the reason why the threat of a fascist takeover in Britain was never realised was the vigorous physical opposition it faced from left-wing forces and those who joined them. And this must indeed have had an effect. But it must be open to question whether, even it had not happened, any attempt at a violent takeover of the state by Mosley and his deluded followers could have had the same kind of success as Mussolini’s forces had had in Italy in the previous decade. Though the BUF presented itself as a threatening force, those workers willing to follow Mosley constituted a very small percentage of the population and would probably not have been capable of overturning the well-established system of capitalist democracy that existed in Britain, nor of setting up a repressive right-wing dictatorship as in Italy and Germany.

The writer also draws comparisons between Mosley’s movement in the ’30s and the current right-wing populism in Britain stirred up by such loathsome individuals as Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson. Will these be any more successful than Mosley in fomenting division and hatred among workers? It remains to be seen. But it has to be observed that the alarmism about this that Bye Bye Blackshirt evinces is typical of the longstanding Trotskyist belief in impending catastrophe and the hope that fear of this will cause workers to rally to the leadership of a vanguard party of the left to rescue them from the crisis and assert its own control. Such is the Trotskyist concept of ‘revolution from below’, which is entirely at odds with the need for a conscious spread of socialist understanding leading to democratic political action to establish a true socialist society of common ownership and free access – the real ‘revolution from below’.

Howard Moss

SPGB Snippets: Ann Widdecombe (2026)

From the Socialist Party of Great Britain website

July 15, 2026

Red faces in the Socialist Workers Party after their tweet on X in response to the death of Widdecombe was ‘Hooray, she’s dead’, followed by immediate deletion as furore swept the media. Some even confused the SWP with us.

So we should point out that, while we oppose capitalism and all its works, and urge the world’s people to establish a post-capitalist society of democratic common ownership, we have no truck with the SWP’s infantile reaction to the death (probably murder) of a pro-capitalist politician, however detestable that person’s opinions.

Capitalism is a worldwide system of private property and market trading, which can only be replaced at a worldwide scale by a conscious and informed majority, not by targeting individuals.

Silly Rivalry. (1932)

From the June 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

On May Day some demonstrators marched on the Japanese Embassy and were bludgeoned by the police. The Communists said that it was their stunt, and the l.L.P. journal, Forward, told the Communists how silly it was.

“The whole case against Communism might be summed up in the final feature of the day. This was the march against the Japanese Embassy….. The forces of police, foot and mounted, were overwhelming, and all that happened was a disgraceful scrimmage, cruel batonings, broken heads and several arrests.” (Forward, May 7th.)

Now read what the New Leader, the other l.L.P. organ, says :—

“The United Column…..was well over 1½ miles in length and very impressive. (This) is a piquant comment on the efforts of the Communist Party speakers to represent themselves the bold and true leaders as distinguished from the faint-hearted l.L.P. The small group which, after the police charges finally did break through to the offices of the Japanese Embassy, consisted almost exclusively of I.L.Pers and was led by one of the most prominent of the Divisional I.L.P. Propagandists.”

The I.L.P., like boastful schoolboys, thus present themselves to the Communists with the challenge : “We dare you to think of a stunt so damned silly that we won’t do it, too.”

Letter: Not That Sort of War (1976)

Letter to the Editors from the April 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Not That Sort of War

I am not a member of the SPGB. Why? I object to Principle 8, line 4. War can prove nothing but who has more money or more brawn.

Winifred Mawson 

Horsham

Reply:

Your objection comes from too literal a reading. The statement that we “wage war against all other political parties” means that we oppose them uncompromisingly and seek to dissuade workers from supporting them, not that we envisage using armed force (or even fisticuffs) against them. War with weapons is not an instrument which Socialists can use. Means have to harmonize with ends. A regime brought into being by force thereafter depends on force: our instrument is understanding.

Editors

Letter: Our attitude on Hungary (1957)

Letter to the Editors from the February 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our attitude on Hungary

Salford, 7,


December 18, 1956.

Dear Comrades,

I think the Party’s attitude on this subject needs further elucidation. In this month’s S.S. it is considered that the revolt is not worth the shedding of a drop of working-class blood.

