The Old, Old Story. (1916)

From the January 1916 of the Socialist Standard

A trade-union conference was recently held at the Central Hall, Westminster, at which three ministers addressed the delegates with the avowed object of gaining their influence against any movement by munition workers for an increase in wages. The ministers, with their usual contempt for the representatives of the workers, delivered their speeches and took their departure. What they had said, though economically unsound, contradictory and absurd, was to be taken as gospel and transmitted to the workers. The delegates made no attempt to expose the ludicrous mistakes and wilful misrepresentations contained in the statements of the three ministers. They came to heel, and carried out the instructions of their masters—as good labour leaders have always done in the past.

Asquith figured first, and destroyed the case of his colleagues before they spoke. Four-and-a-half million workers, one-third of the total, had received an average increase of three and sixpence per week. An increase of a fraction over 5 per cent. for the whole of the working-class. He then showed that the cost of living had risen in the same period by 30 per cent. Thus proving that the working class of this country had sustained a reduction in wages of 25 per cent.

No wonder that Mr. McKenna followed with the remark: “I am not sure that I am very fond of explaining to an audience of this kind why, in the present circumstances, it is contrary to the interests of the State to put forward claims for higher wages in particular trades.” The State having, without friction, achieved a 25 per cent, reduction all round could, of course, afford to pay for the overtime worked in those particular trades and even grant a substantial increase in wages but, that would not be business, and besides, the rest of the workers might want a rise as well. We pass over the insinuating remark that the speaker dislikes the task of dissuading the workers from attempting to improve their conditions. He is no doubt fully alive to its contemptible nature. The insinuation is only one trick in the miserable game played by professional politicians and their colleagues the labour leaders.

Mr. McKenna then proceeded to argue that higher wages means higher prices. He may or may not believe in this oft exposed fallacy. But he is confident of one thing: it is a convenient doctrine to impress upon the workers. Especially that section of the workers completely at the mercy of the masters because they are unorganised. Millions of workers, who's wages are below the average, and who are unable to distinguish the real cause of their poverty, are easily persuaded that their fellow-workers are responsible for some of it when they strike for higher wages.

"Very large wages” said Mr. McKenna, “have been earned in many cases. Now, half the trouble would never have arisen if those large wages had not been lavishly spent.’’

Mr. Asquith had previously demonstrated to the delegates that the workers had sustained a 25 per cent. reduction in wages. Thereby proving that their purchasing power had been reduced. But Mr. McKenna bad the audacity to tell them that four-and-a-half million workers whose actual wages have only fallen by 15 per cent. instead of 25 per cent, are responsible for half the trouble, because they spent this fictitious increase, together with their overtime money, instead of saving it. Note, too, the concern of the little brother of the very poor. “The larger demand amongst that section of the community which was enjoying higher wages and higher income sent up the price of the article and diminished, therefore, the power to purchase of their poorer neighbours."

The whole burden of Mr. McKenna’s speech is summed up in his concluding sentences. “Those who demand higher wages must show themselves worthy of higher wages. They must show they can save in the interests of the State and their neighbours, their families and themselves . . . That is the demand you have to make, and, until you can do so, you are not justified in asking for higher wages for a special trade to the injury of all other classes of the community."

His speech was a transparent attempt to raise a popular outcry against that section of the workers who, in the present crisis, could by organised action demand and obtain a substantial—though temporary increase in the price of their labour-power.

It was reserved for Mr. Runciman to insult the intelligence of the assembled delegates. Many labour leaders profess Socialism. Mr. Runciman, of course, knew the extent of their Socialistic knowledge—nationalisation of industries and the like so, after informing them that the Government had spent forty millions buying up sugar, he gravely informed them that it was “one of the greatest Socialistic experiments ever entered upon by any government.” They also purchased wheat from India, the United States, Canada, and the Argentine in enormous quantities. “That” he said, “was Socialism again, but it was Socialism on a business basis, and I should always be prepared to do business on those terms.” And the delegates, well, they quite appreciated these profound remarks because they coincided with their own limited knowledge and confused ideas of Socialism. We read, therefore, without a symptom of surprise that the conference “decided to send to the members of all trade unions copies of the speeches and commend the appeals to their earnest and favourable consideration.’’

F. Foan

The Good Time That is coming. (1915)

From the April 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

To-day we are being told that this is the last war — the war that is to end war. The world that emerges from this inferno, we are given to understand, will never be as in the past. We are wading through a sea of blood, but it is to a New Jerusalem, and a system where antagonisms between nations and classes will have disappeared and rivalry in armaments will have gone for ever. There is to be an enduring peace, in which the legitimate purpose of our lives—“production, and buying and selling"— will go on uninterruptedly—especially the buying and selling of the workers. So say all the capitalist hacks, political, religious, and philosophical.

The war that will end war is the capitalist excuse for war —for what even they are ashamed of. Because they are ashamed the rulers of each country endeavour to fix the blame upon their opponents. So long have they preached the blessings of peace and commended themselves for its lengthy duration (as if anybody but they desired to break it), that no words are strong enough to describe their provocation. “The rights of small nationalities"; “Scraps of paper," and outrages—without which no war has ever yet been prosecuted—are daily recited with melancholy repetition in the capitalist Press, that they may sink into the minds of the workers, become part of their thoughts and loom large in their conversation, and appear to them as reality—as substance, instead of shadow—as something that matters to them.

In order that the flow of recruits may continue, unstinted praise is lavished on those who have joined. They are all good fellows and the brainiest of fighters now, though but a few short months ago many of them were “just poor creatures without initiative or ability." But the ruling class wants them to-day because they are strong and can be trained to fight.

So, in the columns of the Press, they fall upon their necks, woo them with colour posters, and whisper to them of “our" common nationality. We are all brothers to-day, they plead; one nation, one class, one interest, and one purpose. What grandeur there is in the thought that all our differences have been swept away and we are absolutely united against our common foe! Never can there be a relapse. When, in the future, differences arise and class antagonisms—but there, that is unthinkable—are we not one!

How beautiful they all read —the fairy promises of those who need your help! The gaudy futurist pictures of those who are stricken with the deadly fear that they may lose some of their wealth, or that their power to exploit you may be curtailed or purloined by the capitalists of another nationality. They may well commend you for your patriotism, for it is their country you are fighting to preserve to them— their country, and they hold the bonds, the scrip and the gilt-edged securities.

Would you have your country, they plead, ravaged by the foreign invader as France and Belgium have been ravaged ? Will you submit to slavery, outrage, and murder at the hands of the Germans, or will you bring your “strong right arm" to bear against our common enemy and preserve unsullied, our glorious nationality from the deadly peril of German Militarism?

These are words on their lips; but business is in their minds, though they dare not speak the whole truth. If they did they would say: We are at war with the capitalists of Germany for markets, in order that we may increase our trade and profits. Our share in the earth is at stake; our land, mines, railways, and factories may be lost to us, or tribute may be levied upon them by the invader, as has been done in the case of the property of the Belgian capitalists. Keep the German out, or you will be his slaves instead of ours.

According to Sir Edward Grey and Mr. Harcourt, “forced labour for private profit amounts to slavery." This definition exactly describes the condition of the working class in every capitalist country, England included. For every worker being divorced from the means of life is forced to labour for the profit of some capitalist or capitalists.

So the workers in all capitalist lands were slaves before the war. How, then, can they be made slaves by the Germans? But their slavery can be intensified, it may be retorted. True, but not necessarily by reason of a change of masters. Conditions for the workers must intensify as a result of capitalist development, by the simple process of replacing men with machinery, and with women and children, thereby increasing the unemployed and furnishing the capitalists with the necessary power to reduce and to speed up their workers

The economic whip, the spur of the “sack," is far more effective as a slave-tickler than was over the lash of the ancient slave-driver. The capitalist has the experience of history behind him; he goes by results, and knows that the wage slave, driven by the fear of hunger, is more effectively under his control, more amenable to discipline, and has less independence and spirit, than chattel Slaves and serfs. Docility and efficiency are the attributes of the slave, and the wage-slave possesses these in a fuller measure than slaves nave over possessed them all down the steps of time.

When society has once passed out of the stage of chattel-slavery there can be no general return to it. Those trifling exceptions affecting comparatively small numbers in different parts of the world —such as peonage, indentured labour, and the forced labour of the Belgians who receive rations for work performed —these forms only go to show the similarity of conditions for those subjugated—a mere subsistence, under any form of slavery, including capitalism. It is impossible for the workers to be inflicted with something they already suffer. But can the war remove the infliction?

