Finance and Industry: Exports and hard work (1965)

The Finance and Industry Column from the September 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Exports and hard work

“Everyone must do a full day’s work for a full day’s pay from now on.”

“This is not a year in which we can afford large wage increases.”

“There is far too much indiscipline in every part of the nation.”

“We can no longer afford workers who inflict harm on production and the public with sporadic strikes.”

“Production, more production, more efficient production, cheaper production.”

These are typical of the pleas we get from Wilson and his Ministers almost every weekend now. We are told that there is a serious balance of payments problem which must be solved if prosperity is to be maintained. Labour Ministers, joined the other week by Prince Phillip, entertain us with stories about the simple economics of the family: if you spend too much you can only make this up by sacrifice and hard work. The implication of such stories is that the population of Britain, like members of a family, have a common interest. Socialists deny precisely this; today society is composed of two classes with completely opposing interests. This is why the analogy of the family is invalid; though there is perhaps a sense in which a nation can be likened to a family: a family of capitalists who have banded together for the furtherance of their mutual interests. When people talk of “the nation,” “the country” or “Britain” they are, in fact, referring to this small capitalist minority. For they are the country; Britain in this context is just a fancy collective name for them; the so-called national interest is their interest.

The balance of payments are the overseas trading and investment accounts of the capitalist class. They record, on one side, exports, loans from other capitalist groups, income from overseas investments and the investments of foreign capitalists in the home country. And, on the other side, imports, loans to other capitalist groups, income from foreign investments in the home country which goes abroad and overseas investments. These accounts are generally divided into two parts: the actual balance of trade (exports and imports) and what in Britain is called the “capital account” which records loans and investments. The balance of payments as a whole must, in accordance with simple accounting principles, balance. A deficit in the balance of trade, for instance, must be made by a surplus on the so-called capital account. Balance of payments difficulties arise when payments continuously exceed receipts. Before the last World War the deficit in the balance of trade of the British capitalist class was matched by an inflow of Profits and Interest from overseas. However, many of these overseas investments had to be sold to pay for their war. As a result at the end of the war the British capitalists found that they couldn’t go on as before: now they had to try to eliminate the trade deficit altogether by increasing exports. This is their much-publicised “exports problem.” The position of British capitalists is further complicated by the fact that its currency, Sterling, is one of the international means of payment and also by the fact that they act as bankers to a whole group of capitalist states known as the Sterling Area.

No group of capitalists can go on running a balance of payments deficit without in the end risking bankruptcy. There are various measures that can be taken to try to avoid this dire result (though, of course, the ups and downs of industrial production and trade mainly depend on factors which governments can’t control): loans from other groups of capitalists, cut down imports, try to increase exports and to reduce costs. Devaluation, which involves making it cheaper for foreigners to buy Pounds Sterling, and thus making British exports more attractive in the World Market.

When the Labour Party took over the management of the common affairs of the British capitalists last October, they were immediately faced with a serious balance of payments problem: imports rising, reserves falling, confidence in Sterling disappearing. As they themselves have since revealed they considered that their first duty was to “Save the Pound.” They got a loan from the International Monetary Fund, put on the import surcharges and the like. Most of their promised social reform schemes were “postponed” under the excuse of “clearing up the mess the Tories left.” Since then a major part of their economic policy has been directed to “saving the Pound,” from Wilson’s pleas for a New Britain with boardrooms full of fighting go-ahead managers and salesmen and factories full of hard-working, docile workers who have abandoned strikes, tea-breaks and clock-watching, to Brown’s futile prices and incomes policy. The emphasis is always the same: old attitudes must go, British capitalism can’t afford anything which increases costs from expense account lunches to Trade Unions using their economic strength to the fullest.

The general logic of this policy flows from the (correct) assumption that the continued employment of the working class depends on the continued prosperity of the capitalist class; thus to keep full employment, it is argued, the Government has to take measures to preserve prosperity (including using armed force to protect oil in South Arabia and copper, tin and rubber in Malaya) and avoid measures which threaten to upset it (like expensive and interfering social reform schemes). This might be reasonable if you accept, as the Labour Party does, that the working class must for ever be dependent on the capitalist class.

After all it was Marx himself who wrote that an “indispensable condition for a tolerable situation of the worker is the fastest possible growth of productive capital.” But this is merely the result of the utter dependence of the working class on the capitalist for a living in the first place. This is a dependence which Socialists say amounts to enslavement. We are wage-slaves, condemned to work all our lives for the capitalists in return for a wage or salary. But more than this we can only find employment when our masters can sell what we produce, when they are prosperous and affluent. Socialists say that this economic dependence on the capitalist class can and should be ended. Socialists have always urged workers to realise that their interests are completely opposed to those of their employers and to pursue policies in line with this. On the economic field the conscious pursuit of this class struggle involves using the trade unions to fight and improve wages and conditions all the time; and on the political field an organised struggle in an uncompromising Socialist Party for the conquest of political power in order to achieve Socialism.

Once it is realised that society is not one happy family with a common interest, but rather is composed of two hostile groups then it can be seen how dangerous from the working-class point of view are the Labour Party pleas for hard work, moderation in wage demands and co-operation with capitalist enterprises (“enlightened management and co-operative labour” is what Callaghan once called for). For if accepted this would amount to a complete capitulation to the capitalist class. The Labour Party is, in fact, saying, “If you want to exist under capitalism you must do so on capitalism’s terms, so WORK HARD, DON’T STRIKE, CO-OPERATE.” Socialists have heard this before and have always fought against this servile attitude. Under capitalism the working class must struggle; they have no choice as their economic position forces them to—this, in fact, is why this particular policy of the Labour Government must fail.

Exports, gold reserves and balance of payments only come into this insofar as the prosperity and affluence of the capitalist class in Britain—and so also the continued employment of us their slaves—is particularly dependent on its overseas trade. Today the workers are slaves whose interest it is to organise and struggle to free themselves. Once this is realised then it becomes obvious that exports and the like are not problems that concern the working class at all.

Rachman and rent control 

In the May Socialist Standard in a discussion of the Milner Holland Report we drew attention, as an example of the futility of reformism, to the fact that operators like Rachman were the products in part of rent control. A recent pamphlet by the Conservative Political Centre, Target for Homes, now says:

“The particularly unpleasant strong-arm practices associated with the name of Rachman resulted from control and not from decontrol. It was only the enormous financial attraction of vacant possession that rendered it so profitable to use these unconscionable pressures to get rid of controlled tenants. If there had been no rent control and no controlled tenants this particular exercise would have had no conceivable purpose. And it is significant that Rachman’s operations started some years before the 1957 Rent Act and ceased very shortly after it was passed—long before his activities became public” (p.44).

Adam Buick

50 Years Ago: The Capitalist League of Nations (1985)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

First let us examine the League of Nations. Its name obscures the truth. It is not a League of Nations, but a League of Governments, that is to say, it is directed and controlled by the representatives of the different sections of the capitalist class. If the importance of that is not at once apparent it is only necessary to point out that each of those Governments is occupied at home with the relentless suppression of the working class, by armed force if necessary. Never do those Governments set the armed forces in motion to promote or defend the interests of the working class, but always to protect capitalism and capitalist property rights. Yet we are asked to believe that these gentlemen undergo a surprising change on their journey to Geneva, and become representatives of the interest of humanity as a whole, or even of the working class in particular. Do our Labour Party opponents not recall that the same ridiculous spectacle was once a commonplace in the electoral field, of trade unionists voting into Parliament the very employers with whom they were engaged in bitter wages struggles?

[From an editorial "Let the Capitalists Fight Their Own Wars", published in the Socialist Standard, October 1935.]

Society and Morals. Part VIII. The Outlook of the Proletariat (Continued). (1918)

From the June 1918 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part VIII.

Re-Birth of Unrest

The revival of trade union militancy which has taken place in recent years has its causes in those developments of capitalism we have previously outlined. The intense competition in the world markets which has supplanted the old-time “monopoly of Britain” made the employing class of all countries increasingly reluctant to concede even the least advances in wages. On the contrary, it stimulated the more general adoption of speeding-up methods and the wider use of the most perfect machinery. By depreciating the need for skill and increasing unemployment these factors led to a sharper competition for employment and tended to depress wages. The growth of trusts and of employers’ federations has enabled the capitalists to offer a more effective resistance to the unions, while on the other hand a progressive increase in the coat of living has proved a spur to working class unrest and organised activity, in spite of which real wages have continuously fallen.