This seems to conflict with previous statements that the Hungarian workers were trying to improve their miserable condition. In my view it also differs from the position on the first Russian revolution recently quoted in “50 years ago.” There it was stated that the workers and Capitalists have a short way to travel together. But not in Hungary!

In any case it needs to be made clear what the workers are supposed to do under a Communist dictatorship. It won’t be smashed without the shedding of working class blood; and there won’t be any Socialism or even propaganda for Socialism till it is smashed.

It has often been said that the Capitalists will never let themselves be ousted but if defeated on the Parliamentary field would form a dictatorship. I should have thought the original success of the Hungarians against their own national dictatorship (before overwhelming Russian intervention) was a good case for the Party in that respect. I think it also might have been mentioned that the working class, even those who had been schooled only on “Communism,” showed that objective conditions still prevailed over ’phoney propaganda.

In general I did feel the S.S. was less than generous to the heroic effort which wrested power, “with bare hands” from a police state.

Yours truly,

L. E. Weidberg.

Having said the above, may I add that the general excellence of the articles in the S.S. over the years is not unappreciated by one who has left the work to others.

Reply

The article in the December S.S. to which the critic refers made it clear that, whilst expressing sympathy with the victims of the “Communist” savagery, the Hungarian revolt was fundamentally a movement in favour of Hungarian Capitalist rule, and therefore was not worth the shedding of a drop of working class blood. One reason for this is that the removal of Russian Capitalist oppression is no guarantee that Hungarian Capitalist rule would be any better in the long run.

We have learnt from experience during the last 50 years. We were urged to support the Russian armed rising against the Czarist Police State 40 years ago. The result of that rising has been the establishment of one of the most savage and oppressive police states in the history of the world. We were urged to support the German rising about the same time and the result was another form of police state equally savage. Austria and China have had similar experiences.

However much we may desire to see freedom of expression where it is denied, armed uprising is not the way to accomplish it. Once guns enter into the dispute then guns continue to be be arbiters in internal clashes of ideas afterwards, until either economic development or organised working class action compels the powers that rule to make concessions. That has been the lesson repeatedly driven home, but not wholly appreciated, during toe last 100 years of working class activity. However much we may desire to make progress there is no quicker way than this organised working class action to clear the road to working class emancipation.

Thus, although we appreciate the courage of those who were prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice rather than continue to suffer Russian domination, it is our duty as Socialists to tell the bitter truth. Firstly, that it was not a rising aimed at bringing toe workers freedom; secondly, that armed uprisings may bring a change of rulers but will not bring freedom from class rule; thirdly, that the success of toe uprising would not necessarily have put an end to the police state.

It is not true that there cannot be any Socialist propaganda until a “Communist” dictatorship is smashed. The critic himself suggests that there can be Socialist propaganda when he writes that “the working class, even those who had been schooled on 'Communism' showed that objective conditions still prevailed over phoney propaganda” The revolt was not a bolt out of toe blue. It had been discussed and organised. There is, and has been. Socialist propaganda in all “Communist” and other police states.

It is worth while bearing in mind that, according to the information so far available the peaceful agitation of the Hungarian workers by stopping work has accomplished more, at far less cost in human life, than the armed uprising did. Thus, it certainly appears that the sounder attitude for the Hungarian workers would have been to stick to that method from the beginning in order to accomplish the limited objectives they were after. Sooner than see the whole social fabric collapse into confusion the rulers would have conceded some at least of their demands. However, once an armed revolt was embarked upon bloody conflict was inevitable, with savage reprisals and the use of Russian armed might; and now the atmosphere is still there for further savage reprisals.

Another advantage strike action alone would have achieved would be this. Attacks on peaceful strikers by the police, the militia, and the army, would have made the savagery of the Russian overlords more obvious to the world of Labour. The Russian rulers would not then be able to pat forward the pretence that they were quelling an armed rising against the government.

We are surprised at the last paragraph of the critic’s letter. Over and over again we have expressed our admiration for the courage and devotion of those who took part in the rising; we have, however, been truthful in regretting that it was not done in a better cause, the freedom from all oppression. To be generous without being truthful is to invite cheap praise. We have done our best to be helpful to the working class cause by pointing out realities in order to minimise, as far as possible, useless heroism in the future. We are also mindful of the bitter fact that the victims of today are so often the oppressors of tomorrow.

