Passing Comments: China (1950)

The Passing Comments column from the December 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

China

The Stalinists are having a difficult time trying to explain away the invasion of Tibet by China. One might have expected such an invasion in the days of the old, avowedly imperialist China; but surely, one would have thought, the new China, which claims to be “Communist,” would have no reason to invade her neighbours. The Stalinists are so short of good arguments that the best two excuses for the invasion they can think of are firstly that the Chinese Emperors of the thirteenth century conquered Tibet, and secondly that the British Government recognises Tibet to be “part of China". For example, the Daily Worker (27/10/50) says, “Just as Wales is part of Britain, so Tibet is part of China, and has been so since the thirteenth century. This fact was recognised by the British Government in a note to the Chinese Government as recently as 1945.” The second reason is feeble in the extreme: if the British Government recognises that, say, lndo-China is part of the French Empire, do the Stalinists agree without further discussion that the French have a title to lndo-China? The first reason is even more revealing: apparently the Communists believe that Mao Tse-tung and his friends are the successors of the Emperors, and that if the Mongol rulers of China seven hundred years ago conquered Tibet, then Mao has the right to rule over Tibet to-day. Tibet is as much a part of China as Ireland is of England. Ireland and Tibet are both relatively weak-countries which have at some time in their history been conquered by their bigger and more powerful neighbours. Just as one of the English imperialists of the last century might have referred to “the historic English territory of Ireland,” so now the daily paper of our new twentieth-century imperialists refers to “the historic Chinese territory of Tibet.” The Stalinists, it seems, now think that small countries once conquered lose all right to an independent existence. All of which goes to show that “the rights of small nations” is as empty a phrase in the mouths of the Stalinists as it is in the mouths of the Anglo-American leaders.


Peace

But how does all this square with the desire for “peace” so tirelessly reiterated by the Communist parties of the world?

So agile are the Stalinists in juggling with words that they can even reconcile the waging of an aggressive war with the defence of peace. A Daily Worker article of November 8th begins with the words, “ Twice in the past fortnight the Chinese people have acted for peace. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army has marched into Tibet to protect China’s frontiers, and Chinese volunteers have gone to the help of the Koreans.” This action, it goes on, “ has made more secure not only China but the peace of all Asia and the world.” Propaganda about going to war in order to preserve the peace is not, of course, confined to the Russian bloc: “Illustrated" (11/11/50) has an article about one of the British soldiers who have gone to fight in Korea, and headlines it “Soldiers for Peace.”


Defence

The Daily Worker (27/10/50) says of what it calls the “standard Constitutional History Book for all pupils in the seventh class” in Soviet schools that it emphasises the “peaceful nature of the Soviet State.” “Nowhere in its pages can one find any other justification for the armed forces of the State than the needs of defence.” In the Western World there is the same insistence on the need for defence as the justification for having an army. The cost of preparing for the next war, including the building of bombing planes and bombs of all kinds, comes under the heading of “Defence Expenditure.” The invasion of Tibet shows that the Stalinists, like their opponents, have a somewhat elastic idea of the meaning of the word “ defence.”


India

Mr. Nehru disapproves strongly of the Chinese aggression on Tibet; indeed, he appears to dislike the use of force in any circumstances if it can possibly be avoided, according to the Manchester Guardian. An article in that paper on October 26th said of him that “his whole foreign policy is governed by his views on the use of force. He is enough of a Ghandian to believe that force solves nothing; he is also enough of a practical patriot to realise that countries must defend themselves against attack. . . . He satisfies the Ghandian in himself by insisting that force must not be used to drive the other side into a corner. Solutions to the last must be, he thinks, freely accepted. Mr. Nehru fulfils his duty as Prime Minister by insisting that aggression must be resisted.”

And it must be admitted that when Mr. Nehru talks about aggression and the use of force he is speaking of a subject of which he knows a great deal. Mr. Nehru has had experience of aggression from the profitable end.


Hyderabad

When in 1947 the British set up the two new dominions of India and Pakistan on the Indian subcontinent they did not at first cover all the territory which had accepted the supremacy of Britain. There were a number of Princes’ States like Kashmir and Hyderabad which were left to decide their future for themselves. Most of these States joined one of the Dominions, but the Nizam of Hyderabad did not wish to join either. By August, 1948, Hyderabad was the only state on the sub-continent which was still independent of both Dominions. In that month India protested at the activities of a Moslem organisation in Hyderabad whose members were called Razakars: India alleged that the Moslems were terrorising the Hindus of Hyderabad, who formed 86 per cent, of the population. The government of Hyderabad insisted that there was no internal disorder, and made the counter-charge that India was violating the frontier by sending raiding-parties across it, and was carrying out an economic blockade. (Hyderabad was entirely surrounded by Indian territory, having no outlet to the sea except through India.) After much further accusation and counter-accusation, India, without declaring war, invaded Hyderabad. On September 13th four Indian armoured columns thrust their way across the border. Three days later the Security Council met to hear the complaint of the representative of Hyderabad, who protested against the Indian aggression and demanded "immediate action” by the Security Council. Instead of sending MacArthur to help Hyderabad defend herself against this open act of aggression, the Security Council adjourned. On September 17th the Nizam gave up the unequal struggle against India: an estimated 2,000 of the defending forces had been killed, and the invading columns had almost reached the capital. Mr. Nehru added insult to injury by remarking "we are men of peace, hating war, and the last thing we desire is to come into armed conflict with anyone." After the surrender, the Nizam telegraphed to Lake Success withdrawing Hyderabad’s complaint against India. The Security Council breathed a sigh of relief and adjourned the matter sine die: which is a polite way of saying that they dropped it for good. No doubt Hyderabad was a backward, undemocratic country, ruled dictatorial by the Nizam; but South Korea (the invasion of which so outraged the Security Council) was also an undemocratic country, ruled dictatorially by the Syngman Rhee clique. If the Anglo-American bloc was really interested in defeating aggression, as opposed to making war on Stalinist countries, they could hardly have had a clearer case to deal with than the Indian attack on Hyderabad; but they refused to take any action, and thus showed themselves to be interested, not in defeating aggression, but merely in using aggression as a pretext for war in the countries belonging to the rival bloc.

Production

When the Labour Government took office in 1945 it appealed to the workers to increase production in order to assist in the "national recovery” after the war. To recover means, of course, to regain a position one has previously had, but has temporarily lost. When a nation recovers, it returns to some previous condition: but the Labour Party has never satisfactorily explained just why it wants us to regain our pre-war condition, to return to the days of 1918-39; especially since it has never ceased to criticise the Tory rule of those years. One suspects that phrase "national recovery” has only been used so often because it has a fine sound about it, but at the same time means little.

The workers responded to the Government’s call. Production is now over a quarter more than it was in 1946. The Government, however, has been making it painfully clear that the workers need expect no reward in the shape of a reduction in the cost of living. Mr. Harold Wilson, President of the Board of Trade, said on October 30th: "It would be dishonest to hold out hopes or promises of reductions in the cost of living at a time when world prices, as a result of rearmament, are rising.” And Mr. Chuter Ede, the Home Secretary, told the House of Commons a week later that "it is impossible to anticipate that there will be any reduction in the cost of living.” Not only will there be no reduction : there are more increases on the way. On November 10th the Board of Trade announced that wholesale prices have gone up by another sixpence in the pound. The prices of raw materials have also increased—cotton, rubber, wool and metals are among those which have gone up most.