One writer of some standing says: “Whatever the result, the world that will emerge when the deluge of blood has subsided will be a world that will be new and strange." But those who understand the system, who analysed it before the war and have seen the anarchy and greed of the capitalists, even while they were calling upon the workers to make sacrifices for them and their country —those who understand the nature of capitalism, expect no fundamental changes.

There will be, no doubt, delirious and fanatical expressions of joy, with, perhaps, a universal holiday—as when a king is crowned —on the proclamation of peace. But capitalism, with all its horrors, will remain to us. Miners will go down to their death in mines known to be dangerous; workers in every town, sunk in poverty, will continue to breed consumption in reeking slums. The un-classconscious workers will still be goaded by the wretchedness of their conditions to strike, and they will suffer all the penalties of daring to dispute with their masters. The confusionist will still be engaged poisoning the minds of the workers with every kind of superstition that can possibly keep them in ignorance and subjection. The outlook of the worker cannot change as the result of war; while the philosophy of the capitalist—which begins and ends with profits —will remain the same in all the countries concerned. The workers of no country need fear to have slavery imposed upon them, for there is no form of slavery, tried or untried, that can mean deeper poverty, toil, and degradation for them.

The “better time that is coming "can only be the result of the workers’ own efforts, after they have fought the class war to a finish. For this is the only war that concerns the working class — that can open up a new world for them. We, who understand this, continue the struggle even in the midst of national strife, because the quarrels of the capitalist rulers of the different countries—no matter how many millions of workers are involved—are as dust in the balance compared with the quarrel we have with the ruling class. We therefore call upon the workers of all lands to make an effort to understand Socialism. that they may be fully equipped for the last war—and their emancipation.

F. Foan

The Prostitute Press. (1915)

From the April 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism has produced many vile institutions, but none more corrupt and degraded than the capitalist Press, by which the workers are systematically hoodwinked and led astray.

Whenever a section of the workers are goaded by the horrible conditions of their existence, into striking, the cheap and nasty Press lets itself go and pours out a perfect deluge of lies. If the men come out in accordance with the wishes of their trade union officials we are told that they have been led astray by demagogues and agitators; if they strike against the wishes of their officials .they are denounced for having thrown over their “responsible leaders ’’!

For example, on the occasion of the strike movement in South Africa last year, when nine of the strike leaders were deported without trial, that organ of light and truth, the “Morning Post,” presented us with the following gems of editorial wisdom:

first editorial.

"Supposing that Ulster were pacified as Warsaw was pacified on a famous occasion, a legacy of hatred and resentment would be left behind that would sooner or later bring to ruin the new system of government. Force, the Liberals have always told us, is no remedy. Certainly, the attempt to apply it to Ulster will lead to utter and perhaps irretrievable disaster."

Second editorial.

“The Union Government seem to have broken the back of the general strike in South Africa . . . Now, these are strong measures, but it is sometimes necessary to be cruel in order to be kind. General Botha was faced by the danger of a most dangerous and calamitous anarchy and he treated the case with the decision and energy of a soldier and a man of courage and character."

As the showman says: “You pays yer money and you takes yer chice."

But not only does the Press drug the workers' minds in the interest of the masters; it also assists them to poison their bodies by booming adulterated and unwholesome products. Who does not remember the “Standard Bread" craze that was so assiduously boomed by a section of the Press some time ago? One might have thought that the sole concern of these newspapers was for the purity and wholesomeness of the people’s bread, instead of which all the wheat sweepings which had been lying in the warehouses for years, and which are generally used for feeding cattle and pigs, were suddenly taken away—one can guess where they went to.

We Socialists have always contended that lying is the common character of the capitalist Press, and is not confined to the German section of it; and our attitude is justified by our opponents. Even Lord Selborne, in a letter to the “Times" says:

“The Press Bureau consistently slurs over bad news and exaggerates good news. The Press lays every emphasis by poster, headline, and paragraph on that side of the war which is flattering to our pride. It keeps further in the background the news which is disagreeable to us, and the result is that our sense of proportion is being destroyed and that perspective is ceasing to exist. I could multiply instances of what I mean. Frequently, lately, we have seen the roll of casualties of some battles in Flanders amounting to two hundred, three hundred, four hundred men, or even to half a battalion. These casualties took place in February, January, or December, but who can recollect that at the time we received any impression of such loss by the news published? The fact is that these casualties have usually occurred when we have lost a trench or a line of trenches, and the men holding them have been killed or made prisoners. A day or two after this had happened we were probably told that a trench which had been lost had been brilliantly recaptured, but we had never been previously told that we had lost the trench, and we were never told at the time what the loss of the trench or its recapture had cost us.”

Here we have an admission by a leading light of the capitalist class that the people are deliberately being gulled by their penny and halfpenny oracles.

When capitalist society is a thing of the past the Press will be run by the people themselves for its true purpose, viz., for the dissemination of news, and only then will it be free from the hypocrisy, lying, and cant that characterise it to day, because then there will be no capitalist interests to bolster up and no subject class to be kept in mental darkness.

H. T. Edwards

Votes for Ladies (1999)

Book Review from the November 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sylvia Pankhurst. A Life in Radical Politics. By Mary Davis, Pluto Press.

Sylvia Pankhurst, one of the daughters of the famous suffragette leader Mrs (Emily) Pankhurst, will have done at least one thing for modern feminists: drawn their attention to the complexity of the votes issue before 1914.

Most people will probably think that the suffragettes who chained themselves to railings, knocked off policemen's hats, etc were demanding universal suffrage, i.e. votes for all adult men and women. Actually—and this was a conscious policy decision by the Women's Social and Political Union to which they belonged—they were campaigning for "Votes for Women on the Same Terms as then obtained for Men". But before 1914 not all men had the vote; owing to a property qualification, admittedly fairly low, only about 70 percent of them did. To have extended the vote to women on these terms would (according to one figure quoted by Mary Davis) have enfranchised less than 8 percent of women. Nearly all married women would have remained voteless as their family's "property" was in the name of their husbands.

The WSPU was aware of this and was prepared to go along with it. This meant that what their militant tactics aimed at was, in the contemporary phrase, "Votes for Ladies", votes for rich women. In other words, they were not democrats who were campaigning for votes for all women but, whether intentionally or not, people whose policy would have strengthened the political power of the propertied class by increasing the proportion of capitalist voters at the expense of working class voters. No wonder the Socialists of the time opposed them, as did many ordinary democrats.

However, not all suffragettes were in the WSPU and not all of those in the WSPU favoured this policy aim, Sylvia Pankhurst among them. In fact she fell out with her mother and elder sister over the issue and was expelled from the WSPU in 1914. Her branch became the independent East London Federation of Suffragettes (ELFS) which pursued a different strategy, of including working class women and demanding universal suffrage.

When the war broke out, the WSPU went super-patriotic. The name of their paper was changed from The Suffragette to Britannia and they began, as Sylvia Pankhurst put it, to hand "the white feather to every young man they encountered wearing civilian dress". She moved in the opposite direction, opposing the war. In 1916 the ELFS changed its name to Workers Suffrage Federation and in 1917 its paper Woman's Dreadnought became Workers' Dreadnought; in 1918 the WSF became the Workers Socialist Federation. The WSF was one of the organisations involved in the founding of the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1921. Pankhurst, however, was by this time an anti-parliamentarian (so much for votes, for men as well as women) and was opposed to the new party seeking to be affiliated to Labour. For this she was denounced by Lenin as an "ultra-leftist". She lasted only six months in the CPGB before being expelled.

The Workers' Dreadnought continued to appear until 1924 and was a valuable source of information and documentation on the opposition groups in Russia, including those who argued—as indeed did Pankhurst herself—that Russia was heading for state capitalism not socialism. Mary Davis records that in 1923 Pankhurst set up a rival unemployed organisation to that of the CPGB, "the Unemployed Workers' Organisation (UWO), whose slogan, 'Abolition of the Wages System', was supposed to expose the 'reformist' nature of the demand of its rival—'Work or Full Maintenance'". This could only have been a gesture, but one Socialists can appreciate.

