The Passing Show: Aggrieved (1963)

The Passing Show Column from the April 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Aggrieved

Much controversy followed the BBC’s recent broadcast of a filmed interview with General de Gaulle’s arch-enemy, M. Bidault, who is a former French Premier and Foreign Secretary. Bidault leads the OAS, the organization of the Algerian settlers who were aggrieved by the decision of French capitalism to abandon the French landed interests in Algeria and make terms instead with developing Algerian capitalism. The OAS blames this decision on De Gaulle, although the French capitalist state could hardly in the last resort have decided otherwise. Bidault’s group have already killed many opponents both in Algeria and France, and several attempts have been made on the life of De Gaulle.

Indiscriminate Assassination

The BBC’s Director-General defended the BBC’s action on the grounds that, if the position were reversed, the French TV service might well have done the same. The Conservative MP, Gilbert Longden. retorted that

the BBC themselves describe Bidault as “the man most closely associated with the OAS.” Does their Director-General really believe that “a former British Prime Minister or Foreign Secretary” would be the leader of an organisation which sought to attain its political ends by the indiscriminate assassination and disablement of scores of innocent men, women and children?

The pronouncements of MPs never cease to amaze. Has Mr. Longden really forgotten that every living “former British Prime Minister” and every living “former British Foreign Secretary" supported the British capitalist class to the hilt in the Second World War? Has Mr. Longden really forgotten that in that war the British Government not only "sought to attain its political ends” (the removal of the German threat to British markets and profits) "by the indiscriminate assassination and disablement of scores of innocent men, women and children it went much further: by bombing German. Italian and Japanese cities, the British Government (and its allies) indiscriminately assassinated and disabled not scores but thousands and hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children. Ghastly though its outrages may be, the OAS is merely an apprentice in assassination and disablement compared with the British Governments of the two world wars. Mr. Longden himself supported the British Government in the last war: why does he now pretend to be shocked by the OAS?

You pays your money

From The Times, Tuesday, February 19th, 1963:

The National Economic Development Council are to press ahead with forceful recommendations for faster growth in the national economy. . . . By last night, after two days' discussion with the Chancellor in the chair, the N.E.D.C. was a more united body than it has ever been. . . . The council's March policy statements are thus likely to be on all those subjects where they can find basic agreement. A cornerstone of a coherent N.E.D.C. policy must be an incomes policy. And the council show some optimism about producing at least a framework which has the seal of the Government, management, and trade union members. This alone would be more than the country has had before.

From the Daily Herald, Tuesday. February 19th, 1963:

The Government’s long-term plans for economic recovery reached crisis point last night. The crisis emerged in Neddy—the National Economic Development Council —made up of Government Ministers, top industrialists and leading members of the Trades Union Congress. They are the experts on whom the Government have been relying to produce a united drive for expansion and a lasting solution to unemployment But after a two-day debate touching every aspect of the nation’s economy—all day Sunday and all day yesterday—the Neddy men have still not produced any signpost for the way ahead. . . . The fact is that it is becoming more and more difficult for the Neddy experts to reach agreement on positive action.

Apparently it is difficult for others besides the Neddy experts to reach agreement.

Alwyn Edgar

The Right to Strike (1964)

Editorial from the April 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent decision of the House of Lords in the case of Rookes v. Barnard has again brought the question of strikers and the law into the limelight. The effect of the decision is that where a trade union has signed a contract not to strike or to give notice before striking, anyone harmed by a breach of this contract can bring a civil action for damage against those responsible.

This interpretation of the Trade Disputes Act, 1906, will virtually ban unofficial wild-cat strikes though it will not affect official strikes such as the recent AEU strike in Port Talbot. However, since many of the strikes which take place today are unofficial this decision represents a considerable threat to the right to strike.

In Britain both employers and trade unions have been eager to keep the law out of industrial disputes. Even so there have in recent times been periods when official strikes were illegal. The war-time Order 1305 which was not withdrawn until August, 1951, outlawed strikes and—of course-lockouts. It is generally acknowledged that this hampered attempts to resist the Labour Government’s “wage freeze” and “wage restraint though it was pressure from the unions which led to the Order being withdrawn. Thus, for nearly the whole period of the last Labour Government even official strikes were illegal. This was strikingly illustrated when in 1951 Hartley Shawcross, the Labour Attorney General, tried unsuccessfully to convict the leaders of a dock strike.

Under Capitalism, workers depend on their wages for a living. They live by selling their labour-power. Like all sellers, workers seek the highest possible price. To this end trade unions were formed to bargain with the capitalists. This bargaining must go on as long as labour-power is bought and sold, as long as Capitalism lasts that is. The main weapon the trade unions have in these struggles over wages is the strike. This is a class weapon and its loss would seriously hamper the workers in their day-to-day struggles.

But trade union action, as Marx pointed out in Value, Price and Profit, has its limits. He wrote:

" . . . the working class ought not to exaggerate to themselves the ultimate working of these everyday struggles. They ought not to forget that they are fighting with effects, but not with the causes of those effects; that they are retarding the downward movement, but not changing its direction; that they are applying palliatives, not curing the malady. They ought, therefore, not to be exclusively absorbed in these unavoidable guerrilla fights incessantly springing up from the never ceasing encroachments of capital or changes of the market. They ought to understand that, with all the miseries it imposes upon them, the present system simultaneously engenders the material conditions and the social forms necessary for an economical reconstruction of society. Instead of the conservative motto, ‘A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work!’ they ought to inscribe on their banner their revolutionary watchword, ‘Abolition of the wages system!’ ”

Open Letter to the War Resisters' International (1966)

From the April 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

The 13th Triennial Conference of the War Resisters International, to be held in Rome from 7th to 13th this month, has on its Agenda the discussion of non-violence and politics, with a view to bridging the gap between advocates of non-violence who seek “a fractional society and a world without war” and ‘Individuals and groups engaged in political activities who are finding traditional politics based on physical coercion no more effective for solving present-day problems or even for maintaining order". The statement setting out the attitude of the Socialist Party of Great Britain is printed below. Copies have been sent to the Conference, at their invitation. 

The only way in which mankind can bring about a social change and build a fraternal society, free of war, is to establish Socialism. This will not come about as an expression of non-violence but as the conscious act of a Socialist working-class. The attitude of pacifism can be, and has been, adopted by people of all manner of opinions—for example, by members of the British Labour Party, by Christians and so on—all of whom support the capitalist social system which produces violence and which therefore makes pacifism an empty dream.

