Primitive Accumulation (1967)

From the September 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

How they got the Scottish Highlands 

Even after a newcomer to Socialism has seen that capitalism is based on the exploitation of the workers, he may still feel that originally the propertied class must have obtained their property by superior merit. Surely, he will argue, riches were obtained in the first place by worthy individuals who worked hard and saved?

Marx deals with the question of “primitive accumulation”, the original gathering together of wealth, in Part VIII of Capital. This “primitive accumulation”, he says, plays the same part in orthodox economic theory as original sin does in theology. “In times gone by there were two sorts of people; one, the diligent, intelligent, and, above all, frugal, élite; the other, lazy rascals, spending their substance, and more, in riotous living . . . And from this original sin dates the poverty of the great majority that, despite all its labour, has up to now nothing to sell but itself, and the wealth of the few that increases constantly although they have long ceased to work.” The facts, Marx pointed out, are very different. Wealth was originally accumulated by a process of legalised robbery. The land of Britain, for example, once belonged to those who tilled it. The theft of the land by a few has gone on in stages throughout the last fifteen centuries.

This expropriation was perhaps most striking, as we look back now, in the Highlands of Scotland in the 18th and 19th centuries. The reason is that the blight of private property struck in the Highlands later than in other areas, so that the whole of the coercive forces of Britain were available to help on the transformation, which as a result was particularly sudden and brutal.

The Highlands owed their long immunity to their physical configuration. Entrance to the mountainous area could only be gained through narrow passes, where a handful of men could defeat an army; and the glens and straths within the Highlands were easily defensible against invaders for the same reason. Within this area, during the first part of the 18th century, the clans owned their own clan territories as they had done for centuries. The Campbells in Argyll, the Stewarts and Robertsons in Perthshire, the Rosses and Munros in Ross-shire, could have been forgiven for thinking that their ownership of their land was eternal and unchallengeable. It was not individual ownership; no clansman owned this or that stretch of land to the exclusion of all other clansmen; clan ownership meant that every clansman had the right to hunt the game on the mountain and moor within the clan land, to share in the general grazing, and to till part of the clan's soil. The general right to a living off the land had a corresponding duty: the duty to defend the clan land against invasion. At any alarm the croishtarich — the fiery cross, a piece of wood burnt at one end and dipped in lamb’s blood at the other — would go from township to township through the clan land, and every man capable of bearing arms at once repaired to the pre-arranged rallying spot (the Grants, for example, at Craigellachie, and the Clan Chattan at Dunlichity hill) to ward off the danger.

But among the institutions thrown up by clanship was one which was pregnant with future disaster. It was the chiefship. The chief led the clan in war, and judged any dispute in peacetime. When a chief died, another chief would be chosen, usually a new or distant relative of the last chief: although this meant little when every member of the clan believed himself related to every other, and could recount his descent — whether real or mythical — from the clan’s founder. (Clan is Gaelic for children: the Clan Leod were the children of Leod — the originator of the clan — and each man was Mac Leod, or son of Leod, and each woman Nic Leod, or daughter of Leod). In time it became usual for chiefs to be chosen from the members of one family — the system of tanistry. If a chief’s eldest son were old enough when his father died to lead the clan in war, and the clan thought highly of him, he would usually have the best claim to the succession.

The Highlands, however, were not isolated. Together with the English-speaking Lowlands they formed the kingdom of Scotland. This was largely a theoretical arrangement: the king in Edinburgh had no control in the Highlands, and the only way he could force his will on any clan was by leading an army against it — and often not even then. There were in practice many kings in the Highlands — the chief was “king” of his clan territory. The chiefs soon began to meddle in Lowland politics; and to gain their support, the Edinburgh king would often grant a charter to a particular chief to say that he owned the land of his clan. These charters were of no practical effect at the time, since the chief was unable to exercise any of the powers of ownership. The clansmen paid the chief small annual sums, analogous to present-day taxes, to support him; he had no right to increase this annual tax, much less to evict the clansmen from the clan land. Indeed, if he had gone beyond his traditional powers the clan would have evicted the chief. As a matter of historical fact, whenever a chief was found unsatisfactory he was deposed, and replaced by another member of the chiefly family.

The clan (if it even knew of the fact) was probably relieved when its chief did secure a charter to the clan territory, since it meant that no other chief could do so. Occasionally a chief in particular favour at court would obtain a charter not only to the land of his own clan (which did not belong to him) but also to the land of other clans (which, equally, did not belong to him). The chief of Macintosh, for example, got charters to the lands of the Camerons and of the MacDonalds of Keppoch; and both the Camerons and the MacDonalds had to light several battles to assert their right to their own land by beating off Macintosh and his clan who, out of a mistaken sense of duty, had followed him to support his claim.

Some of the Highland clans followed James Stuart, the Old Pretender, in 1715, and Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Young Pretender, in 1745. Both rebellions were defeated. The British Government determined to end the anomaly of having more than a sixth of Great Britain still under a type of society based on communal ownership, a system moreover which produced such superlative fighting men that only a few thousand of them had seemed about to topple the Government twice in thirty years. In addition the Industrial Revolution, beginning in the middle years of the 18th century, both provided the material strength needed to conquer the Highlands, and spawned great cities which demanded large supplies of food from the non-industrial districts, such as the Highlands. Soldiers marched and counter-marched through the Highlands, garrison towns were created, and the old Highland law was crushed, making way for the new private property law of the Lowlands.

According to this Lowland law, the charters which most of the chiefs had by this time obtained gave them exclusive rights to the whole of the clan land. This was such an enormous change, since it entailed the replacement of an entire system of society by another, that the chiefs themselves were hardly able to comprehend it for a time. Then some of the chiefs, desirous of making a fine figure in Edinburgh or London, realised that by turning out the clansmen and letting the clan land to sheep farmers, they could at one stroke increase their incomes five or six times. The clansmen were as astounded at this turn of events as if they had been told that the sun was henceforward to rise in the west. They had lived in and defended their land from time immemorial: and now the chief had brought in a lawyer who said that because of some writing in a foreign language on a small piece of paper in Edinburgh, the chief—chosen and loyally supported by the clan, and in fact the embodiment of the clan—had now the right to tell every clansman to leave, and to bring in instead a capitalist tenant farmer with great flocks of sheep! Some clearances were met with physical resistance, rioting, and violence; but where that happened, the chief brought up a detachment of Lowland, English, or Irish soldiers, and evicted the clansmen at the point of the bayonet. Often the threat of force was sufficient, especially since the local parish ministers backed up the landlords with warnings of eternal punishments as well as temporal ones. The odds against the clansmen were too great. In district after district the Gaels packed up their belongings, sold off their sheep and cattle, and left the glen for the last time, headed by a piper playing a clan lament. Often the chief cleared out his clan himself; sometimes he sold out to a buyer at such a high price that the new owner obviously intended to recoup—and did recoup—by a wholesale clearance. The tide of evictions crept steadily northwards. From the 1760s to the 1780s there were clearances among the Campbells in Argyll, the MacPhersons in Strath Spey, the various clans of MacDonalds in Glen Garry, Glen Coe and Keppoch, and the MacKenzies in Ross-shire. In the first decade of the 19th century there were many clearances in Inverness- and Ross-shires. MacNeil of Barra, the Chisholm, and MacLeod of Dunvegan were clearing out their clans; Glengarry was doing the same for the MacDonalds, Lochiel for the Camerons, Seaforth for the MacRaes and MacKenzies, and Lovat for the Frasers. Then, from 1807 to 1820, the great Sutherland Clearances took place, the Countess of Sutherland putting to flight thousands of Sutherlands, Murrays, MacKays, and the other Sutherland clans. Lord Reay, chief of a neighbouring clan of MacKays, was doing the same in what was now his land.