By 1924 Pankhurst had tired of the working class and radical working class politics and reverted to being essentially a single-issue reformist. She remained a feminist (deliberately choosing to become "an unmarried mother") advocating such reforms as the introduction of maternity benefit. In 1948 she joined the Labour Party. But from the 1930s on her main centre of interest became Ethiopia. She championed its cause against fascist Italy and came to be a friend of Emperor Haile Selassie. In 1956 she went to live in Ethiopia where she died four years later at the age of 78 and is buried there.

It has been reported (Times, 18 August) that Gordon Brown is supporting the idea that the vacant plinth at Trafalgar Square should be filled by a statue of Sylvia Pankhurst. Evidently, he is unaware that she once advocated the abolition of the wages system and money. Still, come to think of it, better a statue to someone who held this view however briefly than to some warmonger.

Adam Buick

Angry Christians, Hot Dogs and Venezuela (2016)

The Halo Halo! column from the June 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘A majority of millennials now reject capitalism’ reported the Washington Post (26 April) after a recent Harvard University poll concluded that 51 percent of people between 18 and 29 do not support the system and only 42 percent said they did. More interestingly, 33 percent said they supported socialism.

Let’s not start winding up the World Socialist Movement just yet though, our job isn’t quite done. The Washington Post pointed out that ‘Capitalism can mean different things to different people’, and noted ‘Bernie Sanders is profoundly changing how millennials think about politics’. Ah, Bernie Sanders, that American capitalist politician who thinks he’s a socialist. Perhaps someone should inform the Washington Post that ‘Socialism’, too, means different things to different people.

Whether the rightwing Christian Post website has been bamboozled by Bernie, too, is not clear but some joker seems to have told them that socialism has been established in Venezuela and they’re not happy about it. And that Harvard poll has pushed them right over the edge. Anyone browsing their website be warned, you can almost feel their anger and indignation blasting its way through cyberspace and smashing against the inside of your computer screen.

This survey, they say, ‘goes to show you that higher education can’t fix stupid – especially when it’s flowing from the mouths of anti-capitalist educators’. ‘These educators’ they go on, ‘take advantage of their captive audiences, rambling on with their vast “knowledge,” mistaking the blank stares and half-smiles in the room as “interest” having no idea that if they heard themselves in playback, they’d probably stab themselves with their pointing sticks’.

And we thought Christians were such nice, peaceful people. ‘Before all you anti-capitalists jump on the socialist bandwagon’, they warn us, ‘why not first take a look at what’s happening in Venezuela, that pitiful place on the globe where it takes a wheel barrel full of cash to buy a hot dog’. Ah, hot dogs are involved. No wonder they’re angry.

‘I know American socialists are far above eating hot dogs’ their writer explains, ‘and probably prefer munching on exotic tree bark, but if a hot dog is what’s available thanks to your beloved socialism, needing a wheel barrel full of cash to buy one is a bit much, wouldn’t you say?’

It descends into a bit of an incoherent rant after that, although a few paragraphs later we do get a clue about their anger or, at least, their confusion.

Still seething about nasty university lecturers who, although they don’t actually blame them for the economic situation in Venezuela, they do hold responsible for the result of the Harvard poll, and inform us, ‘Venezuela happened – amidst their attempts to paint a rosy picture of socialism, omitting from their lectures historical facts about the collapse of communism in the Eastern bloc’.

Well, Christian Post, here’s a historical fact for you.  There was no communism or socialism in Russia and the Eastern bloc, or in Venezuela for that matter. What they had in Russia, and in Venezuela was just another form of capitalism – administered by the state instead of by big business. And, as we saw in Russia, state administered capitalism is just as useless as private capitalism.

As for your concerns that ‘The International Monetary fund says this year Venezuela’s inflation rate will rise to 500% while other experts predict 700%. That’s why you need wheel barrels loaded with worthless cash to buy hot dogs’. Well, that’s capitalism for you – private or state run. And, we seem to recall, capitalist America too had a bit of a depression back in the 1930s.

And more recently (See wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States) ‘Recent census data shows that half the population qualifies as poor or low income, with one in five millennials living in poverty’ and ‘In 2011 child poverty reached record high levels, with 16.7 million children living in food insecure households’.

Rest assured, when we have real socialism, even in America you won’t need a wheel barrel (or wheelbarrow as we call them on this side of the pond) to collect your hot dog – you just won’t be that hungry.

Pass that on to Bernie, will you?

NW

What is Patriotism? An Analysis. (1915)

From the December 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Johnsonian Definition and Others.
The answer depends largely upon the point of view. From one standpoint patriotism appears as the actual religion of the modern State. From another it is the decadence and perversion of a noble and deep-rooted impulse of loyalty to the social unit, acquired by mankind during the earliest stages of social life. From yet another viewpoint, that of capitalist interests, patriotism is nothing more or less than a convenient and potent instrument of domination.

The word itself, both etymologically and historically, has its root in paternity. In tribal days the feeling of social solidarity, which has now become debased into patriotism, was completely bound up with the religion of ancestor worship. In tribal religion, as in the tribe itself, all were united by ties of blood. The gods and their rights and ceremonies were exclusive to the tribesmen. All strangers were rigidly debarred from worship. The gods themselves were usually dead warriors. Every war was a holy war. Among the ancient Israelites, for instance, the holy Ark of Jehovah of Hosts accompanied the tribes to battle. It was this abode or movable tomb of the ancestral deity that went with the Jews in their march through the desert, and even to Jericho, playing an important part in the fall of that remarkable city. All the traditions of the Jewish religion, in fact, were identified with great national triumphs.

The Merits of the Early Brand

Thus tribal religion was completely interwoven with tribal aspirations and integrity. Tribal “patriotism" and religion were identical. Indeed, without the strongest possible social bond, without a kind of “patriotism" that implied the unhesitating self-sacrifice of the individual for the communal existence, it would have been utterly impossible for tribal man to have won through to civilisation. Natural selection insured that only those social groups which developed this supreme instinct of mutual aid could survive; the rest were crushed out in the struggle for existence. Is it a matter for wonder if it be found that such a magnificent social impulse, so vital to the struggling groups of tribal man, received periodical consecration in the willing human sacrifices so common in primitive religious ceremonial ? Bound up with the deliberate manufacture of gods for the protection of the tribe and its works, there is indicated a social recognition of the need for, and value of, the sacrifice of the individual for the common weal.

This noble impulse of social solidarity is the common inheritance of all mankind. But being a powerful social force it has lent itself to exploitation. Therefore, with the development of class rule this great impulse is made subordinate to the class interests of the rulers. It becomes debased and perverted to definite anti-social ends. As soon as the people become a slave class “the land of their fathers” is theirs no more. Patriotism to them becomes a fraudulent thing. The “ country ” is that of their masters alone. Nevertheless, the instinct of loyalty to the community is too deep-seated to be eradicated so easily, and it becomes a deadly weapon in the hands of the rulers against the people themselves.

With the decay of society based on kinship, religion changed also, and from being tribal and exclusive it became universal and propagandist. “Patriotism” at the same time began to distinguish itself from religion. The instinctive tribal loyalty became transformed, by the aid of religion and the fiction of kinship, into political loyalty. In a number of instances in political society, as in Tudor England, the struggle for priority between religion and patriotism became so acute as to help in the introduction of a more subservient form of religion. Thus patriotism became emancipated from religion, and the latter became a mere accessory to patriotism as handmaiden of class rule.

A Most Accommodating Conception.

Though universal religion did not split up at the same time as the great empire that gave it birth, patriotism did so. The latter has, in fact, always adapted, enlarged, or contracted itself to fit the existing political unit, whether feudal estate, village, township, county, kingdom, republic or empire. No political form has been too absurd for it to fill with its loyalty. No discordance of race, colour or language has been universally effective against it.

What, then, is patriotism in essence to-day? It is usually defined as being devotion to the land of our fathers. But which is the land of our fathers? Our fathers came from many different parts of the world. The political division of the world in which we live is an artificial entity. The land has been wrested from other races. The nation they call “ours” is the result of a conquest over original inhabitants, and over ourselves, by successive ruling classes. Unlike the free tribesmen we are hirelings; we possess no country.

Nationality, of which patriotism is the superstition, covers no real entity other than that of a common oppression, a unified government. It does not comprise any unity of race, for in no nation is there one pure race, or anything like it. It does not cover a unity of language, for scarcely a nation exists in which several distinct languages are not indigenous. Nor is it any fixity of territory, for this changes from decade to decade, while the inhabitants of the transferred territory have to transfer their allegiance, their patriotism, to the new nation.