The revolt did not, as our critic puts it “wrest power, ‘with bare hands,’ from a police state.” The repressive action from outside was a foregone conclusion, and the power remains where it was. Furthermore, the action was not taken “with bare hands.” A portion of the Hungarian army took part in it and arms were in the the hands of the revolters.

Finally, let us consider the reference to the extract from the Socialist Standard of “Fifty Years Ago” that appeared in the November number. It concerns the attitude of the Socialist movement in a country where there is a revolt against a particular form of repression. We would urge the critic to look at the whole extract again in order to get a clear picture of what the writer was driving at. We would particularly urge him to take note of the following selections from the extract:—

“Hence, in the other nations of Western Europe a straight fight is possible between the proletariat and the capitalist ruling class, whilst in Russia the rising capitalist class has yet its emancipation from autocracy to accomplish: so that, in contrast with practically the whole of civilised nations, the working class and the capitalist class in Russia have, in the abolition of Tzardom's tyranny, a step to go together. This historical circumstance, which is at once the strength and weakness of the Russian movement, distinguishes it from that of all capitalist countries." . . .

“ Let us then do all in our power to help our Socialist comrades in Russia in the hope that they will not be deceived as to the outcome of the present upheaval: in the hope. also, that they will sternly keep their separate identity, and distinct aim. so that the Russian bourgeoise State of tomorrow may find a militant class-organisation of Socialist workers leading the final struggle against the Capitalist class, whose defeat must herald the Triumph of Humanity."

It will be seen from the above that the struggle in Russia 50 years ago was to get rid of the semi-feudal barriers, and the Socialist movement there was urged to keep their independence and their Socialist policy. As far as Capitalist Hungary is concerned that is still the attitude for the Socialist to take. Socialists there, just as under autocratic Russia in days gone by, should stand by their Socialist objective and do what propaganda they can under existing conditions, just as, for instance, an Austrian comrade of ours did under the Nazi and Russian occupations.

Editorial Committee.

Jottings. (1911)

The Jottings Column from the March 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following is culled from the front page of that ultra-respectable journal, the “Labour Leader” :

”LET LIARS PERISH

and prove the truth that Socialism is not Atheism by helping me with

10,000 Socialist Shillings.

Cheques or Bank Notes to help pay off debt of £800 on my New Church. . . Rev. W. Schoneld, Manchester. Thy will be done on Earth, United we stand.”

This from the Church that deadly foe of all intellectual progress, the enemy of Science and the upholder of slavery. Could barefaced cheek go farther ?

* * *

This same gentleman at the last General Election, speaking at a meeting in support of Mr. John Hodge, Labour candidate for the Gorton Division, stated that “he was not a Liberal, in fact he hadn’t a vote at all, but he recognised very clearly that Liberalism and Labourism were identical, and the Liberal workingmen in the audience would be noodles indeed to waste their votes when they could achieve the same object by voting for the Labour man” (cheers). That “object” was the veto of the House of Lords. After appealing for Liberal votes for a “Labour” candidate, he now appeals for “Socialist shillings” for the purpose of still further prolonging the process whereby the workers are reduced to a condition for being all the more easily exploited by the master class. I am fairly safe in affirming that he will not get one Socialist shilling.

* * *

Not only are the working class deluded into voting the parasites into power, they are even required to pay for the chloroforming process which keeps them in ignorance and upon which the capitalist sharks rely so much. These gentry profess to believe in a special Providence : why don’t they appeal in that direction ?

The fact is that when it comes to a question of £ s. d., they are as materialistic as the most brazen Atheist. They evidently believe in practising the (slightly altered) dictum, “you will be done on earth.” When will the workers get wise to this ?

* * *

Speaking at the Prince’s Theatre, Blackburn, on Jan. 22nd, under the auspices of the local I.L.P., Mr. Philip Snowden said :

“Socialism is nothing more than a scheme of industrial reorganisation for the reconciliation of Capital and Labour by placing the ownership of land and capital under democratic control. Out of all their theories they have now evolved that concrete idea.”

That’s all !