Giving effect to the proposal to bridge the gap between politics and pacifism can only mean the formation of yet another political party which supports capitalism while it aims to deal with one of capitalism’s manifestations, war. The Socialist Party of Great Britain has always regarded such organisations as a waste of time, and the history of reformism supports our case to the hilt. Any organisation which accepts the continuance of Capitalism, the cause of war in the modem world, is standing in the way of Socialist Parties like the Socialist Party of Great Britain, which seek to end Capitalism and with it war.

Modern war arises from the conflicting economic interests of the various national capitalist groups, including Russia and China, and the other countries falsely claimed to be Socialist.

It is a basic condition of Capitalism that there is a class struggle between the owning, exploiting class and the wage and salary earners by whose labour wealth is produced, and that that wealth takes the form of commodities, produced for sale and profit. This condition produces the competitive nature of Capitalist society which, within a country, in addition to the class struggle, sets one firm against another and which, in the world at large, sets one government against another over the capture of markets for exports, over access to raw materials such as oil and rubber, over the control of trade routes such as the Suez Canal and over the occupation of strategic points such as Cyprus and Singapore.

In another aspect, these disputes take the form of intricate manoeuvres in the political, diplomatic and military fields over the control of spheres of influence. For a long time the ruling class of the Soviet Union and the U.S.A. have disputed over the control of Europe and the Middle East. To some extent, their differences over the Far East have been composed because of the rise of the potential threat from China.

The important fact is that these disputes are inseparable from Capitalism and that they go on all the time. That is why governments maintain armed forces, both to protect the privileged position of the propertied class internally and against other capitalist groups internationally. That is why the long history of international organisations and conferences for disarmament and peace is a history of failure.

This is the basic explanation of the world wars of Capitalism, of the minor wars which have been going on all the time and of the periodic world wars, and of the continual state of tension in which Capitalism lives. The inevitable result of all this is that violence is part of our lives as long as we live under Capitalism.

In these conditions it is futile to make a moral stand against violence in itself. Many pacifists have proved their sincerity and courage, but this does not alter the fact that their views are out of touch with reality. The only way in which war and social violence can be removed from our lives is to remove Capitalism—including State Capitalism in Russia, China, etc.—and replace it with Socialism. This is not, as pacifists argue, a question of propagating ideas of non-violence. It requires that a socialist working-class democratically gain control of the machinery of government for the purpose of abolishing Capitalism and establishing Socialism.

Socialism will be a social system based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community.

Wealth will be produced solely for use and not for the profit of a minority. This will remove the basic cause of war and will therefore remove the apparatus of war—the armed forces and their weapons—and the atmosphere of violence which oppresses humanity today.

To establish Socialism the working-class of the world must first understand and want it. They must, in other words, free themselves from ideas which at present keep Capitalism in being—including ideas like pacifism—and consciously choose the new society in which men can truly live in brotherhood and build a world for human beings.

Divided They Fell? (1968)

Book Review from the April 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

History of the International 1914-1943 by Julius Braunthal. Nelson 126s.

“On issue after issue”, wrote Jack Cohen in reviewing this book in the Morning Star on 18 January, “essential facts and background information and analysis are completely omitted”. He instanced the policy of the German Communist Party up to 1933 (denouncing the Social Democrats as “social fascists”, while helping the fascists to undermine democracy), the Spanish Civil War (murdering thousands of anarchists and trotskyists), the German Soviet Pact (agreeing with Hitler to carve up Poland) and the attitude of the British Communist Party to the war (supporting it for a few days, then opposing it till June 1941, then supporting it again). Of course the so-called Communists do not want people looking at their record of opportunism in the service of Russian state capitalism.

The Communist International was set up in 1919 and to it affiliated those who mistakenly thought that as capitalism was collapsing and that the working class should therefore stage an immediate armed rising. Braunthal says, and this is fair enough, that it was by its Fourth World Congress in 1922 that the Comintern had become a tool of the new rulers of Russia. Its rival was styled the Labour and Socialist International whose members, throughout this period, pursued a more consistent, if futile, policy. They saw their role as not to prepare the workers to take power for Socialism, but to protect the workers within capitalism by supporting reforms and parliamentary democracy. Consistency, to put it mildly, was not something that the Comintern could claim for its policies. At one time they called for armed risings, at another for a “national front” to include all save pro-German fascists.

Braunthal argues that the European Labour movement was so weakened by the split, started by Lenin and perpetuated by the Comintern, that it was unable effectively to resist fascism. But would a united front of self-styled workers’ and democratic parties have stopped fascism? This begs the question by assuming that the Communists were democrats, whereas up till 1935 they were denouncing democracy as useless. Only in the period 1935-9 did they pretend to support democracy and even then, when they shared power in Spain they used it to suppress, torture and murder working class opponents. Why, too, should they be regarded as part of the reformist workers’ movement? Surely they had more in common with the fascists — their contempt for democracy and advocacy of dictatorship, their worship of leaders, their special attacks on financiers, their opportunism and demagogy? How could such people be reliable allies in the defence of democracy and working class interests? As the French Social Democrat, Lucien Laurat, put it: the real social fascists were the Communists.

Braunthal, himself a Social Democrat, is using the Communists as scapegoats for the failure of the Social Democrats’ “lesser evil” policy for resisting fascism: Hindenburg and Dollfuss were not as bad as Hitler and so on. This policy only encouraged fascism. For fascism flourished on discontent and discontent flourishes under capitalism, even in a democratic state. So in rejecting uncompromising struggle against capitalism for a mere struggle to defend democracy (important as democracy is), the Social Democrats were preserving the conditions that cause mass dissatisfaction with democracy. In preserving capitalism, especially since the governments they joined or kept in office failed miserably (as they had to) to make capitalism work for the mass of the people, they too contributed to the growth of fascism.

Braunthal often goes too far in trying to blame the Communists for the suppression of democracy. This is a pity as it means that the wealth of information in his book can not be relied on. He says, for instance, that the Bolsheviks first tried to seize power in July 1917, whereas in fact they were then trying to restrain workers from launching an uprising they thought premature. He claims the 1924 Labour government “fell victim to an episode in the Communist propaganda campaign”. But the Campbell case was only the occasion, and by no means the cause, for the fall. In any event, the British Communist Party gave its unconditional support to all Labour candidates in both the 1923 and 1924 elections. Braunthal makes no mention of this as he argues that up to 1935 the Communists were consistently opposed to Social Democratic parties (save for a brief period in 1922). We who consistently opposed both Social Democrats and Communists know better. But for Braunthal to admit that from 1923 to 1927 the Communists backed the Social Democrats would weaken his basic thesis.