The Product of the Analysis.
The only universal bond of nationality or patriotism that exists for us to-day is, then, that of subjection to a single government. Patriotism in the worker is pride in the common yoke imposed by a politically unified ruling class. Yet it is this artificial entity that we are called upon to honour before life itself. This badge of political servitude is called an object worthy of supreme sacrifice. The workers are expected to abandon all vital interests and sacrifice all they hold dear for the preservation of an artificial nationality that is little more than a manufactured unit of discord: a mere focus of economic and political strife.

Ignoble Exploitation

Thus one of the noblest fruits of man’s social evolution—the impulse of sacrifice for the social existence—is being prostituted by the capitalist class to maintain a system of exploitation, to obtain a commercial supremacy, and preserve or extend the boundaries of a superfluous political entity. The workers are duped by the ruling class into sacrificing themselves for the preservation of a politico-economic yoke of a particular form and colour. Many so-called Socialists have fallen headlong into this trap.

Had social solidarity developed in equal measure with the broadening of men’s real interests, it would now be universal in character instead of national. The wholesale mixture of races, and the economic interdependence of the whole world, show that nationalism is now a barrier, and patriotism, as we know it, a curse. Only the whole world can now be rightly called the land of our fathers. Only in the service of the people of the whole world, and not against those of any part of it, can the instinct of social service find its highest and complete expression. The great Socialist has pointed the way. He did not call upon the workers of Germany alone to unite. He appealed to the toilers of the whole world to join hands; to a whole world of labour whose only loss could be its parti-coloured chains. And in this alone lies the consummation of that tribal instinct of social solidarity of which patriotism is the perverted descendant.

Something Better than Patriotism.

Capitalism, therefore, stands as the barrier the destruction of which will not only set free the productive forces of society for the good of all, but will also liberate human solidarity and brotherhood from the narrow confines of nationality and patriotism. Only victorious labour can make true the simple but pregnant statement: “Mankind are my brethren, the world is my country.” Patriotism and nationalism as we know them will then be remembered only as artificial restrictions of men’s sympathy and mutual help; as obstacles to the expansion of the human mind; as impediments to the needful and helpful development of human unity and co-operation; as bonds that bound men to slavery; as incentives that set brothers at each other's throats.

Despite its shameless perversion by a robber class the great impulse to human solidarity is by no means dead. Economic factors give it an ever firmer basis, and in the Socialist movement it develops apace. Even the hellish system of individualism, with its doctrine of every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost, has been unable to kill it. And in the great class struggle of the workers against the drones, of the socially useful against the socially pernicious, in this last great struggle for the liberation of humanity from; wage-slavery, the great principle of human solidarity, based upon the necessities of to-day and impelled by the deep-seated instincts of the race, will come to full fruition and win its supreme historical battle.

A Vile Use of a Noble Sentiment

That is our hope and aspiration. For the present, however, we are surrounded by the horrors of war added to the horrors of exploitation, and subjected to the operation of open repression as well as to the arts of hypocrisy and fraud. With the weakening power of religion to keep the workers obedient, the false cult of nationality and patriotism is being exploited to the full. Like religion, patriotism has its vestments, its ceremonies, its sacred emblems, its sacred hymns and inspired music; all of which are called in aid of the class interests of our masters, and utilised desperately to lure millions to the shambles for their benefit. Thus is an heroic and glorious social impulse perverted and debased to the support of a régime of wage-slavery, and to the furtherance of the damnable policy of the slave-holding class: to divide and rule.

F. C. Watts

The Beginning and Ending of the Wages System (1937)

From the February 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

When doing propaganda, we frequently meet people who claim to be Socialists, but who cannot understand that when Socialism is established there will be no wages system. They argue that, without wages, chaos would ensue.

First, let us make it clear that the wages system has not always existed. As will be seen, it is of a relatively recent growth. Broadly speaking, there have been four different systems of society: Primitive Communism, Chattel Slavery, Feudalism and Capitalism.

Primitive communism lasted for hundreds of thousands of years. In this system private property was a thing unknown, and the words “mine” and “thine” were consequently never thought of nor used by the members of that society. When travellers first went to North America primitive communism was still in existence there. It is thus that the Jesuit Charlevoix wrote about what he saw: —

The brotherly sentiments of the Redskins are doubtless in part ascribable to the fact that the words “mine’’ and “thine’’ are all unknown as yet to the savages. The protection they extend to the orphans, the widows and the infirm, the hospitality which they exercise in so admirable a manner, are, in their eyes, but a consequence of the conviction which they hold that all things should be common to all men. (Quoted by Lafargue, pp. 32-3, “The Evolution of Property.")

When primitive communism existed, the means of life were obtained chiefly by hunting and fishing, and when a member of the clan killed an animal he would share it with the other members. Some would have us believe that the present savage is a brute, living for himself without any thought for others. Lafargue has shown us that this is far from being the case. One quotation will suffice: —

In times of famine, the young Fuegians explore the coast, and if they chance to light upon any Cetaceous animal (a favourite dainty) they hasten, before touching it, to inform their comrades of their find. These at once hurry to the spot; whereupon the oldest member of the party proceeds to portion out equal shares to all. (pp. 19-20, “The Evolution of Property.")

It will be noticed that in early communist society man did not have need of wages to enable him procure the means of life.

Primitive communism was followed by a system of society based upon chattel-slavery. The change was due to developments in the methods of production. As time elapsed man learned the rudiments of agriculture. Animals were domesticated, food plants (e.g., corn, pumpkins and melons) were cultivated. Naturally these developments necessitated more work and patience. It is not surprising, therefore, that when one tribe conquered another, it did not kill its enemies but brought them back home to till the fields for the victors. As Engels puts it in "The Origin of the Family” (p. 195, Kerr’s Edition): —

The increase of production in all branches—stock raising, agriculture, domestic handicrafts—enabled human labour power to produce more than was necessary for its maintenance. It increased at the same time the amount of daily work that fell to the lot of every member of the gens, a household or a single family. The addition of more labour power became desirable. It was furnished by war; the captured enemies were transformed into slaves.

Here, again, there was no necessity for a wages system, and so none existed. The slaves received their food, clothing and shelter, direct from their masters. It was upon the basis of chattel-slavery that the empires of the ancient world were built.

In its turn this system of society decayed and was replaced by another—feudalism. Here, as in the previous system of society, we have two classes —the exploiters and the exploited. We get, on the one hand, the lord; on the other, the serf. The serf worked for his lord but did not receive wages. The serf held lands of his own which he cultivated for his own use. However, he was compelled to work on the lands of his lord a certain number of days each year. One must not imagine that the feudal lord did nothing in return. He had obligations to fulfil, and his privileges were limited. It was his duty, for example, to see to the defence of his dependents. On p. 94 of "The Evolution of Property,” Lafargue tells us that: —

During the feudal period every lord was bound to possess a castle or fortified house having a courtyard, protected by moats and drawbridges, a large square tower and a grist mill to enable the peasants to shelter their crops and cattle, grind their corn and organise their defence. The chieftain’s dwelling-house was considered as a sort of common house, and actually became such in times of danger.

That the feudal lord’s privileges and powers were limited can be seen from the following: —

The feudal lord and the vassal became co-equals once again in the communal assemblies, which discussed the agricultural interests alike of the villager and the lord: the assemblies met without his sanction, and despite his unwillingness to convoke them. His communal rights were as limited as those of the rest of the inhabitants; the heads of cattle he was entitled to send to pasture on the commons were strictly prescribed. (Ibid. p. 102.)

It was not until feudalism was in its decline that the lord was able to shake off his duties and increase his privileges.

The wages system then was not a characteristic of any of the systems of society prior to capitalism. The reason is that the wages system is part of capitalism, or rather, another name for the capitalist system.

Capital and wage-labour are the two sides of one and the same relation. The one conditions the other, just in the same way that the usurer and the borrower condition each other mutually, (p. 34, “Wage-Labour and Capital," Marx, Kerr’s Edition.)

And again:—

Capital presupposes wage-labour and wage-labour presupposes capital, one is a necessary condition to the existence of the other, they mutually call each other into existence. (Ibid. p. 33.)

The wages system was able to develop only when the common lands had been seized by the landlords and when the lands of the peasants had been torn away from them (i.e., during the 16th and 17th centuries). Then the peasants, finding themselves propertyless, without any means of life, were compelled to sell their energies in return for wages to a new kind of master, the capitalist, who was to be found in the towns. As time went on, whereas previously wages were an unusual feature, there gradually developed a wages SYSTEM.