* * *

In his opening remarks Mr. Snowden said “He had felt for a long time that the I.L.P. had been so much engaged in mere political work that they had not paid the attention which was needed to the education of the people in the fundamental principles of Socialism.”

The reason is that they do not understand the fundamental principles of Socialism—excepting perhaps, those few who hold to the opinion that where it touches the pocket to tell the truth, it is the very height of folly to be wise. To speak of reconciling Capital and Labour under Socialism is an obvious attempt to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds—but it pays at the moment. Mr. Snowden professes to believe in a kind of harmony between Capital and Labour, but the only harmony I can conceive is that existing between the horse-leech and its victim. Besides, I was not aware that capital would exist at all under Socialism. The existence of capitalism, presupposes exploitation. But, of course, Mr. Snowden, being interested in the maintenance of capitalism, cannot be expected to shout that truth from the housetops.

* * *

This according to Liebknecht: “Whoever conceives of Socialism in the sense of a sentimental philanthropic striving after human equality, with no idea of the existence of the evils of capitalist society, is no Socialist in the sense of the class struggle, without which modern Socialism is unthinkable.”

The working class must learn that it need expect nothing from any political party that does not stand upon the basis of the class struggle. The S.P.G.B. is the only party that takes up this position, therefore it is the only party of the workers.

* * *

A remarkable letter penned by a suicide was read at an inquest held at Aldershot recently on the body of an unknown man who was found decapitated on the railway. The deceased wrote :

“Kindly free from censure the courageous driver of that train responsible for this, another tragedy. The cause of this tragedy is the unfair distribution of work. I have searched in vain, for the past three and a half months, for a situation.

“But I say the time is coming when a man who becomes really conscious of the real cause of this hellful drama, the unfair distribution of work, will not commit, as I have done, suicide; but will instantaneously arm himself with a revolver, and he will make a “B” line for the Prime Minister of the country and make him pay the penalty with his life.

“I have been to church—the manufactory of crime—and I am convinced that if people from the North, South, and East refrain from going to church after this day, there will be no recurrence of the Sidney-street affair.

“I do not believe in murder, nevertheless I warn the leader of the Opposition and the Prime Minister of this country of the real and, as I believe, proper conviction that is growing….it cannot be stopped.

“Now I am afraid I shall have to close up as my train will be here presently.—Good-bye, BRITON.”

The jury returned a verdict of suicide whilst of unsound mind. Of course ! It would not do to say that this hellish system of capitalism had forced him to seek oblivion, would it ? It might enlighten the proletariat. And how near to the truth this poor devil got, to say that he was insane. If he had elected to kill someone else instead of himself would he have been found insane ? I venture to think not.

Tom Sala

Socialism cannot come from the barrel of a gun (2026)

From the January 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

The news cycle has recently thrown fresh attention onto the ‘Socialist Rifle Association (SRA)’, an American organisation advocating firearms training and ‘training working-class armed self-defence.’ A Democratic Party Senate candidate in Maine was criticised for old posts encouraging people to join the group. Graham Platner had posted on Reddit in 2020 with the handle ‘Antifa Supersoldier’, encouraging users to join the SRA. Now reports suggest LGBTQ and left-liberal Americans are increasingly turning to gun ownership out of fear of political repression.

The Cato Institute (a free-market libertarian think-tank based in Washington) found via a freedom of information request to the FBI that the SRA appears to be the active target of an ongoing investigation. The Trump administration’s proposed ‘trans gun ban’ was only one example of the orange man’s Second Amendment rollback.

The SRA flips the American script: guns on the left rather than the right. Its message, community defence, resistance to authoritarianism, and the right of ordinary people to defend themselves, and it appears on the surface to be a working-class concern.

The rise in left-wing gun interest however is less an ideological shift than a symptom of a deeply anxious and alienated working class. When one section of the population arms itself, others feel compelled to follow. Capitalism created the conditions of this insecurity: economic instability, political polarisation, violent policing, and the billion dollar security industry that keeps you safe but only if you can afford it.

The SRA itself frames gun ownership as an answer to these concerns.

The phrase, ‘Any attempt to disarm workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary’, is used on SRA merchandise, patches, t-shirts, coffee mugs… a misquote from Karl Marx’s address to the Communist League in March 1850. What doesn’t fit on a t-shirt is the full quote:

‘Where the workers are employed by the state, they must arm and organise themselves into special corps with elected leaders, or as a part of the proletarian guard. Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary’ (Marx, 1850).