The clearances would have been completed sooner than they were but for two complicating factors. Chiefs who still had clansmen to call on found they could raise Highland regiments for Britain's repeated wars between 1740 and 1815; it was financially profitable to them, and in addition they could nominate officers (thus providing for impecunious relatives) and bask in the reflected glory of vicarious military adventure. Further, there was a kind of sea-weed called kelp found in the Hebrides and along the coast of the western Highlands, which when burned was a source of soda (an ingredient of glass) and of iodine. During the Napoleonic wars this burnt kelp brought £20 a ton, at a time when the kelp-worker got only £3 or less a ton. The enormous profits to be made meant that the coast and island landlords were eager to retain as many workers on their estates as they could. For these two reasons landlords would usually allow some of the evicted people to squat (for a rent) on odd comers of marsh and moor that no large farmer would have as a gift. The clansmen were always ready to accept these crofts because any toehold in the venerated land of the clan was better than none, especially when the alternatives were either to undergo the horrors of factory work in the Lowlands, or to go overseas in coffin ships to clear the thickly timbered wilderness in America—an experience many of the emigrants did not long survive.

After Waterloo great wars were few, and the demand for soldiers disappeared. Further, from the 1820s to the 1840s the kelp boom faded to nothing as Free Trade politicians allowed the duty-free import of foreign alkalis, with which kelp could not compete. Finally, the introduction of a Poor Law into the Highlands in 1845 meant that henceforward the landlords would have to pay steep poor rates to help support the very paupers they themselves had created. The clearances now rose to a crescendo. The steady driving out of the Gaels in the 1820s and 1830s (e.g. in Skye, Arran, Morven, Kintyre, Breadalbane, the Menzies country, and Rannoch) was now succeeded by a frenzy of evictions in the 1840s and 1850s. Most notable, perhaps, were those of Seaforth and Sir James Matheson in Lewis, Robertson of Kindeace in Glen Calvie and Greenyards, Colonel Gordon in South Uist and Barra, Lord Macdonald in North Uist and Skye, and Macdonell of Glengarry in Knoydart. These are only examples. Everywhere ships were ordered up to the sea-lochs of the Western Highlands and Islands, and people were herded on them for transportation to Canada or Australia without being consulted, and indeed against their strongly expressed wishes. Any escaping were hunted down and put back on board the emigrant vessels with the aid of the police. In this fashion the Highlands were emptied. 

By the time of the 1880s crofters were to be found in any number only in Skye and the Outer Hebrides and along a few lochs on the west coast; even there they clung to patches of land, the good land having all gone to make either sheep farms, or deer forests where rich idlers—noble and royal— came from England and the Continent to make merry in the glens which had seen the tragic and brutal dispersal of the Highlanders. In the 1880s the groundswell of discontent burst out into a series of open insurrections in Skye, Lewis, Barra, Tiree and other places. It was called the Crofters’ War, and resulted in some measure of protection against eviction for the scattered remnants of the Gaels. But it was too late. The Highlands had already been won for capitalism, and great fortunes had been established through the expropriation by a few of what had previously belonged to the many. It may safely be said that the income from Highland land rose fifty or more times between 1750 and 1880.

Today in the Highlands many of the old chiefs’ descendants still own vast stretches of what was once their clans’ land—the Duke of Sutherland, Lord Lovat (chief of the Frasers), the Countess of Seafield (chief of the Grants), Cameron of Lochiel, the Duke of Atholl (chief of the Stewarts), the Marquis of Bute, the Earl of Cawdor (a Campbell chieftain). Lord Macdonald, Sir George Macpherson-Grant of Ballindalloch, and others. Many others of the old chiefs' heirs have preferred to sell their clans’ land, and otherwise invest the proceeds. None of them should be in any doubt as to the real nature of capitalist primitive accumulation.

Alwyn Edgar

Letter: What Kind of Revolution? (2016)

Letter to the Editors from the July 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors

Your article on the General Strike weapon (May Socialist Standard) whilst informative and useful is quite faulty on a few key points. First, you grossly underestimate and demean the importance of workers’ class consciousness growing, which set the basis of the workers’ advances from mere legal/truncated trade/craft union actions. General strikes tend to move affected parts of the class and allies to more militant, anti-capitalist wider fightback and their own demands and build socialist clarity.

Second, you contradict, by your own emphasis on narrow parliamentary activities that many advances to General Strikes also incorporate political trends and tendencies, socialist work, and getting a favourable and influential hearing from masses of active/combined workers. The workers in combined actions, working, co-operating, in spreading support bring more workers to see in reality the latent power of their own class unleashed from capitalism’s legalist jails and electoral illusions, and raising the needed spirit of organizing as a wider, united class against waged slavery and capital’s wider hegemony over society . . .

Third, you try to separate, almost with a Chinese wall, almost the whole economic struggle from the political conflict with capitalist rule. In fact at whatever the level of struggle, class conflict needs to raise both fronts of battle to the fore, in the terrain of the workers’ lives for them to strengthen their educating and organizing as a class against the bosses rule economically and through the capitalist state machine monopoly of controls.

There is no guarantee of immediate advance to revolution and workers taking the power. But the training of industrial and bona fide socialistic political education and action raises the workers to be serious challengers to the rule of the bosses dominance, exploitation robbery, racism and wars.

In your snipes on the ‘Soviets’, (Books, April Socialist Standard), the workers’ councils advanced struggles, your prejudice against mass combined industrial political tactics leads you to distort the history of the workers’ councils risings. Your assertion that workers councils just arise 'spontaneously’ and in less developed countries is flat out wrong! The workers’ councils did not just step into history in 1905 and 1917 in Russia, but also in rebellion to the imperialist World War 1 in advanced industrial nations as Germany, Austria and Italy, etc and played a huge role in forcing the bourgeois rulers to halt the carnage of WW1 and both the workers, as large sections of the armed forces in councils rebelled against the continuing barbarism and after. That their efforts went furthest in Russia but could not advance to full socialism is hardly the western workers/farmers fault. Given the amount of repression, counter revolution, isolation, capitalist intervention and blockades and state capitalist controls resulted in the defeat of the huge revolutionary waves by the early 20s.

In Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy, etc the workers’ councils had not the time to deepen political understanding assisted by their new Marxist revolutionary parties like the experienced Bolsheviks, as had happened in Russia. The Western European workers’ councils, soldiers/sailors and workers included strong influences of reformists, careerists and fakers in addition to harmful influences of nationalist reaction too. Thus these councils occupations, mass actions, general strikes and near civil war did not achieve the tactical and strategic clarity they had in Russia, at least for a few years. Also, as a result of illusions in bosses 'democracy' and slick parliamentary facades, followed by political division, repression, and isolation, their diffuse attempts to establish workers rule were defeated by the ruling exploiter classes.

Finally, is it not at least a tad of wooden and ossified thinking for you to say that the workers’ councils (albeit in different forms and experiences) cannot again emerge in countries like the UK or the USA, etc., especially in periods of capital’s crises/plunder that will probably be even deeper, bloodier, more global in scope?

Neil Chertcoff (by email from USA)

Reply:

1. We don’t see how, in pointing to the limitation of the general strike as a working class weapon, we are demeaning anything. General strikes are sometimes necessary to defend workers’ wages, working conditions and the right to organise. As with all strikes, some you win, some you lose. The 1926 British General strike was a failure. It did lead to a move away from relying on industrial action towards political action but reformist political action via the Labour Party. The 1968 French General Strike was a success in terms of improving wages and conditions but, from your standpoint, was no doubt a failure as it did not lead to overthrow of capitalism. But that was never the aim and, if it had been, would not have succeeded given, despite the high degree of trade union consciousness, the lack of majority socialist consciousness amongst workers and the fact that the state machine was controlled by pro-capitalist elements. As we said, general strikes are ok as a weapon of the defensive class struggle under capitalism but not as a weapon to overthrow capitalism. The syndicalists are wrong about that.

2. You seem to think that we are opposed to workers organising in the workplace and in communities. We are sure this will happen alongside direct political organisation once the movement for socialism develops, but, as with the general strike, we don’t see these being able to overthrow capitalism in the absence of majority socialist consciousness and independently of political action using the electoral system to win control of state power (of which ‘parliamentary activities’ will be marginal and mainly propagandistic). Those councils you mention (apart from the factory councils in northern Italy which were part of an industrial dispute) came into being in autocratic dynastic empires which had collapsed under the impact of WW1. They were substitutes for local councils and, as you yourself point out, in Germany reflected the view of most workers that the aim should be political democracy not socialism. As to Russia, we don’t see what happened there as an example to be repeated – or likely to be – where an ‘experienced’ vanguard party rode to power on the basis of popular discontent over the war and shortages, using the ‘soviets’ as a cover and then, once in power, emasculating them. 

Editors.

Party News Briefs (1952)

Party Notes from the October 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

Arrangements have been made to hold regular indoor Sunday evening meetings during the Winter and Denison House Hall has been booked fortnightly from 5th October. The title of the first meeting is“ The Labour Party in Conference ” and the speaker is J. D’Arcy. The meeting on 19th October is “Marx—Right or wrong ? ” and the speaker on this occasion is F. Evans. A. Turner is the speaker at the meeting on 2nd November and the title “Has Man Progressed?" Several branches are assisting in the running of these meetings and every effort will be made to ensure their success. If readers make a note of the dates and mention them to friends and people likely to be interested, we should be able to fill the hall to capacity. Further titles will be advertised in future issues of the “Socialist Standard" and details can be had from Head Office. The address for the meetings:- Denison House Hall, Vauxhall Bridge Road (Near Victoria Station). Each meeting commences at 7 p.m.

Socialist Challenge Meeting is being held at St. Pancras Town Hall, Euston Road, N.W.1 (Near Kings Cross Station) on Sunday, 12th October, at 7 p.m. An invitation has been sent to other political organisations asking them to send a representative to put the case of their respective party from the platform, thereby giving the audience an opportunity to compare the various parties' attitudes to problems of to-day. A similar meeting was held on May Day and proved most successful — we are sure that this meeting will be equally successful. Comrades May and Turner will put the case for the Socialist Party of Great Britain. R. Ambridge will take the chair.

Head Office Forums. It is proposed to re-commence these forums at Head Office on Saturday evenings at 7 p.m. The first on 11th October—subject “The Class Struggle” and the second on 25th October—“Mass Production and Socialism.” The panel of speakers has not yet been arranged but names will be given on the notice board at Head Office as soon as possible.

Sunday Evening Lectures at Head Office. It is hoped to commence these fortnightly, from 26th October. Full details on notice board at Head Office.

Head Office Classes. The series of classes at Head Office will start on Monday, 6th October at 7.30p.m., and will continue weekly. Further particulars are being supplied to Braoches by the Education Committee.

Branch Lectures. Hackney, Lewisham, and Leyton Branches am holding a aeries of lectures in their districts and details appear in this issue. In addition to those held by Leyton Branch on Sundays there is a lecture at Grove House on Monday, 27th October at 8pm., title “Indonesia” speaker—C. Scott. Bloomsbury Branch will re-commence discussions after their branch meetings from 16th October when a series on “Revolutions” will commence.

Internal Party Journal. The first issue of‘Forum' will be on sale about the middle of this month to members through Head Office, Branches, or by subscription (6d. per copy, plus l½d. postage). Intending subscribers are particularly asked to notify Head Office without delay, in order to ensure receipt of the first issue.

Phyllis Howard

End of geography (2012)

Book Review from the January 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why the West Rules – for Now. By Ian Morris. Profile Books.

The basic question addressed by Morris is why in recent times the Western part of the globe has been dominant over the Eastern part. Britain’s rulers, for instance, sent armies and gunboats to humiliate the Emperor of China in the nineteenth century and extract trading concessions, rather than vice versa. It is important to realise that the West (more precisely, the rulers in the West) has not always been top dog: from the sixth to the eighteenth centuries the East was more developed. Morris summarised his views in an article in History Today in October 2010, which can be read for free here.

Morris defines the ‘West’ as societies descended from the original core region of southwest Asia, so encompassing Europe and the Americas. The ‘East’ is those societies descended from the early civilisations between the Yellow and Yangzi rivers. Social development is quantified by looking at four criteria: energy capture (the capacity for extracting energy from the natural environment and for using it), urbanism (the size of a society’s largest city, as a proxy for the ability to organize complex situations), information processing (the power to communicate information) and the capacity to make war. The higher the score, the more powerful and developed a society is, and the more able it is to impose itself on others. The West was more advanced till around the middle of the sixth century CE and again from around 1800, when development leapt upwards, first in the West (the Industrial Revolution) and then in the East. The West is still ahead (especially in war-waging ability) but, as the title of the book suggests, this may not last for long.