We have shown that the wages system has not always existed. For the benefit of those who still think it will be a feature of Socialism, we add the following: —

Wages are a badge of slavery. If to-day workers receive wages, it simply means that they are slaves. It is true that the capitalist cannot sell the body of his employees to another capitalist; it is true also that a worker may refuse to work for his present master and leave him. But, if he does, what happens? Like the plundered peasant mentioned above, he is compelled to seek someone else to employ him, for he is propertyless and cannot live on air. Therefore, have it as you will, the wage earner is dependent on the capitalist class and the slave of that class.

As pointed out above, the wage earner is dependent on the capitalist class because he has no property, and because that class own the means of production. If then, the working class wishes to end its slavery, it will have to take those means of production from the present owners and convert them into the property of all society, i.e., establish Socialism.

But in doing this the workers will abolish the wages system, for then there will be no employer to say: “Sell your labour power to me and I'll give you enough money to buy the necessaries of life."

“How will the members of the Socialist commonwealth get food, etc., if they have no wages?" someone may ask. Here is the answer: Since private ownership will be done away with, no one will be able to say, "These goods are mine, I'll sell them.” On the contrary, the wealth produced (like the means of production) will belong to all society and every member will have free access to that wealth.

One last objection is possible. Will there not be a scramble? Production, having advanced to its present level, has made it possible to produce goods in abundance and in quantities enough to satisfy everybody. Furthermore, since profits will not be the aim of production under Socialism (there being no profits), goods could be turned out in still greater quantities without fear of a crisis.

To sum up, then, wages have not always existed, nor can they possibly be a characteristic of Socialist society. With Karl Marx, we say: —

Instead of the conservative motto, “A fair day's wage for a fair day's work!" the working-class ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, “Abolition of the wages system."

Clifford Allen

What we mean by Revolution (1990)

From the May 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The word Revolution, which we Socialists are so often forced to use, has a terrible sound in most people's ears, even when we have explained to them that it does not necessarily mean a change accompanied by riot and all kinds of violence, and cannot mean a change made mechanically and in the teeth of opinion by a group of men who have somehow managed to seize on the executive power for the moment. Even when we explain that we use the word revolution in its etymological sense, and mean by it a change in the basis of society, people are scared at the idea of such a vast change, and beg that you will speak of reform and not revolution. As, however, we Socialists do not at all mean by our word revolution what these worthy people mean by their word reform, I can't help thinking that it would be a mistake to use it, whatever projects we might conceal beneath its harmless envelope. So we will stick to our word, which means a change in the basis of society."

—William Morris in How We Live and How We Might Live.

Human nature and Socialism (1990)

From the May 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

t seems that everyone is an expert on human nature, right? Especially politicians, who often make remarks about the general nature of humans. Why, everyone knows that humans are an inherently greedy, selfish, violent, nasty species. I mean, what could be more obvious?

This conventional wisdom is both wrong and unscientific. There has been a lot of debate over the years, for instance the Nature vs Nurture debate, but it seems that the public at large remain ill informed. The public's judgement is of course affected by the unchallenged remarks of people in positions of power. We not only do ourselves a great injustice by condemning our fellow humans in this bigoted way. we also place ourselves and our collective future in great danger. That such views should be widespread amongst all sections of the population is a striking commentary on the education most people receive.

It is worth noting that when people make the scathing remarks concerning our nature they often conveniently exclude themselves and their friends. Actually, when most people talk about human nature, they are referring to human behaviour—two different concepts.

Human nature implies a built-in, inherent attribute, and we do have these. For instance, the urge to satisfy human needs such as food, clothing, and shelter. Human behaviour, on the other hand, includes learnt or acquired behaviour. The fact is that we are a social animal and that our behaviour is virtually all learned behaviour.

One to two million years ago, human beings emerged as a species from an ape like creature, and for at least the last 100,000 years we have had basically the same bodily form. The thing that ensured our survival was and is co-operation and this has been a constant indispensable feature of human society. Unlike other animals we long ago dispensed with adapting ourselves biologically to the environment, but instead we adapt the environment to ourselves. For hundreds of thousands of years we lived in primitive hunter-gatherer societies of tribal communities. One of the outstanding features of these communities was the ability of their members to co-operate and live in harmony for their own mutual benefit. If they had the behavioural attributes that we now so glibly condemn in ourselves, human beings would have perished forever millions of years ago.

The main things that people are born to do are to eat, drink, keep warm, imitate, copulate and learn. The relations they enter into with each other at a given time to accomplish these ends set the pattern for the social outlook and the social code. In the course of history humanity has moved from relative simplicity in the social arrangements in isolated communities into a world of large interconnected industrial 'complexes. What people think and how they act is not due to some fundamental instinct, but is the result of customs, regulations and inhibitions that spring from the social environment in which people of past history have had to solve the problem of living. In other words, that people are able to think and act is a fact of biological and social development, but how they think and act is a result of social conditions. Since private property came into existence some 10,000 years ago. the pursuit of property has bred murder, cruelty, fraud, enmity and other anti-social behaviour.

There has been little discernible change in the fundamental make-up of humans, yet there have been considerable changes in social conditions. For example, stealing today is looked on as a criminal act whereas hunter-gatherer societies did not have any concept of stealing because there was no private property.

As to the assumption of selfishness, there are thousands of people who give selfless devotion in all manner of voluntary effort. There is co-operation going on all around us if you care to look, despite the competitive, one-upmanship, law-of-the-jungle philosophy which is rammed down our throats. It comes as a surprise that, despite the enormous inhuman stresses that are placed upon people by the society we live in, there are not more murders, rapes and crimes in general. The selfish, cruel, anti-social conduct that is laid at the door of human nature is really only the outcome of systems based on private property, which compel people to engage in predatory conduct in order to survive.

We cannot afford to let an erroneous view of ourselves as human beings prevail. There is absolutely no reason why we cannot live in peace and harmony. That this will mean that we must make a fundamental change in our system of society is something we will come to when we know about ourselves as humans.

Dave Tildesley
World Socialist Party of New Zealand

Myth of overpopulation (1990)

From the November 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

According to T. A. Pahl. in a letter in the Johannesburg Star (27 February) under the heading ‘Villain is high birthrate', “irresponsible black birthrate" is the cause of poverty, hunger disease, housing problems. unemployment, etc. This racist version of discredited Malthusianism is just as false as it was originally, in 1798.

Of course, no proof is offered, nor is possible. for this miserable doctrine. On the other hand, according to Dr Org Marais. Deputy Minister of Finance: “About 1.7 percent of the total tax-paying public pays 73 percent of the country's tax” (Star, 16 February). The Receiver of Revenue has also shown that about one-third of workers in this country do not earn enough to be liable for any Income Tax.

Housing? “Blacks earn too little to qualify for home loans”, reported Norman Chandler ". . . 91 percent of blacks could not afford the R800 a month minimum requirements of the Urban Foundation. Banks and Building Societies, while 83 percent were unable to meet the Housing Trust's £600 a month minimum requirement" (Star 22 November 1989). Most whites face similar problems.

The bottom line is that capitalism is responsible for all the miseries of, and linked with, poverty, while apartheid has concentrated them on blacks, in this country. Not overpopulation, but the chronic and often planned underproduction of food for the market, with access limited to what people can afford, is the cause of those social sores. Only with the establishment of real socialism/communism, with production and distribution solely for direct consumption, can humanity start to end the menace of starvation for millions.

As long as the means of production and distribution are owned and controlled by the capitalist class, privately or through the state, the workers will continue to make wealth for the rich to enjoy and the producers will remain in servile poverty. In fact, poverty in underdeveloped regions promotes population growth, while in Europe a negative birthrate is worrying governments and employers.

In any case, the main point is: can this world sustain present and future populations, expanding or contracting? Again, let the Star reply: “Every demographer knows that world resources are easily capable of supporting a population many times its present size" ('The Other Ethics of Birth-Control'. 22 July 1976).

What a cruel joke: blaming the productive majority, the poor, for their poverty. In any case, proliferation of the poor can hardly threaten available resources: their buying powers do not expand in proportion to their numbers. The facts are readily available in such works as The Legacy of Malthus by Allan Chase (University of Illinois Press, 1980) and The Economic History of World Population by Carlo M. Cipolla (Penguin Books, 1970).