Wool

For the workers this makes dismal reading. But there are others who are less worried about it. The News Chronicle (31/10/50) had some interesting information about Mr. Ebenezer Sykes, one of the men who buy wool from Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, and sell it on Bradford Exchange to the spinners. Mr. Sykes takes up his stand on the floor of the Exchange every Monday and Thursday morning, and the buyers come and see him there. "Mostly when they meet they seem to tell funny stories. You must be very sharp to overhear the deals they make in between the yarns. But quietly, almost casually, one of them will say that he has 50,000 lb. weight of super 60’s to sell at 199 pence a lb. Another will say 'I’ll buy,' and the contract is as good as sealed.” The duties of Mr. Sykes’ job do not seem to be very arduous; but the money is good. "The last time Ben Sykes went on 'Change he sold 60,000 lb. of wool. He had bought it last December for 57 pence a lb. The price he received for that wool from the spinner who bought it from him was 150 pence a lb.” So the gross profit on that one transaction came to £23,250.

Sweated Labour

Mr. Dugdale, the Minister of State for Colonial Affairs, made a speech at Staines in which he gave his own explanation of the rise in prices. "One of the main causes of higher prices was that people in India and Africa and other tropical countries were at last beginning to improve their standard of living ” (Times, 4/11 /50). Mr. Dugdale said that the wages of the Gold Coast agricultural labourers had now risen to 2s. 6d. a day, of tin-workers to 5s. 3d. a day, and of the Malayan rubber-workers to 3s. 4d. a day. "We had the satisfaction of knowing that such people were better fed and clothed now than when the Conservatives were running the Empire ‘and goods were produced at sweated rates.’ ”

It seems, then, that now the Labour Party is running the Empire, goods are not being produced at sweated rates: the line between sweated and non-sweated rates must run somewhere below fifteen shillings a week, at least in the British colonies. Mr. Dugdale’s conclusions on the wages question should earn the Labour Party a lot of support among the tin and rubber shareholders.

Alwyn Edgar

A Winter's Tale (1931)

From the January 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

Well! well!! well!!! Thank goodness, Christmas is over. Everybody has spent more than they should, everyone has bought presents for everyone else, and everyone is worse off except the children and the shopkeepers. The pantomimes are in full swing, and the opening of Parliament will add to their number. J. H. Thomas is ordering a new dress suit—all British—to help the trade of the Empire, and Ramsay is engaged in converting two and a half miles of his dinner speeches into gramophone records. With machines erected at convenient intervals along our coast, it is thought they will be wonderfully efficacious in keeping the east wind off our unemployed. The Mace was found to have vanished during the Recess, but Mr. Beckett explained he had only borrowed it to stir his pudding and would replace it in time for the opening performance. The sensitive heart of Mr. Lansbury has been riven by the spectacle of the ducks on St. James’s Park lake being divorced from their natural element by a thin sheet of ice. Ever practical, ever sympathetic, he has directed that holes shall be pierced at appropriate intervals in the ice, and that the pelicans shall be fitted with (British) skates. That is all the news that our ill-informed Parliamentary Correspondent can think of for the moment. But, looking over the outstanding events of 1930, he has reminded us that there was one item of world-shattering import overlooked by the regular Press. Future historians will record their gratitude to us for rescuing from undeserved oblivion the following moving story.

Let us tell the tale from the beginning. The Communist Party has been having a thin time. Apart from the general apathy due to the discovery of the fraudulence of the Labour Party, the C.P. suffers from private bogies of its own. Among them there is what is called the “right” danger. They seem to be a bit foggy upon the precise meaning of the term, due to the Communist Pope and Cardinals not having explained the danger to the faithful membership. The result was unfortunate. As J. T. Murphy explained in the Communist Review for last June:—

     Because of a lack of understanding of the new methods of work and a desire to eradicate the “right danger,” there has been by many comrades, indeed, whole district party leaderships, a leap into “left” sectarianism, which has isolated the party more than ever from the workers. The independent leadership of the party has become in these districts the isolated leadership, dashing about with revolutionary sounding propositions, accompanied by the transformation of revolutionary terms which mean something, into revolutionary jargon, which drives the workers away from us.

This is very sad, not to say serious. In fact, Mr. Murphy says:—

  In order that the seriousness of this situation can be realised . . . it is necessary to analyse some of these experiences which have led to serious struggles between the Political Bureau and the comrades concerned, though these comrades finally admitted their mistakes.

Some instances follow of the faithful Communists fighting the “right” danger by barging into “left sectarianism.” All are pathetically amusing. We select the following for seasonable reading, and wish we could add a reliable description of the “serious struggle ” referred to.

Attend, then! Turn the kids out of the armchair, draw up to the fire, and prepare to be thrilled by the ghostly tale of the

Battle of Burnley Barracks.

'Twas a wild night in March, and the early equinoctial hurricane moaned menacingly among the chimney stacks of Manchester. “Just the night for right-wing treachery,” said Al Capone to his — But no, we’ve got the wrong extract. This is the one, from the Communist Review:—

  In the preparations for March 6, the Manchester Working Bureau put forward, among other proposals, that a number of leading comrades should on March 6 lead a march of the workers on to Burnley Barracks, and call on the soldiers in uniform to demonstrate with the workers in the streets. Now, no member of our Party will question the desirability of propaganda amongst the troops. But when it is realised that in Burnley we had not a single Party cell in the mills, that the whole Party membership in Burnley did not muster a dozen members, that there had not been the slightest preparation for mass action of the workers, no preliminary work amongst the soldiers, indeed, that there are no Burnley barrarcks and no soldiers in Burnley, then the absolutely unreal and romantic line of approach by the Bureau can be seen at a glance. Once upon a time, there were barracks in Burnley, but so realistic was the approach of the Manchester leadership to Burnley, that they had not discovered that these barracks had long ago been transformed into slum property.

It is good to learn that, as a result of “ serious struggles,” these comrades finally admitted their mistakes. Let us recollect that it is only as a consequence of similar serious struggles that Don Quixote is known and endeared to us. Perhaps the Manchester Working Bureau’s claim to immortality is greater than his, for whilst the Don mistook real windmills for fictitious giants, they planned a spectacular march upon the non-existent. However, no need for depression. That will come soon enough when they hear of the death of Queen Anne.

W. T Hopley

The Socialist Forum: Socialism By Dictatorship. (1931)

Letter to the Editors from the February 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. R. J. Freeman (Thornton Heath) writes, putting forward several points of criticism of our position. For convenience and in order to save space, these points have been extracted from the letter and numbered:—

1. The S.P.G.B. proposes to do nothing to ameliorate the conditions of the working class, other than press the socialist doctrine wherever possible as the only remedy.
2. This work of propaganda can still be carried on by the I.L.P. members outside of Parliament just as persistently as the S.P.G.B., and by their presence in the House of Commons as well, can attempt to resist encroachments on the workers' standard of living.
3. I admit socialist knowledge is growing, but it is not due, as you would suggest, to the theory of the increasing poverty and economic pressure making them think . . .  but because capitalism breeds it.
4. The industrial worker . . .  has a remarkable memory for the names of racehorses, prize-fighters, footballers, etc. . . .  It is extremely doubtful whether the increasing poverty of this section will ever make them socialists.
5. I suggest socialism is more likely to be achieved through the action of the administrative and professional section, because they will see the futility of trying to permeate the concrete skulls of the other section and would rather establish a dictatorship and so force an unintelligent majority to come into line with an enlightened minority.

Reply.

1. The S.P.G.B. is obviously not in a position to “ameliorate the conditions of the working class,’’ but it can and does support useful action by the workers in their Unions to resist encroachments on their standard of living. If our correspondent knows of some other way in which the workers’ conditions can be ameliorated, will he explain why he, and those who agree with him, do not put it into operation?

2. We challenge our critic to give us evidence that the I.L.P., either inside or outside the House of Commons, is carrying on, or has ever carried on, propaganda for Socialism. As we pointed out in the January issue, every single I.L.P. member who has entered Parliament has done so on the programme of the Labour Party, a programme which Mr. Maxton describes as "an enlightened Liberal programme” (see “ Our Case,” page 11). Mr. Maxton added that if the whole of the Labour Party programme were put into operation “ we would have not Socialism but rationalised capitalism.”