Biological explanations (to the effect that people from the West are more intelligent) do not hold up, since human beings are basically the same everywhere. Rather, the factors behind the differences are claimed to be essentially geographical. A period of global warming around twenty thousand years ago led to the growth of agriculture in the ‘Hilly Flanks’ (covering the valleys of the Tigris, Euphrates and Jordan rivers) and so to a distinctive ‘Western’ core. At the end of the last Ice Age, agriculture began between 20 and 35 degrees north, a region with plenty of domesticable plants and animals (unlike, say, sub-Saharan Africa). Millennia later, by around 700 CE, China was a unified empire, with an enormous capital city and woodblock printing, while the West remained divided and much less developed, in the period known as the Dark Ages. But it was Europeans who encountered and exploited the Americas, because it was easier for them to cross the Atlantic than for Chinese explorers to cross the Pacific. Chinese fleets sailed through Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean in the fifteenth century, but distances and prevailing winds meant that sailing eastwards into an empty ocean was unlikely to be attempted.

Western Europe (especially Britain) was well-placed to start off industrialisation because it could build on the gradually-accumulating technologies of previous centuries, but also because it possessed plenty of natural resources, colonies and warships, much more so than China at the time. We might add that it benefited from the profits of the slave trade, too. The various graphs that Morris presents suggest that the East will overtake the West in development early next century; compare predictions that China will become the biggest economy within just two decades, though Morris is not simply dealing with China. He argues, however, that geography will soon cease to mean anything anyway, as globalisation undermines real differences and produces a true worldwide system.

Morris’s work is probably most reminiscent of Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel, which emphasised the importance of environmental factors, such as the relative shortage of domesticable animals in Africa and the Americas, in determining the course of historical development in different areas. In The Enigma of Capital, David Harvey accuses Diamond of a geographical or environmental determinism: on Diamond’s view, he says, ‘Africa is poor for environmental reasons, not … because of centuries of imperialist plundering, beginning with the slave trade’. This objection misses the point, though, since there needs to be an account of why it was Westerners who enslaved Africans, rather than vice versa. A geographical explanation is perfectly compatible with the view that the slave trade contributed to the impoverishment of Africa. In connection with the determinism objection, Morris is right to quote Marx to the effect that people make their own history but under circumstances they have not chosen themselves; their geographical situation being part of those circumstances.

Astonishingly, the word ‘capitalism’ is absent from the book’s index, though there is much discussion of industrialisation and industrialists (i.e. capitalists). It is all very well to say that ‘Change is caused by lazy, greedy, frightened people looking for easier, more profitable, and safer ways to do things’, but there needs to be explicit recognition that this often involves people getting others to work for them, and so exploiting them. Life for the earliest workers in capitalist factories was in no way easy or safe, and the profits went to the owners, not to those who toiled in the factories. The owners were not so much lazy and frightened as hungry for wealth and power.

Marx attributed the growth of the industrial working class to deliberate acts by the capitalists, fencing off the countryside and so driving people into towns to labour as propertyless wage workers. Rather, says Morris, it was due to increases in life expectancy and hence in population (Britain’s more or less doubled between 1780 and 1830). But he does not seem to deny that the rural dispossession took place, and it clearly contributed to the availability of urban workers as a labour force to be exploited by the new lords of capital.

One thing the book does show is that societal arrangements are never permanent. We could turn its theme around and say that the capitalists rule – but only for now.

Paul Bennett

New Left (2011)

Book Review from the September 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Crisis of Theory: EP Thompson, the New Left and Postwar British Politics. By Scott Hamilton, Manchester University Press, 2011

Many socialists would count EP Thompson's books among the best socialist books ever written, particularly William Morris: From Romantic To Revolutionary (1955), The Making of the English Working Class (1963) and The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays (1978). Thompson's own politics however are less admirable. He joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1942 and was an active member until 1956 when he resigned as a result of the Russian military invasion of Hungary and Khrushchev’s 'secret speech' which denounced Stalin. To a significant extent, the rest of Thompson's political career can be seen as distancing himself from Stalinism. He later tried to justify his CP membership by claiming it was part of a 'Popular Front' against fascism. But Thompson did not appreciate that his CP membership would lend legitimacy to Stalin's reign of terror. His concern for the lives of ordinary workers did not extend to the Russian working class.

William Morris: From Romantic To Revolutionary showed that Morris was a revolutionary Marxist. This book was written and published while Thompson was in the CP and in it he claims that Morris's ideas were being realised in Stalin's Russia. In the Second Edition of 1977 this claim is removed. The Making of the English Working Class won huge critical acclaim and it is still widely used as a textbook. Thompson's book is an account of the formation of class consciousness, and in his 1980 Preface he argued that 'in the years between 1780 and 1832 most English working people came to feel an identity of interests as between themselves, and as against other men whose interests are different from (and usually opposed to) theirs'. Some critics had complained that Thompson's analysis of class is too subjective and this forms a major theme of his The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays. Among Thompson's targets was the 'Stalinism in theory' of Louis Althusser. For Althusser history was 'a process without a subject' in which specific circumstances determined human behaviour. For Thompson, on the other hand, the class struggle was the motor of history and so therefore he wrote about the experiences and consciousness of the working class.

Thompson was one of the self-appointed intellectuals who founded the New Left Review in 1960, and it is still published bi-monthly. It was conceived as the journal of the New Left who were opposed to Stalinism and Labour Party 'revisionism' (an open acceptance of capitalism). After an initial surge in interest provided by their work in Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, most of the New Left found their ideological home in the Labour Party. Thompson was involved with the Labour Party in the 1960s and re-joined in 1978. By the early 1980s CND was resurgent and Thompson was its main spokesperson, and he harangued large public meetings on the 'logic of exterminism'. He thought the superpowers were dragging the world towards an inevitable nuclear annihilation, a fatalistic way of thinking he once would have denounced as 'Stalinist'. Thompson died in 1993 but, as Hamilton shows, his books live on.

Lew Higgins

Cooking the Books: Saving Private Capitalism (2016)

The Cooking the Books column from the July 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

American capitalism is, apparently, suffering a ‘crisis of faith’, at least according to a 5-page article featured on the front cover of Time magazine (23 May). The author, Rana Foroohar, quotes the findings of an opinion poll which she finds ‘startling’:

‘… only 19% of Americans aged 18 to 29 identified themselves as “capitalists”. In the richest and most market-oriented country in the world, only 42% of that group said they “supported capitalism”. The numbers were higher among older people; still, only 26% considered themselves capitalists. A little over half supported the system as a whole.’

