News in Review: Maurice Thorez (1964)

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

Maurice Thorez

Maurice Thorez, who led the French Communists when they were the largest political party in France, died last July. His career is a classical example of the Communist technique of forming alliances of conveniences, of employing any means to achieve their ends, of compromising and of plain double-dealing.

Thorez’s early years followed a familiar pattern of agitation and imprisonment. In the middle of this he was elected to the French Parliament and in 1930 became the party's Secretary-General. Then came these highlights in Communist history:—

• 1934. French Communist Party join the Popular Front Movement, in alliance with Leon Blum’s “Socialists” and Daladier’s “ Radicals.”
• 1936. Communists refuse seats in Blum's government, back strikers against the government.
• 1939. Communists support Russo/German Pact of non-aggression and friendship. Deladier declares Communist Party illegal. Thorez called up but deserts to Russia.
• 1940. Thorez and Duclos sign appeal which attacks the “warmongering French Bourgeoisie ” urges overthrow of Leon Blum. but omits to condemn the Nazi occupiers of France. Communist Party tries to obtain permission of German Occupation forces to resume publication of the banned paper Humanite.
• 1941 German invasion of Russia. French Communists join forces with de Gaulle, who excuses Thorez’s desertion and makes him Minister of State. 
• 1946/7. Thorez serves as Minister of State in governments under Gouin, Bidault and Ramadier until alliance between Communists, “Socialists” and MRP breaks down under the strain of Indo-China war.

Since then, the fortunes of the French Communist Party have declined. No longer are they the country’s largest party, no longer have they any prospects of filling important ministries in a government.

One of the men—Bidault—they once supported as an act of Left Wing expediency is now the darling of the Right-Wing extremists. Another—de Gaulle—is virtually dictator of France.

One thing, however, remains. The French Communists still trim their sails to catch the lighter breeze from Moscow, still recast their policies overnight to suit the interests of the Russian government.

This is established Communist policy all over the world. The Communists defend it by arguing that it is intended to gain working class support, and to elect a Communist government which will then introduce Socialism.

This policy has always been theoretically wrong and has been shown up as hopeless in practice. In many countries it has been exposed and France, where Thorez left a party in the depths of impotence and futility but still churning out the the old confusion, is one of them.


Meaning of affluence

One of the myths which have helped to buoy up British capitalism over recent years has been the great illusion of Affluence.

This “Affluence” has had some gaps in it glaring enough to be spotted by even the most deluded worker. Equally obvious should have been the mean standards by which working class conditions have been judged.

A cramped, nondescript little house which is being bought on a lifetime’s mortgage; a mass produced car at the kerbside; a television set. These are what add up to “affluence.”

How the ruling class—or the more perceptive of them—must chuckle at this massive deception! Because they are the people who know what affluence really means. They live in style, in what may fairly be described as houses. They do not fear the prospect of sickness, or unemployment, or old age, as do the “affluent” working class.

Consider, for example, the case of Mr. Michael Fitzgerald Heathcoat-Amory, ager 22, address Oswaldkirk Hall, Yorkshire. This young man’s income at the moment is £11,000 a year—interest from a trust fund left by an uncle who was killed in the war—and what the Daily Telegraph described as ". . . a large sum from other sources.”

But there has recently been some rearrangement in the affairs of Mr. Heathcoat- Amory. As the result of a High Court ruling, he will now receive a lump sum of about £175,000, which is around 65 per cent. of the original trust fund. The balance— about £85,000—will remain in trust, accumulating interest to be inherited by any children Mr. Heathcoat-Amory may have.

Now this is Affluence. And nothing done for it, by the young man or his children yet unborn, except to be conceived in the right womb, and born in the right room at the right time.

We have, of course, come across Mr. Heathcoat-Amory's name before. He is the nephew of the Mr. Derek Heathcoat-Amory who made his name as the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who fed the pigeon on his window sill on Budget Day. The Chancellor’s job partly consists of trying to keep British capitalism prosperous by urging the workers not to press wage claims.

It is obvious that the Heathcoat-Amorys know it all—about poverty and affluence and about where they come from.


The Stock Exchange

What's that you're reading son?

It’s an ad. about die Stock Exchange- jolly interesting.

What’s it say?