In the last thirty years or so the strike policy has come again into favour, first among the newer and so-called unskilled unious, but later generally. Especially has this been so in the years immediately proceeding the outbreak of the war, during which period a continually growing unrest manifested itself among the workers in every part of the world. And it is probable also, that after the war militarism and capitalist “efficiency” will prove a further stimulant to working-class revolt, although, of course, the master class will make strenuous efforts to avoid industrial strife and suppress revolutionary propaganda.

To a certain extent a somewhat new outlook has been realised. The obvious dislike of the old-type officials and leaders to a militant policy and their love for the practice of “conferring” with the employers ; their compromising attitude and frequently proven treachery, have also led to much unfavourable criticism and to a decided weakening of their prestige. As a result many strikes have taken place in opposition to the desires of a compromising executive.

Moreover, the strong co-operation manifested among the masters in their determined efforts to resist and to break strikes, and particularly also the growing frequency with which they used their class weapon—the armed forces—to brutally coerce strikers into submission, brought about a decided tendency toward closer solidarity among the workers themselves. This is evidenced in the consolidation of various unions in the same field of production, in the spread of “sympathetic” strikes, and in the voluntary raising of funds by organised workers in support of disputes in which they themselves were not directly concerned.

Furthermore, the gradual decline of the industrial value of personal skill on the part of the employees, together with the need for “fighting” efficiency, has compelled the older “aristocratic” craft unions to recognise that their old-time method of conserving the strength of the unions by insisting upon special qualifications, including the prior serving of long apprenticeships, is both obsolete and futile. They have been forced more and more to adopt the method of the later “unskilled” unions who aim at including all those of a particular trade or industry within the organisation Consequently, “non-unionism” has become almost as great a crime in the eyes of the unionist as “blacklegging”—the worst delinquency in his moral code.

The same causes which fermented this revival in industrial strife also stimulated among the workers a livelier interest in politics which led to the formation of the Labour Party. The trade unions supported the project, and their leaders saw the possibility of political influence and office. The capitalist parties were cute enough to meet this new interest in political affairs by formulating delusive schemes of social reform to pacify and mislead the workers.

Moreover, having found the Labour Party leaders willing to play the same game, the bourgeoisie, especially the petty capitalist element, have given it no little amount of support. The Labour Party, dominated as it is by the reactionary leaders of trades unionism and men of the same stamp, to all of whom the notion of a class struggle is obnoxious, has consistently upheld capitalist principles, and is in reality only a bourgeois party with a “labour” label. Having achieved nothing of value for the workers it has become the butt of adverse criticism from the same elements as have shown independence and militancy on the industrial field.

                                                                       * * *

Thus far none of the movements mentioned above show any indication of being promoted by a full consciousness of proletarian interests. They register but the first stages of such a conception. The general mass of those who built up the strength both of the Chartist and of the trade union movement, saw and felt only their immediate sufferings and disabilities. The deep social causes from which these arose were mostly quite unrecognised. Consequently, no definite principles in opposition to capitalism were adopted by these movements, and no general code of proletarian ethics grew out of or with them.

Much the same applies to-day. The majority of the workers still accept the main dogmas of bourgeois orthodoxy. No doubt the trade unionist regards black-legging and non-unionism as bad and criminal whereas to the capitalist they are good and justifiable. Likewise extreme exploitation or “sweating” is abhorrent to the workers. Yet with regard to the existence of the wages system and of a profit-reaping class, the need for “national solidarity” in defence of “national interests,” and the like, the working-class mind is a faithful reflection of that bourgeois outlook which we considered in a previous section. Even where the workers do show a divergence of opinion upon Free Trade or Protection, Pacifism or Imperialism, these are manifestly but the effect of similar differences among the employing class and its retainers. That these contentions are correct is abundantly proven by the attitude the workers of every belligerent nation adopted upon the outbreak of the European War.

Nevertheless there does exist a school of thought and action which accurately reflects proletarian needs and interests, and therefore presents a true working-class system of morality, and this is the Socialist movement. Originating in, but toward the climax and close of the first period of working-class revolt, Socialism persisted and grew up, as it had to, independently of the several reformist and palliating movements, receiving a fresh impetus with the coming of the second period of activity now growing surely year by year among the workers of the world.

Our next and final consideration, therefore, will be Socialism in its relation to morality.

R. W. Housley

                                                                  (To be Continued.)

Society and Morals. Part VII. The Morals of Capitalism. (Continued). (1918)

From the May 1918 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part VII.

The Age of Cant.

Summing up the “morality of capitalism,” what is the distinctive feature by which it is distinguished from that of other class-divided societies ? It is undeniably that hypocritical taint which pervades it through and through, and which is seen in the glaring contrast which is presented between the moral theory professed and the actual moral reality practised. This moral hypocrisy is the inevitable outcome of the social relations immanent in capitalism. It results from the antagonisms which exist in the system; partly from that engendered in the competitive struggle between individuals and groups of individuals, but primarily from that antagonism which exists between the interests of the bourgeoisie on the one hand, and of the proletariat on the other.

Every activity of the bourgeoisie in its own interest must be undertaken professedly in the interests of the workers, or, more correctly, of “society as a whole.” For the “unity of society” and of its interests is a cardinal dogma, in which the very existence of classes is often denied. “Democracy, Liberty, and Humanity” have been the watchwords of bourgeois society, but words only, for in their name more horrible and sickening atrocities have been perpetrated than in any previous period in history. Thus, human life is held in this “most humanitarian age” to be sacred, yet witness the widespread equanimity with, which the slow starvation of thousands and the mental and physical deformation of millions are endured, and even the fervid glee with which the international capitalist class and their dupes beheld the bloody murder of 20,000 workers after the Commune of Paris, and which to-day greets the slaughter of millions on the battle-fields of Europe.

The worship of “democratic” and “humanitarian” phrases has led to the ludicrous situation that everyone professes to admire the rule “Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you,” and for the most part to be guided by it, and yet the social system which these same people uphold makes the practice of this rule absolutely impossible. Did, indeed, anyone actually attempt to abide by this principle he would certainly come into such violent conflict with existing conceptions and institutions as to be branded an Utopian and a madman, and most likely he would be punished with imprisonment.

There is hypocrisy and deceit everywhere, from the lying and trickery of trades and the cant about the “honour of our public men” to the veneer of religious orthodoxy and the “love” that in conventional belief cements the economic contract we call “marriage.” Verily, our time has rightly been called “the Age of Cant.”

———————————–

Part VIII. The outlook of the proletariat. 

Owing to the fact that capitalist society rests upon the exploitation of the wage-earners by the owners of capital, it is rendered possible to generate a system of morality radically different from the bourgeois ethics we have been considering, namely, a system which conforms to the interest of the exploited class—the proletariat.

At the same time we have seen also, that an essential part of the superstructure of capitalism consists of institutions which effectively prevent the majority of the workers from recognising their real social status, make them contented with the system they are born into, and secure their acceptance of the bourgeois moral code. The formulation of a proletarian moral code and its acceptance by the working class is, therefore, a slow and difficult process, obstructed at every point by practically all the institutions of the social environment.

Only by gradual and uneven stages can the proletariat in the mass really assimilate a class ethic of their own. Thus to-day, for example, but a small minority have already reached this position, although many are fairly class-conscious and considerably ahead of the main body of the workers, who as yet only possess a faint glimmering of their class interests, whilst on the other side a backward section, growing, however, continually smaller, have not even achieved this state, but embrace in its entirety the capitalistic outlook.

The mental evolution of the proletariat is a subject so vast that here our survey must be practically confined to working-class development in England.

The Early Working-Class Movement.

The earliest independent organisations formed by the modern working class aimed at regulating the conditions of working, such as raising or maintaining the standard of wages or shortening the working day. In several of the more advanced industries such “trade clubs” had already been formed quite early in the eighteenth century. They were, at first, small and local. Working men of a common craft, living in a common locality, gathered together for the protection of their common interests. Though they were concerned with minor and immediate grievances, seeking only to palliate the, to them, evil effects of evolving capitalism, yet their very existence is evidence of the fact that, even in the pre-machine period of capitalism many workers were beginning to realise that their interests and those of their employers were by no means identical. While they acquiesced in the general nature of the system of production prevailing and considered it, on the whole, to be right and just, yet many things which their capitalist employers regarded as perfectly justifiable and reasonable they held to be wrong and unfair.

