Robert Blatchford (1924)

From the February 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard

Robert Blatchford recently resigned his post on the Sunday Chronicle and Sunday Herald. The reason he gave was that he was "tired of all this dirty business of lying about the Labour Party and similar tactics" (Daily Herald, January 7th, 1924). This sounds fine, and it drew from George Lansbury a column of extravagant appreciation, but when one remembers something of Blatchford's career it seems particularly out of place that he, of all men, should be praised for his independence and disinterested enthusiasm for Socialism. He had in his own words "been associated with these papers for seven years," and during those years had reached the point of repudiating most of the views of his youth, including all that he ever held of Socialism. He had shown himself one of the most violent of the stop-at-home fighters who gloried in the knowledge that the workers were butchering each other for the class Blatchford was serving. After selling his "great genius" to the capitalist Press for seven years, Blatchford decides to desert them; curiously, just at the moment when the Labour Party is about to take over the administration; and for this we are expected to honour him!

There are some who charitably ask that Blatchford be forgiven his treachery of the past seven years as a "mistake." Must we then also forgive his even more transparent treachery over the Boer War, when the open Imperialism of the British capitalists was opposed by Lloyd George?

As for his work for Socialism, it is as well to remember that it was the Clarion and its editor who reaped all the glory, not Socialism. The activities he organised were "Clarion" clubs and choirs and vans, and, as shown below, he appears to have reaped no small advantage from them. George Lansbury's opinion certainly does not seem to have been shared by one who knew Blatchford well—his brother Montague.

In a letter to David Lowe, reproduced by him in Forward (December 22nd, 1923) Keir Hardie wrote as follows: —

"House of Commons,

"9th August, 1902.

"Dear Davie,

"I am sending you a Manchester Guardian. It is good. When at Halifax recently I spent an evening at a friend's house where Mont. Blatchford was present. The bottle went round, and he came over to say that the C. (Clarion) was about to burst. That Nunquam and Dangle had not spoken, save to wrangle, for weeks. He afterwards saw me home in the wee sma' 'oors. The two able men have quarrelled about the division of the spoil. Each has an income, presumably, all told, of £600 a year. He, M.B., was happy on less than half, but the others had inflated notions of living; the more they got the more they wanted; they no longer wrote for the love of the Cause but purely for what it brought them; the Bounder, when alive, kept things straight with his fine scorn, but now there was no one to intervene, and the meetings of the Board were a series of wrangles over money affairs. All this and more, with much reiteration. He was sick of it, and was going to clear out, and felt sure the whole thing was about to burst . . . " 

"Nunquam," of course, is Robert Blatchford, and "Dangle" is A. M. Thompson, another loyal servant of the employing class who may also be expected to develop a tender conscience now that his erstwhile comrades have become His Majesty's Government.

Edgar Hardcastle

Editorial: Ten Years of Struggle. (1914)

Editorial from the June 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the 12th June of this year the Socialist Party completes ten years of effort in the service of the working class. Of course it is mere sentiment to say that therefore the 12th of June is any more important than the 11th, but, after all, sentiment is a very real attribute of the human make-up, and has its uses. So we will indulge it to the extent of calling the day auspicious, if for no better purpose than that of doing a little stock-taking.

It has become a matter of history how a band of stalwarts, weary of struggling with the reactionary and traitorous elements in the S.D.F., and hopeless of being able to place that decrepit organisation on a sound basis, came out of it, and with a few others formed a revolutionary political working-class party.

There were prophets in those days, and the prognostications of those gifted with second sight concerning the period which would elapse before the "new party" went to pieces would make interesting reading now, in view of how it has fared with us and what has happened to them. But the "new party" was born with a strong constitution, and it survived—and even flourished.

The reason for this comes out with startling clearness after ten years of battle. It is simply that it is founded upon fundamental principles.

Ten years have been a sufficient time for these principles to be thoroughly tested, and they have been so tested. They have been tested by the undesirables who came into the Party at its inception, and by those who have crept in since. But as always they have enabled the Party to purge itself clean and healthy. But they have been further tested by the inroads which time has made upon the roll of the founders. For while the membership of the Party is seven times as great as at its formation, the band of founders is sadly reduced in number. Yet our Declaration of Principles has proved, in other hands than those who framed them, a sufficient instrument for their revolutionary purpose. We know therefore that it will suffice to the end.

World War One – lest we forget (2002)

From the August 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

The German invasion of Belgium and Luxembourg in 1914 was of military benefit but a political gamble. It enabled the German armies to flood into France by avoiding the main border defences and it allowed Belgian coal mines and factories to fall into German hands. The political gamble was whether or not this move would bring Britain into the war on the side of France.

For the previous century Britain had remained neutral in European conflicts, preferring to use diplomacy to maintain its top position in the balance of power by setting its capitalist rivals against each other. The British capitalist ruling class had supported Prussian aggression and a united Germany in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) and had applauded the formation of a German Empire. However, during the last quarter of the 19th century British capitalists began to realise that Germany was now rapidly replacing the traditional French enemy as their major commercial rival.

The unbridled European scramble for African colonies saw Germany savagely acquire four large areas of that continent. This new swift-growing capitalist society was in desperate need of sources of raw material, markets for their manufactured goods and regions for capital investment and possible emigration. When tremendous mineral wealth was discovered in the independent territory of Transvaal, the anti-British Dutch settlers (Boers) favoured allowing Germany to access these riches. This prompted the voracious British capitalists to embark upon a vicious and ruthless military policy of consolidation in Africa. By destroying, disarming and dispossessing war-like tribes (including the well-organised and disciplined military Zulu nation in 1879), they were then able to concentrate upon annexing the Boer territories of Orange Free State and Transvaal.

The first armed conflict between British and Boer (who were well-armed with German weapons) in 1881 resulted in a British disaster but led later to a far more determined action in 1899-1902 (known as the Boer War, during which 26,000 civilian Boer women and children died in British concentration camps. The eventual British victory assured British capitalists an additional bonanza in wealth and completely foiled the plans of their devastated German rivals. Having staked everything on an industrial society, German capitalists were left in a desperate situation of having no access to the raw materials that were so essential.

The German ruling class now turned their thoughts to the limitless riches that surrounded them in Europe. By expanding their control in all directions Germany could obtain all the resources her industries would ever need and would rocket Germany easily to top spot in the world capitalist league. Plans were made accordingly.

British capitalists were also anxiously aware of the possibility of Germany gaining access to Europe's riches and with the invasion of Belgium in 1914 the great fear was that such a state, with a powerful fleet controlling the Channel ports, could seriously challenge Britain's command of the seas. British capitalism could not allow this to happen.

Non-stop slaughter

So Britain declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914 and had troops in France alongside her allies just in time to face an almighty military onslaught. A massive German army of 1½ million men stormed through Belgium with the objective of reaching and occupying Paris and the Channel ports of Dunkirk and Calais. On the left of the line the British halted the German advance at Ypres where heavy fighting continued through to November. This was the first Battle of Ypres.

In the centre of the line the allies were driven back to the outskirts of Paris where, in September, the Germans were halted at the Marne river. Counter-attacks by the allies pushed the Germans back to the Aisne river by the end of 1914. The front line then stabilised and for 3½ years trenches and massed artillery transformed the war into a virtual interminable siege, extending from Switzerland to the sea.