Well Dad, it's written like a chat between a boy and his father. The boy’s doing some lessons at school on the Stock Exchange and he’s asking his Dad about them.

School, eh?

Yes Dad, and a posh one it sounds, too —boys called This Minor and That Major and their fathers are jobbers and things like that and I know that’s posh because the ad. says they're the people stockbrokers buy shares from and sell them to.

That’s real interesting, son. Anything else?

Well, it says the Stock Exchange benefits us all, Dad. And we all invest in it I know you pay the insurance man every week but you never told me that that makes you an investor. We must be posh! Think I’ll add Major to my surname.

Hang on, son. That isn’t why I take out an insurance. I couldn’t care less what they do with my premiums; I’ve got to pay them because on my money I’ve got to put something by for when I’m sick or when 1 retire. If there weren't insurance firms I’d probably keep it in an old sock or something.

You’re not like the fathers in this ad., then?

That's it, son.

Anyway, I suppose if you were an investor getting all those profits you wouldn’t really need an insurance policy or anything?

As they say in this ad., son, you’re catching on quick.

What’s it all about then, Dad?

Well, it’s true that I can invest in stocks and shares if I want to. It’s like the old song; if I didn’t eat I’d have money to burn.

But you might get dividends, Dad.

I might. Three or four per cent of what I’d invested, perhaps. I might even make a bit of money buying shares when the price was low and selling them when it was high . . .

But that cuts the other way. If 1 may say so, Dad, you might buy when the price was high and sell when it was low—so you’d lose money.

Correct But whatever happened I could never expect to make very much. How much can I afford to invest? And what sort of dividend or capital gain, as they call it, would I make on it? How long would that last if I got the sa . . . sorry, if I became redundant?

Not long. Who does make money on the Stock Exchange, then?

Just like in any other form of gambling —the big gamblers. But the dividends come from the profits which are made by people like me going out to work for an employer. And you, when you’re old enough to work.

What else comes out of the profits?

Well, an employer has lots of things to pay out of them—rent, interest on loans, perhaps, government taxes, and so on.

So where does the Stock Exchange come in, Dad?

Well, it only deals in the stocks and shares, which are the legal documents which give the right to the dividends. And if a company or something needs more money the Stock Exchange can organise it, by selling lots more of those documents. But this doesn’t alter the fact that profit comes from the exploitation of the working people.

So the Stock Exchange isn’t really necessary?

Well, Son, I suppose that as far as capitalism goes it isn’t a bad idea. Something's got to do the work of the Stock Exchange, just like something’s got to do the work of judges and policemen and insurance salesmen and the rest If they didn’t exist, capitalism would have had to create them, in a manner of speaking. But this makes no difference to you or me, or to anyone like us. We’d be better off in a world which didn’t need all those things.

So the Stock Exchange isn’t all it’s cracked up to be in this ad., eh, Dad?

Well, Son, like I've always said, don’t believe all you read in the papers.

Rachmanism revised

Fears that Rachmanism still stalks the borough of Willesden have edged the Council there into setting up a permanent rackets watchdog to probe housing scandals. (Kilburn Times, July 10th, 1964).

Social researcher Mr. Peter Whittaker has drawn up a Black Dossier to be studied by the Milner-Holland Committee. Labour Alderman Reg Freeson says that the rackets are still increasing in the borough; “Every housing racket we investigate we get the terrifying feeling that just around the comer there is another racket we cannot put our finger on.”

Councillor Winnick was even horrified to see fresh rackets on the council list this year. This was capped by Conservative Councillor Miss Wallis, who said, “Wherever there is a shortage you will find the spivs.”

Capitalist parties have always told us that they could manage the problems of society by just a little oil there, a tightening of a screw here; no need to get rid of private property, the profit motive or the wages system. Far too sweeping they said; it may be alright for later on, but we must deal with this or that problem right now. In Willesden they are not only still dealing with the immediate problem—it appears to be getting on top of them.

Shortly these same parties will be padding from door to door cadging for votes. They will point to their glowing records of social service and endeavour, and promise to cure what they promised to cure at the last election and the one before that, and before that, and before that . . .

M.Ps. who have been conspicuous by their absence from their constituency will soon be seen smiling concernedly on street comers, knocking on doors enquiring about the needs of their electorate. They do these things because they need the workers’ votes to give them power to run capitalism as they think best

While the workers support capitalism, the problems of poverty, rackets, bad and short supply, housing, crime and unemployment will continue. In its struggles on the international field, capitalism will often produce a war of some sort or the other.