We deny that this is propaganda for Socialism.

In view of the fact that prominent members of the I.L.P. have repeatedly stated that the workers under Labour Government are worse off than under the Tory Government, we would ask for evidence that the presence in Parliament of members of the I.L.P. has enabled the workers to resist encroachments. Mr. Freeman does not deny or answer our statement that upwards of two million workers have had their wages reduced since the Labour Government came into office.

3. We have never said that poverty would make Socialists. It is the whole organisation and development of capitalism, together with Socialist propaganda, which make Socialists.

4. May we point out that it is in the columns of the Daily Herald, which the I.L.P. tells the workers to read, that racing, boxing, and football news are provided?

See also answer to 3.

5. Before suggesting that the administrative and professional section “will see the futility of trying to permeate the concrete skulls ” of the industrial workers, Mr. Freeman should have told us when the professional section are going to begin to think about Socialism themselves. We have seen nothing to indicate that they are in advance of the lower-paid workers. The assumption that these people will establish a dictatorship is in line with the bumptious silliness of the so-called “middle class” themselves. In the first place, they are not “an enlightened minority"; their behaviour during the war-fever marked them out as being credulous, ignorant, brutal and unstable beyond the average. In the second place, they are a minority and, whether they like it or not, they have to shape their lives within a social framework which depends for its existence on the consent of the majority. Mr. Freeman writes glibly of dictatorship, but evidently has not observed that Mussolini and his imitators came into power because, and only because, they had been placed in control of the armed forces through having behind them a Parliamentary majority. It remains for Mr. Freeman to explain how the people he has in mind are going to get control of Parliament; and then to explain how they are going to impose Socialism on a hostile working class.

Editorial Committee.

A Cock-Eyed World: Some Items From The Press. (1931)

From the March 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

The National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives, in its report for the half-year ended December 31st, 1930, reports that

   the ordinary and legitimate requirements of the public can be met by full-time production during eight months of the year, unemployment and under-employment must continue until such time as we have the good sense to relate our hours to the productive capacity of the industry. (The Times, February 5th, 1931.)
   In several cases at Merthyr Police Court recently summonses against parents for not sending their children to school were adjourned on the plea that the children had no boots. News-Chronicle, February 11th, 1931.

The News-Chronicle on January 28th reported from Caerphilly, a mining area, that several charges were heard on the previous day of men caught stealing coal.

   One man said he had two babies suffering from bronchitis, and they were cold, as he had no coal. He lived in a damp place at the rear of a shop. He had five children, the eldest being eight, and could not send them to school because they had no boots or clothes. He was ordered to pay 5s.
   Another offender said that, although working, he had no coal in the house. He had 12 children to keep.

Psychology and Socialism (1931)

From the April 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

A reader has asked us to give our views on “Psychoanalysis and Sociology,” by Aurel Kolnai, translated by Eden and Cedar Paul, and published in 1921 by George Allen & Unwin, Ltd. It was an attempt to use psychoanalysis to throw light on the part played by society in shaping the individual. The translation is in a style which often makes it exceedingly difficult to understand what the author is driving at, and there is abundant evidence to show that he was quite unfitted to pursue this study, or in fact any study requiring logical argument backed up by knowledge and evidence.

This may be illustrated from his chapter on “Marxism as a Social Psychosis.” He says (p. 157) that “Marx espoused the Hegelian dialectic with great energy, merely replacing spirit in that system by economics, conceived as autonomous independent, mystically operative " (italics ours).

What exactly the italicised passage means it is hard to say, but it is certain that Marx himself did not conceive his theories in any such light. The view expressed must therefore be entirely Kolnai's own, but not one word of justification or explanation does he offer. This is typical of the whole book—an uninterrupted flow of obscurely worded assumptions linked together by the slenderest thread of connections.

Aurel Kolnai says that Marxists show all the signs of paranoia (p. 159), “a form of insanity, characterised by systematic delusions.” All the evidence he offers is contained in two statements; first, that Marxian theories ”suffice to arouse a suspicion ” that they have not a rational basis, and, second, that Marxism ”vividly recalls ” the idea of Christ the Saviour.

But these two assertions do not tell us anything about Marxism and Marxians. What “suffices” for Aurel Kolnai would not suffice for most people; and when he says that Marxism vividly recalls Jesus Christ to him, that only tells us something about Kolnai, about his trend of thought and about his inadequate ideas concerning proof.

And having so easily “proved” that Marxism is paranoia, he just as easily shifts his ground and allows that it is not “ simply a case of paranoia ” (p. 161). He even admits (p. 164) that the conditions under which the workers live may be a "contributory" cause towards moulding their ideas.

It is a pity that Aurel Kolnai did not follow up this one fruitful line of inquiry. If he had done so, he would have discovered that the private ownership, by the Capitalist class, of society's means of life is not a "systematic delusion,” but a hard fact. It is the determining factor in shaping the worker's ideas, because it governs the material conditions of his life.

Edgar Hardcastle

Socialism and Social Reforms (1931)

From the May 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is not only the workers who, through Trade Union action, endeavour to place certain limits upon their exploitation by the capitalists. The State, which to-day exists for the purpose of preserving capitalism, is also compelled in the course of its activities to take such steps.

In the early days of the nineteenth century, when the modern factory system was still struggling with earlier methods of production (based on handicraft in its later phases), the workers were able to reap some slight advantage from the divisions among the exploiting class.

Thus the landed interest, organised in the Tory Party, passed the early Factory Acts; and the tradition developed that by supporting one party against the other the workers could gradually improve their conditions. With the further developments of industry, however, the wealthy manufacturers bought land, and the landlords in turn began to invest in industry, until to-day the division has practically ceased to exist. In addition, the manufacturers discovered by experience that the legal regulation of hours of labour and the curtailment of so-called sweating could be made to hit their poorer and less effectively equipped competitors more than themselves. Hence the Liberal Party eventually took a special interest in pushing through the type of measures which they had previously opposed, and a considerable section of the workers came to regard the Liberals as their friends. In proportion, however, as modern industry develops, the value of such measures to the workers declines. The less efficient workers are precipitated into the ranks of the unemployed through legislation fixing legal minimum wages, and thus their last state is worse than their first.

This brings to the fore another type of reform which arises from the growing mass of destitution at the bottom of the social scale. This destitution constitutes a standing incentive to crime and is, therefore, a constant source of expense to the public authorities and, through them, to the propertied class in whose interests they function. Following the break up of feudalism in this country, in the reigns of the Tudors, the ruling class cowed the destitute into submission by savage repression, but the peasants who, by various means, were driven off the land, continued to grow in number and eventually the Poor Law was instituted. During the eighteenth century the farmers relied on this to make up the wages of their labourers, and again in recent years miners and others have found it necessary to appeal to the parish even when in work. Coupled with the fact that the present-day volume of Poor Law relief had reduced many parishes to bankruptcy, this led to the demand by various sections of the property-owning class that the State should assume the burden of destitution. Hence we have Unemployment and Health Insurance, old age pensions, etc., designed to relieve the pressure on the local authorities and, incidentally, pacify the workers by removing the pauper stigma. Such measures, being organised on a national scale, spread the burden over the entire capitalist, class, are more economical, and simplify the work of administration.

Nothing is easier than for astute politicians, whatever their, label, to put these measures forward as being specially intended to benefit the workers. Yet the number of persons compelled to seek Poor Relief is vastly greater than it was before the War. It is thus evident that as a preventive of poverty these measures are considerably less helpful than Mrs. Partington's mop in dealing with the Atlantic.