Jack Cohen called this book a whitewash operation. We must agree. Nevertheless it is still worth reading if only to get the Social Democratic view of this period in working class history.

Adam Buick

Party News (1969)

Party News from the April 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the recent Northern Ireland election, Belfast branch of the World Socialist Party distributed more than 12,000 election statements urging those who wanted Socialism to vote for none of the candidates but to show on their ballot paper that they were socialists.

The election result was a victory for no change, but it is worth recording the peculiar attitude of the Communist Party of Northern Ireland. This time they put up no candidates “so as not to add to the confused situation” (we expect socialists elsewhere who have to spend so much time clearing up the confusion spread by the ‘Communists’ hope this is to be the new party line). They called for a “united opposition” to include “all anti-Unionist forces”. General Secretary Hugh Moore mentioned by name the Nationalist (known traditionally as 'Green Tories'), Northern Ireland Labour, Republican Labour, National Democrat, and Liberal parties as candidates for “a progressive alliance of the Left, Labour and democratic forces.” (Morning Star, February 22, 1969).

This would appear to be a return to the ultra-opportunist ‘popular front' line of the late 30s with the Communists voluntarily abdicating their self-appointed role as the ‘workers’ vanguard’ in order to trail behind the most conservative anti-Fascist or anti-Unionist or anti-Tory politicians or party. Will this policy spread to Britain also?

The Permissive Society (1971)

From the April 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a list of the most misleading phrases, those used to denote and characterise eras of social history would surely be near the top. The Naughty Nineties; the Roaring Twenties; the Age of Elegance; the Golden Days of this and that. Because, for the majority of people, the times thus described are nothing of the kind. The only one which rings true is The Hungry Forties, and that falls short of adequacy for a nineteenth-century decade of horrible starvation.

The present age is, of course, that of the Permissive Society. Like the other phrases, it suggests an infection of us all — abandon, indulgence, Rabelaisian laughter everywhere: the triumph of the libido. The truth, however, is that to most people it means only the goings-on they read about in the newspapers. The nude, the freaked-out and the orgiastic are a province touching slightly, if at all, the pattern of life in suburbs, villages, and Council estates. Few, really, of Greater London’s millions feel the breeze of the Swinging City. Indeed, how can it be otherwise? Permissiveness is there, but restraint on participation in it is imposed not by morality but by income. No man can be a sybarite on twenty pounds a week.

The participants in the Permissive Society, then, are the young and the better-off. For the latter, that is no change. “It’s the rich what gets the pleasure, the poor what gets the blame’’ is a handed-down line in a bawdy comic song where the joke is a rueful reference to the way things always are in class-divided society; who has not detected, in condemnations of permissiveness, annoyance because the pleasure is not now considered a private privilege of the rich? One may see how it was in Victorian England by reading, for example, the Radical novels of G. W. M. Reynolds where part of the attack on the upper class was continual reference to their debauchery. But it is only ten years since the prosecuting Counsel in the Lady Chatterley case asked the jury if they would wish their servants to read such a book. This vein of criticism of permissiveness reminds one of the old joke about the titled lady on her wedding night asking her husband if the working class enjoyed such raptures and responding to the affirmative with: “Well, you must try to have them stopped. It’s much too good for them.”

Perhaps something similar comes into the perturbation over the permissiveness of the young. It is natural enough for adults with low wages to be resentful of adolescents getting as much as they, able to buy seeming luxuries that a lifetime’s labour never knew — and, apparently, rebutting all the constraints and disciplines which were held to be moral because they were essential. Nor is there any doubt that adolescent life has altered in the last fifteen years. The discovery of the young as a huge consumer group, and the socio-economic pattern-changes which have made one generation’s work-life dissimilar to — and therefore uninfluential over — the next’s, have done that.

Thus, books and films which were “not suitable” for young people are now open to them. The non-conformity in dress and hair-styles has been the display of freedom from older influences. The true significance of the Beatles and Rolling Stones in their emergence ten years ago was rejection in clothes, hair and demeanour as well as in musical form and content of the established, taken-for-granted roles for young males in contemporary society. Moreover, the extensions of secondary and higher education, as parts of general adaptations in capitalism, have meant that young people are in this movement at the same time as they are still in school. This in itself has given fuel to the older generations’ resentment: here are youngsters, never earned a penny yet but behaving with adult licence — as if adulthood were certifiable only by going to work.

The commonest condemnation of "permissive” behaviour among the young is, curiously enough, an uninformed one. In this age, it is said, they bed together instead of waiting for marriage. Practically every week there is still some clergyman in the newspapers drawing attention to the illegitimacy figures and telling how many girls are in the family way when they marry at his church. Anyone who has studied family records — a genealogist, for example — can put right this delusion that it’s modern times. The parish churches’ own registers of baptisms, the only records of births before the State took over in 1837, are universally studded with what they called “baseborn” children. Stratford-on-Avon has an entry for the birth of William Shakespeare’s child, five months after his marriage. Whatever may be different for the young, that has always gone on.

To all this has to be added a small flow of openings-up of forbidden frontiers. Nudity on the stage and in films; the legalisation of abortion and homosexuality; the interlarding of TV plays and sketches with what used to be called “barrack-room language”; the recurrent arguments over pot and pornography, with the possibility that either or both may become legal in not too many years. If most people see little or nothing of these things at first hand, their existence as topics is probably enough to shock and to promote the conviction that we live in a society which has changed because its norms have broken down.

And that is just what has not happened. The norm of capitalist society is production for sale and profit, with all human activity either directed or inescapably conditioned by it. The permissive society is, above everything else, a commercial phase: an everybody’s-doing-it sales concept like high-speed gas or the cult of the white-enamel kitchen. The truth is seen in fact when aspects of permissiveness are used by respectable sounding firms whose executives probably go to church on Sundays and personally deplore the laxity of the young. The Electricity Boards, using one of the most provocative girl-pictures extant for advertising; the petrol ads with the girl and the phallic pump; all the incitements to buy which indicate instant sexual intercourse as reward for doing so.