All along this “Western Front” the names of obscure towns and villages became immortalised as grim reminders of the obscene indifference that exists towards the expendability and suffering of workers in our social system, known as “capitalism”. Young men were shot, bayoneted, gassed, blown to pieces or drowned in water-filled shell craters in their tens of thousands – human sacrifices to the God of Profit and Commercial Greed.

The fighting in capturing, losing and re-capturing a few yards of territory under the most horrific conditions and the great expenditure in effort and explosives plus the unacceptable casualties and loss of life, all became quite acceptable. The only significant movement, which swayed back and forth, was in the centre of the line between Loos and Verdun known as the “Somme Battles”.

Fighting was continuous all along the Western Front but ferocious major battles were unleashed at strategic points. On 22 April 1915 a heavy bombardment signalled another attempted “breakthrough” by the Germans in the second battle of Ypres. Civilians streamed out of the town and headed south. During the afternoon the Germans launched a poisonous gas attack, the first time such a weapon was ever used in warfare. Sixty-thousand allied troops died in this extended battle during which the Germans advanced two miles. This portion of the front was then pounded by artillery shells almost unceasingly for the next two years. The region was reclaimed marshland which was used as pasture. Farmers had been required by law to maintain drainage ditches which, of course, were quickly wrecked. Rains added to the already soggy terrain which eventually became a landscape of foul-smelling mud, peppered with water-filled shell craters. In time this treacherous morass would suck in and engulf men, horses, guns and later even tanks. Every new shell explosion would throw up rotted corpses which would slowly sink from view again.

In the Spring of 1916 the Germans launched a massive attack against the French at Verdun. For four months the battle raged and troops on both sides were massacred. The line held, but to relieve the exhausted defenders the allies mounted an equally massive offensive against the Germans on the Somme (1 July 1916). This first battle of the Somme was aimed at pushing the Germans back on a wide front. A seven-day artillery bombardment was followed by a “creeping barrage”, infantry advancing behind a screen of slowly progressing shell explosions. Constant pressure was applied to the German positions, British tanks appeared for the first time in September 1916. the few tanks became ineffective when this area of irrigation and river systems also turned into a quagmire. Conditions worsened during the winter but the “push” was resumed in the Spring of 1917. Progress was slow and at a huge cost in lives – 600,000 allies were lost for again of about 20 miles.

In April 1917 a British offensive captured some high ground overlooking Ypres, the notorious Vimy Ridge. The same month had the USA declare war on Germany but it would be a year before trained American troops arrived in France.

Life in the trenches after a battle has been described:

“By day, the only signs of life in the 'moonscape' of no-man's land was the hoarse and parched voices of the badly wounded pleading for help which would never arrive and the hawks and carrion crows alighting to gorge upon the many corpses. At dusk hordes of rats, seemingly in their billions, materialised to indulge in feasting upon the dead and the dying who were too weak to fend them off. Bodies were reduced to khaki-clad skeletons within hours.”

On 7 June 1917 the British eliminated another German position that overlooked Ypres. Nineteen mines were exploded in tunnels burrowed beneath the Messines Ridge. This was followed by an artillery barrage from 2,266 guns and howitzers and an infantry attack by 80,000 men. The rim of land was captured at a cost of 1,700 allies lives. This was merely a prelude to the third battle of Ypres, described even today as one of the most squalid bouts of butchery in the history of warfare – now more generally known as “Passchendaele”.

On 31 July 1917 4,000 allied guns pounded German lines for ten days. Four-and-a-half million shell reduced the villages to rubble and then turned the rubble to dust. For four months, mostly in heavy rain and waterlogged conditions, this mindless slaughter continued unabated. In October the Germans unleashed another new weapon for the first time, mustard gas which caused blindness and burns. On 4 November the Canadians captured a mass of shell holes that had once been Passchendaele. The allied line had advanced five miles for the loss of nearly 400,000 allies and at least 200,000. Six months later the Germans had recaptured all the ground the allies had gained since 1914.

On the night of 21 March 1918 the Germans hurled themselves at the British in the centre of the allied line in the second battle of the Somme. For a week the British were forced back but eventually halted the German advance at Amiens. The Germans then launched massive attacks against the French to the right which drove the line back once more to the Marne, where another stubborn resistance held the ferocious German attack.

War-weariness and exhaustion was affecting both sides by this time. The original British regular army had been destroyed in the first few months of the war. Kitchener's volunteer army, comprising those who had so enthusiastically flocked to the recruiting offices in 1914-1915, had been destroyed at the Somme. The British were now scraping the bottom of the barrel to replace the horrific losses. The very young, the old and the unfit were all being dragged in. When fresh American troops joined the final allied offensive which opened on 18 July, the Germans wilted and were rolled back until the final victory on 11 November.

The aftermath

Left behind, marking the position of the Western Front, was a scene of utter destruction. Every landmark had been wiped out and was unrecognisable. But nature healed the man-made wounds of the landscape. Shattered tree stumps threw out leaves and the ground became covered in poppies – a plant that thrives naturally wherever soil is badly disturbed – which became an emblem and trademark for a new “Remembrance” industry. Towns and villages were painstakingly rebuilt and today only the pages of history and the many man-made memorials make the visitor aware of the insane carnage that was acted out in these areas.

Accurate numbers of losses on the Western Front are unknown but, even today, bones and skulls are unearthed by ploughs and ditching machines. Many memorials list names of those “lost without trace”, 55,000 engraved at the Menin Gate, 34,000 at another memorial nearby and so on. These are just the names of British and empire troops and do not include French, Belgian or German losses. Acres of war graves litter France in which those whose remains were found are laid to rest.

Today, in this year of 2002, the land on which these war graves exist has become valuable and the French government have made it known that they intend allowing these grave sites to be used for capitalist development. The thought of bulldozers and construction activity operating upon these plots is abhorrent to many workers who see this as a lack of respect, gratitude, reverence and esteem, etc for those who died for “freedom”. The harsh question should be asked: What respect, gratitude, reverence or esteem did these reluctant and unsuspecting heroes ever have when they lived? A basic understanding of capitalism would indicate that the only freedom workers ever fight for in wars is the freedom for their national, capitalists to do exactly as they wish to make a profit.

Ron Stone

Proper Gander: Screening The Working Class (2014)

The Proper Gander Column from the January 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Occasionally, TV companies allow programme-makers to bite the hand that feeds them. A recent mouthful was the Royal Television Society Huw Weldon Memorial Lecture Totally Shameless: How TV Portrays The Working Class (BBC4). In this insightful and engaging polemic, Owen Jones explains why it’s become acceptable for television to denigrate the working class.

As the broadcasting industry expanded from the late 50s, new opportunities arose for people from lowlier backgrounds to enter the profession. Consequently, a growing number of TV shows reflected working class experiences, from Galton and Simpson’s edgy sitcoms to gritty dramas like Cathy Come Home and The Spongers. By the mid 80s, the working class had been weakened by the decline of the unions and the rise of individualism. The media and the government started to drum into us that ‘we’re all middle class now, apart from those scrounging chavs’. The popular perception of class has shifted towards being defined by culture, according to a study by polling group Britain Thinks. Someone who listens to Radio 4 and owns a cafetière is ‘middle class’, while someone who reads tabloids and watches soaps is working class.