Education, sanitation, and the supply of houses by public bodies are other reforms for which Liberal, Tory and Labour politicians claim credit; yet it is clear that the education received by the wage-slave's child merely fits him to follow in his father's footsteps as a wage-earner; sanitation removes the threat of epidemic disease which does not spare the wealthy; while cheaper housing enables the workers to accept lower wages. Taken all round, these measures are intended to raise the standard of efficiency on the part of the workers, and thus make them more productive of profit for their masters.

In order to finance these measures the State is obliged to levy increased taxation upon those who alone can bear it, the property owners; and again nothing is easier than for so-called Labour leaders and others to represent this taxation as “socialistic"—an attempt to equalise incomes. The fact that the wealth of the large capitalists increases out of all proportion to the increased taxation, and that it is only the small fry that get squeezed out, is coolly ignored.

In spite of generations of this type of State activity, the cost of keeping up the armed forces is overwhelmingly greater than that of the “social services." Thus the greater part of taxation goes not to "relieve" the workers, but to keep them in subjection.

Many self-styled leaders of the workers belonging to the Labour and Communist Parties will readily admit that reforms on similar lines to those outlined above will not solve the problem facing the workers, and that Socialism is the only solution. Yet they claim it is necessary for their parties to have such reforms upon their programme in order to gain working-class support and thus obtain political power. "The workers want something now!” we are told, the implication being that the workers’ party should imitate the capitalist parties and make promises in order to catch votes. Such reasoning ignores the fact that a party which rises to power in such a manner can do nothing towards establishing Socialism.

Socialism cannot be imposed upon the workers from above. It is a system which implies their conscious recognition of its necessity. The workers cannot make the means of life common property without being aware of what they are doing. A programme of reforms is, therefore, useless to a Socialist Party, even as a strategic weapon. The failures of "Labour" Governments, the world over, to make any appreciable difference to the workers' conditions bear eloquent testimony to the soundness of our claim that, so long as capitalism exists because it is accepted by the workers as a necessity, it will be run in the interests of the capitalist class, and not of their slaves.

Wherever we turn, the plausible tales of the “reformers" concerning the need of “something now" merely serve to hide from the workers the fact that, in spite of Trade Union and State action, their exploitation and degradation grow greater rather than less, and must continue to do so with every improvement in machinery, technique, and industrial organisation. The effects of the much-discussed rationalisation now proceeding in all advancing capitalist countries should make clear to all the trend of modern society.

The Socialist Party will not barter its support for any promise of reform. For, no matter whether these promises are made sincerely or not, we know that the immediate need of our class is emancipation, which can only be achieved through the establishment of Socialism. Our interests are opposed to the interests of all sections of the master-class without distinction; whether bankers or industrialists, landlords or commercial magnates, all participate in the fruits of our enslavement, All will unite, in the last resort, in defence of the system by which they live.

For the party of the working class, one course alone is open, and that involves unceasing hostility to all parties, no matter what their plea, who lend their aid to the administration of the existing social order and thus contribute, consciously or otherwise, to its maintenance. Our object is its overthrow, and to us political power is useless for any other purpose. With these facts clearly in mind, and conscious that economic development is our unshakable and inseparable ally, we call upon the workers of this country to muster under our banner.

Eric Boden

Political and Economic Organisation: Some Common Objections Answered. (1931)

From the June 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Battlefield of the Struggle.

In a previous issue we outlined the policy of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. We showed that the class struggle arises on the economic field, but that the workers can only be victorious in that struggle by becoming conscious of their class interests and controlling political power. The objection is often raised that the worker is "robbed” in the process of production, and that it is on the industrial field that he must fight for emancipation. These objectors do not realise the truth pointed out by Marx, that economic systems are controlled politically. Marx showed that material conditions give rise to political institutions by means of which ruling classes dominate the economic world. The materialist view of history shows that the material conditions of production, etc., make necessary political machinery to govern or control the economic life of society.

Every class struggling for control of the economic basis of society has to become politically supreme in order to maintain or obtain economic possession.

"Economic Power."

We are often told that "economic power” is the key to the situation. The working class, however, have no economic power. The working class cannot live except by being employed by the masters. The instruments of production as well as the products belong to the employers, which leaves the workers in the position of constantly struggling for a job and wages in order to exist.

It has been claimed that because the ,workers are necessary to production, their "indispensability" is an economic power. But the workers can’t live on their quality of being necessary to industry. And as soon as they enter into production, they do so on the employers’ terms. If “economic power” depends upon possession, as in the employers’ case, then it at once rules the workers out from “economic power. ” The employing class have to "back up” their economic possession by controlling the political machine.

Is Parliament A Capitalist Machine?

One objection to the use of Parliament is that it is a capitalist machine. Parliaments, however, grew up long before the modern capitalist era, and they evolved along with the changes in the conditions of production. The fact that Parliament was used to bolster up the landowners and monarchy did not prevent the rising merchant class wresting it from the hands of their opponents and using it to legalise and defend their interests. The age-long efforts to prevent the workers having a vote, and the huge funds and resources used to maintain a capitalist majority, show how important a machine Parliament is for the ruling class. It is the seat of power. It is the main machine of the modern State, through which the armed forces are raised, maintained, controlled and moved. Before the workers can do anything with the State machinery, they first of all must win possession of it. Lenin is accepted by many critics as an authority, and he admits the truth of our position when he tells us,.in his "State and Revolution,” that the workers must make use of the present State.

Lessons From Our Masters.

Our critics themselves point to the efforts to try to keep a revolutionary out of Parliament. Does that not show that Parliament is an important machine with tremendous power? Why, otherwise, should they try to keep a revolutionary out? All the talk about the employing class abolishing Parliament if the workers became Socialists in large numbers indicates how anxious the ruling class are to prevent such a powerful weapon falling into workers’ hands.

In no modern capitalist country have the ruling class been able to abolish Parliament. Countries that are backward and where the population have not yet developed a modern outlook are the only examples where attempts have been made with any success. The general tendency is in the other direction, that is, to widen the suffrage and to promote Parliamentary constitutions.

Light From India and Russia.

The merchant class of India to-day want their own Parliament, as that will establish their political supremacy and give them real control over their wealth and industry. The modern struggle in India is an example proving that possession of wealth alone is not the real power, but that it is necessary for the owners to protect and maintain their possession by political and legal domination. Rival owners of wealth, national or foreign, enter the contest for political power because Parliamentary control is essential to run society their way.

In the backward Empire of Russia the Czar was driven to adopt a constitution and establish a Parliament (Duma), but finding it filled by many opponents, he thought the safe thing was to abolish it. He abolished it three times at least. But the ensuing disorder and chaos ended in the rout of the Czar and his oligarchy. The Constitution was too late. Even in those carefully devised Parliaments of Russia we found Bolshevik parties and Terrorist organisations representing workers and peasants.

The Dilemma of Direct Action.

What is the alternative to the use of Parliament in modern constitutional countries? Political organisation is essential both to carry on the propaganda of Socialism as well as to win power. The only suggestion of those who criticise Parliament is that direct economic action offers a better way. The political machine, however, is the instrument controlling the armed forces, and if that Parliamentary control is left in the hands of our enemies, the workers are without any means of taking possession of the machinery of wealth production, etc..

Even regarded as a means of education, political action is superior to economic. On the political field the class struggle can be explained and driven home far more effectively than in the workshop, where the trade or industrial rivalry between workers obscures the class line.

Lenin on the Economic Field.

Lenin waged war for many years against the large Russian body known as Economists,” who stood for economic against political organisation.

In a recent Labour Monthly was reproduced an article, written by Lenin on "The Working Class as Champions of Democracy.” Lenin refers to the "fundamental fallacies of all economists," namely, that it is possible to develop the political consciousness of the workers from within, so to say, out of the economic struggle, that is, starting solely or chiefly, from this struggle."