Much of it is obvious enough. The paperback-book industry has had the jackpot rung for it by permissiveness. The theatre has thriven from it — even Shakespeare appears to have a fresh round now with nude Juliets and more literal interpretations of the bawdy bits. The cinema, which was near dying in the ’fifties, has had a new lease of life by becoming the vehicle for whatever wouldn’t do for family entertainment on TV. General Booth built a new Christian sect to popularity with the maxim “Why should the Devil have the best tunes?” A hundred years later, commerce has reconsidered the point and found randiness better than music.

But is there not at any rate a by-product in that people can nevertheless feel more free and be happier in their personal relationships, because barriers of convention are broken down? If there is, it is only marginal. Margaret Powell, in one of her books about servant life, remarks that one reason why working people felt guilty over sex was the conviction that something which was enjoyable and had not to be purchased must be wrong. The whole point of the commerce in permissiveness is to see that people do purchase it, as far as that can be made possible; and it is hard to see that improving the quality of life. As with the Beatle upsurge, emblems and even feelings of unconventionality are quickly appropriated for sale in the market. What happened to the Flower People? Their style and regalia made a dress-shop vogue, their most lasting effect is the floral shirts on Marks-and-Spencers’ counters.

Permissiveness is an awful word, if you think about it for only a moment. It means, literally, what is allowed. It assumes a society in which dispensations are made by “them”, areas of apparent licence permitted under watchful eyes: the complementary assumption has to be that the permission may be withdrawn at any time. That is, indeed, how most people see it. The common expression by someone who has, say, read a boldly-written book is: “Wonder it was allowed to be printed.” And the assumption is well-founded. The recent attacks on International Times and Oz show this clearly enough; neither publication is specially admirable, but both went beyond the permission for permissiveness. In some ways, Victorian society was more permissive than ours. Certainly no generation before the present one has been so pried and spied upon, its every movement noted and filed to underline the restrictive power of commerce and the State.

The things implied in the idea of a thoroughly permissive society are desirable. It is desirable that people should be free, both psychologically and socially, to find the fullest satisfactions; that responsibility and harmony should be the guides to conduct instead of moral sanctions and legal prohibitions. What has to be appreciated is that these states of affairs are dependent for realisation on the organisation of society as a whole. On one hand, it is not possible to create them within a society whose inherent tendencies are antithetical to freedom and responsibility. On the other, personal freedom is dependent on solid social conditions as much as on attitudes of mind.

Sexual freedom, for instance — since the permissive society is about that more than anything else. For all the emancipated talk, the exercise of freedom in this area of life really does demand a different bricks-and-mortar environment from the one most people get under the capitalist system. The minimum requirements are privacy, hot water, warmth and not being tired, and one can add more desirabilia like a comfortable bed and nice surroundings. Given the perfect partner and the most liberal frame of mind, one cannot do justice to lovemaking in a cold room where the neighbours hear every word and every creak of the bedspring and there is only the kitchen sink to wash in.

Thus, the road to freedom must be paved by a revolution in the way people live materially. And that is not all. There are the questions of the status of women in society; of racial and social barriers; of the continual money worries from which no working person is free, that impede expression and fulfilment in every sphere; and of the commodity-making and marketing of every human need. It has been the aim of drop-outs and reformers alike to meet these problems either personally or socially. That it cannot be done is evidenced not by argument, but by a look at things today. The answer can only be a transformation of society, changing the basis and the purpose on which it is organised.

Socialists have sympathy with all those who want the liberations a permissive society promises. The sympathy must be specially strong for the young people grasping this illusion of freedom to find themselves caught in the commercial bondage of capitalism after all. What they — we, all of us — need is a free society in which mankind can, for the first time, find fulfilment.

Robert Barltrop

English County Council Elections (2017)

Party News from the April 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party is standing a number of candidates in the South East in these elections, which take place on 4 May. In Kent (Folkestone), East Sussex (Lewes) and Surrey (Guildford).

Most of the work (street stalls, leafleting) will take place in April. If you would like to help contact us by letter (52 Clapham High St, SW4 7UN), phone (0207 6223811), or email (spgb@worldsocialism.org) and we will put you in touch with the local branch.

A Tenth of Marx's 'Grundrisse' (1972)

Book Review from the April 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marx’s Grundrisse, by David McLellan. Macmillan. £2.50.

In 1923 some previously unknown manuscripts by Marx from the period 1857-8 were discovered, but were not published until 1939-41. These thousand pages of hand-written notes are known as the Grundrisse Der Kritik Der Politischen Oekonomie (the Basic Principles of the Critique of Political Economy) or simply as Marx’s Grundrisse. They have not yet been translated in full into English despite this book which is really a bit of a take-on. It only includes 100 of the 1,000 of Marx’s pages, as well as 30 more which have been available in English translations since 1904. And some of McLellan’s summaries are tendentious in that they advance his view that Marx always was more of a humanist philosopher than a socialist economist.

Nevertheless some of the selected passages are interesting in that Marx spells out in some detail how capitalism prepares the basis for Socialism and what Socialism will mean. His views can be summarised as follows.

Capitalism, as it develops, brings about a number of connected changes in the character of production:

• First, it increases productivity so that a smaller and smaller amount of labour-time is needed to produce the same amount of real wealth.
• Second, it increases the stock of fixed means of production (plant and machinery) which comes to play a much larger and more important role in production than direct human labour (which still remains essential though).
• Third, it reduces the amount of time society has to devote to producing the necessities of life so increasing the potential amount of free time.
• Fourth, wealth comes to be produced, not by individuals working on their own, but by the social workforce as a whole utilizing science and technology so that it is no longer possible to measure the individual worker’s specific contribution to production.

These developments, said Marx, make it possible for society to use science to reduce the working day, make work interesting and attractive and increase the free time of every member of the workforce, and also to abandon the exchange of products in accordance with their labour-time values.

But, his argument goes on, capitalism cannot do this because it is based on the exploitation of the workforce by the theft of their surplus labour (or potential free time) and it cannot distribute products other than through the price mechanism because they must be converted into money in order to realise as profit the surplus labour embodied in them and to recover the capital invested in their production.

These passages came as a relevation to the pseudo-Marxist Left who, misled by the Russian revolution, had imagined that Marx shared their view that "socialism” was merely nationalisation and planning, with or without democracy, and who had even twisted other passages from Marx to make it appear that he too thought that money, wages, prices and so on would continue to exist at least in the "first phase” of "socialism”. The passages caused Herbert Marcuse (who must be given the credit for first publicizing them in the English-speaking world) to declare that the Left had not been utopian enough!