Worryingly, the term ‘working class’ has often become equated with the derogatory term ‘chav’. Because of this change in the way we see class, and fewer opportunities being available for people from poorer backgrounds to enter the television industry, the traditional blue collar working class has virtually disappeared from our screens. The schedules have become dominated by ‘cops, docs and frocks’, with the ‘docs’ – or documentaries – often being voyeuristic prole-baiting sneerathons. Gypsies, for example, are presented as ‘a strange breed to be prodded through the bars of their cages’. Extreme examples of benefit claimants, such as families with a dozen kids, are paraded as the tips of uncouth, freeloading icebergs. It’s now the norm for television to depict the working class as ugly stereotypes like Vicki Pollard and those chewed up and spat out by The Jeremy Kyle Show.

Jones’ argument usefully illustrates how television mirrors and contributes to the current belittling of the working class. He wants to fight back with a return to programming which reflects working class struggles honestly, and not through the distorting prism of bourgeois ideology. He doesn’t spend long enough discussing how the belief in a ‘middle class’ gives a misleading view of society’s real class structure. However, he rightly prefers to use definitions of class based on ‘wealth and power’, rather than lifestyle. After all, ‘an aristocrat who watches The X Factor is still an aristocrat’.

Mike Foster

The Review Column: Why Students Demonstrate (1968)

The Review Column from the June 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why Students Demonstrate

As any surviving Suffragette will agree, demonstrators, in their time, are rarely popular—a fact which contains the seeds of its own consolation. Most workers, accepting their lot, are quick to condemn anyone who tries to disturb their apathy with protests drawing their attention away from the television set and onto social problems.

So it is that the students are denounced wholesale, as long haired layabouts who dissipate wildly generous grants in promiscuous sex and punch ups with the police—and their horses.

This, of course, is a maliciously distorted picture. The majority of students scrape by on meagre grants, and have to swot hard for the simple reason that, being workers, they must pass their exams on schedule. Even the small minority who may go in for violent demonstrations are by no means the dirty villains they are made out to be.

It is more than a formality to condemn the violence of some of the demonstrations. There was certainly some inexcusably ugly behaviour from the students when the pro-Smith Tory M.P. Patrick Wall went to speak at Leeds University last month. This sort of activity gets nobody anywhere, although it does arouse sympathy for Wall.

It is not being kind to the students to point out that an inescapable—and useful—feature of youth is its desire to reform the world, confident that it can do better than the mess which, it thinks, its elders are responsible for. At the same time a student has every encouragement to investigate and discuss the world—and under capitalism that means world problems, like nuclear war and poverty.

Perhaps some of the scorn for students springs from the suspicion that they might be thinking, probing and responding more than the ordinary worker in his semi-detached.

But how much cause for concern have they? The demonstrations are at the moment about the wrong issues—about the symptoms of capitalism's malaise instead of its root cause. The real issue, the one worth demonstrating about, is whether we keep capitalism or have a society fit for humans to live in.

The Local Elections

With each successive test of their electoral popularity, the Labour Party falls to undreamt-of depths. The results of last month's local elections almost defy belief; it is impossible to imagine what emergency, what gimmick, would be enough to save them in a general election.

Perhaps we are at a turning point in political history—no less than the break up of a major party of capitalism and a consequent reshaping of the political set-up. It is not surprising that Labour's debacle has come so soon after the triumphs of 1964 and 1966. This has happened before; in 1906, for example, when the Liberals swept in on a landslide on massive promises of reform.

The anarchies of capitalism, its disputes and conflicting interests—and finally the First World War—exposed the Liberal pledges, soured their image and in the end finished them as a political force. What would follow, if a similar fate befell the Labour Party? At the moment there is no sign of a comparable alternative; if none emerges the Tories will be opposed by only fragments—by what remains of the Labour Party, by a few Liberals and Nationalists and, who knows, perhaps by some neo-Nazi M.P.s.

Another major reform party may grow out of the ashes of Labour's defeat, but the experience of this government, if of no other, should have been enough  for the working class. It should teach them that no capitalist party can solve their problems, that capitalism cannot be run in their interest, that this social system smothers and kills the strongest of reformist intentions.

It should be a standing warning against political promises and tricksters, and persuade the workers of the urgency of establishing a new society.

Integration into What?

In the uproar which followed Enoch Powell's odious speech, it was inevitable that certain facts on immigration should be overlooked.

It would be idle to pretend that there no problems connected with a movement of population—within, as well as across, frontiers. But at most the immigrants may aggravate problems in housing, hospitals and schools; they cannot cause those problems because they already exist. Immigration may expose social inadequacies, which can also be uncovered by events like war and slump. And, as usual, the people who face up to the problems and deficiencies of capitalism are the working class; not racialist politicians living in comfort, dreaming of Greek poetry in Belgravia.

We should also not forget that the immigrants themselves may be ignorant of the facts of their situation. They plead for integration; it is pertinent to ask, integration into what? The assimilation of the immigrants would mean that they join the labour market on the same terms as other workers, that they can be legally swindled by the insurance and hire purchase companies on the same sort of agreements as the native born, that they can take on the lifetime debt of a mortgage at the same rates of interest as anyone else.

Their children will be trained, in schools and universities, to take their place as workers alongside others, They will be subjected to the same degrading exploitation. the same poverty, the same waste of their lives in servitude to the master class.

Immigrants have as much to learn as the rest. As they become integrated into the working class they must realise their social situation. and that no worker can escape the repressions of capitalism.

They must also come to understand what has to be done about it.

Workers disunited (1988)

Editorial from the July 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Who are the workers? People who go to work, of course: those who have no alternative and must work in order to live. The necessity is created by the constitution of capitalist society. There is an owning class, to whom all the means of producing and distributing wealth belong. The fundamental fact of ownership establishes the pattern of life for the remaining nine-tenths of the population. They have to sell their labour-power for wages, on an exploitative basis: to produce surplus-value—rent, interest and profit—for the owners. Outside the minority who live by ownership, we are in the working class, and consequently in the struggle against the capitalist class.

The belief that a lot of workers are not in it because they belong to a "middle" class is a very useful one to capitalism because it is divisive. It was institutionalised in an Act of Parliament in 1864 which commanded the running of workmen's trains. These continued until the second world war. They were early-morning trains whose passengers paid approximately one-third of the normal day fare. The purpose was to hold down wages in industry and the distributive trades, and there was a long list of unskilled and semi-skilled occupations eligible for workmen's tickets. Clerical workers were excluded, and the tickets were not issued from stations further out on the lines. Thus clerks were separated from "workers" and could go to work later. They could also look down on them because workmen's trains were slow, crowded and dirty; and could live in outer suburban districts while the labouring sections were held in the inner cities.

Nevertheless, clerks and the "professionals" are all in the working class. They are as insecure and as vulnerable to the problems imposed by capitalism as all the others in the non-owning nine-tenths; very often, their respectability is a nastier kind of poverty. To realise the solution of these problems, their first and greatest breakthrough must be to [recognise] the fact of their class position. We live in a world of Them and Us, but it is necessary to identify Us.