Lenin answers the fallacy thus: “Political class-consciousness can be imparted only from outside, that is, outside the economic struggle, outside the sphere of the relation of the workers to employers" (italics Lenin’s).

We hold that Lenin has carried his point too far and that there is a large field for education within the daily economic struggle, but Lenin’s insistence upon the political as the chief field of Socialist education is correct and has been proved up to the hilt by all past experience. Practically all those direct action agitators who talk about Socialism gained their ideas about the nature of Socialism outside the field of industry and in political agitation.

Some of the other objections to our position will be dealt with in a further article.'

Adolph Kohn

Russian Illusions (1931)

Editorial from the July 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is claimed by many that the Russian Government has discovered a means of developing Russian industry on Socialist lines and free from the disturbing effects of the world trading conditions that affect the other capitalist countries. Actually, the more Russian industry enters into the world market as importer and exporter, the more Russian industrial conditions will be affected by conditions outside.

For example, the world slump in prices has hit Russian industry as badly as any, and has necessitated hasty and difficult modifications of the so-called Five-Year Plan. Estimates were based upon the exporting of certain quantities of goods at certain prices, the yield from which was to be used for machinery and other imports. Owing to the unforeseen slump, Russian exports in January and February of 1931 decreased in value by nearly one-fifth as compared with the corresponding period of 1930, and this in spite of a big increase in the quantities of goods exported. The output of the exporting industries had to be increased above the planned amount owing to the fall in the prices obtained for the exported goods in the world market, and in order to pay for the imports. The machinery and other imports either have not fallen in price at all, have not fallen as heavily, or have been contracted for at a stated price. The final result has been that imports have had to be curtailed. The imports for January and February, 1931, were one-third below those for January and February, 1930. Thus does capitalism frustrate attempts at planning.

Mr. Fenner Brockway, the new Chairman of the I.L.P., writing in the New Leader (April 17th), assumes that Russian industry is being run on a “ Socialist basis.” This is quite incorrect and indicates either a misreading of the Russian industrial system or—more probably—a failure to grasp what constitutes Socialism. In Russia, as elsewhere, goods are produced, not for use, but for sale. The producers are a wage-earning class with no effective control over the machinery of production. There is great inequality, as in other capitalist countries. The first charge on industry is the payment of interest to the investors in the State loans. The way in which inequality of wealth is growing is shown by the increasing yield from the graduated income tax. Already the yield is over £60 millions a year. The Government is now itself catering for the wants of monied people by opening shops at which goods are sold at rates far above the official prices.

Mr. Walter Duranty, of the New York Times, telegraphing from Moscow, says: 

  In the large cities, industrial centres and construction camps the food ration of the masses is adequate for health and can readily be supplemented by anyone with money . . .     In the larger centres the authorities are attempting to meet the situation by opening a kind of “ State NEP” stores, where food and commodities are sold well above ration prices but below the rates of the “free markets" which the “State NEP ” stores are intended to replace.

(New York Times, April 3.) 

The Moscow Correspondent of the News-Chronicle (April 13th) gives further information about these stores :—

   New State-owned profiteering stores—selling to anybody with no questions asked about your ration book or whether, you are an “economic outlaw” — went on charging 8s. a pound for frozen chickens; 25s. a pound for an inferior sort of cheese; and 6s. a pound for poor salt herrings.

Mr. Albert Coates, the musical conductor, who recently returned from Russia, gives information about the prices a section of the population are able to pay for seats at the opera. Speaking to a Daily Telegraph representative, he said:—

    Many people still have a great deal of money in Russia, but they have to be careful. There is little or no actual starvation, but there is a system of food rationing.
    The price of seats in the.theatre ranged from 24s. downwards. At every performance—and there is one every night and two on Sundays for nine months in the year—the opera theatres are packed, although the majority of the populace are said to be penniless . . .
    Beautifully gowned women and well-dressed men still continue to adorn the front rows of the Grand Theatre, Moscow, every night.

(Daily Telegraph, April 1.)

While the Russian workers are told that they must pull in their belts and reap their reward later on when the Five-War later on when the Five-Year Plan (or the second Five-Year Plan) is completed, the highly paid administrative and technical officials and the investors in State loans get their benefit now.

These are not the features of Socialism, but of capitalism. Before they get Socialism, the Russian workers will have to tread the same path of disillusionment leading to knowledge that is being trodden by the workers in other countries.

A Tribute From An Unexpected Quarter. (1931)

From the August 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following passage is taken from an article, “Socialism as a Business Career,” published in the "National Citizen," the organ of the National Citizen's Union.

   A study of Labour-Socialism since the beginning of this century reveals some highly interesting circumstances. The movement has been, and is, many sided. It includes those who have clung throughout to the undiluted spirit of Marx as a cult or religion. Personal ambition, advertisement, the the power and pelf of office, from the Parish Council to Parliament, has not deflected.them from their principles or their preachings. When His Holiness the Pope announces that a good Christian cannot be a Socialist or a Socialist a good Christian, these people do not seek to “square the circle” with the terminological sophistry of “explanations” and “justifications of the Labour-Socialist position. They boldly state : “Yes; it is true. Buy our booklet on 'Socialism and Religion’; and you will see that Socialism DOES mean Atheism.” This type of Socialist remains exceedingly small in numbers, and the struggling existence of his organisation, the Socialist Party of Great Britain, is witness to the truth that Marxian Socialism, unalloyed with mixtures of graft, job-hunting, and political chicanery, makes no appeal to English democracy.—(July, 1931.)

The writer of the article, who signs himself “Life-long Trade Unionist,” appreciates the way in which the Labour Party machine has been constructed—on a foundation of “graft, job-hunting and political chicanery,” a foundation from which “cunning and even illiterate tub-thumpers" have risen to positions of relative wealth and eminence.

It is probable, however, that the Labour politicians do not feel any too secure in their eminence. There is always the danger for the Labour leaders that with growing knowledge the workers come to realise the rottenness of the foundation on which the Labour Party has been built. The ferocity with which the Labour M.P.'s have attacked their deserter, Sir Oswald Mosley, makes it look as if they feel very insecure indeed. We can assure the “National Citizen" that when unalloyed socialism does make headway among the workers it will produce a force far more formidable than the shoddy movement fashioned by the timid charlatans of the Labour Party.

P. S.

Rationalisation in Agriculture. (1931)

From the September 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

The March issue of the International Labour Review contains two very interesting and informative articles on Rationalisation in the U.S.A. and Canada, "The Economic Depression in North America ” and "More Mechanisation in Farming.”

In the United States, between the years 1919 and 1929, the output per head in manufacturing industries increased by 45 per cent. In agriculture the output increased by more than 25 per cent., and as a consequence during this time three million workers left the land to seek employment in the towns. 

So much is American capitalism in the grip of rationalisation, that American capitalists estimate their costs and profits on the basis of providing a complete re-equipment of machinery every two or three years.

   "Out of 200 large representative firms questioned on this point by the President’s Economic Survey, 43.6 per cent, required new equipment to replace its cost in two years, and 64.1 per cent, in three years ” (page 320).

To the uninitiated it might appear that there is very little room for further mechanisation in farming. This is not so.

There has been introduced into American and Canadian farming during the past two years machinery which has created a technical revolution. One machine, in particular, is worth special mention. It is known as the "combine,” and both cuts and threshes the grain in one operation, thus eliminating a whole series of manual occupations between the cutting and threshing of the corn that were formerly necessary. Operated by only two men, it can harvest as much as 40 acres a day. The results are a huge displacement of labour and the halving of the cost of production (page 336).