Capitalism is one big Rachmanism. Since when have even the most pious of property owners been free of the taint of exploiting others? When the Rachmanites apply strong arm methods on a small scale on their tenants, isn't this what the Big Boys do on a large scale when they wish to annexe or “ protect ” someone else’s possessions overseas?

Rackets do not begin and end in Willesden.

The VC10

The VC10 affair was one of the government’s more publicised mistakes.

Aircraft are always newsworthy objects— nothing pleases a patriotic British worker more than reports that a British ’plane is selling well abroad. He enthuses over the aircraft’s sleek lines, over its tasteful livery. To him it is a lovely object, a thoroughbred—unlike American aircraft which, he thinks, are slipshod jobs whose engines are always going wrong and whose wings cannot be relied upon not to fall off.

So it came about that the VC10 carried a lot of hopes, including those of the government and the British aircraft industry.

But the clouds gathered quickly about the new airliner and rumours grew thick until BOAC’s new chief, Sir Charles Guthrie, in the unkindest cut of all, clearly indicated that the VC10 was not the aircraft he would choose if his airline was to run at maximum profit.

The government, falling between the two stools of its own support for the new ’plane and its unequivocal instruction to Guthrie to run BOAC as a purely commercial undertaking, compromised by cutting BOACs order and holding up some of the other aircraft already on the way.

This has made the Ministry of Aviation look rather foolish.

Everyone now knows that the VC10 was expected to be a winner because it needed shorter runways than its American rivals— and could therefore land at places which were closed to the Boeing and the Douglas —but this advantage has been wiped out by the smaller airports lengthening their runways especially to take the big American jets.

Everyone now knows that the British Aircraft Corporation originally recommended building an aircraft almost identical to the Boeing 707 and the Douglas DC8, but were overruled by the Ministry: who thought that an aircraft which looked different would sell better.

Everyone now knows that the VC10 was spectacular gamble and that it is Mr. Amery’s bad luck that it did not come off. But if the opposite decisions had been taken on the aircraft’s design they would also have been gambles, with no better chance of success than those which have collapsed about die government’s head.

All of capitalism's investment and production is a gamble, depending for its success upon the caprices of an uncontrollable, unpredictable market. This holds true for a barrow boy buying up a job lot of apples and for a great aircraft firm building a glamorous liner.

The VC10 will not be the last project, heavy with national pride and vested optimism, to crash before it leaves the ground

Race riots

In Harlem and in Rochester in the United States, in Singapore and in British Guiana, there are race riots—ugly, bloody affrays in which human beings suddenly descend to frantic animals.

In Germany the trials of the guards of the concentration camps, which were the obscene fruition of racial theories, drag on, revealing their sickening evidence of men at their most degraded.

In South Africa the Nationalist government continues its dour, inflexible policy of apartheid, while riot simmers beneath the thin crust of surface peace. The Australian government refuses permission for a Burgher family from Ceylon to land because they are not “. . . substantially of European origin,” but it does not say exactly what this means.

All over the world, racial strife continues. In many cases it needs only the most trivial of incidents to spark off a storm of violence and counter violence which seems almost to have no end.

Racial theories are a chronic sickness, holding back the progress of the human race to a sane and harmonious social system. Even more, they are based on the absurdest of fallacies, are shot through with inconsistencies and are usually inspired by the most primitive of suspicions.

The interests of working people in all countries are the same. Society's crying need is for the international unity of the working class to abolish capitalism and substitute for it a cooperative world of abundance and freedom.

It is the need for dignity, for progress, for survival. The people of the world can have Socialism if they want it or they can choose, in one way or another, extinction.

“Young Socialists”

Our recent feature “Labour's Young Lions” has provoked the usual sort of reaction from the Young Socialists.

The June issue of Young Guard, their paper, offers the customary sneer about ". . . the revolutionary virgins in the Socialist Party of Great Britain . . .”, but carefully avoids any attempt at dealing with our criticisms.

The Socialist Standard has replied to this, inviting Young Guard to send us a reasoned argument, which we will publish with our reply.

