Socialism: One World (1969)

Editorial from the July 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a Socialist world everyone will be stony broke, unemployment will reach a level today undreamed of, and all trade will grind to a halt.

That is why we think it such a good idea — but perhaps we had better explain a little.

Everyone will be broke because in Socialism there will be no money. In fact, there will be no buying and selling at all. Nor will there be a system of barter. Instead people will be free to go into the shops and supermarkets and take whatever they want, without payment and without being rationed.

The world can be run in this way because we already have the technical know-how to produce more than enough of the things people want and need. But for the moment money still functions as a form of rationing. If you can't afford something, you go without. That is why people starve, why families are condemned to live in slums, and why men, women, and children throughout the world are deprived and have their lives ruined. Yet the stupid thing about it is that the money system is not the result of scarcity in the world today but it is the cause of that scarcity. All the evidence shows that food, for example, is not produced in sufficient quantities to adequately feed the world’s population not because man lacks the resources to do this but for the disgusting reason that no profits can be made out of hungry people.

Of course, socialism involves such a complete change in the way in which the world is organised that it can only be put into practice when all the factories, mines, transport systems, shops, and so on are owned by mankind and used for the benefit of the entire world population. That is why we say that in socialism unemployment will reach such massive proportions. The whole system of employment (which exists both in the West and in the so-called Communist countries), of a class of bosses buying our energies with wages and then setting us to work for themselves, will be replaced by voluntary, co-operative effort by all members of society. At the same time one of the first priorities in a socialist world will be to get rid of the boring and repetitive tasks which today make so much work unpleasant and replace them with alternative methods.

Socialism must be a world community without frontiers. It can not be set up in one country or even in one part of the world. This means that, just as there will be no buying and selling between individuals in Socialism, so there will be no trade between different countries. Production in Socialism will involve a worldwide effort to produce what is wanted and since every region will be working towards this end (and will participate in the democratic processes used to decide what is needed and in what quantities) naturally every group of people will have free access to what is produced.

Possibly one or two highly original objections to the system we propose have by now occurred to you. Perhaps you think that man is 'too lazy’ or 'too greedy' to make Socialism work, or you might imagine that everything we suggest conflicts with 'human nature’. But, of course, such views are just prejudices unless you have some evidence to show that man is unsuited to live in a socialist society. Socialists are always open to reasoned argument but all our investigations so far have led us to the conclusion that Socialism is not just a good idea but also is urgently needed to solve many of the problems which now harry us.

Wales: A Nation? (1969)

From the July 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lately the spirit of national identity has been reborn, both in Wales and elsewhere. Backed by the indignities of the past, fired by a renewed interest in the peculiarities of custom and language and consciousness of national resources, it has succeeded in forming an organised opinion which has forced the government of Westminster to take notice. The most important thing of all is that in their written and spoken propaganda nationalists, Welsh and others, maintain their faith in capitalism and are agreed to live within a state system of their own making.

At the moment, the focus is on Wales; attention is being paid by the world press and its general propaganda media on the investiture of the son of the reigning sovereign as Prince of Wales. The reaction in Wales, from that of outright opposition to apathy and support, is intriguing to the onlooker.

The early history of Wales shows it to be a land peopled by tribes for the most part engaged in inter-tribal disputes. Its ’community of interest' was of a plural nature, there being no centralisation of authority which could exist under the prevailing social and economic conditions. The only common features were a common tongue and a common way of life. Outside this their attachments went no further than their local territory (Cwmwd and Cantnef) and their local chiefs.

The Roman occupation, lasting about 400 years, did very little to change the broad pattern of social life though it did impose Roman laws, introduce new settlements and road systems, bring the country into close contact with European trade and culture, and introduce new words and phrases to the indigenous language, thereby enriching it. The occupation produced a class of elite Romano-British, whose future was bound up in Roman affairs; in other words their attitude was that of those who accepted the Roman ’State’. This has been the case ever since — it is in the interests of the minority that the state exists. 'Y Werin', the Folk, have no advantages worth talking about accruing from the State.

And so, we find that with the coming of the Normans, the country was divided into regions loosely ruled by native overlords (Y Tywysogion)—the Princes, who in their turn controlled lesser gentry (Boneddwir). The social set-up was true to the general pattern to be found in feudal society everywhere in Europe. This was the system taken over by the Normans who planted their own lords in place of the Welsh and ruled, first by military might and later by laws. In the meantime the agrarian economy remained unaltered, in the same way that when the Germanic people conquered the Old Roman Empire they did not introduce any new division of labour because conquered and conquerors were in the same stage of economic development.

By the 13th century the Normans and Saxons had become one people and in 1284 they so consolidated their footings in Wales that Edward I proclaimed a principality composed of five shires, so replacing forever the earlier regional groupings based on ‘blood ties’. These shires were given over to his eldest son. henceforth to be called the Prince of Wales. The principality, nevertheless remained politically distinct from England, having no representation in the parliament of the time.

Romantic visions

The Act of Union changed the situation: hitherto Wales represented a colony, now it became a part of England. Continual enactments, intrigue, and corruption tied the knot more securely with the passing of time. The Welsh gentry were in spirit with the English Court and the Welsh peasantry remained the providers of sustenance, content with the visions of an ancient freedom made more romantic by the poetry and songs of their bards. The great Arthur slept, to awake one day to lead them out of bondage.

The advent of the Industrial Revolution saw Wales as a people exploited by the coal and iron masters, both English and Welsh, a situation shared by their brethren throughout the length and breadth of Britain, spoon-fed by the same religious cant and moulded by a similar education system, first church charity then state schools. Mistakes were made of course, as for example the vicious attempts to destroy the native language by outlawing it from the schools. Resurgent Welsh capitalism would do the opposite, knowing that the sentiment of language is a potent weapon in maintaining the State Idea. Westminster, now faced with an awkward situation, has also gone a long way towards this end by providing Welsh in schools, parity of esteem, and recognition in all kinds of minor ways.

The growth of nationalist sentiment is being fostered by a variety of organisations at the present time but it is Plaid Cymru which is the spearhead. The events leading up to its formation are interesting, as they show how almost anybody can utilise nationalistic sentiments to further their ends—even people who call themselves socialists.

In July 1918, the South Wales Labour Federation convened a special 'Home Rule' conference in Cardiff where the leaders explained the purport of the Federation “to become the true Nationalist Party of Wales." The Liberals too, at their Conference before the 1918 election, not to be left out of the picture, favoured a parliament for Wales. In 1925 a group founded at Aberystwyth, composed largely of 'intellectuals', claimed nationalism as their goal and published a journal 'Y Wauw' — the Dawn. This group was quickly supressed by the Government. For a short while there existed a Welsh Republican Party — Gwerinialthwyr Cymru — which included in its manifesto the statement that in republican Wales, "ownership would be by and for use only”. It advocated complete severance from the English crown. This party withered away to be replaced by the present Nationalist Party, formed in August 1925. The present Nationalists are prepared to recognise the Crown and would be content with dominion status. In its journal Draig Goch we find the peculiar statement that capital should be created and then shared out among the people. It is interesting to note that about this time a movement known as Byddin Ymreolwyr Cymru (The Home Rule Army of Wales) had views of their own. The present Free Wales Army may be an attempt to revive some of them in terms of ‘direct action'.