But they came as no surprise to us. We had long realised, and argued in the face of fierce opposition and jibes of “utopian” from the Left, that Marx had always expected Socialism to involve the abolition of production for sale and a great change in conditions of work.

Adam Buick

The Economics of Unemployment (1973)

From the April 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is much confusion about the causes of unemployment and almost as much about how many unemployed there actually are. Early last year when the official figures stood at about a million several unofficial estimates put it much higher. The official figures told us how many men and women there were who were available for work and were on the Register. But what about those who for one reason or another were not on the Register? One estimate was that the real total was a million and a quarter. The Observer (23 January 1972) thought it was a million and a half and the same newspaper (20 February 1972) estimated that there were two million fewer people at work than there had been three years earlier. Harold Wilson (Financial Times, 8 April 1972) capped it with his own estimate that if you included all the people who were not looking for a job because there were no vacancies, the real figure “was nearer three million than the government’s figure of one million”.

There is nothing new about this kind of discrepancy between official figures and unofficial estimates in times of heavy unemployment and, provided it is borne in mind, the official figures do give a sufficient indication of how the level of unemployment alternately rises and falls as trade and production decline and expand.

Karl Marx from his study of nineteenth-century capitalism gave a summary description of what goes on:

The enormous extensibility of the factory system, the way in which it increases production by leaps and bounds, and its dependence upon the world market, necessarily give a febrile impetus to production, with a glutting of the markets, a subsequent relative inadequacy of demand, and therefore a paralysis of industry. The life of industry becomes one characterized by a succession of periods of moderate activity, prosperity, overproduction, crisis, and stagnation.

(Capital, Vol. I, page 456. Allen & Unwin edn.) 

Earlier economists had maintained that this kind of trade cycle did not and indeed could not happen. Later critics of Marx, who were compelled by events to admit that it did happen, then maintained that it was not necessary and that it only required certain kinds of corrective action to be taken to prevent it.

Try these Pills

Every variety of “corrective action” has been tried and all have failed because they all come up against certain inescapable aspects of the capitalist system. In a very abstract way it could be said that if all branches of all industries in all the world were planned to be kept in line with market demand and if technical improvements which reduced costs in one country were shared with all other countries and if wages, prices and levels of efficiency were the same everywhere, the trade cycle could be eliminated; but it is only necessary to state this to see that it is impossible. Individual capitalists fight for their own interests and national groups of capitalists have overwhelming economic and military reasons not to be submerged in such an all-embracing scheme. In practice nobody treats seriously ideas of that kind.

In the sphere of what is considered practicable the cures for unemployment fall into a few main groups. One is for the government to prop up ailing firms or industries with subsidies, or to promote employment in particular regions by the same means. These schemes are however not preventives of unemployment but ways of keeping the unemployed on the pay roll and off the dole queue. In effect they are payments to particular employers to employ people they otherwise would not employ. They are a burden on the rest of the capitalist class since they have to be paid for out of taxation. Frances Cairncross (Observer, 28 May 1972) in an article on the cost of promoting employment in the “development areas” in the ten years 1960 to 1970 stated that it was over £2,000 million and “the average cost of each new job created came to £678”; in spite of which unemployment in those areas jumped from 85,405 in June 1961 to 206,740 ten years later. “Looking at those figures, one might well ask whether regional policy was anything more than an expensive attempt to keep marginal constituencies in the backwoods sweet.”

Fewer Hands Make Less Work

A second idea for curing unemployment has been the Labour Party and trade-union belief that workers would be given job security if industries were taken out of the hands of private employers and nationalized. Hugh Scanlon, President of AEUW, voiced this in an attack on the General Electric Company. He pointed out that in the past three years GEC had cut their labour force in Britain from 245,000 to 181,000 while their profits increased (Financial Times, 14 December 1972). He described the company as “the largest unemployer of labour in this country". He seems to be singularly ill-informed. For years the nationalized industries — coal, gas, railways and electricity supply — have been reducing staff by tens of thousands; now joined by the Steel Corporation’s estimated 50,000 redundancies. The forces pressing the nationalized industries to cut staff are exactly the same as those affecting private industry, the need to be competitive and profitable.

The most spectacular of the schemes to obviate the trade cycle has of course been the Keynesian idea that the government can take action to keep up the demand for goods by its own investments and by stimulating consumption and private companies’ investment — the policy of Full Employment. Now that it has manifestly failed it is hard to believe how confident the Keynesians were that it would work. A typical claim was that made in 1946 by Barbara Wootton (now Lady Wootton) when she wrote: “It is now generally accepted, even at the highest academic and political levels, that there can be enough jobs to go round.” (There are still a few "true believers”. Michael Foot, MP, said on the radio, 24 January 1972: “By following Keynes’ doctrine it is a simple matter to make work.”)

Falls on Deaf Ears

Events of the past two years have shown how right Marx was when he pinpointed the fact that what alone will induce the capitalists to increase production is the confidence that what they put on the market will be sold at a profit. No amount of exhortation by the government and assurances that the banks will advance money to aid them will have any effect, and increases of the governments’ own expenditure make no difference if at the same time companies are holding back on investment.

In a speech on 4 February 1973 Prime Minister Heath was chiding businessmen for their reluctance “to expand and invest”, but he and the Chancellor of the Exchequer and other Ministers had been saying the same for the past two years, back to 1971. On 5 December 1971 the Observer published the results of an enquiry into the extent to which industry was, or rather was not, expanding its investment; under the title “Anthony Barber has been begging industry to invest . . . no-one is listening.” They quoted Barber’s claim in the House of Commons that “never before has a government taken so much action to stimulate employment”.

Mr. Barber was so right in telling the Commons this. He has cut taxes, stepped up spending, urged bewildered nationalized industry bosses to get out and spend, and maintained a brave front about economic progress. But Barber missed the point. No one, especially in industry, is arguing about how much he has done. What they are sweating about is whether it is working.

It was left to the City Editor of the Daily Mail to make the appropriate cynical observation on the situation:

Businessmen are not going to invest their own money or shareholders’ funds just because men are out of work or the Government asks them to.

(Daily Mail, 28 Feb. 1972)

He added that businessmen would not change their line until “prospects of better profits emerge”.

Now indeed, helped by the sacking of thousands of workers and the tightening up of work processes, expectation of profit has risen again and unemployment has fallen. But it comes after several years of stagnation which, if the Keynesian idea had been valid, would never have happened in the first place.