Their classification of “good” and “bad” employers still lingers in the minds of their latter-day trade-union descendants. In many respects their economic principles and morality were conservative and even reactionary, for they strove energetically to retain their old-established skill or craftsmanship against the tendency which the employers favoured of sub-dividing the labour process—a means of increasing profits and the domination of the capitalist over the labourer, but also a means of increasing the fertility of human energy, and therefore directly in the line of human progress.

Then came the “industrial revolution” with its ensuing horrors—the dawn of the “machine age” was at hand. In the many revolts against the terrible oppression of the factory system reactionary ideas were still, at first, the prevailing feature. Blindly, the outraged workers struck at the lifeless mechanisms which were the immediate cause of their degradation.

Violent machine-breaking riots occurred, the workers regarding the machines themselves, and not so much their capitalist owners, as the enemy to be combated. Strikes now became frequent, and trade combinations among the workers multiplied to such an extent as to seriously alarm the ruling classes and awaken them to retaliation through the State machine.

Combinations of workmen had never been legal bodies, but they had been more or less tolerated prior to the coming of the machine. But now their rapid progress in numbers and militancy brought forth the severe Anti-Combination Acts of 1799-1800. Savage persecution of workmen followed and unions were relentlessly suppressed. But, nevertheless, these organisations, made inevitable by capitalist exploitation, continued to exist in secret, and in the underground warfare against the em­ploying class, some recognition of the class antagonism inherent in capitalist society must have been forced upon many of the workers.

At length, however, after over twenty years of terrible persecution, the dominant classes seemed to have realised the futility and even worse of forcible suppression, and the unions were granted some measure of legal sanction. Immediately trade unions sprang up everywhere in greater abundance than ever before, for, in the intervening period, capitalist production had advanced exceedingly and machinery had now invaded almost every branch of industry. Consequently more oppression occurred, but to no real purpose.

Now, however, the far-sighted among the bourgeoisie were coming to see that these organisations were unavoidable, and although an evil were a necessary one. If they could not be killed they could, perhaps, be conciliated. How this view was justified we shall see later.

Many various experiments in industrial organisation were made by the workers in the succeeding decade or two, principally through the efforts of enthusiastic Utopians like Robert Owen. The social ideals of such men were high indeed, but the vast majority of the workers remained uninfluenced by them. They were in the unions because they thereby hoped, just as their predecessors had done, to ameliorate their immediate grievances, to obtain higher wages, shorter hours, and better conditions of employ­ment.

Eventually, after many experimental failures, trade unionism settled down into that general form which prevailed throughout the rest of the nineteenth century. One advance was made, however. The unions for the most part ceased to be mere local associations and tended more and more to become national in their scope—a development made possible and necessary by the great progress in communication achieved through the introduction of railways. It is, perhaps, needless to add that as capitalist production gradually took root all over the world there spread along with it its necessary accompaniment, trade unionism.

Meanwhile the final struggle of the industrial capitalists for political power had had the effect of turning the workers’ attention also to the field of politics as a means whereby they might obtain relief from their intense impoverishment and distress.

Though the “industrial revolution” had considerably enhanced the wealth, numbers, and influence of the manufacturing bourgeoisie, this class remained, for a long period afterwards, excluded from direct political representation. Whilst insignificant country districts often had separate representatives, large and now vastly important and thickly populated industrial towns like Birmingham and Manchester were without independent representation under the existing constitution. Parliament, accordingly, continued to be dominated by the aristocratic landlords, vestigial remains of the now dead feudal system.

The manufacturers and their “intellectual” allies demanded political reform and strove, by incessant agitation, to draw the working class to the support of the reform movement. Among the discontented workers such propaganda fell upon fertile soil. Huge demonstrations were held all over the country and eventually, after many years of obstinate resistance and brutal repression, the government, fearful of civil war, reluctantly conceded the Reform Bill of 1832.

This Act, while it partly remedied the anomalies in the representation of the industrial centres and extended the vote to the wealthier strata of the capitalists, left the proletariat still without the franchise. Great disappointment and resentment was aroused in the workers by this betrayal, and within three years an association of working men drew up their own political programme—the “People’s Charter.” This was soon adopted by the majority of the politically active workers who became known as Chartists.

The enactment of the Charter was to establish political democracy by a thorough revision of the electoral system, and the Charter was thus the logical outcome of the political ideals of the bourgeoisie. But there can be no doubt that, to the masses of working men who gave their support to Chartism, political reform was but a means to an end—the alleviation of their miserable poverty, slavery, and degradation. This is shown by the vigorous activity of the Chartists on behalf of the Ten Hours Bill and other factory legislation, and by their loyal support of the industrial movement of the workers which was apparent in every strike. In such activities they were met by the bitter opposition of those self-styled “friends of the people,” the free-trade factory capitalists.

During their existence of about twelve years the Chartists accomplished a great amount of agitation and educational work, several widely-read newspapers being published in support of the movement. Adherents to the party multiplied rapidly, especially in the great northern centres of industry. The growth of the agitation made it hated and feared by the ruling classes both aristocratic and bourgeois, and many of its members were victimised by the employers and imprisoned by the authorities.

The Chartists, however, proved too weak to carry their point. Dissensions had grown in their ranks, and among the mass of their supporters, who were but loosely organised, many were side-tracked by the bourgeois agitation for the repeal of the Corn Laws. Parliament scornfully rejected the petition for the Charter, and in the suppression of the minor insurrections and disturbances which followed, the Chartists found themselves “confronted with a highly developed military administration, with barracks ranged through the industrial districts, and with a newly organised and well drilled police force.” (Green’s “Short History,” p. 859.) Open revolt seemed futile.

Furthermore, the factory acts had removed many of the more pressing grievances of the workers, and a revival of trade relieved the unemployment situation. The bulk of the workers became politically apathetic ; the vigour of Chartism declined and, after a time, the movement collapsed and disappeared.

On the continent of Europe events, similar to those in England were taking place. There the bourgeoisie, striving to win political supremacy, also allied themselves with the proletariat, and in 1848 broke out in revolt. When, however, the workers at the first success put forward demands on their own account, the bourgeoisie immediately became anxious about “law and order.” In Germany they joined hands with their political enemies, the nobility, in suppressing the rising of the workers, and in France, after constituting themselves the ruling power, the industrial bourgeoisie crushed the proletarian rebels with great violence and bloodshed.

The Reconciliation : Its Causes and Consequences.

These early manifestations of a widespread spirit of revolt on the part of the proletariat took place, it must be remembered, before the days of “State education.” The marvellously complex organisations by which the workers were in later times to be impregnated with a bourgeois ideology had not yet been fully evolved. Masses of the workers were still unable to read or write, especially in the earlier period. What little reading and learning was possessed among them, here and there, was gleaned mainly through the agency of trade clubs or similar organisations, in connection with which small libraries were sometimes maintained and study classes held.

That capitalist tradition, including the dogmas regarding abstinence and directive ability, so respected by and ingrained in the bulk of the workers in after years, and which so largely holds them in its grip to-day, was, at that time, only in its formative period. The vast array of intellectual retainers of every type to-day in the pay of the bourgeoisie, was then much less numerous and not nearly so well organised, for the wealth and influence of the industrial capitalists was, at that time, comparatively small. Neither had they that undisputed control of the political machine which they were later to hold. Moreover, they themselves, in their revolutionary struggle with the nobility, had, in their criticisms of hereditary privilege, done much to discredit and undermine respect for established institutions and authority. When they had risen to complete supremacy the bourgeoisie were sorely in need of a working-class narcotic to occupy the place left by that which they had helped to undermine.

At length it was realised by the bolder and wiser elements of the bourgeoisie that an officially controlled educational system would not only give to the workers that technical instruction made more and more necessary by scientific commerce and production, but would also make possible the systematic and more efficient inculcation into the absorbant minds of the proletarian children the servile code of ethics which it had once been the exclusive business of the Church to foster. We have seen in our previous section the outcome of this idea. Still it seems hardly likely that the bourgeoisie could have seen what a valuable instrument in the service of class rule they were forging when the first timid “educational” schemes were put forward.