At the present time there are numerous organisations on the fringe of the political nationalists proper, most of them of a cultural nature from the Urdd (a kind of cultural youth movement), to bodies like the Llewellyn Society, the Patriotic Front Welsh Language Society.

Everywhere one finds the nation states built on the broad shoulders of its working class and everywhere workers are subject to poverty, insecurity, and war. Plaid Cymru wish to add another party to the list. "If there is to he a future Welsh Nation there must be a State” (Gwynfor Evans).

Socialists in Wales know that the Welsh language and cultural tradition cannot be created or maintained by the establishment of a separate political state. In a free society the economic and political pressures that now tend to crush minority cultures will no longer operate.

So much for the ‘grand illusionist trick' to be enacted at Caernarvon: the recognition by the English Crown that Wales shall be a nation but part of the English state. This situation has its supporters and opponents among the Welsh people but it means nothing except that the position of the working class will be that they remain working class.

W. Brain.

The National Question (1969)

From the July 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marx held that society evolved from lower to higher forms along with technology and social productivity. Feudalism evolved into capitalism while capitalism should in the end evolve into Socialism. Marx did not mean ‘evolve’ in any passive sense since he knew that men made their own history as members of rival classes engaged in social and political struggles. The motive force for the change from feudalism to capitalism was the struggle of the bourgeoisie against the nobility. Socialism will be the outcome of the struggle of the working class against the capitalist class (as the bourgeoisie became).

This theory is not only a view of history. It is also a guide to political action which Marx himself used. He lived from 1818 to 1883 and was politically active from the 1840s onward. During this period capitalism on the Continent was just emerging from feudalism, and on the international as well as on the national plane, the rising capitalist class was in conflict with the powers of feudalism. The most powerful anti-capitalist force was the Holy Alliance of Austria, Prussia, and the dominant Russia. These powers agreed to join forces to crush risings all over Europe —in Italy, in Germany, in Poland and Hungary, and even in Austria. As a result of these activities Russia earned the title of 'the gendarme of Europe’.

What, Marx asked, should socialists do in these circumstances? His answer was clear: support capitalist struggles to overcome feudal opposition to the economic and political development of capitalism. So Marx took an anti-Russia stand, even going so far as to support Britain, France, and Turkey in the Crimean War. He backed Polish nationalism as he felt an independent Poland would be a buffer between Russia and the rest of Europe. He favoured German and Italian national unity on the grounds that such unity was a precondition for capitalist development in these countries. In the American Civil War he took the side of the North.

Marx only did these things because he wanted to help capitalism triumph over feudalism. Sooner or later, he would be faced with another problem: what should socialists do after capitalism had triumphed? Marx himself never dealt with this as a practical issue, since it was only around the time of his death that capitalism could be said to have firmly established itself as the dominant world system. His successors, the Social Democrats, did not recognise that, with this change of circumstances, this new problem had arisen. They continued to think that wars and nationalism could be progressive, with disastrous results. The first world war presented the absurd and tragic situation of the German Social Democrats arguing (with quotes from Marx) for Germany as it was more progressive than Tsarist Russia and of the French Social Democrats arguing (again from Marx) for Britain and France on the grounds that democracy was more progressive than Prussian militarism. If nothing else exploded the hollowness of the theory of progressive wars the first world slaughter should have done.

One Social Democrat stands out as an honourable exception: Rosa Luxemburg. She grasped why Marx in the 19th century had supported wars and some nationalisms, but she realised that the situation had since changed and urged opposition to all wars and to nationalism except, ‘oddly enough, in the Balkans. Unfortunately, her writings on the national question are not all that well known.

Straight fight

The Socialist Party of Great Britain, set up in 1904, has always argued that the struggle is now a straight fight between capitalism and Socialism. Since capitalism became the dominant world system towards the end of the last century Socialism (which of course can only exist only a world scale) has been an immediate possibility which could become a reality as soon as a majority of workers wanted and understood it. It follows that only Socialism is progressive (in the Marxist sense), that all wars should be opposed, and that nationalism has no progressive role left. We have in' fact gone further than this and questioned the wisdom, from the point of view of the future development of the socialist movement, of Marx in going so far as he did in his support for wars and nationalism even in the conditions of his time.

The confused legacy of Social Democracy on the national question was inherited by the Bolsheviks (Lenin was an opponent of Luxemburg on this issue) and has been handed down by them to the Trotskyist and similar groups of today. In fact the national question throws these groups into utter confusion so that they argue, apparently in all seriousness, that socialists ought to support state capitalism in the less developed countries and even to support state capitalist countries in wars against others. A case in point is the group ironically called ‘International Socialism’. Arising out of a confused (to put it mildly) article in Socialist Worker on January 4 supporting ‘self-determination' for Biafra, a discussion developed in the group’s internal IS Bulletin (No. 2, March 1969). One contributor from Glasgow started off well:

Marxists realise that Nationalism is the ideology of the capitalist class. The identification of people with the Nation State and the National Interest enables the bosses to present society as a struggle between nations in the interests of the people thus obscuring the real conflict in society between the working and capitalist classes.

But, he went on:

Yet they realise that nationalism can play a progressive role but only under certain conditions. Socialists support all struggles for National Liberation in underdeveloped countries on the grounds that industrialisation and the creation of a working class is only possible with a break from imperialism. If the new Nation does not extend the National idea to property it is stuck forever in a neo-colonialist position . . . without state capitalism these countries will never break through their poverty but will remain entirely dependent on imperialism.

On the same theme another contributor, from Leeds, justifying support for the Vietcong, wrote: '

When Marx looked historically at the new classes and class forms of society, he took the side of the historically progressive new class society against the old;, for example the capitalist against the feudalist forms in Europe. He even took sides in the American Civil War supporting the North against the South

Both argue, then, like the Social Democrats, that nationalism and wars can still be progressive and deny, by implication, that looking at modern world society historically Socialism alone is progressive.

Let us analyse this view that only through national state capitalism can modem industry and a working class develop in the now backward countries. First, what do ‘neo-colonialist' and ‘imperialism' mean? These are not terms we would use ourselves because they are not precise enough. However, in the less developed countries, much of the capital comes from abroad so ‘imperialism’ means ‘foreign investors'. Naturally, such investors want their investments well-protected. At one time they favoured colonialism or their own direct political rule, but, now they have had to entrust local political leaders with this task (‘neo-colonialism').

Now that we know what we are talking about let us proceed. Arguments about the quickest way to develop capitalist industry, run by wage-labour for profit, in the backward parts of the world should only be of academic interest to socialists. Even so it is by no means proved that state capitalism is the quickest. It has its drawback such as cutting off a country from markets and denying it investment from overseas. And does investment from other state capitalist countries like Russia count as ‘imperialism' too?

Economic basis

The fact is that industrialisation under capitalist conditions (state or otherwise) is no longer necessary since the economic basis for Socialism has already been in existence for a long time now. World Socialism is possible on the basis of industry in Europe and North America and the workers of those places so that industrialisation within the quite different framework of Socialism can take place if desired.

Those who mistakenly think that socialists should support state capitalism and not Socialism in the less developed countries should consider what this means. If they have read Marx on Britain (or Cliff on Russia or Gluckstein on China) they will know that the coming of capitalism is a brutal process for the mass of the people involving the use of state power by a privileged minority to drive them off the land and into industry. As Marx put it, capital comes into the world dripping from head to foot in blood and dirt. How can socialists support this when it is not even economically necessary?