Alec Hart

In? Out? Big Business or Little England? (2016)

From the June 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the run-up to the referendum on Britain’s continued membership of the European Union, we assess the views of the Far Left on this ‘vital’ issue.

Although divided into a 57 or more mutually antagonistic sects, an ever-expanding sea of alphabet soup,  many of them put up a surprisingly united front.

What say ye, oh my brothers?

SWP: We say OUT! Although diminished from its pre-Delta days, the Socialist Workers Party (Socialist Worker) is still the largest of the Left groupings. As such, it very much sets the pace in regards to the ‘questions of the day’. Its pamphlet, The EU, a left case for exit, gives a good account of the nature of the European Union. The dedication to neo-liberal economic policies, such as the infliction of austerity misery on the Greek people and widespread privatisation in the interest of the ‘fat cats’, is made clear. Equally, the creation of a murderous Fortress Europe policy to keep out migrants is spelt out, as is the fact that the EU is no source of progressive social reform. To weaken ‘British Imperialism’ vote no.

RS21/ Counterfire: We say OUT! These meaningless SWP splinters follow the example of their older brother.

SPEW: We say OUT! The ‘Socialist’ Party of England and Wales (formerly the Militant Tendency) (paper: The Socialist) says ‘We call for a vote to leave the capitalist EU, and to build a socialist Europe’ for much the same reasons as its arch rivals. They may not have noticed but their much-vaunted construction project has not even got to the planning stage. The choice on the ballot paper is not between a ‘socialist’ (whatever nonsense that might mean to them) Europe and a capitalist Europe but between a capitalist UK as a member of the capitalist EU and a capitalist stand-alone UK.  SPEW takes no part in the Lexit group, the anti-EU campaign group formed on 13 April.

CPB: We say OUT! The third (maybe second) largest Left party has an influence beyond its size due to its activism within the unions. Its pamphlet Britain and the EU: What next? sets out the pro-business agenda of the EU, its anti-democratic nature (pots and kettles?), the decline and fall of Delors’ Social Europe, pro-US origins as a political version of NATO, war-mongering interference in Ukraine and Yugoslavia. The Communist Party of Britain is the prime mover in Lexit. CPB General Secretary Robert Griffiths is the group’s chairman. To be fair, although the CPB are nay sayers, a fair crack of the whip is given to the INNERS in the CPB associatedMorning Star.  

CPBML: We say OUT (very loudly)! In a large and glossy handout, this group of ‘anti-revisionists’ say “Out of the EU!” The Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist), producer of Workers, is notorious for its nationalist stance. Much talk is there of ‘our country.’  Our country? No, Their country! Nation is a capitalist concept. They own, they control: We are their slaves who must break our mental programming. The workers of the world have no country. Even by Left standards, this group is a disgrace.

CL: We say OUT! The Communist League, an intrusion into the UK of the American MilitantTrotskyists, succinctly state ‘the challenge facing workers is to see our independent class interests… not to look to the capitalist rulers for protection – be they inside or outside the EU’. Quite right but this doesn’t stop them voting OUT.

NCP: We say OUT! The (not so) New Communist Party (New Worker) leaflet The truth about the EU features a cartoon of a trio of what look like B-17s bombing a town of peaceful demonstrators. While no one can ignore the neoliberal agenda of the EU, such alarmism is rather over the top. NATO is not at all the same thing.

SL/B: We say OUT! The Spartacist League/Britain, the Sparts, once known for their chanting, with publication Workers Hammer, decry the European Union as the ‘Enemy of Workers and Immigrants’ (aren’t migrants workers too?). But in or out austerity and racist anti-migrant policies will continue.

WRP: We say OUT! The orthodox Trotskyist Workers’ Revolutionary Party (daily paper: News Line, its masthead strangely Sun-like) says Vote Leave  to ‘bring down the broken Cameron government… bring in a workers government’.  A likely outcome  – we don’t think. And, plural or singular, workers don’t need governing.

CPGB-ML: We say OUT! Noisy and unapologetically Stalinist, the Communist Party of Great Britain Marxist-Leninist (paper: Proletarian), consider Brexit will ‘weaken British, European and even US imperialism’ (i.e., providing opportunities for Chinese, Russian and Arab imperialism) ‘taking our struggle for socialism one small step forward’ (or making not a blind bit of difference).

RCPB(ML): We say OUT! The Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist) (Line of March) holds that ‘working people themselves must set the agenda’. Quite right too. Yet the agenda of the referendum has already been set by the ruling class. By voting in their referendum, we are playing their game.

SLP: We say OUT! Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party ‘lambasts’ the ‘free movement of both labour and capital’ and boosts import controls on goods and people. The less said about this (especially the latter) the better.

ISLP: We say OUT! The Independent Socialist Labour Party – an anti-Scargill Scargillite – also go for the OUT vote.

RESPECT: I say OUT! The fan club of the man with the hat call the EU an ‘undemocratic plutocracy, a bankers’ Europe’. And is not the UK an undemocratic plutocracy, a bankers’ paradise? And did not the gorgeous one rethink his views after being booed when sharing a platform with Farage? He did not.

Against the flow

RCG: The Revolutionary Communist Group, very active backsliders from Trotskyism, is yet to declare. The publishers of Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! seem to have little interest - presumably because the effects on its beloved Irish, Palestinian, etc, etc, nationalism and Cuban state capitalism are negligible.

IMT: The International Marxist Tendency issuing Socialist Appeal, still boring within the Labour Party, are hedging their bets. ‘The task of Marxists… is not to come out in favour for either reactionary camp’. So neither an IN or an OUT. That’s a good start.

Workers Power: After nicely contrasting the ‘racist and chauvinist OUT campaigners’ to the ‘pro-capitalist/ neoliberal IN campaigners’, the fighters for a Fifth International (as if four weren’t bad enough) say IN! Workers Power (publishing the pleasantly pink Red Flag) is now entryist in the Labour Party. Which is an IN. Strange huh?

SR: Socialist Resistance ‘Ecosocialist Feminist Revolutionary’ are INNERS. Leader Alan Thornett simplistically aligns Europe and manufacturing (good) and US and finance capital (bad). Although the drawbacks of the European Union are noted, they call for the opposite vote to the chief leavers, UKIP and the “Tory Right” (aren’t they all that?).

AWL: The Alliance for Worker’s Liberty (Solidarity) stands for an IN vote, saying, in particular, it reduces ‘nationalist antagonisms’.  The AWL has always used hostility and contradictoriness to create a clear red line between it and the other Left groups. Its reasoning on this issue seems a little half-hearted.

SEP: Socialist Equality Party are for an active boycott. ‘No to the European Union – No to British nationalism!’ Fair enough. ‘For the unity of the British and European working class!”  And of the world, one might add. ‘For the United Socialist States of Europe!’ This slogan, thought up by Trotsky himself, has been used by INNERS and OUTERS and, here, by abstainers.

CPGB: The Communist Party of Great Britain (journal: Weekly Worker) also recommends a boycott of the referendum. Its essentially tactical reasons include opposition to British nationalism, opposition to the EU as a capitalist body, as well as a theoretical opposition to referenda as undemocratic.

How would ‘Brexit’ affect the working class in Britain?

Capitalism:  No change. The European Union is just as dedicated to free market capitalism and neoliberalism as the British government is or is likely to be. The latter’s austerity programme, independently arrived at and carried out, is just as brutal as the one that the EU imposed on Greece.

Working conditions: No change. For the average worker, in terms of pay and conditions, the benefits of membership or non-membership of the European Union are negligible. The days of the ‘Social Market Economy’ are long gone and will not return.

Civil rights: No change. In or out, we are dependent on our rulers,  on how much they think they can get away with.

Privatisation: No change. One aim of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is to ‘open up’ (privatise) health care and education. Does anyone believe that such a programme is not on the British government’s agenda anyhow? In any case, state bureaucrat or company director, a boss is still a boss.

Democracy: No change. The undemocratic nature of the European Union is matched by the undemocratic nature of the British state. In or out, we, the working class, have little or no say in the decision-making process. In the most crucial decisions, the endless blood-soaked ‘interventions’, even our ‘democratic’ representatives in parliament have little or no say.

Migration: No change. The European Union is responsible for the Mediterranean massacres, a direct result of the Fortress Europe policy. Would these deaths continue if the UK was not part of the EU? Of course. Would the Calais concentration camps still be there? Of course. And perhaps greatly swollen with Poles and Eastern Europeans too (we can only hope, think the UKIPers).