At all events, the fact cannot be gainsaid that with the gradual elaboration and extension of compulsory capitalistic education and, side by side with this the marvellous growth in cheapness, size, and circulation of the bourgeois Press (the greatest agent of mental perversion the world has ever seen), the earliest rumblings of revolt among the workers died down considerably. Engels has admirably shown that a religious revival fostered by the bourgeoisie also played its part in this process. Capitalism now seemed to have reached a comparatively stable and smooth-running condition as far as the workers were concerned, fulfilling all the desires of its profit-worshipping devotees.

Particularly was this conservatism of the workers manifested in England, where there operated more directly economic causes to this end. After the abolition of the Corn Laws in 1846 the capitalists of England entered upon their period of economic world supremacy. Out of the enormous and steadily increasing stream of profits the employers could well afford to conciliate the workers with sops in the shape of somewhat higher wages and with social reforms which eliminated many of the minor grievances of the workers. It paid to do this rather than risk a disturbance and a break in the continuity of their wonderful prosperity by unnecessary industrial strife twixt employer and employed.

After the workers had become docile the bourgeoisie could with safety satisfy that popular desire for the franchise which revived again and again, and this they did in succeeding stages. As Engels says, “parliamentary government is a capital school for teaching respect for tradition,” and besides, the vote completed the argument of the bourgeoisie that the workers were “free.” Did they not elect their chosen representatives to rule them ? Was not “democracy” now a reality ? Thus, apparently, were the capitalists made more secure than ever.

In this long period of working-class quiescence, which started about 1850 and began to end towards the close of the century, trade unionism persisted but took on a form so distinctly bourgeois as to become in itself and its results a powerful “bulwark of capitalism.” Politically the workers for the most part supported the bourgeois Liberal and Tory parties.

Whatever revolutionary sentiment had existed in the earlier movement now almost entirely disappeared. The view that the respective interests of the capitalists and the workers were necessarily antagonistic, which had been taught by many of the advanced Chartists, was now discredited. The workers generally held that the capitalists as a class were useful, necessary, even benevolent, earning the well-deserved profits of abstinence and ability, whatever grievances the workers had were thought to be due either to the greed of exceptionally bad and unjust employers or to unfor­tunate misunderstandings on the part of the capitalists or their workpeople ; this was the justification for trade unions.

The unions had for their motto “Defence, not Defiance,” and “A Fair Day’s Wage for a Fair Day’s Work.” Strikes were discouraged ; the new policy in dealing with disputes was one of arbitration based on compromise and mutual good-will. These tactics, of course, transferred the field of action from the mass of the organised workers to their officials and representatives, who met the employers or their agents in conference.

The growth in size of the unions, together with their anti-strike policy, enabled the accumulation of very considerable reserve funds, which were spent mainly in friendly benefits. These factors also tended to enhance the prestige and power of the prominent officials, who now became a full-time salaried staff, virtually, though not avowedly, dominating the policy and activities of their organisations.

R.W Housley

(To be Continued.)

Passing Comments: Re-armament (1950)

The Passing Comments Column from the October 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

 

Re-armament

The Investor’s Chronicle runs a service for its readers which answers their questions about buying and selling shares; each week it prints four or five of those which are of most general interest. In the issue of 12-8-50 this question was one of those thought to be of widest interest: “Can you name a sound engineering share which offers a good yield and which might benefit from re-armament?” The questioner was recommended to buy an engineering share which, though nominally five shillings, now stands at twenty shillings; the dividend is 26¼  per cent, and the yield 6½ per cent. And in the issue of 26-8-50 this question was one of those printed: “I think that the Far Eastern set-up, coupled with re-armament, augurs well for the wool-producing companies and should be glad if you will please give me a recommendation if you agree with my views.” The person who replied to this enquirer did agree with his views, for he draws his attention to a New Zealand company whose shares, now at par, pay 8 per cent. Wool hasn’t disappointed those shareholders who followed this advice, since the prices quoted at the Sydney wool-sales on August 28th went up 50 per cent.; a little later. South African wool showed even bigger increases in price.

Lower Income Groups

Some people, then, stand to gain considerably if the war spreads. But war, as we are regularly reminded, entails sacrifice. Sacrifice on whose part? Here the Investor’s Chronicle again comes in useful. It is unblushingly frank on this matter, disdaining the usual talk about “equality of suffering.” First of all its commentator Candidus pours scorn on the idea of having a capital levy. Then he goes on: “There is no escape from the simple facts of the case. To the extent that re-armament is not provided from extra effort and by America, it can only come from reduced consumption in the directions where the great mass of consumption now resides—in the ranks of the lower income groups.”

Scroungers

At Birmingham on August 22nd a man was charged with persistently neglecting to maintain himself, and was sent to jail for two months. He refused to work for his living, and tried to get the National Assistance authorities to support him instead. This case is important, because it establishes a precedent, which always weighs heavily with the judge when he is reaching his decision. Professor Charles Oman refers to the "inveterate respect for precedent which sways the legal mind.” It seems that the rule now is to be that people who do not work for their own living, although they are capable of doing so, are to be sent to jail. This rule should be enforced thoroughly. Numbers of shareholders and landowners are to be found around Lombard Street and scattered up and down the country, who have never earned their own livings, and who have no intention of doing so: worse, they make other people work for them, people who themselves have to live on much lower incomes. These property owners are thus offending more than the man who got two months: but with immediate action by the police, and a few salutary sentences from the judges—say five years’ penal servitude for a first conviction—no doubt this kind of offence could be stamped out. The fact that these criminals have a lot more money than the man now serving his sentence will make no difference, for every secondary schoolboy is taught that England is famed for her enjoyment of that inestimable privilege, which our ancestors fought and indeed died for, the privilege of Equality before the Law. Is it not well-known that every British citizen, whatever the length of his purse, gets exactly the same treatment in the law-courts? The police should therefore act speedily on this question.

Leopold

The recent disturbances in Belgium over the return of King Leopold provide a good illustration of how the Communists and Social Democrats waste their time. The Daily Worker (4-8-50) praised the leaders of “this historic movement,” or at any rate the Communists among them. After Leopold returned, said the article, “it took the Belgian working class just five minutes to get angry and five days to get organised.” It applauds the “working class unity” that was attained; it describes the strikes, the riots and the processions, and talks about “ this great class battle.” And it leads up to the triumphant conclusion when Leopold agreed to hand over his powers to his son Baudouin—though it blames the Social Democrats for not having insisted on his complete abdication.

When all the shouting and the shooting was over, what had happened? Before the agitation against the king, the Belgian workers were being exploited by the Belgian owners under the nominal presidency of someone called Leopold; after the agitation, the Belgian workers were being exploited under the nominal presidency of someone called Baudouin. Which makes a lot of difference. And yet to obtain such an insignificant change, the “Left-wing” parties strained all their energies, and three men who were following the lead of these parties were shot by the police at Grace-Berleur. The three men were called “martyrs,” and the name is just; the men were martyrs to the ideas of those “leaders” of the working class who, instead of encouraging the workers to understand and bring about Socialism, spend all their time in noisy pursuit of aims which in the end bring no benefit at all to the workers.

Smile, Please

From the Daily Mirror (7-6-50): “A group of people want Britain to smile more, and the first stage of their plan is a Happiness Week for thousands of city folk. It goes into operation in Manchester in 10 days' time. Everybody in the Levenshulme Ward of the City will be asked to smile—at their work, at play, in the streets and at home. Albert Sidi, business man, first thought of it. Smiling James Bowes, councillor for the ward, took it up. Now the church is supporting it, and the Lord Mayor of Manchester, who will be president of the week of smiles. Mr. Sidi said yesterday: ‘ We intend to make people smile and be happy whether they like it or not.’ ” And the point of all this? Mr. Bowes told the Daily Mirror: “It’s a wonderful idea. If we can make people happy they’ll work better. . . .”

Whatever the long-suffering citizens of Levenshulme think about all this nonsense, this last part should make shareholders and profiteers grin like Cheshire Cats.