We can now see why theoretical clarity is needed so as to avoid ending up at the absurd position of saying socialists should support the coercion and oppression of workers in less developed countries by a state capitalist ruling class.

In Marx’s day the standard of historical progress suggested, at least to him, that socialists should help the capitalists overcome feudalism. Today, now that capitalism has long since done this, it shows that only Socialism is progressive. That is why Socialists everywhere should be struggling for Socialism and opposing capitalism in all its forms, including the national state capitalism favoured by Castro, Guevara, Ho Chi Minh, and others.

Adam Buick

Greasy Pole: Taking The Rise With Tony (2017)

The Greasy Pole column from the May 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

It was some years ago when Tony Blair finally surrendered to the ambitions of Gordon Brown so that his abusive deputy could take over as Prime Minister, leaving Blair to devote appropriate attention to matters of raising his promising offspring, fostering his wife’s career as a legal eagle, making piles of money through dealing in expensive houses and presenting his version of recent history in speeches and writing. In the beginning that seemed enough, satisfactory for so long a resident of Number Ten Downing Street. But recently there has been an evident change, encouraging Blair to emerge from those lucrative shadows and give voice to some different intentions, to the extent that the more nervous observers of the political scene began to question whether he might be considering a re-occupation of those House of Commons benches. We were warned of the possibility of such a change when Blair recently spoke up at a meeting he had arranged to a group calling itself Open Britain (in itself suspicious of what was planned to follow) under the banner of the Bloomberg Institute which manages its disappointment at the Brexit-triumphant Tories by campaigning for another Referendum about British membership of Europe.

President

Towards the end of his term as Prime Minister Blair had a spell presiding over the European Council of Ministers, an experience which he remembered as ‘. . . a simple issue. It was to do with the modern world . . . Britain needed Europe in order to exert influence and advance its interests. It wasn’t complicated. It wasn’t a psychiatric issue . . . I regarded anti-Europe feeling as hopelessly, absurdly out of date and unrealistic… the product of a dangerous insularity, a myopia about the world . . . a kind of post-empire delusion’. Which made it inevitable that when Blair was confronted with the prospect of a National Referendum on the matter he would hope that the result would have been for Britain to Remain in the Union, if possible more secure and comfortable than ever. And if it did not turn out that way the whole episode would be regarded as a hopelessly unrealistic psychiatric case, enough to arouse an out-dated political trickster to sound off with some colourful responses.

By Elections

In late February – some months before the Referendum – there were two parliamentary by-elections in what had been safe Labour seats, both due to the calculated withdrawal from politics of the MP in question. In the case of Stoke on Trent Central the Labour candidate survived with a reduced majority but in the other seat – Copeland – the Tory won by 2147 votes. This was a constituency which was traditionally strong for the Labour Party but the evidence was that there was considerable anxiety over the future of the nuclear power station there coupled with Jeremy Corbyn’s opposition to the Trident nuclear submarine. But in Stoke there was also concern about the threat from UKIP, in spite of the fact that their candidate, their new chairman Paul Nuttall, made himself notable for what might go down in history as some ill-advisedly bizarre statements. At the vote there was little to choose between UKIP and the Tory candidate, which indicated that the voters were influenced by doubts – to some degree prejudice – over the issue of what Blair had once described as ‘the immigration tinder box’ and the stress this had exerted on him as Prime Minister and which persisted as a major issue during the Referendum.

Mission

So it was that in January this year Blair announced his ‘mission’ to set up an ‘institute’ – not a ‘think tank’ but a ‘policy unit’ to be financed from his own resources to encourage a re-think about Europe on the grounds that the British people had voted in the Referendum without knowing enough about Brexit and its real-term inevitable consequences; ‘I don’t know if we can succeed. But I do know we will suffer a rancorous verdict from future generations if we do not try. This is not the time for retreat, indifference or despair, but the time to rise up in defence of what we believe’. This was a sentence likely to provoke some uneasy memories of leaders who urged their followers to confuse their freedom and safety – even their lives – in a cause which only the leader was aware of or had any interest in. It can never be a refreshing experience to allow that Boris Johnson has spoken appropriate and constructive words on an issue but it was not a time to disagree with him when he accused Blair, after his ‘rise up’ speech, of having ‘contempt’ for the voters; and encouraged them to rise only to turn off the TV the next time the discredited ex-leader of the Labour Party comes on with his ‘condescending campaign’.

Bliar

Except that Blair does not need such advice, particularly from a buffoon such as Johnson. After all, when Blair was at his peak he was careful to dissuade his followers from rising up, however desperate the provocation they were subjected to from his government’s repressive and exploitative policies: ‘I learned how to disarm an opponent as well as blast them. They get angry; you get mild. They go over the top; you become a soothing voice of reason. They insult you; you look at them not with resentment, but with pity. Under attack, you have to look directly at them, study their faces, your eyes fixed on theirs rather than rolling with anxiety’. When he exploded with his rallying cry about rising up Blair was at a meeting in a hall where, appropriately, David Cameron had originally announced that the European Referendum was planned to go ahead in July. It was a far cry from the day when he informed the House of Commons, in his maiden speech as the new Member for Sedgefield that ‘I am a socialist… because it stands for equality’. Perhaps he is aware of the fragile irony of these words. Towards the end of his time in power and even more so since then, it was common for angry demonstrators to show their opinion of him by displaying posters with the two middle vowels in his name transposed. For he is one of the most persistent examples of leaders who have flourished into world class riches after a career of condemning millions of others to regimes of cruellest poverty. And to mass destruction in military conflicts. He has made it impossible to estimate the true scale of his riches. And of the damage he has done to the people of the world.

Ivan

Editorial: The Present State of the Trade Union Movement (1945)

Editorial from the November 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

If numbers were all that mattered the trade union movement could congratulate itself on being in a very healthy condition. In this country there are now well over 8,000,000 trade unionists compared with 6,000,000 in 1939, and 4,000,000 in 1913. On the international field the expansion is much more striking because trade unionism is fast developing in countries,, such as South American republics, where it was formerly weak or non-existent. The International Federation of Trade Unions which had about 7,000,000 affiliated members in 1913, and 33,000,000 in 1932 (before the seizure of German trade unions by the Nazi Government) has just been replaced by the new World Federation of Trade Unions claiming some 60 million members in its affiliated national trade union centres.

Membership figures are, however, less than half the strength of organisation and in any event they will suffer drastic reduction in the stormy days ahead when unemployment eats into the unions and when the employing class no longer preoccupied with their urgent task of winning the war, turn their attention to fighting the trade unions over wages and working conditions. Once before British trade unions passed the 8,000,000 mark (in 1920), but by 1933, during the slump they had shrunk to less than 4½ millions. How large “normal” unemployment will be and how soon the next world trade depression will arrive only time will show, but it is interesting to read that “most American economists expect a severe economic depression in two or three years' time.”—Manchester Guardian, September 26th, 1945), and that some of them “predict that there will be 12 million unemployed (in U.S.A.) by the middle of 1946 and possibly 18 million a few months later.”—Manchester Guardian, October 8th).