We say

A plague on both your houses!

Membership of the European Union is a concern for the capitalist class, not the working class. Because the master class is divided on this and cannot decide amongst themselves, they have passed the buck to ‘the people’ in the form of a referendum. Its timing is a cynical ploy by the Cameronian old boys’ club to head rival UKIP off at the pass. The referendum is a non-choice between two all but identical forms of capitalist oppression.

The outcome of the referendum can’t matter that much to the capitalist class – otherwise we would not have been asked. Have we been generously granted a referendum about the constant rounds of military intervention that have caused the deaths of millions? Or on global warming, a possible result of which might be the destruction of the entire planet? Or on nuclear weapons, the most colossal and dangerous waste of resources? Or on austerity, whose grinding misery has resulted in scores of suicides and deaths through stress?

Voting either IN or OUT is an act of class collaboration, to stand alongside either slimy representatives of finance capital like Cameron and Osborne or loathsome opportunists like Farage and Johnson. Your choice: Big Business or Little England. Those who swallow this are deluding themselves.

The working class interest lies in the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of socialism. This referendum is not worth the shedding of a single drop of working class ink.

Vote neither IN nor OUT. Either is a vote for capitalism. Instead, use the opportunity to positively express your desire for socialism. A ballot paper ‘spoilt’ for socialism is a happy ballot paper.

Kaz

The Result of "Trust": A Lesson of the Great Strike. (1926)

From the June 1926 issue of the Socialist Standard

Huxley once said that Hutchinson Stirling's “explanation” of Hegel had made the darkness opaque. So, it may be said, the “blackness” of Friday, 17th April, 1921, has been made to look almost white against the opaqueness of Wednesday, 12th May, 1926. The greatest Trade Union action that was ever taken in any country was closed by the most gigantic swindle in the whole history of Trade Unionism.

Numerous explanations are being given by members of the General Council, by “Right Wingers’’ and “Left Wingers,” by Labour Party apologists, and industrial action idiots. It may be useful to examine some of these “explanations,” even if certain important facts are not yet available to outsiders.

The Communists, who are “united” into several sections, issue two rival papers—"The Workers’ Weekly” and the “Sunday Worker”—in contradiction to the instructions from Moscow. The “Sunday Worker” fills up a large space with the capitalist “dope” of betting and sports information, giving “tips” on horse-racing to those of its readers who may have become tired of the contradictory policies given in the leading articles. Like the rest of the Communists the writers in the “Sunday Worker” preach the slogan of “Follow vour leaders." When, as in the present case, these “leaders” sell out their followers the excuse is made that they were "bad” leaders. The simple fact is that wherever the rank and file accept “leaders” such acceptance always provides the conditions for selling out. While the “Sunday Worker” encourages the following of leaders it is helping to sell out the workers, no matter who those leaders may be. And in sheer wooden-headedness it admits this fact in the issue of 16th May, when it states :—

“The humiliating terms forced on the railwaymen is the result of Right Wing betrayal and Left Wing cowardice inside the General Council of the T.U.C.”

And as the “Left Wing” are either members of the Communist Party, or supporters of Communist notions, the above quotation makes it clear that Communist leaders sell out as soon as any others.

On the next page of the same issue we are told :—

  “At the end of the strike, when the Right Wing leaders, with the acquiescence and even support of some Left Wingers, left the miners in the lurch, while the workers stood bewildered, aghast, and finally deeply humiliated at this unexampled betrayal—all through the workers led the way."
  "It will only be a step from this to the conclusion that they must now find leaders who will lead.”
  “The workers have had a practical demonstration—and the Left Wing's job is to drive the lesson home in the unions—that they must find new leaders, leaders who will fight instead of running away."

In brief, as the Left Wingers have displayed cowardice and supported betrayal the workers should now select—Left Wingers. Wonderfully simple!

To further illustrate the idiotic ignorance of the Communists, we are told in the same leading article that “Parliament very rapidly receded into its real place in the background.” The Parliament that issued the Proclamation bringing into operation the Emergency Powers Act; the Parliament that day by day issued fresh regulations under that Act, even to the forbidding of the importation of money to assist the strike; the Parliament whose orders prevented the "Sunday Worker” (see issue of 23rd May) as well as others, from stating what they wished to say, was supposed to have receded into the background. How curious.

“The Workers' Weekly," the official organ of the Communist Party, has had for its slogan, “All power to the General Council." In the issue of 21st May its leading article is headed, “Cashier the Cowards." Further on it says:—

   "The truth cannot be concealed. We had men at the head of the General Council who were more afraid of winning than of losing."
   "But why did the better and more virile of the members of the General Council—those we have called the 'Left Wing'—allow themselves to become involved in their panic?"

Only echo is left to answer. Then follows this brilliant gem :—

"The principle of All Power to the General Council was more than vindicated by the promptness and steadfastness of the rank and file. But clearly the composition of the Council must be changed, and that at once."

That is, having “cashiered the cowards," the rank and file is to replace them by “more virile” Left Wingers who become involved in the cowards' panic. And is not the “ principle" of all power to the General Council equally "vindicated” by the action of the latter on the 12th May? “ Where ignorance is bliss," says Gray, “it is folly to be wise.” The Communists must simply be overflowing with bliss.

Mr. Wheatley, M.P., is looked upon as a "Left Winger," and in "Forward” for 22nd May he reviews the situation. After stating that the workers have sustained a smashing reverse, he says :—

   "Not only had the T.U.C. deserted the miners, but they had gratuitously thrown their own members to the wolves.”
.   .   .   .   .
   "One wondered how on earth those trade union leaders did not even stipulate, in return for their desertion of the miners, the unconditional reinstatement of their own members.”

Further on he says :—

   “Some days must elapse before we learn accurately all the causes of the dreadful debacle. But I have no doubt that when everything is straightened out cowardice will occupy a prominent position.”
.    .    .    .    .
   “From the first moment of the struggle, and indeed before it, prominent Labour leaders were whining and grovelling. The day before the General Strike was declared we were told by one of the men who were going to lead us that defeat was certain.”

Was it cowardice that prevented Mr. Wheatley publishing this latter statement when it was made? Or had he another reason? Time, perhaps, will tell.

"Lansbury’s Labour Weekly" professes to give a "secret" history of the strike in the issue of the 22nd May, but there is very little information given that was not already public. The only two points that might deserve the term secret are given without any authority and must be treated on their own merits. The first point is stated as follows :—

   "Finally, on Sunday night, or thereabouts, the war lords of the Cabinet, the same who had a week ago declared war, decided that the war must be turned into a counter-revolution. Information reached Eccleston Square that they had decided (a) to arrest the members of the General Council and of Local Strike Committees; (b) to call up the Army Reserve; (c) to rush through the packed House of Commons a Bill repealing the Trades Disputes Act, and thus making union funds definitely liable to seizure.”

This statement may have been true; at any rate there is nothing inherently improbable in it. But the second point is on different lines :—

   "On the other-hand, there was the General Council believing that the Cabinet was about to use the last weapon on them, and knowing that, if they did so, the workers in every part of the country would certainly reply with reprisals—that in fact then 'industrial struggle' would, if the strike were not called off immediately, turn not merely into a political issue, but into a civil war,, for which they had neither. any desire nor any formal mandate.”

This statement is not merely unsupported by any evidence—it is in contradiction to the facts of the case. Nowhere did the workers show any desire for civil war, nor any understanding of how to carry through such a war even if they did desire it. The paragraph is a piece of frothy bunkum written to excuse the General Council.

The “New Leader" for 21st May has a bitter cartoon on its front page of a miner with wife and child, and the line underneath, “Locked Out and Alone.’’ In a leading article Mr. Brailsford deals with what he calls the "Inner History of the Great Strike." He examines the main features of a General Strike and the value of a partial strike, and rather leans towards the latter, in the form of an embargo on coal, as being more effective. Then he says :—

   "The plan which was eventually adopted was a compromise which fell far short of a General Strike. it was Mr. Bevin's work, and he was, throughout, the general, as Mr. Thomas was the diplomatist, of the struggle."

Later on he says :—

"Mr. Bevin foresaw what might happen when the strike came to an end, and laid it down as a condition, to which all agreed, that in the event of 'trade union agreements being placed in jeopardy . . .  there will be no general resumption of work until those agreements are fully recognised.’ That vital condition was forgotten when the end came."