Does this mean that the labouring poor have got to embrace workers who think they are middle-class as their brothers and sisters? The unskilled and semi-skilled in general know they are working-class, because they are continually told so; what they need to learn is some implications of it. Principally, it is for the "superior" workers to face up to and act upon. They must grasp that they are not superior, that the middle-class is a myth, that all those who work for wages or salaries are in the same boat. When they understand this, they can stop insulting other members of their class—in particular, by romanticising versions of working-class life which are disguised imputations of inferiority.

The left is guilty on this count. Most of those who pronounce the word "worker" with veneration don't think they themselves are workers; they are the educated vanguard who choose to get among the workers. If that conception were true, a person would be much more among workers in a football crowd than in a left-wing gathering. But whose doctrine is this? It reasserts the divide-and-rule outlook and the contemptuous stance of capitalism. The capitalist says the workers are stupid and vicious. He wants this repeated by one section of workers against another; his position depends in it. The reply of class-conscious workers is that they are educated in a sense he can never be, and that their—our—capability will get rid of the wealth-based arrogance of his kind.

Class awareness is the all-important condition for bringing a new world into being. It arises from existence under capitalism; workers become all the time more responsive to their environment, the framework of which is the wages system. The task of socialists is to give precision to those responses. We judge all claimants to working-class support by their attitude to class. Whoever conceals it or distorts its meaning is acting contrary to the interests of the workers. The apparent divisions between social and occupational groups are shadows cast by the real and irreconcilable division between capitalists and all workers. Class rule can and shall be ended, through the understanding of what class is.

Marx and Spencer (2003)

Book Review from the November 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

The First Darwinian Left. Socialism and Darwinism 1859-1914. By David Stack, New Clarion Press, 2003.

This book is in part a reply to Peter Singer's A Darwinian Left: Politics, Evolution and Co-operation (reviewed in the April 2001 Socialist Standard) in which he agreed with those who have turned Darwinism into a theory of biological determinism and pleaded for reformists to become biological determinists too.

Stack points out that, when Darwin's theory was first making headway at the end of the 19th century, amongst its prominent advocates were Socialists and leftwing reformists. Only, what they saw in Darwin was not a theory of biological determinism but a theory of evolution that could also be applied to human society.

Reformists, such as Ramsay MacDonald of the ILP in Britain and Edouard Bernstein in Germany, saw Darwin's theory of evolution, when applied to society, as backing their case for a gradual reform of society. According to them, since society was a sort of organism it could not be changed mechanically or forcibly by a political revolution but could only change gradually, organically, through slow evolution. Hence Bernstein's agreement to call the English translation of his 1899 criticism of Marxism, sponsored by MacDonald's ILP in 1909, Evolutionary Socialism. All this is examined in detail by Stack.

But it wasn't just reformists and gradualists who were influenced by the idea that society was an organism and that it, too, evolved. In fact, this did not come from Darwin himself at all but rather, in Britain, from the philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820-1903). The early members of the Socialist Party were influenced by Spencer, as can be seen the volumes of his Principles of Sociology, inherited from an early member, lying unread today on the shelves of our party's library. There were also favourable references to Spencer in the 1910 SPGB pamphlet on religion and in early articles in the Socialist Standard: e.g., the front-page article of the December 1906 issue was entitled "Is Society an Organism?", to which the unequivocal answer was given: "Herbert Spencer and others have so firmly established the fact of the organic nature of Society that one is surprised to find it brought into question".

How did the revolutionaries refute the gradualists' arguments for evolution? Seeing society as an organism, they saw it too as having to survive by adapting to its environment (i.e., to the technological way in which its members got from the rest of nature what they needed to survive). Society in its capitalist form was based on the private ownership of the means of production, while the production process had become socialised or collective. This arrangement was ill-adapted to its environment and so society had to change, or rather had to be changed by the revolutionary action of the working class.

The view that Darwinian evolutionism did not rule out revolutionary change was given a boost, by a passage in his presidential address to the annual conference of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Cape Town in 1905, by one of Darwin's sons, Professor George Darwin:

"The physicist, like the biologist and the historian, watched the effect of slowly varying external conditions; he saw the quality of persistence or stability gradually decaying until it vanished, when there ensued what was called in politics a revolution. These considerations led him to doubt whether biologists had been correct in looking for continuous transformation of species. Judging by analogy, they should rather expect to find slight continuous changes occurring during a long period of time, followed by a somewhat sudden transformation into a new species, or by rapid extinction".

This passage was quoted on a number of occasions in the Socialist Standard. It has to added, though, that Professor Darwin was an astronomer and mathematician not a biologist himself (though he does seem to have anticipated Stephen Jay Gould's theory of 'punctuated equilibrium').

Stack makes the point that pre-WWI Marxism was hardly influenced by the ideas of Hegel. As the pun put it, it owed more to Haeckel (a German Darwinist) than to Hegel. He offers this as a criticism but it is open to question whether Hegel would have contributed anything more, or any less, useful than Spencer. (The only people in England at the time who read Hegel were a group of Idealist philosophers in Oxford.)

Stack's book throws some interesting light on the intellectual life of the period during which our party was founded and which inevitably had some influence on it. One curious omission is any reference to Anton Pannekoek's Marxism and Darwinism that was published in English by Charles Kerr in Chicago in 1908, so falling within the period.

Adam Buick

A Darwinian Left (2001)

Book Review from the April 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Darwinian Left. Politics, Evolution and Co-operation. By Peter Singer, Wiedenfeld & Nicholson.

This book is based on the mistaken assumption that Socialists are not Darwinians. Right from the start, Socialists embraced Darwin's theory of the evolution of species through natural selection, and propagated it in the face of religious obscurantism. Indeed, a number of well-known early Marxists came to socialism through Darwinism, Karl Kautsky in Austria and Edward Aveling in England for instance.

What Singer has done is to accept the hi-jacking of the terms "Darwinian" and "Darwinism" by rightwing ideologists who see both nature and human societies as involving a competitive struggle for survival between selfish individualists. Singer does concede that Socialists accept Darwin's theory, but criticises us for refusing to extend it from nature to human societies. Socialists do indeed say this (after all, Darwin only claimed to be a biologist, not a sociologist) and have been saying it for a hundred years now, ever since we had to confront the "Social Darwinists" of the turn of the last century who used Darwin's theory to justify the rugged individualism of US capitalism during the age of the Robber Barons. Typical of such people today are the editors of the series of which this book is one, "Darwin@LSE".

The argument between Socialists and such people is not about the validity of Darwin's theory of evolution but about the evolved biological nature of humans. Are humans an animal whose biologically-evolved brain allows them to adopt a great variety of different behaviours depending on the social and physical conditions they were brought up in or is there something in their biological makeup that restricts their behaviour within a relatively narrow range which Singer lists as "greed, egoism, personal ambition and envy that a Darwinian might see as inevitable aspects of our nature"?

Certainly, humans can and do exhibit these traits, but the question is: are they innate and are humans capable of behaving in other ways too (answer: yes, of course they are)? Also, the view that the main feature of human biological nature is behavioural versatility and flexibility is no less Darwinian than the opposite view. It is in fact the more accurate, given the evidence accumulated to date by anthropologists, geneticists and neuroscientists.