What is even more disturbing than the likely fall in trade union membership is the disunity among the unions, which in turn reflects widely held illusions about the nature of the struggle the trade unions are waging. Many unions are more concerned with fighting each other than in maintaining working-class unity against the employers. In the international organisation the affiliated groups are strongly nationalistic. At home inter-union disputes occupy a considerable part of the attention of the Trade Union Congress, and in U.S.A., two large federations, the American Federation of Labour and the Congress of Industrial Organisations, are openly at war and the former refuses to join the World Federation of Trade Unions because the Russian organisations are represented in it. At the time of writing two strikes in American industries, those affecting the telephone service and Warner Brothers studios at Hollywood, centre round clashes between rival unions.

In this country the effective functioning of the unions is hampered by the desire of officials to avoid strikes at all costs. In this desire they obviously have the backing of part of the membership that has been misled by the fallacious argument that strikes must be avoided at all costs because they “embarrass” the Labour Government. During October there were “unofficial” strikes, repudiated by the unions concerned, among dockers, London Passenger Transport Board employees (both ’bus employees, and power workers at a generating station), building workers, railwaymen and co-operative society employees. Two of these strikes deserve special mention because they involve the Port of London Authority and the London Passenger Transport Board, two public utility corporations that the Labour Party chooses to describe as ‘'Socialist.” It is these capitalist bodies that the Labour Government accepts as a model for its nationalisation schemes. (Incidentally, the Labour Government’s Minister of Labour announced on October 9th, that troops were to be used to unload the ships held up by the strike of dockers.—Daily Herald, October 10th).

It is quite obvious that a minority in a union has an obligation not to take action against the decision of the majority of members, but the idea is fantastic that the strike, which in the last resort is the workers' only weapon against the employers on the industrial field, should be given up because capitalism is now being administered by a Labour Government (or, as in Russia, by a Communist Party dictatorship); that can only render the trade unions impotent. A particular instance of this is the decision of the National Union of Mineworkers to discipline their own members who, through absenteeism, lateness or other actions, fail to co-operate in the Labour Government's drive for increased output. Mr. Arthur Horner, Communist. who is National Production Officer of the Mineworkers Union is demanding from the men at the coal face a 10 per cent. increase of output and in a speech in London, on September 6th,. he said:—

“If a Lodge was satisfied that individuals were persistently refusing to do their clear duty, then these individuals would have to be informed that they could no longer count on the support of the rest of the men if they found themselves in difficulties. Such persons would in future be reported to the pit production councils and branches of the union. . . .”—(Times, September 7th,. 1945).

Because the mines are to be nationalised (meaning that the mineowners will in future receive the proceeds of the exploitation of the workers through the Government in the form of interest on the money paid to them as compensation—£200 million has been mentioned as a possible figure—instead of receiving it direct as shareholders), Mr. Horner has said that the Union must no longer follow the old policy of trying “to get what they could out of the owners." The miners will soon discover, as other workers employed by the State have discovered, that State capitalism is only private capitalism with a new name. It is the same exploiting system, and until the working class decide to abolish it and introduce socialism the trade unions should get back to the task, that of defending working class standards on the industrial field, for which they were formed.

Obituary: The Passing of Comrade S. Auty (1929)

Obituary from the May 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

An Active Worker for Socialism

We regret to announce the death of Comrade S. Auty, of Tottenham, on March 23rd, at the age of 46. He had been ill over a period of many years, but his untiring work for Socialism brought the end much closer than if he had been able to seek rest and attention in time. He was one of the very early members of the Party, having joined in 1904.

He was many years on the Executive and, in spite of poor health, was evident at most of the propaganda meetings in an active capacity. Comrades of the old Edmonton Branch, of which Auty was Secretary, knew him as one of the most earnest and devoted members the Party ever had.

Comrade Lake represented the Party at the funeral, and paid a tribute to his life and work.

Our sincere sympathy is offered to his wife and family in the loss of such a sterling comrade.

Human Nature (1951)

From the December 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

Of all the bugs that have ever bitten the working class, the Human Nature one is perhaps the most persistent as well as the most illogical. There is certainly no socialist who has not heard repeatedly the statement that Human Nature is against Socialism, or that the people of this country would not stand for socialism.

Of course the words they choose to clothe their arguments are just as incorrect as the objection itself. It is Human Nature to eat when you are hungry, to drink when you are thirsty, and to sleep when you are tired. These things are part of the inherent nature of human beings as indeed of all biological organisms. Nothing can alter this and nobody wants to change it— least of all socialists. What is meant by Human Nature, as used by those who trot it out as an objection, is not human nature at all, but human behaviour. Now human behaviour is quite another thing and its roots are to be found principally in one’s environment and the economic conditions which influences one’s physiological make-up.

Man behaves in the way he does, very largely, although not completely, because of the conditioning he receives from his environment, since he is a social animal and lives in a community.

Normally a Bishop would not steal food, but if he were placed in an environment in which he had no choice but to steal food or die of starvation, his behaviour would be dictated by his environment. He would thus break the 8th Commandment, and be forced to excuse or justify himself by the unfortunate conditions in which he found himself (or which surrounded him).

Now what does the objector find in socialism which warrants his statement that human nature (behaviour) would not stand for it? His only answer appears to be that the workers would not tolerate the regimentation, the filling up of forms, and being told to do this, that, or the other. Indeed not only has the objector a false conception of human nature, but also (as usual), a completely false conception of Socialism. Who knows what the workers will or will not stand for? At least we can be sure that they have stood for two world wars almost without a murmur; and at present they appear to be standing for the preparation for a third.

In England they have stood for rationing for about 12 years, and with the end not yet in sight. They have stood for conservative and labour governments. "The labour party promised them everything and gave them nothing; while the conservatives promised them nothing and saw that they got it.” They have been through crises of unemployment and privations galore, and have received untold promises of better times to come if only they tighten in their belts and work for the common good. But in the end there still remains the struggle for their livelihood and the division of society into two classes, one of which owns the means of production and exploits the other.

Where therefore do the human nature objectors stand? Surely they are condoning the existence of a system which means the continuance of their own exploitation, whether they know it or not? Human nature (behaviour) can be made to tolerate some strange things. What socialism in effect means is the emancipation from exploitation by a ruling class, and if the workers won’t stand for their own emancipation, then things are certainly in a bad way.

Horace Jarvis

What's next for privatisation? (1989)

From the April 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

"They have monopolised everything that it is possible to monopolise: they have got the whole earth, the minerals in the earth and the streams that water the earth. The only reason they have not monopolised the daylight and the air is that it is not possible to do it. If it were possible to construct huge gasometers and to draw together and compress within them the whole of the atmosphere, it would have been done long time ago, and we should have been compelled to work for them in order to get money to buy air to breathe. And if that seemingly impossible thing were accomplished tomorrow, you would see thousands of people dying for want of air — or of the money to buy it — even as now thousands are dying for want of the other necessaries of life. You would see people going about gasping for breath, and telling each other that the likes of them could not expect to have air to breathe unless they had the money to pay for it. Most of you here, for instance, would think so and say so. Even as you think at present that it's right for a few people to own the Earth, the Minerals and the Water, which are all just as necessary as is the air. In exactly the same spirit as you now say: 'It's Their Land , It's Their Water'. It's Their Coal', It's Their Iron', so you would say ‘It's Their Air', 'These are Their gasometers, and what right have the likes of us to expect them to allow us to breathe for nothing?’”

— Owen to his fellow workers in Robert Tressell's The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.

