50 Years Ago: Socialism Hard To Grasp (1961)

The 50 Years Ago column from the February 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

No part of the Socialist proposition seems more difficult to the average worker than the proposal to abolish money, price and trade. So deep has the idea of commerce been driven into the working class that they have come to believe themselves formed for the sole purpose of working and increasing trade.

In capitalist production the toiler is, indeed, just a piece of mechanism, necessary to the progress of trade, and he has been taught to believe that such is all he is fitted to be.

To-day we live to work, and the proposal of the Socialist—undoubtedly a revolutionary one—to reverse the sequence, to produce wealth in order to live, seems to be beyond the comprehension of the wage-slave. His brain, stored with capitalist ideas, cannot get away from the notions connected with capitalist methods of production and exchange, hence the information that under u Socialist system no wages would be paid comes to him as a shock.

From the Socialist Standard, February, 1911.

50 Years Ago: Might is Right (1961)

The 50 Years Ago column from the February 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Man has a right to live only — if he can. The mightiest beast and the meanest parasite have as much right to live—and as little. . . .

Yet nature is not cruel: she knows nothing of emotions. She leaves her children to fight things out for themselves, giving them one universal law: Might is Right. . . .

The revolutionary requires no other justification than that of expediency. No revolutionary in history ever really did. True they have paid much lip service to Justice and other figments of the popular mind, but that has been only because they have required the assistance of those who were to gain nothing from revolution, and who had therefore to be inspired with empty phrases and confused with humbug. But the highest sanction revolutionaries ever have required has been—opportunity.

The Socialist asks no more. Let who will grovel at the feet of Justice, or slobber over the “Natural Rights of Man”—the Socialist has no use for such meaningless vapourings. . . .

Against the might of the strong few shall be put the might of the many weak ones. Before that might capitalism and private ownership will go down for ever. Then, when society founded upon common property in the means of life, has become one harmonious whole, the brutal dictum, might is right, will hold good only between the social organism and external nature, while between man and man a new ethic will arise—or rather the old ethic of gentile society under a new form—that only the social good is right.

From the Socialist Standard, February, 1911.

Back to Normal (1961)

From the February 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the last two General Elections we heard much about the wonderful affluent conditions in which we were living.

“You’ve never had it so good” was a Mac Wonder phrase much in the air. We have also distinct memories of “doubling our standard of living within twenty-five years”. The air was as, Hamlet said “promise-crammed" but as he himself tartly added “you cannot feed capons so”.

These promises have now come home to roost. All the other old and well-worn phrases and threats have now been dusted and polished and taken out of storage. The air is now full of them, as threatening. For example, Selwyn Lloyd:

   I will simply point out that no one in the world owes us a living and if we don’t earn it by hard work in this field, the standard of living in this country will go down. It’s goodbye to dreams of expansion and social progress. 

Translated this means—“Work harder. Don’t ask for higher wages or else ... ” 

And another pearl from Mr. Lloyd, "The whole emphasis should be on saving labour, or increasing efficiency and on being competitive”. Then as if to sugar the pill—“Far from that being a threat to full employment it is the only way to maintain it ”.

It would be interesting to hear the comments of the recently sacked motor workers (and those put on short time) on that last bit.

The facts of the matter are that in present-day competitive capitalist society goods can be sold only if, in terms of quality and price, they match up to, or improve upon similar or identical products from elsewhere: the ultimate purpose being to provide a profit for the owners. If this purpose of profit-making is threatened, production eases off, and workers are put on short-time or sacked. Of course, you may rest assured that no capitalist politician is ever going to make this plain to you.'

Max Judd

Sting in the Tail: Missing the point (1996)

The Sting in the Tail column from the January 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Missing the point

Paul Foot of the SWP, writing in the Guardian (20 November) bemoaned the closure by a Labour council of a day centre in Newcastle.

This had him recalling past arguments with Labour Party members in which they “scorned the luxuries of Utopian socialist visions” (presumably the SWP’s ease) and “boasted of their practical down-to-earth ‘municipal socialism’”, and asked:

  “Where are those arguments now? What is the point of joining the Labour Party if Labour councils are forced to cut the services which their predecessors provided to assist the people who vote Labour? ”

True enough, but by the same token shouldn’t Paul Foot be asking himself what is the point of him and the rest of the SWP urging workers to vole for the Labour Party at every election?


Blacker than black

The Advertising Standards Authority is the in-house watchdog of British advertising. It is supposed to ensure that advertising meets the criteria of honesty, legality and decency. Like most things associated with advertising it is a complete con-trick.

Hunter Marsden, a high-rolling American ad-man who works for the giant J. Walter Thompson agency, is reported in the Observer (5 November) on the present level of duplicity in world-wide advertising as saying:

  "Superiority claims are delicately stitched together by legal wordmeisters, aided by a hairy menagerie of weasel words, mouse type and squirrelly logic."

In other words, to paraphrase Disraeli, “there arc three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and advertising”.