The Public

The dictionary defines “the public” as “the people in general; all the people.” But in the minds of our politicians and statesmen it has come to mean something quite different. Adam Smith, in his “Wealth of Nations” gives us a hint of this new meaning when he says: “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public.” The implied distinction here between worker and member of the public is repeated with more emphasis by Captain Gammans (“Everybody’s,” 25-3-50): “ Nationalisation has no appeal now to the British public, and, judging from the number of strikes in the Nationalised industries and the growing drift from the Nationalised coal mines, it is losing its magic for the worker as well.” Captain Gammans evidently considers that the same man cannot be both a worker and a member of the public. And if the public, in the sense in which the word is being used today, contains no workers, it must consist entirely of the owning class. This is borne out by the phraseology of the financial columns in the newspapers, which regularly refer to the public as being that body of people which owns shares and other capital. For example, when the City Editor of the Daily Herald suggested (9-8-50) that company law should be amended to rule out directors’ estimates from a company’s prospectus, he said: “Had that been done in the Crittall case and in other cases where the ’estimates’ have been optimistic, the prospectus could never have been issued, and the public’s money saved for more worthy objects.” Here the public covers those people who have money for “more worthy objects,” i.e. capitalist investment. And no worker has any money for investment worth mentioning; if he had, he would not be in the ranks of the working class. It seems then that the new meaning of the public is simply “the owning class.” So the next time you hear of some politician proposing that we reduce wages for the “public” good, or go to war in the “public” interest, you will be able to understand what he really means.

Priority

When Mr. Attlee is replying to Mr. Churchill’s criticisms his theme-song should be “Anything you can do I can do better.” For the Labour Government has brought the country through the “work harder to recover from the war” stage, and is now leading the workers into the “work harder to prepare for the next war” stage. With any luck, it might still be in power when the third part of the workers' eternal triangle is reached, the “work harder to win the war” stage. If it is, it will have proved that it can run the country just as well as any other capitalist government; though that, perhaps, is not saying much.

It was while the rallying-cry was still “work harder to recover from the war” that Mr. Aneurin Bevan made his pronouncement to the working class reported in Reynolds News (17-7-49): “‘Work first, independence second. Socialism third ’ was the order of priority for British workers, Mr. Aneurin Bevan told thousands of Northumberland miners at Morpeth yesterday.” Like his colleagues in the government, Mr. Bevan regards Socialism as a vague and undefined objective for the dim and distant future; but the word is nevertheless useful, since it performs the same function for the workers as the carrot on the end of the stick does for the donkey. The workers never get it, but they are continually being exhorted to produce more so that some day they might.

St. Leger

But Mr. Bevan put work as Priority No. 1 only for the working class; there are others to whom he was not addressing himself. After five years of Labour Government there are many who have undoubtedly attained the second of Mr. Bevan’s objectives, independence, but who regard the other two, work and Socialism, with strong aversion. They need have no fear. Under this government they are equally safe from both.

The Sunday Express gives details of the activities of some of them. Talking of the St. Leger race-meeting,' it says (3-9-50): “The new fashion is to rent a house in Doncaster for the meeting. The Earl and Countess of Derby have taken a modern villa near the course, and Lord Irwin has followed suit. . . . Mr J. V. Rank, the rich miller and race-horse owner, has rented two houses. But there are still some stately homes where the week is celebrated in the traditional manner. The Earl of Scarborough, Lord-Lieutenant of the West Riding, always has a gay party at Sandbeck Park. His neighbour. Lady Galway, is entertaining Jockey Club Steward Sir Humphrey de Trafford, Lady de Trafford, and Sir Rhys Llewellyn. And parties are being taken by the Marquis and Machioness of Hartington, by Baroness Beaumont and by Sir Richard Sykes.”

Marx and the Labour Party

From the Daily Herald (31-7-50): “The Labour Party’s rejection of much of Karl Marx’s teaching had not been a source of weakness, said Morgan Phillips, the Party’s secretary, last night.”

Well, certainly not to Karl Marx’s teaching.

Alwyn Edgar

The story behind Powell Duffryn (1965)

From the October 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

In Regent Street, in the posh shopping area of London, is a shop called POWELL DUFFRYN. Now that nationalisation is once again a political issue it is not out of place to tell the story behind this name.

It begins in South Wales, where Powell Duffryn used to be one of the hated coal combines owning pits in the Red Rhondda valleys. Between the wars these coal combines, by their persistent attempts to worsen wages and working conditions and by their union-busting, aroused deep resentment among miners, many of whom devoted their time to campaigning for the nationalisation of the mines. And on January 1st, 1947 their aim was achieved. The mines were handed over to the National Coal Board; the NCB flag was raised amidst cheering and the singing of traditional Labour songs. Powell Duffryn was dead. Or was it?

As a side-line to mining, Powell Duffryn was also engaged in the making of heating equipment, boilers and radiators. This side of the business was not nationalised. In the years that followed, while the NCB languished, Powell Duffryn used its compensation and flourished. Today it has its shop in Regent Street; it co-operates closely with the nationalised fuel industries—the Gas Board and the NCB. Not long ago the papers carried a joint Powell Duffryn-NCB advert. All of this is a mockery of the devoted, if misguided, struggles of the miners to nationalise such outfits, and yet another monument to the futility of reformism.

It is worth spending some time looking into the concept of nationalisation a little more closely. In its modern sense, the term first appeared in 1869 when the telegraph system was nationalised, though for some time before the concept had gone under a different name. Some people had called for the nationalisation of land, and a clause in the 1844 Railway Act had allowed for the nationalisation of the railway system if necessary. The word itself—nationalisation—gives a clue as to its significance. The dominant theories, popular and philosophical, of capitalism hold that the interests of all those who make up the entity variously called the “nation” or the “public”, on the popular level, and “society” or “the community”, in the textbooks of political philosophy, are one and the same.

This is a fraud. Present-day society is composed of two mutually antagonistic classes, between which there is a conflict over the distribution of the product of labour. The interests of these two classes are completely opposed; they have no interests in common. Once this is realised, it can be understood that “nation” and “public” are often little more than polite words for the owning class.

When the apologists of capitalism wish to refer to the situation which exists after the State has taken over a section of industry in the interests of the capitalist class as a whole, they sometimes call it “common ownership”. This is how the phrase is used in the famous Clause IV of the Labour Party constitution in its reference to the “common ownership . . . of the means of exchange” (i.e. financial institutions). To talk of the common ownership of financial institutions is a contradiction in terms, the purest nonsense. But to those who use “common ownership” in its capitalist sense it makes sense. As has been well said, the Labour Party stands for “socialism for the capitalist class”!

The capitalist class has been prepared to consider nationalisation as a solution when their interests as a whole have differed from those of a section. This was the position with land in the nineteenth century. The landowners, by virtue of their monopoly position, were able to extract a portion of the proceeds of working class exploitation from the capitalist class. A similar fear that the railway companies might exploit their monopoly position was responsible for the clause in the 1844 Act. In both cases nationalisation, or the assumption of ownership by the State on behalf of the rest of the ruling class, was considered. This had one drawback; it meant that the State had to assume the management of the estates or railways it might acquire.

Most capitalists were not prepared to put such power into the hands of their State officials. The institution of the public corporation was a solution to this problem. It removed the fear of the State becoming more and more powerful and eventually taking over other sections of industry as well. This fear was not groundless; there are historical examples of this happening, in Russia for instance. Here the capitalist class as well as the working class, such as they were, were subjected to a dictatorship of the State. The system remained capitalism however and it eventually evolved into a form of State capitalism.

Where such disputes break out between the capitalist class and usurping politicians or State officials, the workers are invited to take sides. But their interests are no more involved here than they were in the old landowner-capitalist struggle. Despite this, “Leftwingers” delight in backing the new usurpers against the capitalists; only to find that the usurpers end by establishing themselves as a new ruling class. So nationalisation without compensation is no more worthy of working class support that the more moderate means of nationalisation that have been applied in Britain.

With the public corporation the capitalist class felt less fear about nationalisation, so that in 1944 Herbert Morrison could declare that the Conservatives had introduced more “Socialism” than the Labour Party. The nationalisations of the post-war Labour Government however identified the Labour Party as the party of nationalisation.

Soon after 1945, a large section of the capitalist class were becoming dissatisfied with the efforts of the Labour Party on their behalf. They were becoming annoyed at having to pay taxes to prop up inefficient State-run industries. Not that they were completely opposed to all measures of State control; they just came round to the view that nationalisation was not a suitable means of such control. This is the crux of the argument about steel nationalisation.