Whatever Happened to "Full Employment"? (1974)

From the December 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

In The "Queen's Speech” on 29th October Mr. Wilson included a pledge about unemployment. "My government”, it read, "in view of the gravity of the economic situation, will as its most urgent task seek the fulfilment of the social contract as an essential element in its strategy for curbing inflation, reducing the balance of payments deficit, encouraging industrial investment, maintaining employment, particularly in the older industrial areas, and promoting economic and social justice.”

Maybe Labour Party supporters are reassured by this mumbo-jumbo, but they ought to examine the small print very carefully. If they do they will notice how the form of the pledge about dealing with unemployment has been discreetly watered down. Now it is part of a “strategy”, along with other aims, all of them dependent on the nebulous "social contract”, and the word “full” has been dropped. And all of it stems from the grave economic situation — their euphemistic way of describing a normal crisis of capitalism, aggravated by the inflation that Tory and Labour governments alike have brought about and are still promoting.

When the first post-war Labour government came into office in 1945, buoyed up with the fatuous belief that they had mastered capitalism and abolished crises for ever, their committal to deal with unemployment was in very different words. Then it was "Jobs for All” and "Full Employment”. In the early post-war years (due among other things to making good wartime destruction) unemployment was exceptionally low. In several years average unemployment then was under 300,000, about 1.2 per cent., and of course the Labour and Tory governments claimed credit for it.

Since the mid-fifties unemployment has been moving to higher levels, but as late as 1966 in the Wilson Labour Government John Diamond MP, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, boasted that they had got unemployment down from 1.6 per cent, to 1.2 per cent, and “that is how we propose to continue doing it" (Hansard, 6th March 1966). Capitalism, however, was not listening to Mr. Diamond and by the time they went out of office in June 1970 unemployment had gone up by about a quarter of a million to 579,000 (2.5 per cent.). In October 1974 it was 643,000 (2.8 per cent.), and with unemployment rising in most parts of the world the Government’s advisers are fearful that next year it may pass the million mark, as it did in 1972.

But if the politicians cannot prevent capitalism from following its normal course, with periodical higher levels of unemployment, their thoughts are turning hopefully to disguising it by “keeping the unemployed on the pay-roll”, paying subsidies to firms in difficulties instead of paying the money to the unemployed. A correspondent of the Sunday Telegraph (22nd September) estimated that subsidies to such companies were running at £2 million a week and that the jobs of 100,000 workers were involved. There is nothing the Labour Party will not try to do with capitalism — except abolish it.

Edgar Hardcastle

The Problem of Problems. (1925)

Book Review from the August 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Problems of the Labour Movement,” by P. Braun, price 2d.—The Labour Monthly, 162, Buckingham Palace Road, S.W.

Problems of the Labour Movement. What an imposing title for a booklet. And what an imposition upon the person who parts with his “tuppence” under the impression that he will learn something about the problems. For, throughout the 16 pages of this booklet, which includes a preface by Mr. A. J. Cook, of the Miners’ Federation, the problems confronting the workers are not even stated.

To tell us that there are eleven hundred trade unions in England, and to lament the disorganised state of the workers, both nationally and internationally, is not very helpful.

Unity, Unity, Unity, is the keynote of Mr. Braun’s attempt at outlining a policy for working class action. But one is compelled to exclaim, Words, Words, Words.

John Stuart Mill once pointed out that he who proclaims himself a champion of Liberty generally gained the sympathy of his hearers before he commenced to argue a word of his case. And there is a good deal of truth in this, judging by a type of mind not altogether uncommon in the Labour movement. The words “Unity, Solidarity, Freedom,” etc., among many “Labourist” and “Communist” ranters bring as much consolation as the blessed word “Mesopotamia” is supposed to have brought to the mind of a certain old lady.

All the talk in the world about “Unity” is so much clap-trap, unless it is dearly stated what the workers are to unite for. Even then, as our common experience shows, the plans outlined for unity, are more or less worthless. Not that Mr. Braun outlines any plan, he prefers to leave this as severely alone as the problems he set out to state.

Despite this adverse criticism of the Labour Party, he tells us that “the trade unions must organise an influence on the policy of that party,” and among other things, they are “to try to cleanse the Labour Party of lords, bankers, and merchants.”

What a revolutionary proposal! Why does not Mr. Braun go the whole hog and advise the trade unions to write to John Bull about it?

As though the average trade unionist in his present state of political and economic ignorance of his class position could make any fundamental difference on the policy of the Labour Party. Whilst, as far as the lords, bankers, and merchants are concerned, cleanse the Labour Party of these people and that organisation remains what it has always been, a hindrance to working-class emancipation. Or, as Mr. Braun sees it, “a pathway towards rank and career,” even though it be guided by those Mr. Braun styles as “the Left Elements.”

Let Mr. Braun and all those who talk so glibly about “Unity” take note that, as the fundamental problem confronting the workers is how to get rid of their exploitation and poverty, the basis for the organisation of the workers, must be the ending of capitalism and the establishment of Socialism. But this means Socialist education, something more than opposition to the trickery of MacDonald, Thomas and Co. Given an intelligent working class, bent upon the removal of the real cause of their troubles, and Capitalism, let alone the MacDonald’s, and the Thomas’s, could not exist. The Socialist Party insists that the first step to unite the working class is to teach the workers that Socialism is their only real hope.

Robert Reynolds

Notes by the Way: The Basque Children (1937)

The Notes by the Way Column from the October 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Basque Children

The rescue of Basque child refugees from General Franco's bombers was a natural gesture of sympathy on the part of workers' organisations in France, England and elsewhere. It provoked in certain quarters some disgusting exhibitions of religious and properties-class hatred and meanness. Although many Catholics actively associated themselves with the refugee committees, some of their less humane fellows used all their influence to prevent the children from being rescued and have since sought to get them sent back. On the plea that the children's religious faith was being harmed they were quite prepared to see their lives endangered. What they fear, of course—and rightly so—is that new contacts may start the children thinking for themselves and freeing themselves from religious shackles.

Other protesters, wealthy people who had never been known to object to the miserable half-starved lives of British children, suddenly became indignant at the idea of spending British money on foreign children while there is so much need for charity at home. The cost of upkeep of the refugees exposed the niggardliness of unemployment child allowances.

The whole gang, aided by some of the viler newspapers, gave distorted publicity to the unruly behaviour of some of the refugee boys. Smug town councils demanded that their lives and property be safeguarded and the hooligans sent back to be bombed. What did they expect of children who have seen the fabric of life destroyed by brutal war? And why not some of the tolerance they habitually show towards the periodical hooliganism of university gangs?

A news item (Sunday Express, September 19th, 1937) provides an interesting parallel with the protests against the refugee camps. The Swanage Town Council has asked the War Office not to send any more Officer Training Corps camps to the neighbourhood on the ground that the university men in the O.T.C. were guilty of various acts of hooliganism and were beyond the control of the local police. One councillor, a magistrate, added that the Territorials (not drawn from university ranks) were much better behaved.

The same gentleman, however, also disclosed something else which was getting the goat of Swanage shopkeepers, the fact that the O.T.C. camps bring all their supplies with them and buy nothing from the local shops. Perhaps this was the reason why so many voices were raised against the Basque children.

Rural Workers Who Cannot Afford Fresh Milk

The Shop Assistant (August 21st, 1937) publishes the following extract from the annual report of the Medical Officer of Health for the St. Faith's and Aylesham rural district of Norfolk: —

In the rural parts of this district there is a large number of households where fresh milk is not used, but the supply is by tinned milk. It is curious to find this occurring near farms. There are some cases in which the reason is given that too great a distance has to be covered to obtain milk, but in the majority of cases it is because the families cannot afford it.