Although we don't like the term a "Darwinian Left" exists and has done for over a hundred years, arguing that humans are a biologically-evolved species whose behaviour is socially, and no longer biologically, determined and that the societies which groups of humans live in evolve on a quite different basis from that of the evolution of biological species. For a start, it is a key principle of Darwinism that acquired characteristics cannot be inherited; that was the view of Lamarck which Darwinism replaced. When it comes to social and technological evolution, however, Lamarck rides again: acquired characteristics can be passed on, by non-biological means of course; which is why such evolution is much more rapid than Darwinian biological evolution, and why in fact humans have had to adapt to many different types of societies since we first evolved without our biological nature changing hardly at all. Fortunately, that nature includes precisely the capacity to adapt to different social environments.

What Singer is seeking to be is a leftwing biological determinist, a left-wing Social Darwinist. Singer, however, is not a socialist but a reformist—his hobby horse is that animals have abstract "rights" and that this should be enshrined in law—so has no problem seeing himself as the leftwing of an essentially anti-socialist ideology.

Adam Buick

Cooking the Books: ‘I’m Not Going First’ (2014)

The Cooking The Books column from the January 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

’I don’t want UK to be at the forefront of tacking climate change, says Osborne’, ran the headline in the Guardian (28 September) reporting on an interview George Osborne gave just because last year’s Tory conference. His exact words were:

‘I want to provide for the country the cheapest energy possible, consistent with having it reliable, in other words as a steady supply, and consistent with playing our part in an international effort to tackle climate change. But I don’t want to be the only people out there in front of the rest of the world. I certainly think we shouldn’t be further ahead of our partners in Europe.’

Given capitalism, and given his position as a member of the government of one of the many states into which the capitalist world is divided, his logic was impeccable. If Britain alone imposed stricter conditions than its rivals on releasing CO2 from burning fossil fuels into the atmosphere, this would increase the cost of energy to firms producing in Britain and undermine their competitiveness on world markets. The governments of other states follow the same logic. So nothing effective gets done to tackle climate change.

The main source of CO2 emissions is the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas) to power industry and transport and to provide heating and lighting. The trouble is that different states have access to fossil fuels more, or less, than others and each wants ‘the cheapest energy possible.’

So, any international scheme to reduce CO2 emissions that involved, for instance, cutting back on burning coal would disproportionally effect states for which this was the cheapest source of energy. It would increase the cost of production across their whole economy and make its products less competitive. The government of a state in this position will therefore oppose or seek to delay or water down any such scheme.

The same applies to oil. Of the fossil fuels burning gas emits the least CO2. So, a scheme to favour this at the expense of burning coal or oil would favour states with easy and cheap access to gas.

It is these conflicts of interest between capitalist states with different energy supply conditions that is preventing agreement on doing any effective to reduce even the rate of increase of CO2 emission let alone the absolute level.

It is also why no one state is going to unilateral measures to do this. Greens who campaign for their government to be ‘out there in front of the world’ on this are being naïve. Any government which did this would, by undermining the competitiveness of its industries, provoke an economic slowdown with increased unemployment and so likely be voted out of office.

Global warming is a world problem requiring a world solution. This is not going to happen under capitalism. Something may well be attempted, but it will be too little, too late. The only framework within which the problem can be solved is where the Earth’s resources have become the common heritage of all. Then there will be no capitalist vested interests standing in the way nor any market forces working against a solution.

Marxism and Darwinism by Anton Pannekoek (2003)

From the October 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

(The Socialist Party has just re-issued this pamphlet with the following new introduction)

It could be asked why the Socialist Party in 2003 should re-issue a pamphlet on Marxism and Darwinism written almost a century ago by the Dutch socialist, Anton Pannekoek? Written in 1905, it can hardly be expected to add anything new to the subject of Marxism. Also, since then, there has been a vast accumulation of evidence in support of Darwin's evolutionist theories, with the result that they are almost universally accepted. This may be true but the continuing importance of this pamphlet is for different reasons. Pannekoek brought together the works of Darwin and Marx in a way that not only showed how each complemented the other but also provided vital lessons even for today.

What Pannekoek did was to present in a few simply written pages an integrated view of our human past which enables us to see in clear perspective our origins as an animal species and also our social nature which has been a key part of developing society. He shows how these two sides of our lives, the biological and the social, have not been entirely separate. Particularly in the section “Tools, Thought and Language”, he suggests that our physical attributes, the product of biological evolution, once pre-disposed a toolmaking tradition that stimulated abstract thought, language and an ability to develop socially by accumulating our experience from one generation to another. Eventually this dynamic interaction between the physical, mental and social with the natural environment was expressed as culture and then latterly, history.

What is also important in this pamphlet is its awareness of change. This is not just a reminder of the impermanence of things but also of our powers to create a society better able to provide for our needs. It was for this that Pannekoek recognised the importance of a scientific approach. Although he was trained as an astronomer and mathematician and made significant contributions in these fields, he also realised that it was in the study of human relationships and social problems where sound theory should lead most urgently to sound political action. It was this that took him into the fields of Darwinism and Marxism. “Thus, both teachings, the teachings of Darwin and Marx, the one in the domain of the organic world and the other upon the field of human society, raised the theory of evolution to a positive science.” (page 6)

With The Communist Manifesto issued in 1848, The Origin of Species in 1859 and the first volume of Capital in 1867, within a few years, Darwin and Marx placed our understanding of human origins and developing society on a scientific basis. This gave great strength to radical opinion which challenged supernatural ideas of creation and elitist views of history. Henceforward these lost much of their authority and were placed on the defence.

But the use of Darwinism was not only by those who were against creation and the political power of religion. Vulgarised as merely the “survival of the fittest” in the economic competition between individuals “social Darwinism” was used to justify class society. In this view capitalism was depicted as “the natural order of things”.

Pannekoek comments, “Strong as these arguments may appear at first sight they were not hard for socialists to overcome”. In countering these views he cited the social nature of humankind which meant that individuals draw their strength from co-operation with others. Indeed, human development would never have been possible without co-operation. Because it conferred vital survival advantages on the group co-operation can be said to be more in line with our natural inheritance.

This being the case, although strictly speaking, nothing humans can do can be said to be “unnatural”, it is evident that the class relationships of the capitalist system and the competitive economic individualism through which they operate are most destructive of the interests of the whole community. It was Pannekoek's vision of our past and of our future possibilities inspired by the works of Darwin and Marx that still has the utmost relevance to the plight of humanity today. It sets out the political means by which we can bring our social nature and our needs as individuals into harmony with social relationships based on co-operation.

This is why we are re-issuing this classic pamphlet, not simply because it is a historical document but also because it still blends the science of our origins as a species with an understanding of social development, our problems and what needs to be done to solve them. Like many radical writers of his day, Pannekoek was greatly impressed by the development of science in all fields and especially its application in rapid technical innovation. He was optimistic that progress would lead to a great working class movement and political action to create a classless society in which all means of production and resources will be held in common by all people and used solely for needs.

The fact that this is still to be achieved only adds to the urgency of our need to realise Pannekoek's vision. “With the abolition of classes the entire civilised world will become one great productive community . . . Here a new career opens for man; man's rising from the animal world and carrying on his struggle for existence by the use of tools, ceases, and a new chapter of human history begins.”

The pamphlet can be obtained from:The Socialist Party, 52 Clapham High St, London SW4 7UN for £1.30 (postage included). Cheques and postal orders should be made payable to “The Socialist Party of Great Britain”.