What Marx was speaking of was a specific political moment in 1850, during a faltering bourgeois revolution, not of the general conditions of working class life under capitalism, or of a popular democratic working-class revolution.

We can assume many SRA supporters cite Lenin, who wrote at a time of underdeveloped material conditions in Tsarist Russia, and leaned heavily on Marx’s early writings from the 1850s, written before the bourgeois revolutions had run their course. In those texts, Marx had argued that workers should support the bourgeoisie (emergent capitalist class) in overthrowing autocratic rule while pressing for full democracy. Only after the bourgeoisie attained political power he believed should workers organise politically against them.

Marx’s later position was that the emancipation of the working class must be the conscious act of the working class itself, democratically organised, not the work of a professional armed minority or vanguard.

Capitalism, not the lack of firearms, is what makes the working class vulnerable. It is capitalism that pits factions of the workers against one another: nationalist movements, strongman posturings, racism, gender-based violence. Against these systemic woes the possession of rifles is no more a solution than the ownership of a fire extinguisher is a solution to arson.

The SRA’s rhetoric makes much of ‘community defence’ and the image of the armed worker resisting oppression. Historically, this imagery is lifted from episodes of class conflict eg. Paris 1871, Russia 1917, Spain 1936, and further romanticised by those who confuse coups with socialism. As the Provisional Rules of the International Working Men’s Association put it: ‘The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves.’ That means consciously organising for political control, not relying on paramilitaries or armed minorities acting ‘on behalf of’ workers.

Socialism cannot be imposed by force, nor defended by pockets of armed militants. The failure of the USSR shows this to be true. A society based on common ownership and democratic control requires an active majority to be politically convinced and politically organised, not a vanguard with guns, bombs and bullets.

Armed groups, whether on the left or right, reflect capitalism’s logic of coercion, alienation and the struggle for dominance. The SRA rejects right-wing gun culture, but it mirrors it and as such it remains bound within capitalism’s framework. It’s a consumerist solution – buy a gun, get training – to combat a structural problem. But, as the Libertarian Socialist Organisation (LSO) in Australia pointed out in 1979 in an essay against anarchist terrorism, ‘You can’t blow up a social relationship’.

Socialism cannot be created by armed vigilantes because socialism is not a change of rulers but a transformation of society. The revolution must be conscious, majority-led, democratic and international. No amount of gun owners can substitute political consciousness and political will.

King Capital will not be dethroned by an armed militia, but by a working class organised consciously and democratically to remove the master class from control of the state.

The SRA is not a revolutionary awakening, but a reaction to a society that offers people no security except what they can buy and carry.

A.T.

Letter: Free speech (2025)

Letter to the Editors from the December 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Free speech

Dear Editors

I was quite shocked to read the article about Charlie Kirk in the November issue of the Socialist Standard who was murdered on a university campus. The avowed Left is often indifferent about issues around free speech but I was not expecting the same thing to come from the SPGB who have a rich tradition of its defence in both theory and practice. Has the SPGB changed their view on this?

Name and email supplied

Reply:

Rest assured that the Socialist Party’s position on free speech remains unchanged. We defend (and host) open discussion as essential to the working class’s democratic organization. The article did not excuse the violence, but contextualised how groups like Turning Point USA use the cloak of ‘free speech’ to promote reactionary politics and incite hostility; including incidents of harassment and intimidation against students, trade unionists and minorities. Actions by TPUSA (and TPUK) show that their defence of ‘free speech’ is often a cover for silencing opposition and reinforcing existing hierarchies rather than fostering genuine democratic debate. – Editors

Fascism again? (1947)

From the November 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

The last War was ostensibly fought in order that the destruction of fascism might be permanently effected. Its measure of success in this direction may be judged by the recent revival of fascist activity. Under the new guise of the “British League of Ex-servicemen” a number of meetings have been held in the London area. The scenes that characterise these meetings are reminiscent of pre-war days. Rabid anti-Semitic propaganda, intense nationalism, slogan-shouting between supporters and opponents, invariably culminating in street brawls between both rival factions.