The really curious thing about this is not that it happens, but that the medical officer finds it curious. It is typical of capitalist industry everywhere.

Building workers who cannot afford to live in the houses they build (sometimes even when these are so-called "publicly-owned" council houses), shipbuilders who cannot afford to travel, textile workers who are badly clothed, bootmakers with leaky boots, telephone linesmen who cannot afford a telephone. Yet the doctor finds it curious! What has a better claim to be regarded as curious is that workers who see and feel every day the results of private ownership should go on accepting it.

Mr. McGovern is Amazed

In the recent by-election at Springburn, Glasgow, at which the Labour Party candidate, Mrs. Hardie, was elected, Mr. McGovern, M.P., advised the members of the I.L.P. to refrain from voting. One of his reasons was that, although the Labour Party claims to be Socialist, the word "Socialism" was never mentioned once in Mrs. Hardie's election address (The Times, September 7th, 1937). Now, it would indeed by remarkable if a Socialist Party were to run candidates on a non-Socialist programme. Actually what has happened is not at all remarkable since it comes from the Labour Party, which is not Socialist. Where can Mrs. Hardie have learned this trick? Perhaps she learned it from her old acquaintance, Miss Jennie Lee. In 1928 Miss Lee was elected at a by-election at North Lanark. She was the I.L.P.’s nominee and they financed her. Her election address not only contained no reference to Socialism, direct or indirectly, but she did not even mention the I.L.P. or her membership of it. Mr. McGovern should see her about it.

Incidentally, he should also recall that it was the I.L.P. which reduced to a fine art the practice of pretending to be Socialist but running as candidates of the Labour Party on a non-Socialist programme. How else does he suppose that some 200 of its members got themselves into Parliament at the 1929 General Election? Mr. McGovern himself first got into Parliament as candidate of the Labour Party, which he knew was not a Socialist Party.

It is true that Mr. McGovern and his associates in the Independent Labour Party now include at least the words “Socialism" and “Socialist” in their election addresses, but they have made little other change. Votes are still solicited on every kind of reform; which means that the candidates know quite well that they are dependent on the votes of non-Socialists.

It is reported that Glasgow members and branches of the I.L.P. are returning to the Labour Party because they disapprove of Mr. McGovern’s action in advising them not to vote for the Labour candidate.


French Workers Learn by Experience

Fools are said to learn by experience. The working class are not fools—just doped with capitalist propaganda and blinded by leader-worship—but it seems that many experiences are needed before they learn. Every Labour Government, no matter where it exists, is an attempt to defy the truth that the only way that capitalism can be administered is a capitalist way. But still Labour Governments come and go, each one blind to the truth and oblivious of the fate of the last. In 1929 the Labour Government in Great Britain went into office “accepting the present order of society ” (Mr. J. H. Thomas, Daily Herald, July 6th, 1929). Its principal pledge was to reduce unemployment. Two years later it was out on its neck, with unemployment at a record height and capitalism jogging along. The Labour Party was still prepared to accept the present order of society, but the owners of the present order of society for the time being were not prepared to accept the discredited and not-very-competent Labour leaders. Major Attlee and his associates are now busy dressing themselves up for another performance, as purblind as ever.

In the meantime the French Labourites have tried a similar experiment, marked by the same infantile hopefulness in the impossible. In Great Britain in 1929 the Labour Government depended on Liberal votes in the House of Commons. In France the Labourites formed a coalition government with the Liberals, under the premiership, of Leon Blum. After running for a year Blum was forced to quit and hand over the premiership to a Liberal, still maintaining the "Popular Front,” though already the workers are sadly disappointed. It is to be hoped that they will learn how little can be done until capitalism has been got rid of.

Three newspapers which gave approval to Blum’s Government (Daily Herald, Manchester Guardian and The Times) have recognised the simple facts of the situation.

The Daily Herald (June 22nd, 1937), in an editorial, says that Blum fell because “he did not possess the confidence of the big men of property, of the financiers, and the bankers"; which provokes the thought that if Blum went into office prepared to govern "within the present social regime” (his own words, The Times, May 2nd, 1936), yet supposed he could do so without having the confidence of those who own the present social regime, it is time he began to wake up to realities.

The Times Paris correspondent has shown a remarkably clear appreciation of the role of Labour Government and of the narrow limits within which they can diverge from traditional Liberal and Tory policy. On August 23rd, 1937, The Times published an article from him in which he wrote that Blum’s “Socialist” Minister of Finance

Does not seem to have realised that within the framework of the capitalist system social reform can be paid for only out of the profits of industry, and that if the entrepreneur is frightened out of his wits profits disappear. . . .

Two weeks later (The Times, September 7th, 1937), in another article, he wrote: —

M. Blum now supports the Radicals because he has realised that, short of provoking a dangerous upheaval, the problems of a capitalist system must, if they are to be resolved with capitalist support, be met by capitalist methods. . . .

One action of the present Popular Front Government which is highly praised by the British Labourites is the amalgamation of the railways into a single company in which the Government will hold a majority of the shares. The workers expect that it will benefit them, a point on which they will be better informed when they have seen it at work. Just now the French railway shareholders are feeling grateful to the Popular Front Government, because the nationalisation scheme had the result that “ their shares have actually enjoyed a remarkable boom on the Bourse ” (Manchester Guardian, September 1st, 1937).

This recalls the way in which British capitalists supported the Labour Government’s London Passenger Transport Board, which, of course, had no more to do with Socialism than the French railway nationalisation has.

Beaverbrook Outbids the Labour Party

Not only on foreign policy, but on home policy also. Lord Beaverbrook's Daily Express is interesting as an example of the way avowed defenders of capitalism can outbid the Labour Party at the game of vote-catching by social reforms. A few of the planks in the Daily Express's policy during recent years are: Higher wages, paid holidays, shorter hours, State control of banking, and now the drastic curtailment of inherited wealth by means of much heavier death duties. (“There is only one serious complaint to be made against death duties. They are not nearly steep enough”—Express editorial, September 15th, 1937.) So successful is this policy that the Daily Herald's 2,000,000 circulation has fallen a bad second to the 2,400,000 of the Express.

It can be said, of course, that Beaverbrook has one policy for the Express and another for the Evening Standard. This is an old game of the Press barons. While Odham's Daily Herald backs the Labour Party’s new pension scheme, a regular contributor to Odham’s People (August 22nd, 1937) poured cold water on it.

“Not for the Prime Purpose of Making Profits"

Lord Beaverbrook, in a signed pronouncement in the Evening Standard (September 9th, 1937), has this: —

The Daily Express is not run for the prime purpose of making profits. This newspaper is a public institution, which, in the national interest, sacrifices money to the main plan of serving the public.

We now await an invitation from Beaverbrook to serve his public by stating the Socialist case in the Daily Express, and we know that with the price of newsprint rising the Daily Express will not try to reduce its size in order to save profits, and we expect when Beaverbrook dies he will turn out to be a poor man—worth only £2,000,000 instead of £5,000,000.

It is all very noble and touching, only we don’t believe it.

The Ellerman Fortune—What Price Social Reforms?