Diary of a worker (1980)

From the November 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

Monday

Woke up. Went to work. Came home, had tea. Switched on box, sat down, fell asleep. Woke up, switched off box, went to bed. Couldn't sleep, finally dropped off at 1 o'clock.

Tuesday

Six o'clock alarm went off. Dragged myself out of bed. Missed bus, late for work. Came home, had tea, switched on box, load of rubbish on a Tuesday. Watched a programme called The Voyage of the Beagle which I thought was a Walt Disney adventure story. Turned out to be about someone called Darwin collecting bugs. Fell asleep in the armchair. Woke up, switched off telly and went to bed. Couldn't sleep, so read Penthouse instead.

Wednesday

Prayed for alarm not to go off. Alarm went off. Pulled myself out of bed. Quick cup of tea and some toast. Switched on tranny for time check. Disc jockey gibbering away. Switched off quickly. Dashed out to bus stop, missed bus, late for work. Bit of excitement in work today. The management was holding a presentation for old Dobbs, who was retiring after fifty years service with the firm; gave us a break from the usual boring routine. They presented him with a digital alarm clock, guaranteed for ten years, which means it will probably last longer than he will. Came home, had tea, switched on the television. Catastrophe! Telly wasn't working. Slumped in chair completely stunned. Too numb to gave a catnap, so I decided to read the Sun which I didn't have time to do in the tea break. Finally decided to have an early night. Couldn't sleep, so I decided to try counting sheep, only trouble was that they all seemed to have old Dobb's face.

Thursday

Hoped the alarm was broken. Alarm not broken. Crawled out of bed, had breakfast. Jones next door offered to give me a lift into work every morning in exchange for my giving him petrol money, which meant that I could have an extra half-hour in bed every morning. Sauntered out of house and climbed into car. Car wouldn't start. Climbed back out again. Missed bus, late for work. Got a red-hot tip from a man at work whose cousin drinks in the same pub as a man who works in a stable, so at dinner time I nipped out to the bookie's and stuck a pound each way on Dangling Carrot running in the three-fifteen at Doncaster. Horse got beaten by a nose. Came home, had tea. Television fixed. Switched on, sat down. Good night for television. Fred and Ginger tripping the light fantastic. Fell asleep. Woke up, switched off box, went to bed. Finally dropped off at two.

Friday

Hoped alarm would fail to go off. Alarm failed to go off. Panic. Jumped out of bed, threw on clothes and rushed out. Quick "Good morning" to Jones's bum sticking out of from under bonnet. Missed bus, late for work. Read in the paper today about a chap who had just won three quarters of a million pounds on the football pools. Too much money for one person. They should divide it up into lots of smaller prizes so that more people would have a better chance of winning. Besides, you couldn't be happy with all that money. Look at all those stories you read about how unhappy rich people are.

Got another sure-fire tip today, this time from the canteen lady whose granny plays the ouija board; Pie In the Sky running in the two-thirty at Lingfield. Since I got paid I could afford two pounds each way. Unfortunately, it didn't have a prayer. Came home, had tea. No telly tonight, instead went up the pub. Had a few pints, played darts, had another few points . . . staggered home, went to bed, no problem falling asleep.

Saturday

Fell out of bed before alarm went off. Too ill to have breakfast. Actually managed to catch the bus and was congratulating myself when I remembered that I don't work on a Saturday. Back up the pub tonight. Lively and interesting discussion about whether that last goal was offside at today's match, and then down to the serious business of playing our darts league match. Out of the pub and into the Chinese take-away, then home in time for the late-night double movie bill: Carry on Wage-Slave followed by: The Night of the Blood Sucking Parasite.

Sunday

Best day of the week. Walked round to the pub for a couple of pints before dinner. Afterwards it was such a nice day, I decided to stroll home through the park so that I could work up an appetite for my favourite meal, that traditional English dinner of roast soya beef, and instant Yorkshire pudding. I was crossing the square when I spotted this guy up on a soap-box, so I stopped for a laugh. He was talking about a world without money! What a load of rubbish. I was going to stay and shoot down all his commie arguments but then I realised that it was almost time for Match of the Day so I decided instead to leave with one really witty parting shot, I shouted: "Why don't you go back to Russia?!" Nobody laughed. They were probably all Commies too. Imagine, a world without money! No money to buy all the things you want. Doesn't bear thinking about. Arrive home to see Jones's feet sticking out from beneath his car. He asked me if I was going back round for a few pints later on. Mumbled an excuse about having to something in the house. Actually, I didn't want to admit that I'd spent the last of my pocket money, so I stayed in and watched the telly instead. Some good films showing on a Sunday night, only trouble is that they are on too late. Went to bed. Couldn't sleep. Very restless tonight, kept thinking about that guy and his world without money. Told me that I was a slave! Crazy. I'm free to do what I like. Eventually dropped off to sleep at three . . . at six the alarm went off . . .

Tone.

Preface to Daniel De Leon by Stephen Coleman (1990)

The following is the preface by the author to his biography of Daniel De Leon, which was part of Manchester University Press' Lives of the Left series. 

Thanks go to La Bataille socialiste  blog for originally putting this on the net.

This biography is a study of uncompromised revolutionary hope and dismal political failure. The story of Daniel De Leon is not that of a populist leader or a radical legislator, but of a militant and unswerving Marxist and irrepressible socialist activist who could see what was wrong and what must be changed in the mean and sordid atmosphere of turn-of-the-century American capitalism. The wrongs which he exposed and the change which he sought concerned not only the nature of the capitalism itself, but also the ways in which that system tends to dominate and misdirect efforts to resist it. The wrongs were to outlive De Leon; the change has yet to come. Still people of reason argue with passion, and sometimes despair, about why socialist ideas have never taken root in the USA; why the American working class has been so successfully accommodated within the capitalist system; why the message of De Leon has been utterly unheeded. It is to be hoped that this biographical study of the pioneer of American Marxism will contribute to an explanation of the hopes and failures which characterised the early socialist tradition in the USA.

Writers of history have not been kind to Daniel De Leon. Apart from the generally uncritical hagiographical accounts of his life written by De Leonists in defence of their tradition, most historians have mentioned De Leon only in passing, usually disparagingly and often inaccurately. When I first came to study the history of socialist thought in the USA, I was surprised (and irritated) to discover that no serious scholarly work dealing exclusively with De Leon’s ideas has been published. It reminded me of the absence of serious scholarly works on the great English Marxist, William Morris, which had at one time been a feature of British socialist historiography. It was clear to me from the outset that De Leon was a figure of major intellectual importance in the history of American socialist thought, and it was just no good for his life and ideas to be left to the realm of superficial caricature. As I embarked upon a study of De Leon’s writings and speeches it became obvious that I was considering a substantial political theorist, an evaluation of whom should not be clouded by tedious psychological investigations or other long-obsolete sectarian squabbles. In the time that I have written this book I have come to conclude that most of the original attacks upon De Leon were motivated by the fact that he would not abandon his principles in order to court the kind of popularity socialist often attract when they stop being socialists. The secondary critics of De Leon have too often been inclined simply to regurgitate the prejudices of those who wrote before them without comprehending the political context of such prejudices. I must plead guilty to an absence of biographical interest in the deeper qualities or defects of De Leon’s personality, nor would I  expect others to evaluate the political ideas of a Marx, a Mill or a Morris on the basis of criteria which are best left to computer dating agencies. In so far as De Leon’s character influenced his effect as a political thinker and activist such matters are considered in the following pages. It is my hope that readers will be motivated by this account of De Leon’s life to turn next to his many very readable and easily available writings, in which are to be found some of the soundest and most straightforward Marxist thinking between the years 1890 and 1914. The account which follows is intended to clarify the context and meaning of such writings as well as to raise a number of criticisms which the openminded reader will want to consider.