As a consequence a large measure of publicity was given by the daily Press. Among those perturbed at this state of affairs was Mr. John Platts Mills, M.P. At a meeting of the Finsbury Council he proposed a resolution “viewing with concern the recent outbreaks of anti-Semitism and increase in Fascist activity.” (Star, 26/9/47.)

He went on to say : ”I don’t think any of us would have imagined two years ago, after a war in which the whole world was embroiled in order to smash the most devilish system of government ever recorded in history, that we would now find people seeking to propagate the same system of government in our country. These people are self-declared traitors.”

Apparently Mr. Platts Mills is one of many who mistakenly assume that wars are fought over political systems and ideologies. It might interest him to know, however, that the S.P.G.B., while steadfastly proclaiming its Socialist opposition throughout the war, re-iterated the unpalatable truth, that whatever the outcome would be, the menace of fascism would not be removed. The cause of fascism must be sought in the economic structure of society prevailing in the world today. This system of Capitalism is based upon the ownership of the means of life by a comparative few, resulting in the consequent enslavement and subjection of the dispossessed majority in society, the working class.

Fascism then, arises when millions of workers, lacking a knowledge of their class position and desirous of seeking a scapegoat as the cause of their economic ills, fall an easy prey to the rhetorical arguments of the fascist demogogues.

Believing also that democracy can serve no useful purpose and therefore what is needed is a one-party government with a strong man at the helm, the workers in their political blindness hand over power to these tyrants, resulting in the inevitable abrogation of democratic institutions, with the subsequent establishment of a ruthless, repressive regime in its place. The rise of Hitlerism in Germany is a classic example of this.

The only safeguard against dictatorship is the conversion of the working class to the ideas of Socialism. When the majority are convinced of its necessity, they will wrest political control from the Capitalist class by sending their own Socialist delegates to the seat of power with a mandate to transform society from one of class ownership to one of common ownership and democratic control.

With the inauguration of a Socialist society, dictatorship, Fascist or otherwise, will be inconceivible, because the means of life will be owned and controlled by the democratic community of the world. Wealth will be produced solely to satisfy the needs of all, whereas today it is produced primarily for the profit of those who own, which results, in the starvation of millions who inhabit this globe if these profits are not forthcoming.

Socialism, then, will not only solve the major problems confronting society today but will afford the fullest possible life imaginable to all humanity. Such monstrosities as war, Fascism and economic insecurity will go and will be replaced by peace, democracy and plenty for all mankind.

J. Pizer

Press Cuttings (1947)

From the November 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Son of Matteotti

“The municipal elections due to take place next Sunday have been marked by violence towards those left-wing candidates who are insisting on a Socialist line independent of Communist policy. Signer Matteotti, son of the man who died in anti-Fascist resistance during the Mussolini regime and who still vehemently insists on a policy opposing Communism, has had two meetings this week broken up by violence, his car burned and stones thrown at platform speakers.” (Rome Correspondent of the Times, 10/10/47.)

* * *

The Labour Party and Taxation

“We hold that indirect taxation on commodities, whether by Customs or Excise, should be strictly limited to luxuries; and concentrated principally on those of which it is socially desirable that the consumption should be actually discouraged.”—(“Labour and the New Social Order,” Labour Party, 1918, p.19.)

“Mr. J. W. Belcher, £l,500-a-year Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, said last: night: ‘When the price of cigarettes is doubled it makes far more difference to the £5-a-week man than it does, to me. The tobacco tax falls hardest on those who can least afford to pay it.'”—(Daily Express, 10/10/47.)

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The United Nations Can Agree

“Lest it be thought, however, that the United Nations is incapable of making quick and lasting decisions, it should be reported that the Legal Committee yesterday settled something in five minutes that the League of Nations abandoned after ten years’ fruitless argument. It adopted a flag for the United Nations and left it to the Secretary General, Mr. Lie, to decide its dimensions and its code of courtesy. It is to be a white globe on a field of blue. And there is no truth at all in the report that the Yugoslavs have suggested it should bear the motto ‘Manners Makyth Man.”—(Manchester Guardian, 9/10/47.)