One of the questions must have been odd if it invited people to identify themselves as ‘capitalists’ in the same sort of way that they might have been asked if they were socialists. A capitalist is not someone who believes in capitalism. It is someone who has enough capital to be able to live without being obliged to sell their labour power for a living. In America that will be well under 5 percent.

Foroohar’s article, entitled ‘Saving Capitalism’, is taken from her forthcoming book Makers and Takers. Her argument is that the current problems of American capitalism are due to ‘financialization’. Up until the early 1970s, she says, finance served business:

‘finance took individual and corporate savings and funnelled them into productive enterprises, creating new jobs, new wealth and, ultimately, economic growth.’

However, over the past few decades this has changed:

‘finance has turned away from this traditional role. Academic research shows that only a fraction of all the money washing around the financial markets these days actually makes it to Main Street businesses…. Most of the money in the system is being used for lending against existing assets such as housing, stocks and bonds.’

She says that banks have become more interested in such ‘trading’ than in their traditional role of lending to business. But it is not just banks that have been affected. Businesses themselves have become increasingly involved in hedging, ‘tax optimization’ and offering financial services, to the detriment of productive investment. They have the money to do this because:

‘Top-tier US businesses have never enjoyed greater financial resources. They have a record $2 trillion in cash on their balance sheets – enough money combined to make them the 10^th largest economy in the world.’

Her plan to save capitalism is ‘remooring finance in the real economy’, putting ‘the financial system back in its rightful place, as a servant of business rather than its master.’

It’s not the first time in the history of capitalism that finance capital has been seen as the enemy. Before WWI the Austrian Social Democrat Rudolf Hilferding wrote Finanzkapital in which he argued that banks had come to dominate and control industry. Lenin took this up and incorporated it into his theory of imperialism.

To merely denounce ‘financial capital’ is to support ‘manufacturing capital’; which is Foroohar’s (if not the Leninists’) explicit position. She has appointed herself as a defender of manufacturing (‘the makers’) against finance capital (‘the takers’). But she doesn’t consider an alternative explanation for ‘financialization’: that it might be a consequence of slow economic growth rather than the other way round. Since previous profits are not being fully reinvested because it’s not profitable enough a part of them accumulate as cash mountains, providing the stakes for ‘trading’ and ‘hedging’. Like the Stock Exchange, these are zero sum games in which no new wealth is created but where representations of existing wealth are traded instead – where some capitalists get richer but only at the expense of other capitalists, competing against each for the largest share they can get of wealth already taken from the real wealth makers, the working class.

Looking Back on Edward Bellamy (2016)

From the July 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1888 a book by Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward, was published which had an enormous impact at the time. It could even be said that it marked the take-off of modern socialist ideas in America.

Bellamy was a New England journalist and writer who had travelled widely. His utopian novel is based on the story of a rich young Bostonian, Julian West, who is sent to sleep by mesmerism and does not wake up until the year 2000, by which time a far-reaching economic and social revolution has taken place in America.

As explained to him by his host, Dr Leete, all land and industry is now the collective property of the whole community and run as a public service to supply people’s needs. People no longer work for wages, and money has been abolished. Instead, everybody is required to serve in an industrial army between the ages of 21 and 45 and in return receives an annual credit, which is equal for everyone, in the form of vouchers entitling them to draw a given amount of goods and services from the common store. Differences between the nature of jobs would be taken into account by adjusting the number of hours the people doing them would be expected to work. The functions of government, Dr Leete explains, now reduced essentially to the organisation of production for use are exercised by the general council of the industrial army whose members are elected by those who have retired from industrial service, i.e. by the over-45s.

Bellamy depicted a technologically advanced society, imagining some technological advances that would have taken place between 1888 and 2000, for instance moving pavements, music piped to every house, and goods delivered to homes by pneumatic tubes. Reality (airplanes, motor cars, radio, television, electronic computers, internet, mobile phones, etc) turned out to be much more amazing than anyone in 1888 could have imagined, but this strengthened rather than weakened Bellamy's case.

Although the industrial army aspect is over-painted (and Bellamy himself watered it down in his later writings), all the essential ideas of the socialist movement as it was to develop in America were there: collective ownership of all land and industry on a national scale, production for use not sale or profit, social service instead of working for wages, economic equality, industrial administration replacing political government.

Bellamy himself never referred to himself as a socialist, apparently feeling that the foreign associations of the word would put off American public opinion which he was seeking to convince. He referred to his system variously as 'national co-operation', 'nationalized industrial system' and even as 'public capitalism'. The movement which sprang up on the basis of the ideas expressed in his book was called the 'Nationalist' movement. Nevertheless, his was a powerful indictment of private capitalism and its effects on the propertyless majority which it both created and exploited. Many of those influenced by Bellamy were not afraid to call themselves socialists. In fact they easily moved from his Nationalist movement to Socialism, including Daniel De Leon who joined the Socialist Labor Party in 1890 and became its leading figure till his death in 1914.

The attraction of Bellamy’s book was that it put forward a solution to the social problems, brought about in America by the development of industry under capitalist conditions since the Civil War, and which did not reject industry and industrialisation, but which on the contrary fully accepted them as providing the means to supply plenty for all.

When people like De Leon left the Nationalist movement and became socialists, they did so not because they disagreed with the goal but because they disagreed with Bellamy’s strategy for reaching this goal. Bellamy thought that a 'nationalised industrial system' could come about gradually through the trustification of industry and then the piecemeal nationalisation of these trusts, and steadfastly refused till his death in 1898 to entertain talk about socialism and the class struggle. He got no further than supporting the People’s Party (Populists); in fact most of the Nationalists who did not go over to calling themselves Socialists were absorbed into the Populist movement.

De Leon and the others who broke away over this issue saw Bellamy’s system, which they were not afraid to call socialism, being achieved through the working-class victims of the competitive system organising politically and industrially to dispossess the private capitalists, so making all means of production the common property of the community (or rather of ‘the nation’ as they sometimes revealingly put it). Like Bellamy, they envisaged 'political government' being replaced by 'industrial government', though their conception of this latter was more democratic than Bellamy’s since they envisaged the members of this 'central directing authority' being elected by those working in the various branches of industry, an idea Bellamy had rejected in Looking Backward as being bad for the discipline of his 'industrial army'.

When William Morris reviewed Looking Backward in the Socialist League's paper, Commonweal, on 22 June 1889 he made the point that one of the dangers of socialist utopian novels was that some people would take them as a description of what socialism was going to be like rather than as seeing them as the author's preference as to what he or she would like it to be (a point to remember, as Morris himself made clear, when reading his utopian novel News from Nowhere written precisely to propose an alternative vision of the future to Bellamy's).