The Iron and Steel industry has been subject to a substantial amount of State control since the 1930’s. In 1951 it was nationalised but in the succeeding years the Conservative governments sold most of it back to the former owners. Ironically they could find no-one to buy Richard Thomas and Baldwin’s which is still nationalised today. The plans recently announced by the Labour government provided for the sole shareholder of some 90 per cent of the industry to be a National Steel Corporation which can thus control the industry as it wants. The Conservatives and Liberals favour what they call a more competitive solution.

The compensation measures—since in Britain nationalisation amounts to a business deal in which the State buys out the old owners—have been described in avowedly capitalist papers as reasonable, fair and far better than expected. One referred to “jubilation in the City”. It seems that some £660 million will have to be paid out. In present at stock-market conditions much of the government stock which will be given as compensation could well be sold and the capital re-invested in more profitable fields.

This brings us back to Powell Duffryn. The same story will no doubt be repeated for the steel industry as for the coal industry and the others. We conclude by quoting from a recent survey of the State in industry in Britain:

“Nationalisation deprived many companies of their assets but left them with huge sums in cash and stock for re-investment after compensating the former shareholders, The colliery companies alone received nearly £300 million from this source. Some companies became investment trusts; others took over and developed existing businesses or established new enterprises in fields where they could use their technical and managerial skill. Typical examples are Cable and Wireless (Holdings) Ltd.—now quite unconnected with the nationalised concern, Cable and Wireless Ltd.—which has invested its free money to build an interest in about 850 different companies; and Thomas Tilling (Holdings) which continues to manage the interests of the old Tilling Group that were not acquired by the British Transport Commission, and has used its compensation to acquire holdings in some twenty-five companies in industries ranging from light engineering to glass and plastics and from insurance to book publishing” (Government and Industry in Britain, 1962, J. W. Grove, p. 250).

Adam Buick

A marriage of convenience (1965)

From the October 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ever since they slipped into power last October the Labour Government have been pursued by speculations on whether they would come to an arrangement with the Liberals which would have the effect of keeping them in power. This speculation has, of course, become more intense as the Government’s majority has been slowly whittled down.

The idea of a Lib/Lab alliance, as the newspapers are fond of calling it, is not new. The Guardian, which is running a campaign in favour of it, recently published a series of extracts from editorials of 1912, 1924, 1926 and 1929 which advocated such an alliance (although it is difficult to appreciate what this was supposed to prove).

The whole thing is, in fact, one of the most grisly of all the spectres which haunt the Labour Party from their uncomfortable past. Their first attempt at Government, in 1924, was brought about only because the Liberals supported them, but the same Party turned Labour out of office as quickly as they had put them in. When they came back in 1929, Labour’s leader, Ramsay MacDonald, left us in no doubt about where he thought the blame for his previous defeat lay. “I am,” he told the press, “Going to stand no monkeying.”

This sounded very grand, Yet if anyone was doing any monkeying it was MacDonald himself, because despite his experience in 1924 he was once more relying on Liberal votes in the House to keep a minority Labour Government in power. This showed that Mr. MacDonald possessed the one essential quality of an “intellectual,” which is the ability to ignore inconvenient facts.

As it turned out, MacDonald went further than a mere voting pact with the Liberals. When the crunch came a couple of years later, when the unemployment figures were around the three million mark, when the finances of British capitalism were in turmoil, and when the Government were imposing panic cuts in expenditure, MacDonald did not wait for the Liberals or anyone else to defeat him in the Commons. He led the way into a coalition with the Liberals and the Tories. He joined hands with the men regarded by generations of Labour workers as representatives of the hated mine owners and steel masters, of the hard-faced men who had ground the working class down into unforgettable destitution.

There is no need to recall here the shattering effect which this had on the Labour Party. It is enough to say that the debacles of 1924 and 1931 made coalition a forbidden word in respectable Labour circles.

Of course, these same circles saw nothing wrong in their Party joining the wartime coalition, even if this was under the man who was a lifelong enemy of the working class, who had been openly contemptuous of starving miners and who had so zestfully edited the official British Gazette during the General Strike, when the workers were desperately defending what remained of their livelihoods. The war coalition was, apparently, different. Churchill was no longer cur enemy. He was our friend and protector. This coalition, said the Labour Party, was in what they called (but which they were not rash enough to attempt to define) the National Interest.

We should all be aware by now that when the bugles are blowing to rally us all to defend the National Interest a certain amusement can be had by observing countless politicians, men who swear by their own honesty and consistency, going back on a lot of what they ever said. Thus it was with the Labour Party, when they embraced their bitterest foe and joined the Churchill coalition in 1940. This gave them the experience of running capitalism which stood them in good stead when they took over in 1945 and had to tell the working class that the promises made during the war could not (naturally) be kept.

But no bugles are blowing now. The Labour Party cannot pretend that a pact with the Liberals would have anything to do with their precious National Interest. It would have only one object and that would be to keep the Labour Party in power. Ten regular Liberal votes in the House would enable Mr. Wilson to luxuriate in unaccustomed security of tenure at Number Ten. There is no secret about the price of these votes—a tailoring of the Government’s programme, to drop steel nationalisation and to push ahead with schemes like the Ombudsman.

Or the Labour Party could go into whole-hog coalition with the Liberals, and Mr. Wilson preside over a Government containing one or two Liberal ministers. Or again—another favourite dream of political wanderers—a new party could be formed, a so-called radical party with a programme consisting of bits and pieces from both Parties, mashed up and blended into something which, it is hoped, would attract massive electoral support.

Any of these is possible. It is evident that the Liberals, as distant from power as ever, are awaiting their chance. Mr. Grimond’s famous interview with the Guardian some months ago could not have been entirely a coincidence. It is more likely that the ground had been prepared in advance. This interview might have been Mr. Wilson’s chance to inspire his disconsolate supporters with a valorous, defiant refusal, to goad them forward on their devious, never-ending journey to the Promised Land. Instead, the Liberal offer was met with a heavy silence which, when we consider the business of coalition government, and of government itself, assumes a certain significance.

Governments are there to run capitalism, which means in the general National Interest of the capitalist class. Governments look after the economic affairs of that class, they keep up the machinery by which the capitalists assert their dominance in society. Governments concern themselves with customs laws, trading pacts, the police, prisons and armed forces. They look after capitalism’s finances and they do their best to weaken what bargaining power the working class may have in matters of wages, hours and so on.

Whether they are dictatorships or so-called democracies, governments always face a certain amount of opposition. This means that to stay in power politicians must exercise a deal of cunning and ruthlessness. The manner and the field in which these qualities—if that is the word for them—are applied varies with the type of government. In this country, where governments are elected by popular (if not very enlightened) vote, political skill often expresses itself in a politician’s ability to do one thing and persuade the mass of people that he is doing the exact opposite. This skill sometimes reaches a very high level, as, for example, when it was being practised by Baldwin and later Macmillan. It seems that Harold Wilson has also won his way into this distinguished company.

This is the perspective in which we should view Wilson’s silence at Grimond’s offer of an alliance. The Labour Party are supposed to be opposed to the Liberals, but in fact they have done little, in major policy, to displease them. True, they have pushed through a declaration that they intend to nationalise steel, but so far this remains no more than a declaration. On most other issues, as the Guardian never tires of bleating (“It will be a tragedy if the Government is brought down needlessly. Much of what it wants to do is common to the Liberal and Labour Parties.” 6/9/65), the two Parties are in harmony.

This means, in effect, that Mr. Wilson has the votes of the Liberal members. In other words, he has all the advantages of a Lib/Lab coalition without any of the disadvantages. He is doing one thing while convincing everyone that he is doing the opposite. In addition, he does not have the tiresome necessity of allocating jobs to the Liberals, he is not exciting the emotions of Labour Party workers who remember 1924 and he is left with the tactical asset of being able to fix the date of the next election.

This is by no means a surprising situation. The only thing to prevent an alliance between political parties is a difference of principle and the capitalist parties showed in 1931, and again during the war, that they are all united on the basic principle of protecting the National Interest of the British ruling class. Compared to this, whatever differences they may have are trivial. The Labour Party have always claimed they were basically different from the others, but experience shows us that in fact they are merely another administration for British capitalism.. Even more, they have claimed that their close connections with the unions would enable them to hold wages in check—in other words, to do capitalism’s dirty work—much more efficiently than the Tories could do it. Recent events at the T.U.C., and in Mr. Brown’s Department of Economic Affairs, shows that this is one claim Labour have made good.