A large firm which formerly took on 30 men in the Spring and a further 120-150 during the harvest, now employs only 14 men throughout the year (page 305). It abolishes the need for additional harvest labour. "No extra harvest hands have been required during the last two years.” Bang goes the English unemployed worker’s chance of spending a holiday harvesting in Canada.

The "combine” was invented 10 years ago, but has only recently been introduced and applies as a result of competition. It can be applied to other crops besides corn, e.g., cotton.

A substantial part of the 1929 crop is still in the granaries, and the 1930 crop is still unsold.

As a warning to workers who might be considering emigration, a Canadian provincial government minister is quoted as follows: "We have now too many people because there is no work for them.” "And," says the article, "that in a territory of great wealth with little more than two to the square mile" (page 306).

Wealth, over-abundance, misery and suffering side by side! When will the workers see this glaring anachronism; and the remedy, the dispossession of the owners of the means of living, and the establishment of Socialism?

Harry Waite

The Socialist Forum: Are the Workers Robbed? (1931)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent (“Jason,” Balham) questions the accuracy of the statement that the workers are ” robbed.” He refers particularly to three phrases used by us. The first was used in the War Manifesto reprinted in the August issue, and is as follows:

  . . . the workers’ interests are not bound up in the struggle for markets wherein their masters may dispose of the wealth they have stolen from them (the workers) . . .

Our correspondent objects that this statement is not derived from Marx and is not correct. He writes :—

   When Marx refers to the capitalists as the robber class he has in mind the original source of their capital—the primary accumulation obtained from robbing the Spaniards and Portuguese of their loot from Mexico, Peru and the Malay Archipelago, plundering Africa and the Indies, and expropriating the peasants, etc.
    It is palpably absurd to talk of the workers as propertyless proletarians and then to dilate upon the magnitude of the robbery of non-existent wealth from them. At the most the workers can be robbed only within the compass of their wages, insurance money, or loans, but such robbery enriches only a section of the Capitalist Class, operating in the sphere of circulation, and may be termed cheating rather than robbery.
   The process by which the capitalists augment their wealth is a process far more deadly than any mere robbery could be. It is a draining, pumping, sucking, squeezing, of labour-power, not stealing the worker’s wealth, but rather his health and vitality, by the purchase at its value of the energy derived through the expenditure of brain, muscle, nerve and bone tissue. Workers are poor not because they are ^ j robbed, but because they are enslaved.

Our correspondent considers that the phrase in our Declaration of Principles which reads, “the monopoly by the capitalist class of the wealth taken from the workers,” “tends to foster the . . . erroneous viewpoint.” He expresses the opinion that a third phrase used in the article, “ The Socialist Party and War ” (see August issue), viz., “robbing them of the fruits of their labour,” is “more correct.”

Reply.

The capitalist buys labour power at its value, yet robs the worker. The value of labour power depends upon the cost of production of the labourer, and the cost of production of the labourer depends upon his cost of living. Inside this, however, is the fact that standards of living for different types of workers vary, and standards also vary between one country and another. The capitalist aims at lowering the general standard of living to the lowest possible level.

The labourer, when working, produces a greater value than the value of his means of living, and the capitalist takes the extra value produced. Our correspondent argues that this is exploitation, but not robbery, because the capitalist pays the labourer the value of his labour-power. In his eyes, only that which is illegal to-day is robbery. But although the capitalist pays the labourer the value of his labour-power, he does not pay him the value of his product.

We will leave aside the question of depressing the standard of living, wherein the capitalist obviously robs the worker of former advantages. It is to be assumed that the critic does not suggest the worker willingly agrees to wage reductions, etc. As the worker is deprived of wealth that he does not willingly give, he is plundered by force.

The workers fight for a larger amount of the total wealth produced, but are defeated in the long run by the power of the capitalists. The capitalist shows his power by the giving and withholding of jobs, which signifies inviting the workers to produce on certain terms or starve. Dick Turpin used a pistol to force wealth from his victims; the capitalist uses the threat of starvation for the same purpose. The one method is illegal robbery; the other is legal robbery. In the present discussion the main difference between the two is the question of legality. There is another difference. Dick Turpin did the job himself; the capitalist pays others to do it. When Dick Turpin met with opposition he had only his own arms to call upon. When the worker resists the capitalist, the latter can call upon the State power to bring the worker to subjection and force him to produce.

The difficulty is that the mass of the workers, like the victims of Hatry, do not realise that they are being robbed.

The original accumulation of the capitalists, by means of which they were able to obtain control of the means of production and subject the worker to exploitation, was also robbery. The plundering of the Eastern and Western countries, the plundering of the monasteries and the enclosing of lands by driving the original owners off, form the principal part of the capitalists’ early accumulation of wealth.

Dr; Annandale gives the following definitions in his dictionary ;—

Rob: To plunder or strip by force or violence; to deprive of something by stealing. Robbery: A taking away by violence or wrong. Steal: To take clandestinely without right or leave; to gain or win by address or gradual and imperceptible means; to perform secretly; to try to accomplish clandestinely.

The capitalist deprives, plunders and strips the worker of energy, leisure, pleasure, the product of his labour, and a host of other things, and it is done by force, and secretly or clandestinely by gradual and imperceptible means. Therefore the capitalist robs the worker. The customs of savage society do not permit this form of robbery, but the laws of capitalist society do. Therefore it is now legal robbery.

It is true the capitalists rob each other, but the robbery of the worker is the basis of the system.

As to our critic’s references to robbery in the past, we would point out that from the strictly legal point of view it would in many instances be as incorrect to apply the word to the past as to the present. The enclosures of common lands, for example, were perfectly legal forms of robbery, according to the laws of the time.

Editorial Committee

A Word To Sympathisers. (1931)

Party News from the November 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

During and immediately before the General Election we distributed free of charge 170,000 copies of two leaflets, one on the fall of the Labour Government, and the other on the election issues. To do so we used up the fund we had earmarked for that purpose and in addition we have incurred a heavy debt. Now we have to replace that money in order to be able to issue further leaflets as occasion arises, particularly bearing in mind that another General Election may not be long delayed. We need money for other purposes. We are out-of-stock of certain pamphlets, and we have in preparation a new pamphlet on the Socialist Party and its principles. If only half of the readers of the Socialist Standard would contribute one shilling a month to our funds we could quickly clear off our debt and would have in hand, before the end of the winter, a substantial part of the money needed for the new pamphlet. We address this appeal especially to non-members because we realise that there are many who sympathise with the Party’s position but are unable, for one reason or another, to join up or take an active part in propaganda. We ask you to remember that the Socialist Party, unlike other political parties, receives no financial support from the trade unions or from wealthy individuals. The burden on our members is, therefore, a heavy one.

Send your donations to the Treasurer, 42, Great Dover Street, London, S.E.1. Acknowledgment will be made by post and in these columns.

Editorial: Futilities & Tragedies. (1931)

Editorial from the December 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

Each year that passes brings out with greater clearness the contrast between the professions of the League of Nations and its accomplishments. Organised for the avowed purpose of solving international tangles by arbitration, and thus doing away with the recourse to force, every dispute it has set out to settle has demonstrated its utter ineptitude.

The latest manifestation of the League must be food for infinite laughter to all who have a sense of humour. The League holds numerous and heated meetings; its delegates sit day and sometimes till late at night; first-class diplomats from all nations represented make hurried trips in aeroplanes to its meetings; frenzied notes are sent out to Japan and China to cease fighting and arbitrate. And the result?—Japan goes marching on to protect the £200 millions her capitalists have invested in Manchuria.

The central fact is the permanent condition of capitalism. Where a group of capitalists are aiming at markets for their goods they are always prepared to use force to accomplish their object if cunning is not sufficient, and if they believe they can safely do so. The only deterrent factor is the fear of superior force. The permanency of force should have been made sufficiently clear by the abortive disarmament conferences and the way in which Germany, when restricted in the size of ships and weight of armour, succeeded in producing in smaller form as destructive ships of war as formerly.

