How Capital Flourishes Under Labour Government (1950)

Editorial from the September 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

Forty-five years ago, just after the formation of the S.P.G.B. and just before the formation of the Labour Party, Chiozza Money, a Liberal economist, wrote a book that played a large part in political argument for many years. It was called “Riches and Poverty.” It showed how the country was divided into two classes, the smaller of which monopolised the ownership of property and enjoyed the luxury provided by large incomes. It was nothing new for Socialists but provided statistical backing for the Socialist case. It was also used by the reformist Labour Party; but with a very different purpose. The first Manifesto of the S.P.G.B. declared:—“Society is today divided into two classes with opposing interests, one class owning the means of life and the other nothing but their power to work.” Then, as now, the S.P.G.B. insisted that nothing less than the conversion of the means of production and distribution into the common property of society could achieve emancipation. The Labour Party however promised by means of social reforms, taxation, death duties (and by the now forgotten “capital levy”) to make gradual but increasing inroads into capitalism until, imperceptibly, socialism would be here.

We have had the reforms, the death duties, the increase of income tax and surtax, and three Labour governments, the latest of which has been in power with a Parliamentary majority for over 5 years. And Socialism has not been introduced nor is it in process of being introduced. We still confront the same ruthless, exploiting, war-producing capitalist system. The task of achieving socialism still remains to be done and the method set out in the first publications of the S.P.G.B. is still the only way.

Labour Party supporters will contest the Socialist charge that capitalism has not been essentially changed; but out of the mouths of their own spokesmen the futility of Labourism can be demonstrated. Here are two Labour Party statements on capitalist ownership, the first was made in 1918 and the second in 1949.

The first was made towards the end of the first world war, in the Labour Party’s Report on general policy called “Labour and the New Social Order.”

  "Meanwhile innumerable new private fortunes are being heaped up by those who have taken advantage of the nation's needs; and the one-tenth of the population which owns nine-tenths of the riches of the United Kingdom, far from being made poorer, will find itself, in the aggregate, as a result of the war, drawing in rent and interest and dividends a larger nominal income than ever before.”

(“Labour and the New Social Order” Labour Party 1918, Page 19.)

Every one of those statements could be made again today; in particular the admission about the concentration of wealth in the hands of the small minority.

Let us now take a step forward over 30 years and read the admission made in the House of Commons on 18 May, 1949, by Mr. Glenvil Hall, M.P., Financial Secretary to the Treasury in the Labour Government:—

  “Of the 550,000 people who die each year only 10 per cent. own more than £2,000, but these 10 per cent. between them own 90 per cent, of the total property.” 

So thirty years of change has produced no result whatever. Ninety per cent. of the wealth was owned by 10 per cent. of the population in 1918 and still is.

Of course the Labour Party is again promising to do something about it. Mr. Gaitskell, M.P., who is now Minister of State for Economic Affairs referred to it in March 1949: “Property is still very unequally divided, and that is a problem which has got to be tackled.” (Daily Herald, 9/3/49). He thought that still higher death duties might do the trick but he did not explain why all the earlier increases had failed to do so. Nearly a year later another writer, Mr. Douglas Jay, M.P., who has now replaced Mr. Glenvil Hall as Financial Secretary to the Treasury, made an admission that might help to enlighten him. Speaking at Battersea Mr. Jay said:—“There is little sign that death duties are doing more than holding their own against private accumulation of Wealth.” (Daily Express 17/1/50).

One mysterious belief of Labour Party propagandists has been that nationalisation helps to lessen inequality of wealth. In the past few years the nationalisation schemes have actually worked in the opposite direction. If the mines and railways had not been nationalised the heavy losses made in the years after the war would have drastically slashed the market prices of mining and railways shares and correspondingly reduced the big fortunes invested in those industries. As it is the shareholders, by being compensated with the many hundreds of millions of pounds worth of Government bonds at fixed rates of interest guaranteed by the Government, have been saved from the major part of the loss they would otherwise have suffered. Nationalisation or state capitalism helps to safeguard the wealth of the capitalist class.

Capitalism, which the Labour Party never understood. has made nonsense of their well-intentioned but misconceived programmes. The only cure for capitalism is its abolition. The only road to emancipation is that proclaimed by the S.P.G.B. nearly half a century ago.

Sidelights on Korea (1950)

From the September 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

All governments are in favour of peace; we know that because they have all told us so! We also know, in spite of this passionate assertion, that they have all been engaged in “little wars” since the end of the second World War. This also includes the bearer of the olive branch, the Indian Government, which forgot to clean its own doorstep before making its frightened appeal to others to clean theirs. This is the comic side of the tragedy. None of them want war but they all prepare for it and wage “little wars.” What they really want is the fruit of war without having to spend treasure fighting for it. But they all want the fruit so determinedly that rather than lose it, they are prepared to turn the world into a cemetery again. Human life and human misery weigh nothing in the balance against markets, trade routes and raw materials—the means to realise the surplus labour extracted from the working class, out of which the capitalist class of the world wax rich and live in riotous luxury.