The Wilson Government’s policies have upset many of their supporters; in the Guardian of 6th September last, for example, Mr. Reginald Paget, Labour M.P. for Northampton, was asking: “Ought a Labour Government, committed to Tory expediency, be permitted to continue in office? . . . should they be allowed another session?” The obvious answer to these questions is that it all depends upon Mr. Paget—only one vote, after all, is needed to turn the Government out. But who is really to blame for all these broken hopes? Mr. Paget is disillusioned simply because he had illusions to lose. He actually believed, in the face of all evidence, that a Labour Government would be different from a Conservative. Now that Labour have once again shown how similar they are, they have not only confused their friends; they have also confounded their enemies. Even Mr. Heath, strain as he might, can pick no specific quarrel with them—only vaguely accuse them of not doing the “right sort of deeds.”

The whole point is that, whether they formally admit it or not, all the capitalist parties are constantly in coalition to support the private property system of society. In many ways they actually need each other. But even more they need the votes of the millions of workers who are misled into thinking that capitalism is in their interests and who, if Mr. Grimond ever succeeds in getting Mr. Wilson to the church on time, will be lining the aisles to give the uneasy couple their blessing.

Ivan

The hollow cry of ‘self-determination’ in a world of borders (2026)

From the April 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

The air is thick with the rhetoric of ‘self-determination.’ From the hallowed halls of the United Nations to the televised addresses of national leaders, the principle that ‘all peoples have the right to freely determine their political status’ is touted as a moral absolute. Yet, for the global working class, this ‘right’ is nothing more than a cruel joke—a deceptive mask worn by the state to protect the interests of the ruling class.

The hypocrisy of the nation-state

The very states that harp on about self-determination are the ones that have historically opposed it whenever it threatened their own economic or military interests. For example, British imperial history is a masterclass in this hypocrisy; the idea of self-determination was seen as a direct threat to the control of colonies essential for economic benefits, military strategy, and international prestige.

Even today, the nation-state remains a ‘prison house of nationalities’. Leaders preach the moral superiority of national self-determination over sovereignty to justify their own territorial claims or to undermine rivals, yet they remain the routine managers of a capitalist system that thrives on exploitation.

The myth of national interest

Socialists maintain that there is no such thing as a ‘national interest’ that includes both the exploiter and the exploited. The nation-state is a territorial entity that identifies itself with a particular ‘people’ only to better manage them for the benefit of the capitalist class. When workers are told to wave national flags, they are being encouraged to block the path to any higher human synthesis and to ignore the fact that they have no fatherland to defend.

In this elemental chaos, the state uses nationalism and racism as tools to divide the working class, making more privileged groups feel that their interests lie with their masters rather than their fellow workers.

The real victim: working-class self-determination

While leaders argue over where to draw lines on a map, the true self-determination of the working class is systematically trampled. We define real socialism as a society where production is freed from the artificial constraints of profit and organised for the benefit of all.

Under the current system:

• Freedom is an illusion: workers are forced to sell their labour power for a wage, which entails providing the unpaid labour that forms the basis of capitalist wealth.
• Democratic rights are suppressed: governments and unions often cultivate a myth of an all-powerful government while insisting that nothing can be done about the systemic inequalities of capitalism.
• Solidarity is sabotaged: by emphasising national boundaries, the state ensures that workers of different nations view each other as competitors rather than allies against a common enemy.

A world without borders

We affirm that capitalism is incapable of meaningful change in the interests of the majority. The struggle for national liberation is frequently a trap; when a new national bourgeoisie takes power, the working class finds itself exploited by a new set of masters and mistresses under a new flag.

Our goal is not the ‘self-determination’ of new states, but the abolition of the state itself. We advocate for a classless, stateless, wageless, moneyless society – a frontierless world community where men and women cooperate freely to produce what is needed. Only by recognising that they are exploited by the same enemy class in all countries can workers reclaim their true identity and achieve real self-determination through a global democratic revolution.

Jake Ambrose (Australia)

Who cares about spies (1963)

From the June 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why all this fuss about spies and traitors? The commercial press, of course, likes a sensational treason trial. It helps them stir up national hatred. Spies are held up as objects of public scorn. They are, we are told, greedy men and women led to betray their country for thirty pieces of silver. Now come the Spies for Peace. The Spies for Peace have in fact done us a good turn by telling us some of the minor preparations the government has made for its safety in any war. The press, the Labour Party, the churches and other capitalist henchmen, naturally feel differently. They want the “traitors” arrested and punished. They are concerned about Mr. Krushchev getting hold of the pamphlet. But no-one bothers to ask the more basic questions. Why are there state secrets? What is their significance? Does it matter what Mr. Krushchev knows? That he knows there are plans for Regional Seats of Government at Warren Row and the other places where they’re supposed to be?

Consider the matter a little more closely. Today there are two kinds of people around. Those who are rich and wealthy and own all the means of living and the rest of us who own practically nothing. This means we have to work for these owners in order to live. In other words we are slaves. There is no other word for it. The workers are dependent on the owning class—just as the slaves of the past were dependent on their masters. Its the same all over the world. In America, in Russia, in France, in Germany. The working class, we are always told, no longer exists. But how stupid can you get! Of course, the working class exists. Its us—those who work and make everything but own nothing. Everywhere the working class is a slave class with the rich owners as their masters. So what’s all this nonsense about nations? The slaves in Athens didn’t count as Athenians. And we don’t really count as Britons, Germans, Poles, or any other of the names in use. Our political nationality is a fraud. “The Nation” is the owning class. The “national interest” is their interest. So all this talk about bombs and armies being kept to protect us is so much nonsense. They exist to protect our masters. To protect their property. To protect their ruling position. To protect their markets. Ask yourself: what have I to sell save my ability to work? Nothing! Then why worry about whether factory owners can sell their steel, their cars, their machines? But its for these people that wars are fought. To get markets for them. To help their trade. War gives us nothing. In no war is there anything at stake worth dying for. Just our masters’ markets and trade interests.

Everybody wants peace these days. Everybody is against war. But how do you get rid of it? Peace marches, perhaps, or conferences? No, neither. If the set-up didn’t mean that one class lives by selling what the other makes there would be no war. For capitalism has a built-in drive toward war. That’s why its stupid to hope for disarmament under capitalism. Armed forces are not kept for the fun of it. They can’t be disbanded at will. They exist to protect the interests of the capitalist class at home and abroad. A capitalist must sell or die. If he doesn’t sell he gets no profit. If he gets no profit he can’t accumulate capital. If he doesn’t accumulate he can’t modernise his equipment to meet competition. Which means he will be driven to the wall by more efficient-competitors. This is the basic cause of modern war.

The capitalists in various areas join to keep a national state to look after their interests and carry out their wishes. Hence the so-called nation. Every “nation,” or rather every capitalist gang, competes against every other. In this struggle might is right. This is why armed forces exist. Today America and Russia and their allies are at cold war with each other. They are struggling for world domination because they must. Neither of these groups of powers can afford to let the other get ahead militarily. So the arms race and the H bomb. In this race to keep ahead military secrets are important. Important, that is, to the capitalist class and the state they keep to protect their interests. This is why in every country the worst crime is treason, worse even than murder.

But where do we come in? Should we worry about cases of treason? Should we look upon those who give away secrets as traitors? The short answer to questions such as these is that workers have "no country. And it’s not? as if the state and its secrets exist for our benefit. They are only traitors from the capitalist viewpoint because they have committed the worst crime m the book. They have helped a rival capitalist gang. Each secret betrayed to a foreign power weakens the military machine. This is why state secrets are so important to the capitalist class. This is why those who give them away arc labelled traitors and punished harshly. For us it’s different. We don’t need to worry about security and defence matters. They’re not our concern. The war machine is not there to protect us. It’s there to protect our masters’ interests at home and abroad. And more. The armed forces are used to keep the masters masters, and us slaves. They are part of the government machine. And it is through this machine that the capitalist class rules. At home the government machine is used to keep ’’law and order,” to keep the set-up whereby the capitalist class live off our unpaid labour.