I acknowledge with gratitude the contributions to the production of this book of several people. Melvin Harris, whose profound intellectual generosity has been an inspiration to me, allowed me free access to his unique collection of material by and on De Leon; furthermore, the discussions I had with him and the suggestions I received helped me immensely to understand some of the important themes examined in this book. Frank Girard entertained me while I was researching in the USA, offered me the benefit of his years of scholarly and committed reflection upon De Leon’s contribution to the socialist movement, and (together with Ben Perry, with whom he is writing what promises to be an excellent history of the Socialist Labor Party) gave me insights into the De Leonist tradition which I could not have obtained otherwise. Adam Buick has encouraged and, sometimes, directed my research, especially into De Leon’s conception of socialism. Clifford Slapper’s very useful comments on the text and consistently intelligent suggestions of ways to improve both the stylistic and political quality of this book are much appreciated. I have received useful information from Edmund Grant, Ronald A. Sims, John O’Neil, Louis Lazarus and a number of others in the USA who did not know me personally but who heard that I was writing about De Leon and were kind enough to send me literature by, or about, him. In expressing my sincere thanks to these people, I must make clear that I take responsibility for any errors of fact or fault of interpretation which may have found their way into the text. I would also like to thanks Sally McCann for her diligent and very helpful work in copy-editing this book. Above all, I dedicate this book to my father, who first taught me about the importance of history and the vision of socialism, which, when combined, can change the world; without his support over many years this book could never have been written.

Stephen Coleman

An American Marxist (1990)

Book Review from the May 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Daniel De Leon. By Stephen Coleman. Manchester University Press. £25.

The contribution to socialist thought of Daniel De Leon has been neglected over the years. Most labour historians have mentioned him only in passing, usually in scorn and often inaccurately. Stephen Coleman’s book, in Manchester University Press’s “Lives of the Left” series, rectifies the situation. But who was De Leon?

By 1886 Venezuelan-born Daniel De Leon was 34 and living in the Hispanic quarter of New York. An ordinary family man, his main concern was to achieve secure employment as a university law lecturer. However, he was soon to come into conflict with the status quo and leave university life for good. He immersed himself in the radical movements of his day, finally emerging as a Marxian socialist in 1890. He joined the American Socialist Labour Party (SLP) which he was to dominate, transform and remain in for the rest of his life. He stood for socialism and nothing but, and his distinct brand of Marxism and party organisation is still extant today.

De Leon’s major concern, states Coleman, was “to apply the orthodox position of Marx to the industrial conditions of his own time, and to simplify its reasoning and conclusions”. He goes so far as to include him in the tradition of popularising socialist ideas of William Morris and Robert Tressell and to write that it would be hard to name any other source of Marxian education in the USA. De Leonist bodies also emerged in Canada and Australia.

In Britain De Leon’s works were a major influence on the revolutionary minority which left the Social Democratic Federation in 1903-4. This minority formed the British Socialist Labour Party and the Socialist Party of Great Britain. Coleman quotes Jack Fitzgerald, a founder member of the SPGB, who thought the American SLP’s journal The People “the best socialist journal published in English”.

De Leon’s standards were rigorous, and Coleman makes it clear that he imposed them on the SLP. For a start, membership of the party was not automatic. Applicants had to demonstrate an understanding of SLP principles before joining. Neither were waverers tolerated for long. That unity was not to be had at any price is demonstrated by the party split of 1899, when a halving of the membership was regarded by the remaining members as a gain in the party’s strength. James Connolly was one of the more notable waverers to be ousted. Now more famed for his Irish nationalism than his socialism, he left the SLP fold with De Leon accusing him of introducing racial (national) and religious questions into party tactics and organisation.

De Leon’s influence was such that principles would not be exchanged for a “broad-church” numbers-game. It was this principled stand for socialism and nothing but that influenced those who found the Socialist Party of Great Britain. But this is as far as it goes. There is another aspect of De Leonism that Coleman could have more clearly distinguished from this political influence: socialist industrial unionism.

“Socialists tend to die frustrated or deluded: frustrated that human emancipation has not been achieved, or deluded that it has”. Such is the socialist’s lot according to Coleman. But perhaps De Leon’s life shows that frustration and delusion need not be mutually exclusive. There is no doubt that De Leon’s political life was a model of socialist commitment and principle. The frustrating fact was that workers continued to be, in Coleman’s words, “a recalcitrant force”, persistently denying ballot success to the SLP. And though Coleman emphasises that De Leon was never deluded into thinking that socialism had been achieved, it could be argued that he held illusions about how it could be achieved – illusions born of frustration.

By 1905 De Leon was rejecting the notion of a solely political transformation of society. He asserted the need for an economic wing to the socialist movement and put forward a three-stage theory of revolution: socialists winning the battle of ideas, victory at the ballot-box, and socialist industrial unions supplying the economic might to enforce electoral victory and workers’ power. He also ventured a view of future socialist society that would be an industrial unionist administration. To this end he was a major influence on the formation of two industrial unions: the Socialist Trade and Labour Alliance and then the Industrial Workers of the World – both ultimately to fail.

Socialist unions were never to be the short-cut to a mass class-conscious movement that De Leon might have hoped for. How could they be when, unlike the political wing, an understanding of basic socialist principles was not a condition of membership? Coleman argues that De Leon was not wrong to condemn “pure and simple” trade unions. “His mistake was to attach too much importance to leadership, assuming that dishonest leaders imposed themselves on unwilling union memberships”. The fact is that these leaders had the support of the workers “and this would not be changed by retreat into socialist-run unions, but by hard and sustained persuasion of those who accepted the union status-quo”. In Britain industrial unionism was taken up with enthusiasm by the SLP and even by a short-lived minority in the early SPGB.

Coleman is quick to point out that De Leon’s post-revolutionary plan, to replace a political state that would “wither away” with a work-based industrial administration, had its unsolved problems. What about those who do not work? For example, the retired, disabled and those in full-time education. Neither, Coleman states, were De Leon’s views on socialism in one country nor his plans for a post-revolution labour-voucher system what one might expect from a consistent socialist. What about free access?

These were certainly lapses. But De Leon was a product of his times. Coleman claims that his industrial administration theory was borrowed from Edward Bellamy’s utopian work Looking Backward and of course even Marx came up with a labour-voucher scheme in his Critique of the Gotha Programme. In final mitigation, Coleman points out that De Leon was unable to spend time working out an entirely coherent conception of socialism because he was too busy recruiting socialists.

Although Coleman can hardly suppress a glowing respect for this giant amongst pioneer socialists, his is not an uncritical account of De Leon’s life and ideas. De Leon’s failings as a revolutionary socialist are openly and clearly brought out and, in many respects, account for the greater part of Coleman’s work.

Indeed this book, apart from its biographical content, should achieve the status of a handbook to the do’s and don’ts of socialist strategy. As well as being a well-researched scholarly work, it is accessible and eminently readable. It only remains to add that a cheaper, paper-back version will be published later.