The war in Korea has some similarities with the “little wars” that preceded the 1939 catastrophe. Here again new methods of warfare are being tried out by the most powerful groups just as they were in Spain and China. We read of the coming into action of new and more powerful weapons on both sides; weapons not devised by either North or South Koreans. These weapons include new quick-firing rifles that fire a number of bullets instantaneously; powerful tanks with better fire-resisting armour; more formidable tank attack weapons; more powerful plane fired rockets; and so forth. At the same time we read about the greater concentration upon the development of guided missiles of various kinds this side of the iron curtain; the silence from the other side is more foreboding than actual information would be. In short, whilst we have been taught to recoil with horror from the tooth and claw of animal life in the jungle, that is a paradise compared with the human jungle prepared by enlightened human ingenuity from which we have lately emerged and into which we seem doomed to be driven again, unless the workers of the world awake to what lies behind it all—the hungry hunt for riches by a relatively small section of the world's population.

Another similarity with pre 1939 times is the impotence of the world assembly that was alleged to be the means of banishing war. Then it was the League of Nations which pursued its way, impotent to do anything about the numerous wars that occurred between 1918 and 1939, and finally disappeared on the outbreak of war in 1939. But our “practical” capitalists, who accuse socialists of being idealists, were not discouraged. They learnt nothing from the collapse of the League of Nations. No sooner was the last war ended than they organised a new, more costly and equally useless emblem of their fatuous idealism—the United Nations Organisation. Since then the world has been involved in bitterness, conflict, and wars in which the United Nations has not had the slightest influence beyond providing halls for the shouting and the intrigue and occasional banquets and travel tours for the disputants. Like the old unlamented League of Nations the United Nations has been no more than the plaything of the more powerful governments, providing a facade behind which each jockeyed for the plunder on behalf of their particular section of the world capitalist class.

When we point out that Socialism will require the understanding and co-operation of people all over the earth we are met with the challenge “What about the backward nations?” To those who are disturbed by what appears to them to be an insurmountable obstacle the war in Korea should provide a salutary lesson. When the war first broke out it was generally believed that a few thousand trained American soldiers would have little trouble in sweeping the native North Korean army out of existence. With a shock it was soon realised that this expectation was based on an illusion. Not only were the North Koreans armed with the latest and most powerful means of destruction but these people, until recently, looked upon as backward peasants, were able to handle the complicated rifles, guns and tanks as well as carry out military manoeuvres with an expertness equal to the personnel of the so-called advanced countries. They have provided evidence that, given the opportunity, mental and physical capacities are so similar all over the earth that the apparent backwardness is not real and can be overcome in a very short time. At the rate of progress we have been witnessing in recent years the “backward people! ” bogey will soon vanish.

There is another lesson that the Korean war is providing. How often are we met with statement from our opponents “You can’t change human nature!” Without going into the misconception behind the question let us remember the propaganda of years which painted the Germans and Japanese with unalterable racial characteristics which doomed them to act as wild beasts of almost unbelievable brutality. Short as may be the memory of workers they can hardly have forgotten the stories of the natural criminal proclivities of these two groups of people. Well, if we are to accept the human nature argument, they must have changed in a remarkably short space of time. Germany is being appealed to and urged to form an army to fight alongside the Western countries as allies. The Japanese have also acquired good conduct medals and efforts are being made to bring them in on similar terms. The awkward part of it is that the Germans, who were alleged to be a fundamentally war-like race, have shewn no enthusiasm for the project; they want to go about their business in peace.

The war in Korea has given an impetus to the armament drives because behind it is the struggle between rival powers which is driving towards another world war. But Korea is not the only spot where these rivalries are culminating in “small wars.” Malaya is another part of the East where fighting is involved. If the main interest of the Powers in Korea is strategic other things also interest them in Malaya.

On the 16th August the Foreign Editor of the Evening News, Mr. Harold Walton, wrote an article headed “Malaya at War is our Best Dollar-Eamer.” Malaya is the biggest producer of tin and rubber in the world. The following two extracts from the article are significant:

   "And so the tale goes on, the grim battle against the Communist terrorists in the eternal half-light of the Malayan jungle, and the sky-rocketing of the prices of those two vital raw materials for which Malaya is most famous—tin and rubber. . . . One thing is certain: that so rich a treasure-house as Malaya will always be a target of Soviet Russian expansionist aims, and that the terrorist war she has set on foot there (with the single object of driving the British out) will be intensified as the months go by.
 . . . .
   The British troops and the planters and tin managers, the Malay police and the innocent and loyal villagers (many of whom have paid with their lives) should have the support and gratitude of the whole Western world."