In his review Morris criticised the regimentation and centralisation Bellamy depicted and, like other socialists of the time, challenged his view as to how socialism would come about. Above all, he criticised Bellamy's attitude to work. Like many others, Bellamy saw work as something inherently unpleasant which people had to be obliged to do and which society should aim to minimise. Morris's view, on the contrary, was:

'I believe that the ideal of the future does not point to the lessening of men's energy by the reduction of labour to a minimum, but rather to the reduction of pain in labour to a minimum, so small that it will cease to be a pain.'

Morris point is a reasonable one but views similar to Bellamy's still circulate amongst critics in America of capitalism, for instance in the Zeitgeist movement (which wants to automate everything) and Parecon (which is based on the assumption that nobody will work without some form of compensation as an incentive).

This said, Looking Backward was an important work in the development of the socialist idea in America which in turn had an influence in their development in other parts of the English-speaking world including Britain.

Looking Backward can be read online here. 

For Members Only (1952)

From the September 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man”

Thus wrote Francis Bacon about the end of the 16th century.

Every year, the agenda for our annual conference carries a number of items for discussion. Any controversy that arises, whether it be a matter of internal organisation or the application of socialist principles to some problem of the moment finds its way into our conference room. There it gets analysed, investigated, debated and argued—to the full extent of the time available.

Every member of the party cannot be at the annual conference to hear or take part in the debates. Amongst those who do attend are many who would like to speak but are deterred by the limitation of time or their own failings as public speakers. Thus, many a valuable contribution may be lost to our discussions. We are going to remedy that.

Next month will appear the first issue of “Forum,” the S.P.G.B.’s internal journal. It will be the paper that hundreds of members have waited for. In it, any and every member of our party may express his point of view on the various controversial issues that arise in our ranks from time to time. The columns of “Forum” will be kept lively with the heat of debate as members flay the pants from one another in arguments and discussions. Out of the battles of ideas will emerge modified and clarified points of view. Here is our opportunity to become “Full,” “Ready,” and “ Exact.”

It is our intention to publish monthly, in this new journal, three or four feature articles expressing controversial points of view, written by their most able exponents. In following issues will appear replies from those who wish to pick up the gauntlet.

You, who have views on the advisability or otherwise of contesting parliamentary elections—here are bones for you to pick in the first issue of “Forum.” How many of you will want to have a crack at the author of "The Nature of the Socialist Revolution.” also to appear in issue number I? And the title, “Trade Unions,” will cover many of the much discussed issues that arise whenever the subject is broached amongst a group of S.P.G.B’ers.

In addition, we shall include items of party news, suggestions for reading and for study, and any matter that will be useful and interesting to members of our party.

Francis Bacon was a wise guy. He made some pithy remarks. Such as:

“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.”

“Forum” is going to be a paper that will be chewed, digested and enjoyed.

S.P.G.B’ers and members of Companion Parties overseas! You must not miss the first issue of our new paper. If you get hold of a later issue and find yourself in the middle of a red-hot discussion on a topic of vital interest, and you have missed the beginning, you’ll want to kick yourself. So make sure of No. 1. Send your order in at once. Order through your branch or take out a subscription. Do it now, or you may leave it too late.

Internal Party Journal Committee.

Fairly Equal (2016)

Book Review from the July 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

'The Great Divide', by Joseph Stiglitz. Penguin £10.99.

Stiglitz is a kind of dissident establishment economist, a Nobel Prize winner and former Chief Economist at the World Bank, yet who is in some ways at odds with conventional views. This volume consists of shortish essays from publications such as the New York Times and Vanity Fair, with some extra material. Most deal with the United States, but there is also some discussion of other countries, including China, Scotland and Mauritius.

The central theme is inequality and its consequences, though strangely there are no references to Wilkinson and Pickett’s The Spirit Level. As an example of the extent of inequality, an article from 2012 notes that the family that owns Walmart has wealth of $90bn, equivalent to that of the poorest 30 percent of the US population. In three years of recession, median wealth declined by 40 percent, and workers are on average worse off than their parents were. In the first three years of the so-called recovery, 95 percent of the increase in income went to the top one percent. There is no equality of opportunity in the US either, as the life chances of a child are dependent on their parents’ income and education. The children of the poor suffer disproportionately from asthma and learning disabilities.

Among the consequences of a high degree of inequality are greater instability, lower growth and less aggregate demand. This is because the very rich consume less, as a fraction of their income, than lower-income individuals. So a less inegalitarian system would supposedly lead to a more buoyant economy and almost everyone being better off. Moreover, the current astonishing levels of inequality are not inevitable but the result of deliberate policies, including the growth in importance of the financial sector.

Stiglitz sees the present system as an example of ‘phoney capitalism’, where ‘losses are socialized and profits privatized’ and markets are not truly competitive (a position more usually associated with the ‘right’ than with the ‘left’). Corporate welfarism means the banks and so on are bailed out by the government, but those who own them still make big profits and their top bosses still get massive bonuses. He is particularly opposed to what economists term ‘rent seeking’, which includes preferential tax treatment, government subsidies and the profit from controlling a monopoly. It is a zero-sum activity, devoted to gaining a bigger share of the pie rather than increasing the size of the economic pie, and just leads to an increase in wealth at the top of the scale.

As for the kind of society he wants instead, Stiglitz says we should choose both capitalism and fairness. He prefers a far more equal system and rejects austerity, which weakens demand and so discourages investment. Inequality stifles growth, and committing resources to education, infrastructure and technology will be a way of ‘putting America back to work’. With bland views like this, it is little wonder he is on the Labour Party’s Economic Advisory Committee (with Thomas Piketty).

One essay here is entitled ‘Of the 1 percent, by the 1 percent, for the 1 percent’. Nothing Stiglitz says suggests that he stands for a society where things will be different in any significant way from this.      Paul Bennett

Party News Briefs (1952)

Party News from the September 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Delegate Meeting will be held at Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London, on Saturday and Sunday, September 6th and 7th, commencing each day at 11 a.m.

A Social and Dance will be held at Conway Hall on the Saturday evening commencing at 7 p.m. Full details regarding this appear elsewhere in this issue.

Indoor Propaganda Meetings will be held fortnightly at Denison House, Vauxhall Bridge Road, commencing Sunday evening, 5th October, at 7 p.m. Every effort will be made to ensure that these meetings are successful and members are urged to note the dates and interest as many as possible to attend. The hall is a pleasant one, easily accessible and has been booked until March, 1953, and affords an excellent opportunity and scope to propagate the Party’s case. Branches will be making their own arrangements to publicise these meetings as much as possible. The members who cannot attend branch meetings will be noting the dates in order to invite non-members to attend.

St Pancras Town Hall has been booked for a Sunday evening meeting on 12th October, when another Challenge meeting will be held, similar to the successful May Day Challenge meeting. Other political Parties have been invited to send a representative to address the meeting.