The final and most effective reason for the maintaining of an armed force by each capitalist State is the enemy within its gates — the working class —who, at times when the burden of poverty and oppression becomes too much to be borne in silence and weakness, tends to revolt blindly and fiercely, and threaten the foundations of capitalist wealth. Although blind revolt cannot build a new society, it could damage or even destroy an existing one.

The amount of money willingly spent by various nations on the futile and fatuous work of the League of Nations is in striking contrast to the niggardliness of the expenditure on inside matters that affect the life and welfare of their workers. In factories and mines, and elsewhere, thousands. of workers lose their lives every year in the work of piling up wealth for the capitalist. When an event occurs that is outstanding and .cannot be conveniently ignored, the papers are full of tales of the heroism of workers and the cheap sympathy of those who profit by the workers' toil. One such event has occurred in England this week. At the Doncaster Colliery thirty-four miners have been killed and many injured in a disaster that has been a common feature of the mining industry.

Yet these very miners have been fighting for years against reductions in their already meagre wages, and in the forefront of the sympathisers are those who use the powers of Parliament to force down the miners' standard of living. Once again it has been shown that coal mining is an exceedingly dangerous occupation, but when the trouble has blown over this fact will be forgotten and all attention centred on the “League of Nations" and similar futilities.

Happy New Year (1986)

From the January 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

I've hated Christmas for as long as I can remember. Since the day when, as a child, I realised that I'd been conned every year of my short life by stories about Father Christmas only bringing toys to good children — a sort of "no-strike" agreement in return for a Christmas bonus between me and my mother. Later I realised that all of Christmas is a con — from the birth of Jesus which it is supposed to be celebrating, to the "peace and goodwill" that is supposed to appear miraculously at this time of year.

Nowadays I get a sinking feeling in my stomach when Christmas cards first go on sale in the shops (usually sometime around the end of summer); I start to feel decidedly fed up by about mid-November when fairy lights and tinsel are festooned around concrete street lamps in the High Street; and by December, depression hits with a vengeance and I can be found loitering in travel agents frantically seeking out cheap holidays to places where they don't celebrate Christmas.

Last year I succeeded: I flew to Israel on Christmas Day — not a turkey, mince pie or tinsel angel in sight (so long as you kept well away from Bethlehem where they tend to get a bit excited about it all). The irony of it was that in order to pay for this extravagant piece of escapism I had to work every night for two weeks at the post office — sorting Christmas cards!

But despite my loathing of the enforced jollity of Christmas I always used to like New Year. I liked the idea of seeing the Old Year out and starting the New Year afresh with fine-sounding resolutions scribbled furtively in a diary which, if I kept them, were sure to make me healthy, happy and wise, or so I thought. Of course I never did keep them, or at least not for very long.

As idealism faded and cynicism set in even the resolutions took on a more jaundiced tone: to stop killing myself by smoking cigarettes (that one, kept for over four years, is lately getting a bit frayed around the edges); not to be so bad-tempered, and so on. I also began to realise that I could make all sorts of resolutions but I was fighting against enormous odds in trying to keep them (besides, that is. my own lack of will power).

The society in which we live makes it almost impossible for most of us to be healthy, happy, or wise, no matter how hard we try or how many New Year resolutions we make. How can we become more healthy when the environment in which we live is profoundly unhealthy? I might resolve to swim twenty lengths of the swimming pool every day and only eat whole foods, but that's not going to do me much good if I live next to a leaky nuclear reactor, or in a city where the air is polluted by lead-ridden exhaust fumes. I might resolve to give up smoking (again), but if I smoke to help me cope with the stress of everyday life caused by anxieties about money, work, housing or bills, then I might very well get a stomach ulcer instead. My resolve to be less bad-tempered is all very well, but if the reason I get bad-tempered is the daily frustration of not being fully in control of my own life then I am attacking the symptom and not the cause. How nice a person can you afford to be in a world that is not nice, where competition and aggression are highly valued attributes? And how can people become wise when they are constantly being fed misinformation, distortions of the truth and downright lies from the relatively harmless fairy tales about Father Christmas coming down chimneys to bring toys to good children to the infinitely more harmful fairy tales of politicians who tell us that if we, the workers, are good (work harder for less pay, don't go on strike, don't make a fuss about poor housing, health care and so on), then we will reap the benefit as "the nation" gets richer.

The truth of the matter is that, as individuals, we are extremely limited in our ability to change our own lives very much at all. We are part of a society which directly affects what we can or cannot expect from life, how we live our lives and even the way in which we behave towards each other. So if we want to be healthy, happy, caring individuals — if, in other words, we want to be fully human — we must first live in a society which permits those qualities to flourish. And capitalism, the society in which we all live now, certainly does not.

Capitalism is a system of society which divides people rather than unites them — capitalist from worker, men from women, blacks from whites, nation from nation. It teaches us competition not co-operation competition for jobs, housing and something that approximates to a bearable standard of living. The division between capitalist and worker is inherent in capitalism — their interests are totally opposed and can never be reconciled. But the divisions between workers are not inherent —they are encouraged by the conditions in which we live and work but could be overcome through a recognition of our common class interests, our mutual inter-dependence and, above all, the need for radical change.

So this year, when your self-image has recovered from the body-blow dealt it by your brother thinking you were the kind of person who would like the pair of pink lurex socks, or by your Auntie Flo being convinced that a Barbara Cartland novel was just what you always wanted; when you've been to Marks and Sparks to get a refund on a jumper in order to pay the electricity bill; when the last of the turkey has been metamorphosed into turkey curry; when you've replied "Quiet, but nice" for the last time to people who ask at work if you've had a nice Christmas; when the TV has stopped showing disaster movies, The Sound of Music and Jimmy Savile tormenting sick children in hospital; when the ankle you sprained leaping across the living room on Christmas Day to turn off the Queen has recovered; in short, when life has returned to humdrum normality, why not reflect on what your New Year's resolution will be this year? Are you going to make pious resolutions to become a "better" person, which you have very little chance of keeping, or are you going to make this the year you start to take control of your own life? It would be nice to think that people throughout the world are scribbling the words: "I resolve that 1986 will be the year that I will organise democratically with my fellow workers to abolish capitalism and bring about a society in which we can all start to become healthy, happy and wise".

Janie Percy-Smith

Much ado about nothing: The Anglo-Irish Agreement (1986)

From the February 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

By the time this article appears, the "Ulster Says No" election will have passed. The reader will know whether the alliance of "Democratic" and Official Unionists conned enough members of the working class. Did Sinn Fein — who don't want Ulster to say "Yes" and are opposed to those who want it to say "No" —take enough votes to win a seat at Westminster (which they have refused to accept) or did they simply ensure that the SDLP — who want to say "Yes" — was defeated? Did the so-called Workers' Party — more-or-less in the "Yes" camp — save all. or any, of its deposits? Did the Alliance Party — strong on unionism but tentatively in the "Yes" group — win a few more votes from imagined "middle-class" Unionists whose political stomachs are upset by the surfacing of anti-British violence in the Unionist camp? In the best tradition of soap operas, all this will have been revealed by now.

Generally, politicians take elections very seriously. It is true that, following an election, irrespective of which group of political con artists get elected, the condition of the great majority of people, the working class, remains unaffected. Be that as it may, before an election it is the business of politicians and their parties to convince us that the elections are about our problems; about unemployment, poverty, slums — indeed, about any of the mass of social ills that affect society in general and the working class in particular.

The fact that all these social ills continue to exist after countless elections and the implementation of the policies represented by all the political parties — somewhere, if not in Northern Ireland — clearly demonstrates the failure of conventional politics and politicians. Nevertheless, unless politicians wish their business to be reduced to the level of a beauty contest or a dog show, they have got to go through the motions of trying to convince us that their election or rejection has some relevance to our problems.