There is a specimen of the sordid aims that lie behind the high-flown appeals to workers to risk their lives in warfare. Both the older and the newer brigands hunger for the treasures of Malaya.

As we have so often pointed out all modern wars are capitalist, rooted in the conditions of capitalism. Peace campaigns are pointless so long as the world is based upon capitalist conditions. Big wars and little wars will continue to devastate the world until the mass of its population realise that Capitalism must disappear and Socialism take its place; only then will there be peace upon earth.

Gilmac.

Germany Revisited (1950)

From the September 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party is not interested in travel articles or personal reminiscences, as Socialism is essentially an impersonal movement on philosophy. But perhaps in this case as I visited Germany for ten consecutive years before the war, and again for the first time since the war this summer, with a knowledge of Germany and plenty of good contacts, this should be useful in assessing the situation, and these reminiscences might not be so much out of place.

Firstly there are no Nazis now in Germany, nor anybody who ever subscribed to the Nazi philosophy. All the present population in British, French, or American zones were never supporters of Hitler, or at least so they say!

Those who knew Nazi Germany well will remember how almost every man, woman and child went out of his or her way to assure you that everybody was for Hitler, and the few communists or Jews that were anti-Hitler had fled abroad in shame. The towns in Nazi Germany were no place for a holiday because of the ceaseless propaganda night and day which made the atmosphere more like that of a boiler house. Munich station was always covered with a mass of flags and banners to remind visitors that Munich was “Die Hauptstadt der Bewegung” (chief town of the movement). To-day it is a ruin with no roof over the major portion. A photograph of the ruin of “ Haus Wachenfeld ” (Hitler’s mountain chalet) adorns the walls of the station at Berchtesgaden alongside a picture depicting its former beauty. Foreign visitors are interested in these things, but German’s aren’t.

Nobody talks about Hitler unless you first raise the matter. A change-over from the days when everybody had to greet everybody else or a business house or shop had to greet their customers with Heil Hitler. There was no good morning or good bye in Nazi Germany, it was all “Heil Hitler.” Everybody had to salute the banners carried by storm troopers every few minutes of the day. Photos of Hitler besmirched the walls of every cafe, restaurant, shop, business house, etc., just like those of Uncle Joe in Red Fascist Russia!

If the working class have forgotten Hitler and his night-mare, then what are they thinking about to-day? Like the working class in England, they are in a state of mind oscillating between confusion and apathy. Those who used to argue that Nazism was a special type of Socialism applicable to Germany and adapted to German needs, have now chucked over-board this argument, but they have got nothing in its place. Those many thousands one meets who have, fought on the Russian front and been prisoners of war, say they are thoroughly convinced that the Soviet system is not Socialism, and that the Russians have a much lower standard of living than the Germans were accustomed to. They were also much impressed by the high standard of living of the Commissars, and the tyranny over the masses, with the indescribable poverty of the peasants.

In Austria the present Christlische-Volks Partei, which is in power, have not been slow to capitalise anti-communist ideas by plastering the place with pictures of Austrian soldiers behind the barbed wire in Russia with the caption “Listen to us, we’ve tasted Socialism in the workers Fatherland.”

The harm that has been done to Socialism, as we of the Socialist Party understand it is incalculable both from the Nazis calling themselves Socialists and also from the Russians, who not only persist to-day, but are everywhere on the continent pretending to champion democracy. Indeed the official designation of the Russian zone of Germany is “Demokratic Deutsches Republik.”

One sees in Germany, and Austria, no Marxist literature and no indication that the workers are making up for time lost in getting an understanding of Marxism. There is nothing of the nature of a Socialist Party based on Socialist knowledge. The bookshops contain no literature which indicates that things are moving in an enlightened direction. After the first World War Germany produced a great crop of anti-war books, such as the famous “No More War” and “All Quiet on the Western Front” and hundreds of others. At present the best sellers are Churchill’s “War Time Memories,” and Rommel’s book. Anti-communist books, so common in Switzerland, are entirely absent in Germany and Austria. Nothing is rationed in either country and the black market and cigarette currency has disappeared. One sees and hears little about unemployment. Germany is busy making consumer goods perhaps one day destined to compete with England’s for the export market when trade gets really going. Austria is experiencing a wave of “prosperity” brought on by the many tourists plus Marshall Aid. In both countries American troops spend lavishly (by Austrian workers’ standards) and bring their relatives from home there.

Neither the War nor the Nazi experiences seem to have taught the workers anything useful, for many of them to-day would be only too pleased to fight against the Russians with the knowledge of America behind them, with all the financial aid and equipment that can mean.

Our case has always been that you can’t get Socialism out of war, nor does war lead to Socialism, as Lenin and others have claimed. The Germans have been through a lot of tragic experiences from which very few have learned anything, except that it is unpleasant. If the present position of Germany has any lesson for us, it is that it confirms our philosophy that Socialism comes and can come only from understanding.

Horace Jarvis