Edgar Hardcastle

Must Man Starve? (1974)

From the April 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

For six months the peasants of the drought-stricken regions of Wello and Tigro in Ethiopia have been suffering from famine . . .  In the five months from April to August between 50,000 and 100,000 died. (Guardian 18 October 1973)
Malnutrition in the Bangladesh villages has reached near-starvation levels among the poor and landless. “I have seen village children who look like Biafro babies”, said a senior official. (Guardian 19 October 1973)

In large parts of Africa, Asia, and South America malnutrition is the norm and starvation common, while even in industrially developed countries considerable numbers eat badly and too little. In Britain’s “affluent society” it is reckoned that 50 to 60,000 old age pensioners die each year through lack of food and warmth.

Most experts estimate that two-thirds of the world’s population are undernourished — and that the situation is getting worse.

Is It Inevitable?

Yes say many. It’s a popular view that there are just too many people and too few resources for everyone to eat well. This is demonstrably false.

At the Second World Food Congress (June 1970) United Nations experts stated that if present technology were used to the full the world’s population could certainly be fed. Then years ago the International Agricultural Centre at the Hague announced that the earth could support a population of 28,000 million if food production were organised on lines then known to be practical (Times 24 July 1962) (Present-day population is under 4,000 million).

The many studies undertaken by various food production experts leave us in no doubt that it is possible to produce enough good-quality food for everyone.

Why Then Hunger?

Simply because in this society food is not produced to feed people but to make a profit for the farmers and other investors in the food industry. This results in: —

• People starving amidst a sufficiency of food — because they’ve not got the money to buy it. “The problem in Bangladesh, as elsewhere on the subcontinent, is not that the food is not there but that the poor (and especially the landless) cannot afford to buy it” (Guardian 19 October 1973).
• Food being produced, then either left to rot in warehouses or deliberately destroyed — because it can’t be sold profitably. 300,000 tons of “surplus” butter are considered a "grave problem” in the EEC while in Britain perfectly good fish and apples have recently been destroyed.
• Quotas being set to limit foodstuffs production and farmers being paid to keep perfectly good land unused. "It is a known fact that, to avoid overproduction of grain, an attempt has been made in various parts of the United States to apply the principle of subsidizing farmers to leave a percentage of their arable land fallow. The same method has been used with other agricultural products”. (Hugo Osvald, The Earth Can Feed Us All).
• Land that could be brought into production by irrigation, and new methods (such as underwater farming) that could be employed, not being used due to the general effort to keep production below a certain level to maintain high prices.

What's The Solution?

Since it’s the basic economic structure that causes the problem all petty reforms merely tinkering with the superstructure are bound to fail. The land and the means of food production, along with all the natural and man-made resources of society, must come under the democratic control of the whole world community. The sole aim of food production must be to satisfy the food requirements of the world and to provide satisfying work for those involved. The buying and selling of food, and the other needs of life, should be abolished and a system of free distribution adopted. Eating is a natural function, not a privilege. In a world based on the common ownership of the means of wealth production, food production would be merely a technical problem — and we already have the technology to meet the task. With the fetters of profit-making removed, today’s potential plenty would be made a reality.

How Can This Be Achieved?

No leader can usher in such a society on your behalf. Its establishment depends on YOUR understanding and effort. Nothing less than conscious political action by a majority of the working class can create World Socialism. The Socialist Party of Great Britain and its Companion Parties overseas are striving to this end.

Aberdeen Socialists

Kicking Out Cant (1975)

Book Review from the April 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Christianity and Socialism by Horace Jarvis. Published by the author. 30p.

This 80-page pamphlet should please many people and enlighten many more. It concentrates on attacking religious superstition and the idea of divine authority, and is well furnished with quotations and examples from the author’s extensive knowledge of Christian teachings. Socialism is defined and explained, and the reader is told why the Socialist Party of Great Britain does not admit people holding religious beliefs. There is a short but-to-the-point chapter on "Was Jesus a Socialist?”, and the pamphlet ends with a survey of some modern revivalist and splinter groups.

We are asked to say that it is obtainable from 72 Beechwood Road, Sanderstead, Surrey, and that the price includes postage.

Socialists in Ireland Battle On (1976)

From the April 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Explanation of failure to reply to earlier communication . . .

CIRCULAR RECEIVED BY A SPGB MEMBER FROM THE WORLD SOCIALIST PARTY OF IRELAND, BELFAST :

Some time ago our premises at Pimm Street, Belfast suffered bomb and fire damage and had to be vacated. The proprietor of a small printery, whose basement workshop in the same building was only slightly damaged, decided to continue in business and agreed to accept incoming mail on our behalf.

Last week this printer decided to go into the unoccupied part of the building in search of some timber and there he came on the front door of the rooms we had occupied. The door had been blown from its hinges and had actually fallen into a lower floor of the building but it still had affixed to it the mail box. Later examination revealed some letters in the box including yours of 29th March 1974.

It is a crazy little chapter from the sad and crazy world we live in; however we now enclose our reply and our apologies.

ACCOMPANYING LETTER FROM SECRETARY :

The enclosed circular will explain why we did not reply to your letter of the 29th March 1974.

The circular gives an insight into the problems we face in N. Ireland at present. We did manage to maintain premises up to two years ago but even this was a dodgy proposition. Our “meeting” night was Tuesdays but most evenings people were afraid to come out and I have memories of sitting long hours alone beside a dirty paraffin stove. Sometimes the foot on the stairs brought mixed feelings; “Good! Someone . . ." but there was the fear that the "someone” might not be good! Just before the premises were blown up they were vandalized by the military and, on another occasion when I foolishly took my seventeen-year-old daughter (who was a Party member) with me, we had a visit from some worthies who were obviously confident that if they could provoke us into starting something they could handle both of us.

Finally, our “national heroes”, the Provos, in pursuit of their “economic war” or their equally intelligent counterparts, the Loyalists, blew the place up. It must have been a victory for something.

After that we tried to get an old slum shop and dwelling in a “borderline” area. It had been vandalized and was going very cheap and I had arranged with the agent to accept £200 deposit and the £500 balance by weekly instalments of £2. Unfortunately, when the crunch came, the woman who owned the place refused to sign the contracts.

Now we have learnt that the premises at Pimm Street have been bought by a tyre trader who carries on his business in the adjoining property. The place is being re-roofed and repaired in a make-shift way and we are hopeful that we might get our old room back.