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The Labour Party and the Factory Acts

“The amendment and consolidation of the Factories and Workshops Acts, with their extension to all employed persons and the restriction of the working week to not more than 48 hours, is long overdue . . .” (“Labour and the New Social Order,” Labour Party, 1918, p.6.)

“Night work in the factories for girls of 18 and youths of 16 will be legal after September 22.

“And anyone over 16 may work more than 48 hours a week—but not for two weeks running.

“These amendments to general conditions were announced last night as part of the staggered hours plan which will spread the electricity load.

“After September 22 a district inspector of factories can. permit an earlier start or later finish for day work.

“The starting and finishing hours of 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. can be extended to 6 a.m. to 11 p.m., and 6.30 a.m. to 6 p.m. for those under 16.”—(Daily Mail, 2/9/47.)

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“More of Everything for Everybody”

”We have greatly increased our capacity to produce more things during this war. We must use the skill of our people and our great productive resources to make more of everything for everybody in times of peace.”—(From “Your Future—After Victory—What Then?” Published by Labour Party, June, 1944.)

”What the nation needs is undoubtedly a great bound onward in its aggregate production. But this cannot be secured merely by pressing the manual workers to more strenuous toil . . . What the Labour Party looks to is a genuinely scientific reorganisation of the nation’s industry . . . on the basis of the Common Ownership of the Means of Production; the equitable shaving of the proceeds among all who participate in any capacity and only among these . . .”—(”Labour and the New Social Order,” Labour Party, 1918, p.12-13.)

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Sir John Boyd Orr on Food and Capitalism

“Warning the United Nations Economic Committee, at Lake Success yesterday, that more people will die through the food shortage in Europe and Asia in the next 12 months than were killed in any year of the war, Sir John Boyd Orr declared :

” ‘This presents an opportunity to the nations, assembled here to concentrate less on the political problems which engender misunderstanding and conflict, and concentrate more on the concrete problems on which there can be no misunderstanding.’

“He pointed out that the General Assembly agenda contained no reference to food and economic difficulties, and stressed that the food situation in Asia was just as bad as in Europe.

“Food production would need to be increased by 110 per cent, in the next 25 years to provide sufficient for the world’s population.”—(Daily Herald, 7/10/47.)

* * *

“Meanwhile, in the producer countries, the paradox of the years between the wars shows signs of being repeated. While people elsewhere face starvation, farmers tremble at the prospects of ruin—not because they cannot produce the food the hungry peoples need, but because they can produce more than the peoples can buy . . .

“At one and the same time we have these problems : How to get maximum production to salvage the world from present hunger and how to deal with unmarketable surpluses which will again bring ruin and misery to millions of land-workers and endanger the stability of the whole economic system.

“For failure will mean that the existing economic system cannot carry the burden of the material wealth which modern science can produce.”—(Sir John Boyd-Orr, News Chronicle, 1/8/47)

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Labour Party and Conscription

“The Labour Party declares emphatically against any continuance of the Military Service Acts a moment longer than the imperative requirements of the war excuse.”—(“Labour and the New Social Order,” Labour Party, 1918, p.11.)

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Labour Government and Wages

” ‘As a trade union official, if I were, faced with the choice of keeping the Labour Government in office or a reduction in wages, I would advocate a reduction of wages,’ said Mr. Sam Watson, general secretary of the Durham area of the National Union of Mineworkers.

“He was speaking at a week-end school of the National Council of Labour Colleges at Morecambe.

”‘Unless we can lift production, increased wages are simply a means of increasing the dangers of inflation and rising prices,’ he said.”—(Daily Herald, 6/10/47.)

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Housing under the Swedish Labour Government

”Many tourists, observed Mr. Osborn, have come back believing that the Swedes have everything to tell us about standards of housing and architecture. They are misled by the cleanliness and furnishing taste everywhere displayed. Housing standards in Stockholm are, as in most other European cities, appallingly low. Of the 670,000 people within the city boundaries, 90 per cent. live in flats, and only 7 per cent, in one-family dwellings. More than half the dwellings (51.6 per cent.) have only one room and kitchen or two rooms without kitchen. Another 26.7 per cent. have two rooms and kitchen.”—(Mr. F. J. Osborn, Chairman of the Town and Country Planning Association Municipal Journal, 26/9/47.)