But the young lions are silent, and still. So far (mid-August) they have not replied.

"Young Guard is Misguided" (1963)

From the November 1963 issue of the Young Guard

The purpose of this article is to show readers why the Socialist Party of Gt. Britain considers ‘Young Guard’ as just another well meaning but misguided group who aim, whether they realise it or not, to make the running of capitalism more efficient, or supporting various reforms which they misname socialism.

In contrast the SPGB holds that the present social system, capitalism, is the cause of working class poverty and will only be abolished when the majority of the international working class understands and wants socialism.

First must be explained what we mean by the two terms.

Capitalism is a system of buying and selling, where wealth is produced for sale on the market with the idea of producing a profit for those who own and control the means of production and distribution. Socialism on the other hand, is a system where wealth is produced for use, with the means of production and distribution being commonly owned and democratically controlled by the whole society.

Anything short of this—no matter how desirable it may seem—is not Socialism. For instance there will be no money in the socialist society, therefore no need of banks and insurance companies; no armed forces, for in society there will exist for the first time a harmony of interests: where the watchword will be— from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

We say that all reformists— whether so-called leftists or rightists—who tell the workers that their administration of capitalism is Socialism are directly retarding workers realising that Socialism is their interests. Thanks to the antics of Labour Parties the world over. Socialism is now equated with shortages, controls, high rates and taxes, nationalisation and so on.

Young Socialists and Young Guard in particular are perpetuating these myths by supporting the party which, during its last term of office, initiated the production of nuclear weapons in Britain, used troops to break strikes, imposed a wage freeze on trade unionists (and intends to do so again with your help no doubt) became the first party to impose conscription in peace time and started the germ warfare establishment at Porton although your contributor ‘Fianna!, seems to think this was a devilish Tory creation (see Y. G. Aug.).

No doubt Young Guardites hold the absurd view that they can help convert the Labour Party to Socialism, though they might just as well try doing this with the Catholic Church, but even if this were possible who are they to play the educators?

Take a look at the ‘aims’ of YG (which can be changed anytime!) to see what we mean. For example, nationalisation has nothing to do with Socialism and we challenge YG or anyone else to give just one example of nationalisation having benefited workers anywhere.

Again worker’s control is a meaningless term as the abolition of capitalism means the abolition of all classes, so where do these workers come in? Workers control is merely another method of running capitalism which even Mr. Khrushchev is now looking upon with favour. Indeed Mark Frankland, writing in the Observer (Sept. 1st) hit the nail on the head when he pointed out that Mr K’s recent speech to Yugoslav workers, on which he extolled the virtues of workers control, was a waste of breath as they—“Know quite well that their wages depend on profits from their factories.”

We also know that Young Guardites envisage profits under Socialism. Where will these come from? Will workers extract surplus-value from themselves?

To sum up; Young Guardites have as much idea of Socialism as any other reformist group. What they call ‘Socialism’ is merely a Utopian rag-bag of ideas none of which, if implemented, would fundamentally alter the wage slavery of the working class. The interests of that class lie in the abolition of capitalism and this, we repeat, they will do when and only when they understand and want Socialism.

“Fair enough” you may say, ‘But how will they get this understanding?” Our reply is that they certainly will not get it by being told that Labour administration of capitalism is Socialism. This simply draws the antagonism of the workers for the failures of that Party onto Socialism and produces a working class which, by its many disappointments at the hands of Labour, is disillusioned and more confused than ever as to what Socialism is, let alone how to achieve it.

The only way is for Socialists to preach Socialism and nothing else, at all times. The more the workers hear expounded a revolutionary alternative to the present set up, the quicker will they demonstrate that they are just as capable of latching-on as anyone else.

Vic Vanni

Ex-Secretary of Woodside Constituency Labour Party

Wood's Failings (1963)

Report from the October 1963 issue of the Young Guard

Middlesbrough

On Sunday, 8th September, a conference was held for N.E. YS. Each branch was asked to send five delegates. It had no terms of reference and nobody yet knows what it was really about.

There were three speakers, Geoff Foster recently appointed youth officer, Roland Boyce a Young Socialist and lastly the prospective candidate for Sunderland.

Comrade Boyce excels in self control, a fact that he himself pointed out repeatedly, and only once declared he was getting annoyed.