John Dunn

Early days (1986)

Book Review from the April 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marx in Manchester, Ruth and Edmund Frow (The Working Class Movement Library, Manchester £1.80p)

Today, no public library is complete without a number of books dealing with Marxism on its shelves. What is true of municipal libraries equally applies to the retail book trade and extends to university libraries.

It was against this background, and the centenary of Marx's death, that the Manchester Public Library Committee decided to organise an educational exhibition on the close relationship of Marx and Engels to the city of Manchester. Held at its Central Library, (which incidentally stands on the site of Peterloo) the exhibition was so sell attended that it was given an extended run. Arising directly from the event, the Working Class Movement Library decided to print R. & E. Frow's Marx in Manchester.

The booklet is more than a detailed account of Marx's many visits to Manchester. It deals fully with the important reasons for them, among which was the necessary and essential research for Capital and his need to pool knowledge and share experience with his many close friends and comrades in the town. These included his friend and collaborator Engels, who lived in Manchester for 20 years, Wilhelm Wolff ('Lupus"), the Manchester teacher to whom Volume One of Capital was dedicated, and Samuel Moore, who translated Capital. Given Marx's constant ill-health, his visits also provided an opportunity for medical treatment by Dr. Edward Gurnbert (the Physician in General) who was Marx and Engels' doctor and a close friend. Often Marx and his wife Jenny would stay ay the Gurnbert house.

On Engels' arrival in Manchester in December 1842—just after the conclusion of the Lancashire General Strike (referred to by the bourgeois historians as the "Plug Riots.")—the town had already undergone a huge industrial transformation. It had become the centre of a new factory system in which the mode of production had been completely changed by the use of steam and machinery. Its cotton products were famous throughout the world. Here was the first great factory town the world had ever known; the birthplace of large-scale capitalist production and the modern proletariat. The workers there had experience of the class struggle (the town was an important centre for the Chartist movement) and Robert Owen's teachings were well known (he had been employed in a Manchester mill). 16 August 1819 (Peterloo) was still well remembered by the workers.

The main source of information in Manchester for Marx was Chethams Library. He told his publishers later that the journey had been taken exclusively for research for this book on political economy. Engels wrote: "at that time Marx had never yet been in the reading room of the British Museum. Beside the libraries of Paris and Brussels, besides my books and extracts seen during a six weeks' journey in England we made in the summer of 1845, he only examined such books as were procurable in Manchester." Some of the material collected was put to good use by Marx in his Poverty of Philosophy. Also a large amount of the historical material contained in Capital was obtained from Chethams Library.

Marx was elected as an honorary delegate to the Chartist Labour Parliament held in Manchester in 1854. This conference was attended by delegates from all over the country, and Marx's message to them was a clear and concise summary of what was happening in the political arena. He urged that the proceedings should be aimed at organising the working class for the conquest of political power and the immediate taking over of the means of production.

In 1864, the First International was founded. It constituted one of the most memorable episodes in the history of socialism. The International had branches in Manchester and Salford, both of which has the support of the local Trade Council. Marx's key role in the IWMA meant that yet again he had direct links with the Manchester working-class movement. Incidentally, Engels regularly posted the Manchester Guardian to Marx, who closely followed the movements of the Cotton market, as a reading of Capital will show. 

The authors list the monies paid annually to Marx by Engels, during the latter's stay in Manchester. They also provide an exact and detailed account of Engels' income from the firm of Erman & Engels, in which his father was a junior partner, thus clearing away the considerable confusion on this issue.

This low-priced booklet is published by an organisation of workers, the profit motive plays no role in their decision to write and publish material on working class history. As a source of information on an aspect of Marx's life not usually dealt with, it deserves a place on every bookshelf.

Wally Preston

Voice From The Back: Zillionaires And Nonsense (2014)

The Voice From The Back Column from the January 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Zillionaires And Nonsense

The Mayor of London Boris Johnson has told people to stop bashing the super-rich. 'Mr Johnson accused ‘everyone from the Archbishop of Canterbury to Nick Clegg’ of bullying the group he defined as ‘zillionaires’ and said the most rich of all should receive ‘automatic knighthoods’. ........ Mr Johnson said the rich deserve our ‘humble and hearty thanks’ for their contributions to charity and the exchequer - quoting figures that say the top 1 per cent pay 29.8 per cent of all UK income tax’ (Independent, 18 November). Since Mr Johnson's zillionaires tend to get knighthoods anyway we wonder at his concern for them, especially when all their wealth has come from the exploitation of the impoverished majority.

No Recovery For Some

It is often difficult to get up to date figures about poverty in Britain but a recent survey backed by public money has come up with some current statistics. 'Nearly nine million people across the UK are living with serious debt problems, according to a new report. The Money Advice Service (MAS) also said very few people were making any attempt to get professional help. The problem is particularly acute in five English cities, where more than 40% of the population is struggling to repay debt. According to the survey, 18% of Britons, 8.8 million people, consider they have ‘serious’ financial issues’ (BBC News, 27 November). These figures give the lie to political nonsense about a so-called economic recovery.

Not So Glamorous

The following scene is a common one throughout capitalism. 'The line for the soup kitchen starts to form at dusk, and by the time it is fully dark more than 200 people are waiting to be fed. There are toddlers in prams, and military veterans in wheelchairs’ (Times, 29 November). The scene is not all that unusual but this is not happening in Asia or Africa but in modern sophisticated Santa Monica Boulevard, Hollywood. Every night for 27 years the Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition has given a hot meal to some of the 53,800 homeless estimated to live in Los Angeles. Behind the chauffeur driven limousines and expensive cocktails of the Hollywood cinema dream factory lurks the sordid reality of modern capitalism.

Harsh Reality

British MPs like to pat themselves on the back and boast about improving living standards, but recent information from official sources paints a completely different picture. 'Food poverty in the UK has now become such a big problem that it should be seen as a ‘public health emergency’, a group of health experts says. In a letter to the British Medical Journal, six leading public health figures warned poor nutrition could lead to a host of problems. It comes amid reports that people are struggling to feed themselves. The UK Red Cross has started asking for food donations for the first time since World War Two. And in October the Trussell Trust, which runs 400 food banks, said the numbers of people it was helping had tripled to 350,000 in the past year’ (BBC News, 4 December). Poor nutrition for thousands of workers in one of the most developed capitalist countries in the world despite politicians boasts is the harsh reality of the profit motive society.

Poverty Stricken Millions

'More working households were living in poverty in the UK last year than non-working ones - for the first time, a charity has reported. Just over half of the 13 million people in poverty - surviving on less than 60% of the national median (middle) income - were from working families, it said. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation said low pay and part-time work had prompted an unprecedented fall in living standards’ (BBC News, 8 December). These figures underestimate the extent of the problem as the JRF's annual Monitoring Poverty and Social Exclusion report was written by the New Policy Institute and tracks a range of indicators, including government data and surveys covering income, education and social security, and has a very frugal concept of what poverty is. In the 2011-12 period, the amount of earnings before a household was said to be in poverty was £128 a week for a single adult; £172 for a single parent with one child; £220 for a couple with no children, and £357 for a couple with two children. How many of the ‘we are all in this together’ MPs could survive on £128 a week?