On the next page, when dealing with the conduct of the negotiations, Mr. Brailsford makes the following significant statement:

"It was unlucky that through all the critical days the miners had no representative of their own on the Council, for Mr. Tom Richards was seriously ill and Mr. Smillie absent in Scotland. The active, mobile mind, the leader in all the diplomacy, was Mr. Thomas. Him the miners deeply distrusted, and said so in the bluntest language before the Council. They felt that he gave away their case when he met the Government; they thought him more zealous to press them to accept wage cuts than to oppose the Government."

When the strike had started the General Council began to look for a way out and found, as they thought, a saviour in Samuel. What a godsend he seemed to some of that body can be gathered from Mr. Brailsford’s remark :—

"Mr. Thomas was uneasy under the accusation of 'unconstitutional conduct ’; he foresaw disorder and talked of the 'streets running with blood’—though strikers and policemen in this incorrigible English strike were playing cricket together. His one platform speech—if it was fairly reported—was that of a man who dreaded, and in fact disapproved, the strike for which he had voted."

Right up to Tuesday afternoon, 11th May, the negotiations over the Samuel Memoranda went on, with the miners’ representatives refusing to accept it. On Tuesday night the Council came to a decision, and one prominent member told the driver who took him home from the meeting that "it was all over.” Mr. Brailsford says :—

‘‘The Council took its decision to end the strike on this Tuesday night, and took it without informing the miners. But it did inform the Government, and when it again met the miners on Wednesday morning it was only to beg them to join in a surrender which, in fact, they had already made. In the decision to call off the strike, the Council, Left and Right, was unanimous, and seemed to feel wholehearted satisfaction."

Summing up, Mr. Brailsford says that it was the blunt, undiplomatic miners, and not the skilful Mr. Thomas, who saw the plain reality. His final remark is :—

"But the deep stain upon them [the leaders] is that in this struggle which had evoked the passionate loyalty, the selfless idealism of the mass, they sullied its record and nullified its sacrifices by abandoning the miners to their fate."

Except for an inspired article in the "Daily Herald” denouncing all who would dare to criticise the General Council, that body has said very little on their action, though some individual members have rushed into print—with disastrous results to themselves. Thus Messrs. Bevin, Walker and Findlay, tried to claim in an article in the "Sunday Worker,” 23rd May, that Mr. Baldwin’s statement as to the extent to which the Government were committed by the Samuel Memorandum was not in accordance with their information. And they called upon Sir Herbert Samuel to speak out. This statement is sheer bluff, as can be proved from the General Council’s official Bulletin. In the "British Worker” for Wednesday evening, 12th May, appeared Mr. Samuel’s letter, which contains the following paragraph :—

" I have made it clear to your Committee from the outset that 1 have been acting entirely on my own initiative, have received no authority from the Government, and can give no assurances on their behalf."

This clause in Mr. Samuel’s letter is plain and unequivocal —it cannot be misunderstood and makes the position of the Government quite clear. But Mr. Samuel, has called the bluff in an interview reported in the "Daily News” for Monday, 24th May. He repeated the statements given in the letter quoted above, and added: -

"No suggestion in any different sense was made by me at any stage."

Three supposed "Left Wingers,” Messrs. Swales, Hicks and Tillett, have written an article in "Lansbury’s Labour Weekly” for 22nd May, which opens with a brazen lie. They say :—

"The General Strike is ended, having served the purpose of urgent and necessary defence." 

The "purpose” of the so-called General Strike, according to the General Council’s statement in the "British Worker,” was to secure the withdrawal of the lock-out notices and to obtain a decent standard of life for the miners. Not only has this purpose not been accomplished, but the General Council surrendered without asking for any terms at all. Yet these brazen liars can talk of the strike "having served its purpose ” !

Perhaps the slimiest piece of hypocrisy is the article written by Ramsay MacDonald in "Forward” of 22nd May. It seems strange he should not have published the article in his Party’s paper, the “New Leader,” but possibly the Editor of that journal may have raised objections. Haq the article been signed by a Nonconformist parson it would easily pass as genuine, for it is full of sham religious phrases and forms.

We are told :—

“There was a religious fervour in the movement. The people were to be oppressed, and the people would not have it.”

Fancy that! And some of us were so foolish as to imagine we had been oppressed for quite a long time. But, apparently, we were wrong. We were only “going to be oppressed,” and we refused to have it.

Follows then a sermon on the strike containing the following remark :—

"Whoever has witnessed a first-class religious row being worked up in heathendom will have breathed a familiar atmosphere in London during the past week."

Fortunately a saviour was at hand.:—

"But reason was harboured in Eccleston Square. The forces were kept well in hand, and when the substance of victory was gained by a bold and wise stroke, the Mad Mullah and his organ were left to cock-a-doodle-doo to the heavens for nothing.”

And where is this "substance of victory"? Only in the imagination of mis-leaders like MacDonald, Tillett, Hicks, Swales and Co.

There are two curious facts worth noting about the General Council’s handling of the strike. The first is that with Thomas, MacDonald, Bevin, Tillett, etc., at the head of affairs, it would have been quite a simple matter for the Government to have arranged a formula that would have swindled the miners quietly. The only reason why this was not done seems to be that the coal-owners desired an open victory for the purpose of intimidating the rest of the workers who were demanding increases in wages.

The second fact is the curious unanimity among the various critics in ascribing the gigantic swindle of a settlement to the “cowardice” of the General Council. The shrieks of the job-hunting, feather-headed Communists can be ignored, but “Lansbury’s Weekly” labours the danger run by the General Council through several paragraphs as a sort of apology for their “cowardice,” while the reasoned article of Brailsford quoted above follows the same line.

What was this “danger” to the General Council?

In any strike every member of the rank and file runs the risk of losing his job at the end of the strike. If he has been an active member of his trade union, he runs the additional risk of being black-listed, and if the industry has a working combination, like the Railways, or is a Trust, like Tobacco and Cotton Thread, this black-listing will completely prevent him from obtaining a living in that line. A strike is, therefore, always a serious matter for the rank and file.

Then what of the officials? Apart from the personal discomfort of being imprisoned they run no risk at all! On the contrary, so far as his job is concerned, an official who suffers imprisonment for a trade union action is assured of his job for life, as he will be looked upon as a “hero” or a “martyr” in the cause. In the present instance it must be remembered that hundreds of the rank and file have been arrested and fined or imprisoned, in some cases for merely being in possession of certain documents. And this, be it noticed, with hardly a single serious riot taking place during the whole strike.

While it may be granted that cowardice was one factor in the unconditional surrender of the General Council, in face of the above facts it does not fill the whole or even a major portion of the bill. Then what does?

Though the mine-owners desired an open victory, there were certain disturbing factors to be considered. Throughout the whole industrial field there was—and is—considerable discontent with wages and conditions of employment. Despite the bad state of trade, the leaders of the Engineers had considerable difficulty in preventing a strike. The Building Operatives, despite something of a boom, have found that to accept several reductions merely leads to more being demanded. Although the short memory of the working class is proverbial, the previous swindles of “Black Friday” and the railway strikes still rankle in the minds of many. These factors furnished the view that if the Miners were forced into a strike, large numbers of other workers would come out in support of the Miners without waiting for official sanction, or even against it. 'The problem was how to prevent such action taking place, or, if it took place, rendering it as ineffective as possible. One method would be to have a sham fight. Call a more or less “General” Strike for a few days and then find some pretext to close it down before too much damage was done.

The game was somewhat risky, for while in the view of some there was a doubt whether the men would come out, the far greater fear in the views of others (see, for instance, MacDonald's article quoted above) was that they would not get the men back at the appointed time. As it was the greed of many employers in at once demanding cuts in wages or alterations in conditions of employment, nearly spoilt the game, but Baldwin's appeal eased off the situation.

Such is the lesson. "Trust and ye shall be betrayed.” After all the lessons of the past the same “leaders" were entrusted with power, and acted along the same lines as before. Which was to be expected. The workers have still a fair road to travel before they will get rid of the superstition of "Leadership" or the dope of "good" and "bad" leaders. But the splendid solidarity of the rank and file, along with their steady refusal to follow the maniacs who advise the formation of "Workers' Defence Corps" and other methods of crude force, are healthy signs of the beginnings of an understanding of their slave position that forms the first step in the work of establishing Socialism.

Jack Fitzgerald