He was, quite justifiably getting annoyed at comrade Foster who opposed a suggestion that the YS should get down into the dole queues. Comrade Boyce quoted the example of Peterlee (Durham) where an unemployment committee had greatly helped in a council by-election.

Unemployment in the N.E. is not only a Tory headache but seems to cause the Labour Party much embarrassment. The Unemployed Men’s Association in West Hartlepool was almost used by its President as a means of getting him elected against a Labour candidate as an SPGB candidate (it shows how contemptuous of the Labour Party many working people are when they turn to two ends of nothing like the SPGB).

In my own town the unemployed men’s association meets, believe it or not, in the Conservative Party headquarters. How the hell that happened I just do not know. But this may be partly explained by a remark made by the prospective Labour Party candidate for Sunderland. “The Labour Party must be careful that people do not believe it gets into power only on the backs of the unemployed.”

Vic Wood

Middlesbrough Y.S.

Letter to the Editor from the November 1963 issue of the Young Guard

Wood's Failings

Comrades,

As a member of the SPGB (and also a reader of Young Guard) may I draw your readers’ attention to the complete inaccuracy of the part of your report from Middlesbrough YS (October 1963) which refers to the SPGB.

The Chairman of the Unemployed Workers’ Committee in West Hartlepools, a Mr. W. Aves, is in no way connected with the SPGB. The facts are that Mr. Aves announced his intention to stand at the next General Election as an unofficial Labourite against the official Labour Party candidate. He has since changed his mind. Mr. Aves also tried to get adopted as Liberal candidate—but they wouldn’t have him. If Vic Wood can confuse this gentleman with the SPGB then it can only be assumed that he is unaware of the SPGB position. Despite this he feels competent to direct two sneers at the SPGB.

First, he suggests that our members are the type who climb to prominence on the backs of unemployed workers after the fashion of ILP and CP labour bleeders in the 1930’s. As a matter of fact the SPGB regards such activity as reformism.

Second, he refers to the SPGB as “two ends of nothing”. This is a very ungenerous way to refer to the group which pioneered the view that Russia is a form of State capitalism; which has since its foundation rejected the idea of “leadership” declaring that the workers must emancipate themselves; which has always exposed the fraud of nationalisation and which, finally, has always emphasised the democratic nature of Socialism. I say ungenerous because today all these ideas are circulating amongst sections of the YS and particularly amongst Young Guard supporters.

I trust that Vic Wood will have the decency to apologise and withdraw his inaccurate statements.

Adam Buick

Newport (Mon) SPGB

Labour's young lions (1964)

From the May 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent conference of the youth section of the Labour Party, the so-called Young Socialists, at Brighton, has again rejected the official party policy on many important issues. There are signs that the young Socialists have now become an embarrassment to the Labour Party as was the League of Youth in the past. The Labour Party has always been unfortunate with its youth section. They have always been captured by extremists. In the thirties it was the Communists; today it is the Trotskyists.

Trotskyist theory places great emphasis on leadership and slogans. It is their policy to take up the demands of any discontented group and to try and lead their struggle. The Young Socialists have been an easy target for them. In fact it is only here that their policy of boring from within has had any success. The youth sections of all "left-wing" parties tend to be more "radical" than the main party.

When the blatant vote-catching manoeuvres of the leadership of the Labour Party are considered it is not really surprising that the Young Socialists have gone the way they have. They don't like what they see but have not the political experience to explain it. It is young people in this frame of mind that the Trotskyist approach with criticism and an alternative policy. They move in and organise the discontented members.

There are at present four or five Trotskyist and similar groups operating in the Young Socialist movement. This in itself is noteworthy. For Young Socialist branches have tended to back the group which approached them first, though changes occur through the process of splitting to which the Trotskyist groupings are particularly liable. The most influential of these is Keep Left which the Labour Party has already proscribed. This takes the same line as the Socialist Labour League, the main British Trotskyist group, and has a clandestine organisation within the Young Socialists. There are other Trotskyist groups opposed to Keep Left in Liverpool, Nottingham, Glasgow and South Wales. Then there is Young Guard, which has a following in London and amongst students. Strictly speaking, this is not Trotskyist—its Trotskyist wing recently broke away—but it has the same technique of "boring from within."