Phyllis Howard

To All Members: The Internal Party Journal (1952)

Party News from the August 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

Party members will know by now that the first issue of the Internal Party Journal is to appear in October. It will appear regularly each month. The decision arises directly out of the expressed wishes of Conference.

The committee responsible for the publication is governed by terms of reference laid down by the E.C. The matter to be published will include articles on controversial issues, educational matters, book notes and guidance on courses of study, letters from correspondents, and general information about the activities of Socialists at home and broad. Judging from letters from comrades abroad it seems that even E.C. reports are as welcome as refreshing rain in a desert. The Journal, we know, will be very welcome. A comrade from the U.S.A. writes that it is a “tremendous step forward," and expresses the opinion (and hope) that it will be open to contributions from comrades in the companion parties. We hope that the views and opinions of members of all the companion parties will find expression in the Journal, and that it will provide a new link between us all to help to break the remoteness of distance. The new venture will demonstrate that Socialist principles are the stronger where varying opinions about their interpretation and application can be argued out sincerely and without fear.

The first issue in October will contain, apart from other matter, four main articles: “The Nature of the Socialist Revolution,” “Is Parliament the Road to Socialism?” “Trade Unions,” “Is the Time Opportune for Socialists to Contest Parliamentary Elections? ” Each issue will contain main articles as well as correspondence dealing with previous articles.

The price of the Journal has initially been fixed by the E.C. at sixpence. Early reactions suggest that the demand will be good and the possibility of it being sold at a lower price or of producing a larger Journal is not ruled out. For the time being it will be a four-page production about twice the size of our Election Specials.

Branches are asked to give the effort their full support and to endeavour to contact each member with a view to selling a copy to each member. Branches are also asked to let H.O. know at the first opportunity the number they will require of the October issue. Comrades out of touch with branches are advised to take out a quarterly, six-monthly or an annual subscription and to write H.O. accordingly.

This is the paper the membership has asked for and it should be taken by the whole Party membership.

Party News Briefs (1952)

Party News from the August 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

Provincial Propaganda Tour. The Executive Committee have approved preliminary arrangements for a Provincial Propaganda Tour during August. Comrades Lawler, Coster, May and D’Arcy are visiting Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham, and Comrade Cash is going to Glasgow for two weeks. Help from members in these districts will be welcome and we suggest that the secretaries of the branches concerned be contacted for further details.

It is hoped to send speakers to Nottingham for weekend meetings and following Comrade Lawler’s fortnight in Birmingham, to send week-end speakers from London to follow on.

Bloomsbury Branch will not be holding meetings during the month of August as Conway Hall will not be available. From Thursday, 4th September, the branch will hold its meetings on the first and third Thursdays in each month as ’ previously instead of weekly as at present

Islington Branch are holding a weekly Speakers’ Class under the guidance of Comrade F. Terry. Four meetings have already been held and the six members who have regularly attended have found the class interesting and instructive. The branch suggests that other branches might find the scheme worthy of consideration. 

Denison House Meetings. The Propaganda Committee have the Executive Committee’s approval of arrangements to hold fortnightly Sunday evening meetings at Denison House from October 5th to December 14th and then during the first three months in 1953. Bloomsbury, Ealing and Paddington Branches have already offered to assist in running these meetings and it is hoped that really good results will ensue.

St Pancras Town Hall—It was considered that the May Day Challenge meeting at St. Pancras Town Hall was a success and arrangements are in hand to book the same Hall for a similar type of meeting for Sunday evening, October 12th. When dans are more advanced details will appear in the Socialist Standard. 

The Internal Party Journal. Members’ attention is drawn to the notice elsewhere in this issue announcing the launching of the new Internal Party Journal in October. This is something that has been “in the air” for a long while and now that it is shortly to appear it is up to all who are interested to give it full support. A lot depends on effective planning in advance of the first issue, and members will greatly help this work by making their decision about getting it as soon as possible.

Phyllis Howard

Party News Briefs (1952)

Party Notes from the July 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

Head Office Forum will be held on Saturday, July 12th, at 7 p.m., subject, “Socialism in Backward Countries.” Forum is to consist of Comrades F. Evans, D. Fenwick, C. Groves, G. McClatchie and W. Read. A. Turner will take the chair. This should prove a very interesting discussion so please make a note of the date and time.

Summer School Week-end was held on Saturday and Sunday, June 8th, and 9th, at “Treetops,” Farley Green, Surrey. Sixty members and friends were present and despite showers on the Sunday, all appeared to have enjoyed the week-end. F. Evans gave a lecture on Economic Geography and a discussion was opened by A. Turner on “Socialist Propaganda—is our approach too Negative?”

A Social was held on Saturday evening. All expenses were met with £1 surplus.

It is hoped to arrange an autumn week-end school at “Treetops,” and if members who are interested would contact the Central Organiser it will enable him to make preliminary arrangements as a minimum number of visitors must be ensured before he can book the camp.

Provincial Propaganda,—The Executive Committee is making arrangements for a comrade to visit the Manchester/Liverpool area for four weeks in August. It is also hoped to run regular fortnightly meetings at Nottingham throughout the summer. The meetings already held there have proved most satisfactory. 

Ealing Branch is slowly but surely increasing its efforts after a period of comparative inactivity. At the time of writing three debates are due to take place, one of which is in June with the Ealing North Liberals. The other two come later in the year with the Peace Pledge Union and George Schwarz, of the Sunday Times.

Members are once more rallying in support of the outdoor stations at Ealing and Richmond. This year’s season has had an encouraging commencement with good results. It is also proposed to hold two seaside propaganda trips, one of which is to Southsea on June 22nd, and the other to Hastings on August 17th. Ventures of this sort have in the past proved very fruitful, some excellent meetings having been held.

Just recently the monthly canvass of the Socialist Standard has been recommenced with promising results to date. Efforts are also being made to get the sales of the Party’s journal boosted in local newsagents and outside railway stations.

Phyllis Howard

Party News Briefs: Glasgow and St. Pancras (1952)

Party News from the June 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

May Day, 1952. Our Glasgow members write that this year’s May Day has been very encouraging for the Glasgow Comrades. In the afternoon on Sunday, May 4th, at Queen’s Park Recreation Grounds, a propaganda meeting which had been organised jointly by Kelvingrove and City branches, was a great success. The best, as a matter of fact, ever held outdoors on May Day.

When members arrived at the park with their small platform, the Communist Party, I.L.P. and the Scottish Nationalists were building up platforms and mounting loudspeaker equipment on motor-lorries, whilst waiting on their respective members who were marching to the park in the May Day Procession.