Of course normal political activity is impossible at present in this lunatic asylum but, still, an address that could be used openly would open some avenues. At present, apart from putting the case to individuals in general conversation (and this with some caution!) we confine our activities to sending the Socialist Standard to various groups and individuals and to the principal newspapers. It is dangerous to write to the papers; both morning and evening newspapers print most of their letters under pen names but require that the writer enclose his name and address; a friend of mine who had a letter published criticizing the Loyalist “strike” of ’74 received a threatening telephone call the following day — this despite the fact that his letter had been published over a pseudonym. Obviously one does not want to put one’s family at risk by identifying one’s home address but, if we get premises, we will use the address openly for letters and the occasional leaflet.

I am convinced that we must show some evidence of our continued existence during this period, however slight or sporadic. To fail to do so will leave us open to the charge of deserting our case when it was dangerous to stand by it. Honest explanation of our smallness and lack of resources can be made for little activity in the present period but we would have no excuse for total silence.

Over the past two months I have engaged in an exchange of letters with the Secretary of a Dublin group who call themselves the Socialist Party. Some progress has been made but the issues of nationalism and religion still prove tortuous (what a dis-service the “Marxist” Connolly did for Socialism!). In my last letter I suggested that I would like to visit the group and, if I get a favourable response, I will take a week-end in Dublin.

Bad as the situation here is I feel it is not without a glimmer of hope. Some of the old loyalties are being scrutinized more incisively than heretofore by many on the political touchlines; the anger of the moment may not reflect this but there is much evidence to show that it is true. Some — indeed, many — of the Loyalists have lost some of their intractable “Britishness” and, equally, many of the Catholic Nationalists have been disillusioned by blatant indifference shown to their plight by a self-preserving Southern capitalism. True, the battles go on; today’s fought in the bitterness of last night’s memories. Increasingly, however, it is only the scarred and the most deeply committed who can maintain the fight on a no-hope diet of hatred. When the anger ebbs the old values will be in the melting pot and while, then, Socialist hands may be few, they will at least be clean.

Richard Montague

Queen Capital's Jubilee (1977)

From the April 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

In June 1911, when George Wettin was crowned, the Socialist Standard carried an article with the title “King Capital’s Coronation”. This article was reproduced in the September 1964 anniversary issue of the Standard and so is still obtainable. A Socialist classic and a masterpiece of erudition, wit and irony. In about eighteen hundred words it takes in every facet of Socialist education. History, economics, parasitism, exploitation, class-struggle. It explains why the capitalist class preserve an obsolete and costly monarchy. An institution whose origins stretch back to barbarism, whose rituals and incantations are at once primitive and ludicrous and whose great wealth has been built up on centuries of plunder, piracy and wholesale murder. That the monarchy survived the onslaught of such an article is a tribute to the control exercised by the capitalist propaganda machine over the thinking of the working class. Working on the theory that meaningful education begins with class-consciousness, we think the article would have an electrifying effect if reproduced in the Times and Guardian education supplements.

Here we are sixty-six years later and the workers still dragging their feet. After twenty five years as the royal mascot of British capitalism, what can be said about Elizabeth? She has been all over the world as the commercial representative and prestige symbol of the ruling class, visited hundreds of places, travelled scores of thousands of miles and been received by all the heads-of-state and civil “dignitaries” on earth, and yet has probably never uttered a word in public, apart from casual conversation, that was her own. Apart from the obligatory built-in grin, what accomplishments does she need? Riding side-saddle for the trooping of the colour ceremony must be quite arduous, but who could not memorize a line like “I name this ship ‘Servitude’ may god bless her and all who sail in her”? (Swinging the bottle of champagne is not like driving home the rivets.) With every advantage money can buy, she needs proficiency at nothing. In terms of social usefulness, the girl in the typing pool or the woman who cleans lavatories makes a far greater contribution. Yet it is such useful members of society who denigrate themselves by lining the gutters to wave and cheer as she passes. She is regarded as some great White Mother whose grin protects us from evil and stimulates “our” trade. It is argued that if we did not have a monarch we would have a president and that might even be worse. This of course is an argument for scrapping both, not for maintaining either. The working class will only be prepared to get rid of the trappings, when they have come to reject the private-property relationships of capitalism which require these elevated nonentities.

The twenty-five years since 1952 have seen the world in a state of unprecedented turmoil. Untold millions have died from starvation while vast surpluses of unsaleable food have been systematically destroyed. Millions more have perished in wars. The Korean war was raging when Elizabeth was crowned, and was supported by her Labour and Tory ministers of state. These same ministers have tested and built up the British arsenal of nuclear weapons, for “her” armed forces. But she just reads their speeches; all this has nothing to do with her.

Whilst old people after a working life dependent on wages, producing wealth for sale and profit, live in deprivation and often die for the want of life's simplest needs of food and warmth, she represents every excess of conspicuous consumption. The exploitation of countless millions in this country and throughout the world is the foundation upon which rests the grotesque accumulation of wealth belonging to the class of socially useless people, whose cover-up is the monarchy. The queen’s cloistered existence hidden from reality makes a mockery of stricken humanity. Even public toilets have to be disguised when she passes. Yet, despite the squalor of the Walworth Road and Brixton, and many more such slum areas, at the time of the Coronation one could hardly see the slums for bunting. Even the kerbstones were painted red, white, and blue. This was the message the parasite class wanted. This made it all worth their while. Bread and circuses. Now there will be more beakers and mugs — always plenty of those — and sundry souvenirs to make profitable business and remind the workers how lucky they are.

The women’s magazines conjure up a phoney sense of delight as if they were treating some small children to their first Punch and Judy show. The television and radio put on special programmes which help project the illusion that something important has happened. The press, servile and sycophantic as ever, carries more stories and pictures than usual, which is no easy task. The Guardian on 7th February published a eulogy by the Poet Laureate, which is reminiscent of the grovelling non-sense that Pravda used to print about Stalin. In his day, William Morris turned down the job of Poet Laureate; as a Socialist he would not lend himself to such humbug. When it is understood, that no less a luminary (and there are no lesser luminaries) than Mary Wilson had a poem read at the Albert Hall at the same do which launched the above mentioned epic, and that she has been hinted at as a possible future Laureate, perhaps the ruling class and their mascot are more up against it than we realize.

Harry Baldwin

Obituary: Sammy Highams (1978)

Obituary from the April 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

The death took place on 17th February of our old comrade Sammy Highams. He was 80.