An amusing aspect of all this is the factionalism and the disagreements between the various groups. The leaders of the boring-from-within groups—Healy, Grant, and others—are all older men who have been on the Trotskyist movement for twenty to thirty years. They fell out with each other soon after the Revolutionary Communist Party was dissolved in the late 1940s. The basic differences were over the nature of the Russian system and various theses of Pablo, a leader of the Fourth International, on Eastern Europe. These quarrels have been transferred lock, stock and barrel to the Young Socialist organisation. Wherever their branches meet these obscure differences are aired and the whole Trotskyist library of abuse is brought out—centrist, revisionist, Pabloite, elitist, Stalinist, Krondstadt, etc., etc. Added to this are stories and rumours of how the members of the groups have behaved at various conferences; how they allied themselves with the Right Wing; how particular groups have organised too many socials and dances. All this together with secret meetings and visions of armed uprisings may be good for laughs but has nothing to do with Socialism.

Generally speaking the members of these factions spend more time arguing against each other and Party officials than anything else. Such is the experience of boring from within. If Socialists were to join the Labour Party they too would be forced into petty disputes to the detriment of Socialist propaganda even if this were allowed. The Young Socialist Movement may have been easy to infiltrate but it has no power to do anything. When its members face the working class they do so as members of the Labour Party and on its programme. They do not control their own journal. They cannot campaign on their own programme. They have to campaign for a Western nuclear deterrent and for immigration control and for other policies which their conference has rejected. To campaign on any other programme is to render themselves liable to expulsion. This is the whole futility of boring from within. Inside the supposedly mass party your time is taken up with quarrels with bureaucrats; outside you campaign on their programme.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain holds that Socialism can only be established by a Socialist working class. hence the chief task of Socialists can only be to make their fellow workers Socialist. We hold that this can best be done by campaigning for Socialism and Socialism alone. To do otherwise is to get the support of non-Socialists and eventually to cease to be a Socialist party altogether. We accept the doctrine of the class struggle and base our policy on it. Thus we refuse to compromise with other political parties which, including the Labour Party, can only stand for Capitalism.

It is sometimes argued that the way to make Socialists is to back the demands of politically ignorant workers and show then that these demands can't be realised without getting rid of Capitalism. But this is an odd way of going about things. Why not tell the workers straight off that they're going down a blind alley? Why bother to lead them down it just to show them it is a blind alley? The logic of this is that the working class should try out all wrong policies just to see that they are wrong. We reject such nonsensical doctrine. But once this doctrine is rejected then the case for entryism falls to the ground. There is no longer any need to make a principle of leading workers down blind alleys because you think it will benefit them.

Nor does it make sense to argue that Socialists should work within the Labour Party because it is "the mass party of the working class." If the Labour Party is a mass working class party then so is the Conservative Party for just as many workers vote Conservative as Labour. But even if the Labour Party were supposed by the vast majority of workers this would still be no reason for joining it. Such workers would not be Socialists. It would still be the duty of Socialists to oppose the Labour Party and to point out its non-Socialist character. An independent Socialist party would still be necessary to spread Socialist ideas.

Basically, however, the Trotskyists don't accept the need for Socialist understanding. They are more interested in leading ignorant masses. This is perhaps why have been successful among the Young Socialists. The ordinary Young Socialist member has little knowledge of politics. He is merely discontented. The Trotskyists have channelled and assumed the leadership of this discontent. Thus arguments which we have heard many times before appear in Marxist and Trotskyist terms. But behind the words there is no understanding. The ordinary Trotskyist follower does not understand the principles of Socialism—some are even religious—he does not realise he is being used by a bunch of experienced political manipulators who have failed to gain a following elsewhere.

Some good may yet come from this confusion and ignorance. Some young people may be led to study the principles of Socialism and to think beyond the slogan level. Already ideas on Russia, nationalization and leadership which we have been expressing for decades are being discussed in some sections of the Young Socialists. We have something to contribute to these discussions. After all, we pioneered the view that Russia is State capitalist; we said even before nationalization was implemented that it would not benefit the working class; it has been a principle of our organization from its foundation in 1904 that the working class doesn't ned any leaders and must emancipate itself. It is not boasting, but a historical fact, that we have been consistently correct in our attitude to political issues. Those who are interested in politics do themselves a disservice if they ignore our case.

Adam Buick