A news item in the Evening Standard (September 8th and 9th, 1937) gives a staggering jolt to the hoary belief of the Labourites that you can gradually tax the capitalist out of existence and find yourselves sliding imperceptibly into Socialism. Sir John Ellerman, after a life of accumulation of the proceeds of the exploitation of the workers, left property worth £40,000,000, of which £17,000,000 was in cash and Government securities. Under the death duties the State took £22,000,000, leaving a paltry £18,000,000 for the heir. On the authority of Sir William Cox, manager of the Ellerman estate, the Evening Standard states that the value of the estate has increased in four years back to the original level of £40,000,000! This as any economic textbook will tell you, must have been due to the brains and work of the present Sir John Ellerman, but the Evening Standard says it is due to the all-round rise in share values:—

Some people have expressed surprise at so rapid an expansion. An examination of the increase in the values of property and securities during the last four years shows that such a growth is by no means exceptional.

It looks as if it will take capitalism quite a long time to die from death duties.

Simultaneously with the above news item, the Labour Party published its brand-new plan for old-age pensions of £l at 65. It will cost £80,000,000 a year, rising in ten years to £90,000,000 a year. As however, under a Labour Government “there will be strict limits . . . to what is practicable to add to the Budget,” the scheme is to be a contributory one: the workers are to pay 1s. men and 9d. women per week in order to qualify (see “ Labour’s Pension Plan,” " National Council of Labour,” 2d., page 29).

When the Labour Party say that expenditure of £80,000,000 a year is not practicable they don’t mean that the Ellerman’s cannot afford it, but that they won’t pay.

The moral of which is, get rid of capitalism, but as the Labour Party pamphlet goes on to say, rather unnecessarily: —

We shall not be living under Socialism during the period of office of the next Labour Government.

The Labour Party should ask Lord Southwood, who is associated with Sir John Ellerman in the recent purchase of Illustrated Newspapers, to tell them about the Ellerman fortune. Lord Southwood (formerly Mr. Elias) is head of Odhams, who own the Labour daily, the Daily Herald.

The Inefficient Russian Dictatorship

One of the popular features of Communist propaganda in the days before they became ashamed of dictatorship and went all democratic was the argument that dictatorship is so very efficient because it doesn’t waste time on talk and doesn’t allow the “stupid” rank and file, in their ignorance, to elect rogues and fools to positions of responsibility. (Nowadays the Fascists can be heard putting over the same arguments.) If ever there was a living example of its falsity the Russian dictatorship provides it. Never a day passes now without more declarations by the Russian Government that its hand-picked men in high places are corrupt and inefficient, rogues and fools, spies and wreckers. One instance out of many is of special interest because it relates not to one of the original hand-picked regional dictators but to the man who was picked to succeed one who had been thrown out only a short while ago. He is Abdullah Rakhimbayev, Premier of the Soviet Republic of Tadjikstan.

He was appointed as recently as 1934 to succeed a former premier discovered to be a "counter-revolutionary." The new genius was instructed to clean things up. This, according to the Moscow correspondent of the Daily Herald (September 13th, 1937), was how he did it: —

   Rakhimbayev was revealed here to-day to have lived like an Oriental potentate, with a harem of three wives.
   One of the wives was an Uzbek, the second was a Tartar, and the third an Ossetian, from Georgia.
  Rakhimbayev, it is asserted, inherited his feudal attitude and habits from his father, a prominent landowner.
   He used to travel about Tadjikstan with the pomp once accorded to the Emir of Bokhara.
   Peasants were treated with the utmost contempt by the Premier’s retinue, and on one occasion 500 collective farmers were forced to trudge eight miles to meet Rakhimbayev.
  (Rakhimbayev was appointed in 1934 to succeed a counter-revolutionary. He was instructed to “bring back Tadjikstan into the proper road of a model Socialist Republic.”)

With all its faults, democracy was never so stupid and stultifying as dictatorship, and it will take more than the new fake democratic constitution to clean up the mess produced or perpetuated by dictatorship in Russia.

Labour Programme of the Indian Nationalists

Mr. V. V. Giri, Minister for Labour and Industries in the Indian Congress Government of Madras, spoke on July 25th about the policy the Government will pursue: —

   You all know that Congress stands for the fundamental rights which have been described by the famous Karachi Resolution. Chief among them being freedom of association and combination, freedom of speech and of the Press, living wage for industrial workers, limited hours of labour, healthy conditions of work, protection against economic consequences of old-age, sickness and unemployment, abolition of contract labour, right of labour to form unions to protect their interest, and a suitable machinery for settlement of disputes through conciliation, substantial reduction in agricultural rent or revenue paid by the peasantry, control over exchange and currency policy to help Indian industries and bring relief to the masses, control by the State of key industries, and ownership of mineral resources and control of usury.
   I do not for a moment claim that this programme is cent, per cent. Socialism, nor do I say that it must satisfy all Socialists. But I am bound to admit that these fundamental rights should be the basis for all workers to unite and organise the economic life of the masses, by organising every peasant in every village and every worker in every industry.—(Indian Labour Journal, August, 1937.)

Good Old Capitalism

The blessings of this capitalist era: —

   Ours is an age of banditry, piracy, civil wars, savage aggressions, guerrilla struggles, frontier fights, gangsters, gunmen and graft, interesting for future historians, never dull for those of who stay alive. —(Daily Express, September 22nd, 1937.)

   No one who examines the evidence can doubt that, actually, the use of torture is more widespread to-day than it was half a century ago.—(Report on treatment of prisoners: “The Accused. An International Survey,” issued by the Howard League for Penal Reform.) 

                                                MALNUTRITION.

   One result of the inquiry into nutrition had been a relisation of the deplorable malnutrition which existed to a smaller or greater degree in all countries of the world. This inquiry had demonstrated in a remarkable manner the fact that malnutrition could not be eliminated without a general improvement in the standard of living.

   Vital statistics showed clearly the connection between poverty on the one hand and ill-health and premature death on the other. Even in advanced countries death rates were 60 per cent. higher in poor areas than in well-to-do. Infantile mortality was as 2 to 1, while the death rate from tuberculosis was as 4 to 1. Could they reconcile it with their consciences that such contrasts should continue to exist? Would the general mass of the people continue to tolerate them?—(Mr. Bruce, representing Australia, at the League of Nations Assembly, September 21st, 1937. Times, September 22nd.)

Edgar Hardcastle

A New Campaign: Join the CCD (1962)

From the July 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

No, this is not a misprint. It stands for The Campaign for Chemical Disarmament which, doubtless, will soon start up when frustrated members of CND and others looking for good causes to follow have digested the facts recently given in an article in The Guardian under the title "U.S. Arsenal revised. Chemicals for defence”.

From the article is appears that the U.S. Army's projected expenditure for 1963 on research and development shows a drop of 20 per cent, on nuclear weapons and an increase of 67 per cent, on chemical and biological warfare. This, by the way, is a “faint ray of hope” for humanity, according to the former Chief Officer of the U.S. Army, General Creasy, who is reported to have said in 1959 that these weapons could lead to a “less total form of war". Apart from other possible results of chemical warfare, such as the interruption of nerve signals in the body causing convulsions and death, there are such effects as temporary paralysis, deafness, blindness and mental aberration. So much for less total forms of war!