We have nothing to gain from war, nor from war or defence preparations. It is for the capitalist class to worry about British “security” services or about whether Mr. Krushchev knows “our” secrets.

Adam Buick

The Last Refuge (1949)

From the October 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

The more prominent of the political parties that are trying to cajole the workers in preparation for the next General Election, have each published a pamphlet expounding the programme for which they ask support. These programmes offer “practical” solutions to the problems that confront different sections of the community. There are cures for unemployment to intrigue the workers; promises of houses to attract the homeless; encouraging plans for industrialists; offers of help to the farmers and various inducements to draw the vote of trade unionists. There are special chapters for each of these groups, whilst other chapters are addressed to rather vague social groupings such as “The Common Man,” “The Small Man,” and “ The Consumer.”

The cover titles of these pamphlets, before we open them to read the contents, betray the line of approach to the problems that are dealt with. The Conservative Party issues “The Right Road for Britain”; the Liberal Party, “Programme for Britain” and the Labour Party, “Labour Believes in Britain.” Each proposes to solve the problems of “Britain” without addressing itself to the working class. They make it appear that unemployment, poverty, restricted political freedom, ill housing, bad health, insecurity and war, are the problems of “Britain” and not of one section of the people. If only all goes well with “Britain” we are to assume that these problems will at least be reduced to lesser proportions if not abolished altogether.

We do not expect pro-capitalist parties to view social problems from a working-class angle, but, unfortunately, many workers are confused and misled by this national approach to the evils that they would like to remedy. They live in a competitive world and accept it as inevitable. They are persuaded into a belief that they have an identical interest with everyone who classifies himself as “British,” irrespective of all economic differences. The problems of trade, of imports and exports, of international currency and diplomatic relations are regarded as the urgent affair of all who live in Britain. The proposed cures and reforms must all be regarded from the standpoint of whether “Britain” can afford it, whether the present hour of need for “Britain” will allow of this or that, whether certain steps will conform to the “British way of life.” This national approach to social problems is essentially a capitalist one. The capitalist class of the world is mainly divided into national groups, each group having its state machinery to conserve its wealth and protect its interests against its class enemies at home and its fellow-capitalist competitors abroad. Without a national state the capitalist is lost. His legal claim to property is of little use if there is no means to enforce it. When he must struggle with foreign competitors for trade, for access to raw materials, for control of land, sea and air routes for the transport of his goods, he needs the armed force of his state in his struggle. When he is faced with recalcitrant workers at home, workers who strike and lessen his profits, workers who do not do his bidding with the required alacrity, he needs his police and his judges, his jails and his warders —and, quite often—his troops. This is all part of the state machinery and around it the capitalist weaves his interest. His fortunes become the fortunes of his state, the fortunes of his state become his. He is a patriot, in the sense that he would have us use the word. He symbolises his state with a flag, a Union Jack, a Stars and Stripes or a Tri-colour. He will talk with sentiment about his country, meaning his state, meaning his interests. All those who live under the authority of his state are his countrymen, his fellow citizens. He argues that they have a common interest with him, a national interest, to preserve the country. They all have an interest in the capture of markets from foreign competitors and if necessary, they should be prepared to go to war against the adherents of some other state when such others become aggressive and threaten trade and trade routes. This imagined identity of national interest enables people to be worked up into a condition of national patriotism wherein they will slay one another in their political blindness, “for the glory of their country ” or for the preservation of their “national way of life.” It can also be used to persuade them to suffer want and misery, to work harder and cheaper and to give support to quack, self-seeking politicians and to tolerate exploitation. “Steel—record output at lower prices—for Britain’s hour of need.” Thus shouts a new poster from the hoardings around the countryside. Whilst the workers approach their problems from this angle they will find no solution—they are disarmed. The capitalist will be the foremost patriot and lover of his country, and the workers will be shorn of more and more of the wealth that they produce. It was Dr. Johnson who is reputed to have said, “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”

The problems that are dealt with in the three pamphlets that we have mentioned, all arise from the way in which we live. When we need to make classifications in an effort to solve some problem, we do so on the basis of the problem’s cause. For a biological problem we should divide men into groups according to their biological differences. In a study of language we may have to divide into territorial groups. Economics is the study of how we produce and distribute wealth—how we live. To solve economic problems we must study and classify according to the manner in which we get our living, not according to the particular state under which we were born or which has adopted us. Classifying according to biological differences or variations of language will hinder and not help. If our livelihoods are insecure or if we are impoverished, if we are poor in a world of plenty, if we must go to war in order to be able to live in peace, then we must seek the causes in the manner in which we produce and distribute the things that we are short of or that we have to compete for. As soon as we do this we are faced with one very outstanding fact. Everyone, in any one country, does not get his livelihood in the same way, or have the same amount of the wealth produced. Some, the vast majority, in order to get a living, must seek an employer. They have no tools or instruments with which to till the soil, to weave cloth, to build houses, to get the million and one things that make up the necessities of modern life. They have only a measure of physical and mental energy and this they must sell to someone who is in a position to buy it. So, they become wage workers, or salary earners, it’s all the same. That is their way of getting a livelihood. What of the others? They, the minority, are the ones who can employ the workers. Not because they are biologically different, not because they are cleverer, not because they are of a different nationality, but simply because they are the owners of the means and instruments of production and distribution. They do not of necessity have to work. They certainly do not have to seek employment in order to live. They own the means of production and they own the wealth that is produced. AH that is surplus, when they have paid the working class, they can utilise for their own convenience. They must sell their goods in a world market in order to realise the surplus in a useful form. They must trade. They seek spheres of influence, colonies, trade agreements and all the other things that they hope will ensure them continued and favourable trade. Trade is so vital to them. If there is no trade, there are no profits. If there are no profits there is no purpose in producing. Production slows down or ceases and the workers are unemployed. To capture a market the capitalist must sell competitively. That means cheaply. It also means that goods must be produced cheaply and that means that the workers must work hard for low wages. So, it’s either unemployment or low wages. Both spell poverty. Most of the other social problems are subsidiary to the poverty one. Only a poor man will be ill-housed, under-nourished, worried about unemployment. There is no solution to the workers’ problems within the capitalist system. The only solution lies in its overthrow and the establishment of a system where wealth is produced solely for use instead of for profit.

Of course, to tell the workers to work harder, or take lower wages, or go to war in order to secure the capitalists profits, would have very poor results. But if they can be urged to accept the idea that they have a national interest with the capitalist and not a class interest against him, then their patriotism can be roused and they may be kidded to do all sorts of things that result to their detriment.

The two political champions of to-day, the Labour Party and the Tory Party, and one ex-champion, the Liberal Party, snarl at one another, but are all agreed on the maintenance of capitalism. All are prepared to focus the attention of the workers on the problems of the British capitalist class and to string the working class along behind its masters with bleatings about national unity, Britain’s hour of need, Britain’s future in the hands of the people, blah! blah! blah!

Note the following by Winston Churchill in the Conservative pamphlet (page 5): —

“We earnestly hope that what is written here may be a help to those who wish to make a right decision for the future of their country, and may strengthen their confidence that we have a glorious future and their resolve that we do not throw it away.”

From the Liberal pamphlet (page . 31): —

“If all those who care for Liberalism ‘in their hearts and not with their lips only’ will lend it their support, it can bring salvation to our country and to mankind.”

From “Labour Believes in Britain" (page 30):—

“The Labour Party does not seek place and power for its own sake. We seek the victory for great ends, not for our Party, but for our country and the world. In this document we have approached our task in the British spirit . . . unity in common purpose and of justified pride in our nation’s greatness.”

Yes, the Communist Party has also published a pamphlet, “ Communism and Labour,” being a report by Harry Pollitt. He spends a chapter on criticism of the Labour Government’s foreign trade policy, makes suggestions for improved trade, and talks about “Britain’s economic difficulties ” (page 20). Having had a good slam at the Labour Government he clarifies the issue on page 25 by stating “ . . . if no Communist is standing, we advise the people to vote Labour.”

At election time or at any other time, the issue for the working class is never “Britain versus other countries of the world.” It is always “the Working Class versus the Capitalist class.” Anyone who hides that issue is an enemy of the workers. One can be reasonably assured that he who bleats loudly about “his country” is either a fool or a knave. He is probably taking what old Dr. Johnson called “the refuge of a scoundrel.”

W. Waters.