Sammy joined the East London branch of the Party in 1928. Later he was in Hackney branch, and after it closed a few years ago he transferred to Camden. He was a ship’s carpenter and travelled widely, and was in Canada for some years. An active and lively-minded man, he had several interests. He was a keen trade-unionist; he studied French and made visits to France; in his mid-seventies he still went swimming regularly. He was a prolific letter-writer to newspapers, and also wrote to engage politicians and academics in arguments about statements they made.

Sammy’s chief Party activity was selling the Socialist Standard, and he did this with unflagging zeal until a short time before his death. He attended demonstrations, travelled to political parties’ conferences, stood at street-corners and in the London School of Economics, and was often remarkably successful.

He will be remembered by many members — and opponents — as a choleric man. He castigated members for not equalling his efforts with the Socialist Standard, and voiced his boredom when branch-room discussions went on too long for him. In arguments in Hyde Park, he flourished his umbrella alarmingly; and he made an impression on a “Right to Work” demonstration two years ago by shouting alongside it “What about the right to be lazy?” Those who knew him more closely, however, were well aware of his warm and kindly nature. His work for the socialist cause will certainly be missed; so will his person be, by a lot of us.

Anarchism and Socialism (1979)

From the April 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Plekhanov’s book Anarchism and Socialism is a treasure. Not only did he clearly state the case against the anarchists of his day but he also analysed utopian socialism. For Plekhanov, Anarchism was a decadent form of utopianism. For Eleanor Marx Aveling, who translated his book in 1895, "under any circumstances Anarchism is but another word for reaction; and the more honest the men and women who play this reactionist game, the more tragic and dangerous it becomes for the whole working class movement".

The book's central point, made equally effectively in the translator’s preface and the introduction by Robert Rives La Monte, to the 1907 Kerr edition, is the importance of political action. Both Eleanor Marx and La Monte point to the failure of the Socialist League as evidence that "every revolt from the Socialist Party in America, which is based on disgust with the fact that it is a ‘pure and simple’ political party of ‘ballot-worshippers’ is destined to repeat the history of the Socialist League” (La Monte).

Plekhanov begins, however, not with the Anarchists at all but with an analysis of utopian socialism:-

The Utopian is one who, starting from an abstract principle, seeks for a perfect social organisation.

The abstract principle on which utopian socialists like Morelly, Fourier. Owen and Saint Simon based their arguments was "human nature.” But scientific socialism showed that this was not constant: “while man, in order to maintain his existence, acts upon nature outside himself, he alters his own naure”. Since Marx, wrote Plekhanov, the revolutionary socialist movement was no longer founded on an abstract principle or an ideal of a "perfect legislation” in total conformity with human nature, but on “a scientifically demonstrable economic necessity”. The struggle between workers and the capitalist class, he declared, must become a political one:-

Every class war is a political one. In order to do away with feudal society the bourgeoisie had to seize upon political power. In order to do away with capitalist society the proletariat must do the same. Its political task is therefore traced out for it beforehand by the force of events themselves, and not by any abstract consideration.

Rooted in the class struggle and the interests of the working class, Plekhanov lashed into the Anarchists, dealing in some depth with their naive, crazy notions. There was Max Stirner: "for me there is nothing above myself”. Stirner’s League of Egoists, wrote Plekhanov, was "the Utopia of a petty bourgeois in revolt". Some of Stirner’s ideas still surface from time to time in eccentric Tory circles and leagues of small shopkeepers, imbued with the same spirit of "bourgeois individualism".

Proudhon's ideas on the social constitution and on ending capitalism without political action or class struggle are debunked by Plekhanov, who points out with irony the many blatant contradictions in Proudhon's theories.

Bakunin is dealt with next. "I detest Communism, because it is the negation of liberty, and I cannot conceive anything human without liberty”, he declared, thus revealing his basic utopianism. "I am not a Communist, because Communism concentrates and causes all the forces of society to be absorbed by the State, because it necessarily ends in the centralisation of property in the hands of the State".

Bakunin also expressed clearly the characteristic mistake of Anarchist thinking, that is, the idea that the State should be smashed since its oppression is the cause of exploitation. In this belief can be seen the Utopian’s ignorance of hard economic facts, of the historical process and of the role of the State, as necessary to class-based economic systems. As capitalism has become an intolerable fetter on the productive forces, the working class must abolish it. The State will not be abolished: it will wither away, like an uprooted weed. Rut as long as class ownership of wealth exists, smashing the State is futile—a new form of State will always arise, as weeds do when their roots are left in the soil.

The Anarchists are mistaken in believing the abolition of the State would achieve emancipation. The events of 1917, when Lenin, destroying the old State with his programme "All power to the Soviets", only succeeded in creating a new form of State, and new methods of exploitation, are evidence of the futility of such tactics. Capitalism can only be ended by the working class taking political action, not to smash the State, but to abolish the wages system.

Bakunin distinguished between social revolution and political revolution. Plekhanov answered, in memorable terms:-

Every class struggle being necessarily a political struggle, it is evident that every political revolution, worthy of the name, is a social revolution; it is evident also that for the proletariat the political struggle is as much a necessity as it has always been for every class struggling to emancipate itself.

Adrift from political action. Bakunin and his followers encouraged terrorist tactics—the "propaganda by deed” which still sporadically hits the headlines in many countries—Italy, Spain, Germany, Japan. Mexico, Argentina, US and England.

"Error has its logic as well as truth. Once you reject the political action of the working-class, you are fatally driven —provided you do not wish to serve the bourgeois politicians—to accept the tactics of the Vaillants and the Henrys", observed Plekhanov. After parliamentarism was discarded, the tactics of riots and isolated uprisings were abandoned since workers, sensibly, did not want anything to do with such suicidal tactics. What was left? For the Anarchist, either syndicalism (equally disastrous) or the individual gesture, the assassin with a bomb in his briefcase—"doing the work if not receiving the pay of a spy”, as La Monte put it.

The result of the Anarchist movement’s rejection of political struggle in favour of syndicalism or terrorism is to weaken the working class movement and to encourage the forces of reaction. Special police agents infiltrate all working class organisations, laws are passed and special measures enforced which handicap socialists in their activity. Workers become hostile and reactionary. Revolution becomes a dirty word. Socialism is seen as dangerous lunacy. As Plekhanov said, "An Anarchist is a man who—when he is not a police agent—is fated always and everywhere to attain the opposite of that which he attempts to achieve".

For its chapter on scientific socialism alone, clear and concise, this book deserves to stand alongside the best-known works of Marx and Engels.

Charmian Skelton