Elsewhere in the article is mentioned the Hague Protocol signed by certain nations after the First World War and ratified by Great Britain (although not the United States) by which it was agreed not to use poisonous gases and chemicals in warfare. Yet a few weeks ago consternation was caused by the finding of hundreds of cylinders of mustard gas on a beach in Wales, manufactured by Britain during the Second World War and subsequently dumped. So much for the agreements between nations which the CND and similar organisations would have us believe will preserve us against the use of terrible weapons. The fact that gas was not used during the 1939/45 war only means that it was recognised as a rather inefficient method of murdering opponents, depending as it does on weather conditions. The same attitude, it may be added, did not apply to the napalm bomb or the flame thrower.

And so far we have only been discussing chemical weapons. So-called biological warfare is still very secret, although a year or two ago it leaked out that scientists were working on germs which could wipe out cities with far less trouble than hydrogen bombs and, what is more, leave property unharmed!

History has shown that summit meetings, treaties and promises come to nothing when the operations of capitalism force governments to protect their spheres of interest, if necessary, by war. Weapons will be manufactured secretly and held in reserve for the right moment. Equally we know that governments have not shrunk from using such weapons however terrible, when the interests of capitalism demand it.

Nobody can say that they will not do so again.

S. Goodman

A Dirty Lie (1919)

From the February 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the “Daily Chronicle” of Jan. 24th appears the following, purporting to be sent by that paper’s “diplomatic correspondent.” It occurs in a pronouncement dealing with Wilson’s proposal to ask Russian representatives to a conference on one of Prince’s Islands.

The conditions of existence in Russia were shown to be appalling; the nationalisation of women and other facts of Bolshevik rule pointed to a species of organised depravity.

Whoever this “diplomatic correspondent” may be he is a filthy-minded liar. His statement that the Russian Revolutionaries have nationalised women is so ridiculous one would think only the mental and moral dregs of the bourgeoisie could swallow it. It bears the impress of the organised campaign of slander and villification which the parasitic ruling class invariably launch against any section of the working class which has the temerity to challenge its supremacy. Such stuff is written for working-class consumption. Our masters, arguing that a class which will for ages permit themselves to be plundered by another class must be fools indeed, never hesitate to show their contempt for working-class intelligence, and too often they are justified by results. But in this instance, surely, they have reached a little too deep into their mental cesspool in their eagerness for unnameable filth to throw at those they are at a loss to combat in any other way. The muck they have reached up reveals its source in its stench. It stinks of capitalism. It reeks of the system in which, as notorious cases at present before the Courts show, the young beautiful women—nay, children, for “suffer little children to come unto me” is no less the command of the capitalist ravishers than the capitalist Christ, and their victims often are dead and buried before they can be called women—of the working class are at the disposal of the “rich friend”—private monopoly, not nationalisation! Note the difference.

No, working class revolution has never yet failed to effect a moral cleansing. When the Commune of Paris was in being the prostitutes of Paris flocked to Versailles, to their bourgeois patrons. In Paris no woman had to sell herself for food under the Commune. Prostitution is a pillar of capitalism, a common foundation of starvation wages. That this feature of the system of private property should assume a “nationalised” form along with the “nationalisation" of all the other means by which they are enabled to plunder the workers easily enough suggests itself to the filthy minds of the capitalists, and it goes without saying that there will be some mugs in the workers’ ranks ready to swallow the noxious concoction. 

J.

Editorial: "What Will He Do With It?" (1919)

Editorial from the January 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Martial Law General Election has come and gone. As was generally expected, the “Coalition” gang got there. They polled, in the United Kingdom, 5,091,528 votes, against 4,589,486 polled by the non-coalitionists. Thus they had a majority of 52 per cent of the votes cast. This astounding majority, we are seriously informed, overwhelmed David Ll. G. But, as showing how minorities fare under capitalist “democracy,” it may be remarked that this five per cent. vote majority gives the Coalition (leaving Ireland out of it) a majority of some 317 seats.

For us, of course, the election was bound to provide consolation prizes. It is sweet to observe that Butcher Asquith has got left, and it is sweeter than saccharine tablets to note that J. R. Macdonald has bitten the dust. The Liberal henchmen have proved who their masters are, alike in the defeat of men like Henderson and Macdonald who have been unfortunate enough to lose their masters’ support, and in the victory of men like Thorne who, openly flouting their “labour” crutches, clung frantically to the hand that doles them out their £400 a year, and found, if we may mix the metaphor in a good cause, that they had backed the right horse.

And now Lloyd George goes on to juggle with his promises. Pledged up to the hilt to Home Rule for Ireland, he is going to carry it with a vast Unionist majority! He is going to make a “beautiful new world” with a majority of the stoutest defenders of the old sordid and bestial working-class environment. Well, we hope the workers are about to learn a few useful lessons—and we think they are.

Another Election Lie.

At the fag end of the election campaign Lloyd George made a bid for the soldiers’ votes by declaring for rapid demobilisation and no conscription after the war. As to the first, we shall see presently what he means by that, but as for the second, he has warned us beforehand that he was simply lying.

Earlier in the campaign the wily one said that the question of Conscription depended upon the terms of the peace settlement. He was opposed to Conscription, he said, but if other countries had large armies—why, of course, and so on. He at the same time declared that Britain must retain her navy, which he said is a defensive force.

Now it must be obvious that if Britain is to retain her gigantic navy other countries are going to provide themselves with instruments of defence. The American Naval Secretary soon showed this when he declared that “It was his firm conviction that if the Versailles Conference did not result in a general agreement to put an end to naval construction the United States must bend its energies to the creation of incomparably the greatest navy in the world.” (‘"Star,” 31.12.18.)

It is sheer rubbish to talk of the Navy as being a defensive weapon. Lloyd George’s persistent claim that without the British Navy the Allies had never won the war proves that it was an offensive instrument of the first order. If it were merely a defensive weapon then it might be extinguished in a general disarmament. But Lloyd George says no, it must be retained. And Secretary Daniels, knowing that it is the factor in the control of trade routes, and therefore of.the world market, declares that America does not intend to be shut out of the world market.

And so there we are. The game is about to begin all over again—and nobody knows it better than Lloyd George. So when he says that he is in favour of no-conscription he is only lying to catch votes. He tells us the truth when he says Conscription in this country depends upon what obtains on the Continent, for that means that he is already preparing to institute it as an integral part of the “beautiful new world.”

Confirmation!

“If Germany had waited a single generation she would have had a commercial empire of the world.”

Thus spake President Wilson in Rome on Jan. 3rd. Strange, is it not, how our opponents and apologists for the war prove the correctness of our statements regarding the root cause of the conflict and belie their own beatitudes concerning the high ideals which have actuated the Allies. Can it possibly be that they find, when the bill is finally presented, and shows ten million naval and military deaths alone, to say nothing of the millions of other deaths for which the war is responsible, that the old shallow bunkum of honour and the like is really too absurdly inadequate, and that is better to rely on the truth—that it was an economic war?

Obituaries: Tommy Jones and Willie Stewart (1992)

Obituaries from the July 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

From his daughter we have learned of the death of Tommy Jones at the age of 84. He was active in the old Hamilton branch and was its secretary during its ten-year existence.

Tommy had a hard life: he worked down the pit and in foundries for many years and struggled to bring up a large family, but he always did what he could for the party in the Hamilton area.

We also learned at the same time that Willie Stewart, another old Hamilton stalwart, had passed away. Although disabled from an early age Willie never missed an opportunity to forcefully put over the socialist case. He was 86.

Tommy and Willie were lifelong friends as well as comrades and they never wavered in their commitment to the party. We extend our condolences to their families.