The procession duly arrived helped by pipe and flute bands and made for the different platforms prepared for them. When the circus had passed our first speaker mounted the platform and very quickly gathered an audience which grew to at least 500. Our meeting lasted two hours and could have gone on longer, but we had to allow time to get to the Cosmo Cinema where we were holding our indoor meeting in the evening. During the time we were holding the outdoor meeting we witnessed the spectacle of the once proud I.L.P. having to close down after less than 30 minutes, during which they had made a vain effort to get an audience with the assistance of loudspeakers and a ladies’ pipe band. The Scottish Nationalists stuck it out with a comparatively small audience, considering all the display they had. The only other meeting of any size was addressed by the ‘Rev.' Harry Pollitt, backed up by the choir of the ‘Russian Orthodox Church.' Their audience amounted to about 2,500, mostly composed of the faithful flock who had marched all the way from the centre of the town shouting silly slogans.

Our meeting arranged for the evening in the Cosmo Cinema had been advertised by putting 10,000 tickets through doors in the Kelvingrove constituency, by street chalking and newspaper advertisements. The distribution of the tickets had been hard work and we were anxious to see the results. The audience, giving a conservative estimate numbered at least 550. A collection of £15 13s. 8d. was taken and £4 odd literature was sold. But for a last minute hitch which deprived us of the use of a car for our loudspeaker equipment, we would probably have filled the hall which holds 750. Comrade May gave an excellent lecture and the members went home satisfied that the work they had put in was well worth the results.

The total of the collections for the day was £16 12s. and total literature sales amounted to £7 10s.

In London plans had been made to hold our usual May Day Rally in Hyde Park, but owing to heavy rain our hopes were washed away. Despite the rain, however, efforts were made to distribute handbills advertising our evening May Day Rally at St. Pancras Town Hall.

An audience of 600 attended this evening meeting to which we had invited representatives of other political parties to speak from the platform putting their parties’ case so that the audience could compare the various cases along with the case of the Socialist Party. The Liberal Party accepted the challenge, the Labour Party declined, the Conservative Party replied that they could not accept as it was not their practice to address meetings on a Sunday, the Communist Party did not reply to our invitation.

The meeting commenced with Comrades D’Arcy. and Waters speaking for the Party and a Mr. Allison for the Liberal Party. We announced that our challenge had been made and only accepted by the Liberal Party when a Conservative and Labour Party member from the audience asked if they could speak on their respective Parties’ cases. They were permitted to join the other speakers on the platform and each spoke for ten minutes. The audience was most attentive and many questions were asked of our speakers.

A collection of £17 was taken and literature sales amounted to £3 10s.

St. Pancras Branch members were responsible for Stewards and literature sellers, and the general organisation of the meeting, and they worked efficiently and well.

Manchester Branch held their May Day Rally on Thursday, 1st May, at a meeting in Chorlton Town Hall. Apart from knowing that this meeting was also very successful we have not the full details to hand yet.

Phyllis Howard

Our 48th Annual Conference (1952)

Party News from the May 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the morning of Friday, April 11th, of this year, 69 delegates, representing all but one of our branches, assembled at Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London, for our 48th Annual Conference. The delegates sat down to criticise and discuss a 14-page report from the Executive Committee, together with two pages of amendments to rules, 22 resolutions and 13 items for discussion. This was quite a plateful to digest in the three days at their disposal. On Friday afternoon the delegates reached the all-time record total of 72 delegates.

Much of the discussion on Friday morning centred around proposals for reorganising and improving the procedure at our Conference. This was undoubtedly due to the fact that the increased size of our conference delegation during late years has shown some of our procedure to be suitable only for smaller bodies and that, as we grow in numerical strength, we must amend our methods in order to facilitate our work.

Another proposition which was obviously inspired by the increase in our membership was that all branches with a membership of over 50 should be encouraged to divide and set up new branches in nearby localities. Conference decided that to attempt to increase the number of our branches by these methods was undesirable and would not have the effect desired by the proposers of the item. Branches should be allowed to grow naturally without urging from Head Office.

The Executive Committee reported to the Conference on the Party’s finances during 1951. The report showed that losses made in previous years on our Summer Schools were not repeated during 1951. The cost of postage, printing and stationery increased by about 30 per cent, compared with 1950 and over 60 per cent, compared with 1949. The cost of producing the Socialist Standard was up by £150 during the year necessitating the increase of price by 1d. Expenditure on Hall Hire, Advertising, etc., was also greater so that altogether, “The end of 1951 sees us worse off financially (as far as balance is concerned) than a year previously, but with the problem of premises solved permanently.”

The main item of discussion on the Saturday session centred around our methods of propaganda. Heated arguments were advanced in favour or in opposition to our various avenues for expounding our case. All were agreed that it would be inadvisable to discard any one of those avenues but that we might with advantage concentrate on certain ones without neglecting any. The disadvantages attendant upon outdoor meetings in this age of noisy traffic, cinemas, radio, television, etc., were considered, but our inability to make use of the modem mass propaganda machinery, due to lack of finances and Government control, make it necessary for us to continue with older methods despite the fact that they may be less productive of results than of yore.

The training and encouragement of new speakers, the methods and manner of our approach to audiences, the social problems that we investigate and the flaws in our propaganda organisation were all debated, and delegates indulged in a lot of self-searching to find causes for dissatisfaction and remedies for the future.

Sunday afternoon was devoted mainly to a discussion on electoral activity and the Executive Committee was instructed to put forward candidates at the next General Election. Here a problem was encountered. It was recognised that a Parliamentary Election could be held at very short notice and that quick decisions would have to be made. The concern of delegates arose from the need to keep decisions on all major issues in the hands of the Party membership whilst at the same time being able to make such decisions in the limited time available.

Much of the discussion disclosed a dissatisfaction with the slow growth of our organisation, but never at any time did a delegate or other member suggest that we should depart from the rock-firm foundation on which our Party is built—a sound understanding of our object and principles on the part of all applicants for membership. We have seen other political parties which have called themselves socialist but have in reality been little more than rebellions, build up large organisations on the soft sand of a mass, politically-ignorant membership, and then crumble away to oblivion.

The report of the work done during 1951, which was under review, did not show anything sensational. The decline in interest in outdoor meetings was offset by an increase in the number of writers for the Socialist Standard, tending to show that many members consider written propaganda to be more effective than verbal.

Those members who sat through the three days of the Conference, whilst the sun was shining outside the Conference Hall, probably felt that they had experienced three days of dry-as-dust discussion. It has been said that this was not our most brilliant or enthusing Conference. Long hours of serious discussion was relieved by an occasional humorous wisecrack or, interjection. But it was business done. It was a real Conference in that the delegates assembled to confer on the many problems facing the Party and not to listen to long-winded oratory from a bunch of party commissars, as is the case at the Annual Conferences of other political parties. We can embark on the next year of socialist activity reinforced with the ideas and decisions that emanated from the Conference.

A successful social evening was held at our new Head Office on the Friday evening and the social and dance on Saturday evening was likewise a great success. The Conference concluded with the usual Party rally in the Conway Hall on Sunday evening.

W. Waters