Not about facts

On the 17 December last, the Belfast Telegraph published Thatcher's views on the Anglo-Irish Accord as given to its London correspondent. Her views are significant in one respect: they reveal that the whole exercise of the Anglo-Irish Accord is wholly unrelated to the facts of life of the ordinary people of Northern Ireland. "We are dealing" said Thatcher, "not with facts, but with perceptions".

It would be difficult to find a more contemptuous way of telling the working people of Northern Ireland that the purpose of the Anglo-Irish Accord is to kid them about the future. Here, straight from the mouth of the messiah of British capitalism is the message: the Accord is not concerned with facts — that is, with the realities of our lives. It is merely concerned with "perceptions" — that is, with the way we see things.

Of course Thatcher is right; the Accord, and the election it caused in Northern Ireland. is not about facts. It is not concerned with the fact that more than one in five people in Northern Ireland have no job or that, in some working class areas, a man with a job is a curiosity; it is not concerned with the fact that those who are working are paid, on average, some £20 a week less than workers in the rest of the UK or with the fact that wages in Northern Ireland are among the lowest in western Europe; it is not concerned with the fact that some 40 per cent of the population are wholly or partially dependent on social security payments in order to live or with the fact that slums and insanitary hovels are more prevalent in Northern Ireland than anywhere else within the EEC. Nor is it concerned with the fact that, if there was real peace in the province and all those currently engaged in jobs associated with the troubles were stood down, the miseries that are facts for the great majority of working people in Northern Ireland would be extended to many more people.

The Accord

The purpose of the Accord is. as Thatcher says, to make people in Northern Ireland see things differently. It establishes a Ministerial Conference under the joint chairmanship of the British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and the Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs in which the two sovereign governments, the British and Irish, will be equally represented. Both sides will have an input into the Conference which may make recommendations to the British and, effectively, the Irish governments on matters related to Northern Ireland. The British government undertakes to give reasonable consideration to such recommendations but is not bound by the Accord to accept them. Within the Accord, the Irish government recognises the right of the majority within Northern Ireland to remain within the United Kingdom and the British government recognises the right of the nationalist minority in Northern Ireland to identify without proscription or legal encumbrance with their "cultural" aspirations and to engage in nonviolent political activity to promote a united Ireland.

The Accord provides for the Conference to relinquish to the control of an elected Northern Ireland Assembly all or any of the matters within its competence providing that such an Assembly enjoys wide cross- community support — effectively, from catholics and protestants — and is desirous of taking over all or any of the matters within the brief of the Conference. In other words, should the local politicians reach a political accommodation that would allow them to establish a power-sharing Assembly and should that Assembly agree to deal with the matters presently within the consultative competence of the Conference, the latter is agreed to hand over such matters to the Assembly and. should all such matters be handed over, the Conference will become redundant.

Changing perceptions

How do the British and Irish governments see the Accord working? What perceptions do they wish to change and what effect would such change have in Northern Ireland? More importantly, especially since some Unionists and the loyalist paramilitaries have intimated that loyalists should, if necessary, be prepared to sacrifice their lives and freedom resisting it — what real difference will the Accord make to the lives of the working class?

It was hoped that the loyalists would accept the Accord, however reluctantly, because it contained the Irish government's effective repudiation of its constitutional claim to jurisdiction over Northern Ireland. On the other hand, it is hoped that catholics and nationalists will see their interests protected by the Irish representatives within the Conference and would, accordingly, be more willing, or less unwilling, to identify with the Northern State and co-operate with the forces policing that state.

Given a degree of success in this direction. it is hoped that elements within the northern nationalists who support the IRA will increasingly withdraw their support. Not only would this retard the IRA's capacity for waging terrorist warfare, it would also help to create a political climate in which the Northern and, more especially, Southern authorities could take the necessary steps to deal with terrorism. This, more than anything else, must be the desired purpose of the Accord; terrorism continues to destabilise authority both north and south of the border and, of course, the ever-present threat of bombings in Great Britain is a constant dread for the British authorities. The cost of maintaining security in both parts of Ireland is now astronomical and is especially damaging for an Irish government beset with persistent economic problems and a growing cash crisis.

The Northern Ireland problem, as far as the various authorities are concerned, is the IRA. In keeping with the naive logic of government, it is unnecessary to deal with the social realities behind political violence; a few cosmetic changes, a simple change in perceptions, and the terrorists will be isolated and banished. This is the why and the wherefore of the Accord; it has nothing to do with the problems of poverty, unemployment. slums or the frightening insecurity which bedevil working class life in the province — the very problems that fuel sectarianism. hatred and political violence.

According to the Accord makers an end. or even a substantial diminution, of IRA activity would be followed by a loss of influence on the part of the more extreme brands of Unionism. The currently enfeebled Official Unionists could regain the centre stage and. freed from the necessity of looking over their shoulders, these "moderates" would be able to do a power-sharing deal with the "moderate" nationalists. A power-sharing government could emerge in Northern Ireland, the Anglo-Irish Conference could be ended and the British and Irish governments allowed to return to the serious business of running a troubled capitalism in their respective territories.

In effect, the perceptions that Thatcher and Fitzgerald are concerned with changing the bigotry, hatred and patriotic rubbish that they wish to adjust — are those that their political forebears, together with the Ulster Unionists, developed out of the slime of Irish history. The perceptions of both Unionists and nationalists in Northern Ireland the way the working class see things — was originally fashioned by the English authorities in the interests of English and Irish landlords in Ireland and was refined — if one can use such an expression for the deliberate promotion of hatred and division among the poor — during the 18th and 19th centuries. Later, the political representatives of a divided Irish capitalist class, Unionists, constitutional nationalists and Sinn Fein, developed that bigotry, hatred and patriotic rubbish as a weapon to promote the interests of the conflicting sides of Irish capitalism in the present century*. Now, with a united capitalist interest, north and south, the old slogans and shibboleths that form the present perceptions of the working class have become an expensive embarrassment. It is these, and only these, that the Accord hopes to adjust.

War of the big battalions

If a change in perceptions did result from the Accord and if these proved effective in ending violence and "normalising" politics in Northern Ireland, the World Socialist Party would acknowledge something that kept our fellow workers out of the cemeteries and the jails and. obviously, the difficult task of spreading our socialist image would be rendered easier without the shadow of the gunman official and unofficial — and in circumstances where less emotional bitterness prevailed. Unfortunately, perceptions are hard to change when the economic conditions that underpin them remain and grow stronger every day.

Nor are we impressed by the cynical deception behind the Accord and the contemptuous efforts of its authors to con workers into the belief that it has anything to do with the social realities of working class life.

Perhaps the most disgusting aspect of the Accord is its obvious intention, promoted by the Pentagon, to clear away the difficulties currently preventing the Irish government from becoming a strategically important member of the Western Alliance. It is a typical irony of capitalist authority that an alleged reform is set in the shadow of a grosser evil. Britain, America and Ireland may deplore a shabby tribal conflict in Northern Ireland but, because war is a persistent and glorified feature of capitalism, they will see no contradiction if part of the formula for ending that conflict is to bring Ireland into a war of the big battalions.

Seeing things the way they are

We can with absolute confidence predict the result of the elections as far as working people are concerned. Irrespective of who gets in or the size of their vote, and whether or not the elections have any bearing on the ultimate rejection or implementation of the Anglo-Irish Accord, life for the working class will remain the same. Our poverty, our unemployment. our slums and mean living will still be with us for these are the constant realities of capitalism however we may perceive it.

Richard Montague

*See IRELAND — PAST. PRESENT AND FUTURE. Available now from the SPGB and the World Socialist Party.