No change there

The conference of the Scottish Young Conservatives in November threw up the usual quota of reactionary spoutings. For example, guest speaker Leslie Sharp, Chief Constable of Strathclyde "delighted the Tory faithful in Edinburgh with a robust attack on the link between poverty and crime, coupled with a strong defence of stiffer prison sentences” (Herald, 27 November).

And conference chairman Murray Roxburgh was loudly cheered by delegates when he blamed the strike by Scottish postal workers who were resisting the imposition of worsened conditions, on “lefty scum” (Teletext, 27 November). Roxburgh insisted that “management must have the right to manage”, meaning that workers must meekly accept whatever bosses throw at them.

However, the Herald also noted that:

   "Not so long ago, this event would have been big enough to take over a large hotel for an entire weekend. On Saturday, barely 70 gathered in a conference room at Murrayfield Stadium in Edinburgh. ”

The conference also showed that although the SYC’s numbers have diminished, their obnoxious outlook certainly has not.


“Middle-class” nonsense

What a lot of daft and contradictory definitions there are of the so-called “middle class”.

In Britain many politicians and academics would have us believe that this middle class is getting bigger and bigger and even constitutes the majority of the population, but in America, Republican congressman F.K. Heineman of North Carolina takes a very different view:

   “When I see someone who is making anywhere from $300,000 to $750,000 a year, that’s middle class,' said Mr Heine man, a former New York City police officer and Raleigh police chief. ‘When I see anyone above that, that’s upper middle class’” (New York Times, 29 October).

The story reveals that the US Census Bureau has just released figures showing that only 5 percent of American households earn more than $109,821 a year, so the percentage earning from $300,000 to $750,000 must be even less.

Going by Heineman’s definition, the American middle class, far from getting bigger, is practically non-existent.


Dear Brutus

In the desperate competition for customers, banks and building societies spend millions of pounds on advertising, marketing gimmicks and giveaways. The Abbey National, though, has surely scraped the bottom of the barrel in its latest gimmick. It is offering a booklet “Your Astrological Guide to a Secure Future”.

It is written by Jonathan Cainer, described as “Britain’s most authoritative astrologer”. This is akin to descriptions like “most pregnant virgin” or “wisest idiot”.

Presumably the Abbey National are only being humorous in this latest gimmick, but given the “success” of predicting the market by the various “experts”, who is to say Cainer will be less accurate?

To understand how capitalism operates workers would be better advised to consult Marx’s Capital than squinting at the stars. As usual. Shakespeare had a helpful couple of lines to say on the subject:

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings. ”

Countdown to Murder (1996)

From the March 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent resumption of violence by the IRA has brought forth the predictable, worn-out denunciations and justifications. For socialists, the twin ‘issues’ of nationalism and political violence are surrounded on all sides by capitalist hypocrisy and nonsense

Some time before the 9th February, the Army Council of the IRA met somewhere in Ireland. These seven people, representing the minuscule Irish Republican Army, decided to recommence their war with a massive bomb in London. Effectively, this decision resulted in the death of two men and the injuring of scores of people none of whom had any power of decision in relation to the political situation in Ireland.

The seven members of the Army Council based the legitimacy of their right to kill other human beings on the result of elections held in Ireland in 1918 when, with a minority vote of the people of Ireland, Sinn Fein won a decisive electoral victory and an endorsement of its claim to speak for tile people of Ireland. Even the name that the 1996 Army Council used in its statement ending seventeen months of ceasefire was a throw back to the twenties and as fictious as the historical myths on which tlie IRA and Sinn Fein base their claim over the lives of others.

According to the IRA and Sinn Fein the results of the 1918 election remain valid today — more than three quarters of a century later — because the British government of the time used violence to frustrate the establishment of a politically independent Ireland by Sinn Fein who, in accordance with the peculiarities of what passes for democracy in capitalism, had been given a mandate to establish an Irish republican state.

Transfixed in time

Based on this logic the IRA and Sinn Fein see the changing population of Ireland as transfixed in time without the right to waver from the decision of its dead generations. Those dead generations were essentially conservative and reactionary; largely Catholic, they would have bitterly opposed womens’ rights, abortion, divorce and many other issues that Sinn Fein supporters currently espouse.

As for Sinn Fein itself, in 1918 a primary object of its vision of independence was the legislative right to afford trade protection for a fledging southern Irish capitalism. Again and again, from its establishment in 1905, Sinn Fein leaders had reiterated the importance they placed on the question of protecting the south’s nascent capitalist industries. Indeed it was the implications of this very policy for the northern capitalists, whose highly developed industries were dependent on the British home market and Empire Preference that fuelled much of the conflict and which was translated by the politicians into nationalistic and religious bigotry.

Sinn Fein might still emphasise its national capitalist credentials for its American backers but at home it uses the lexicon of the Left. In essence, its strategy for employment, housing and education is to demand — ironically, from what it sees as the British occupying power in Ireland — massive financial intervention. In other words, it has reserved the right to change completely the policies on which it fought the 1918 elections and yet insists that the people of modem Ireland have to abide by the electoral decisions of their grandparents!

The Army Council

Given the power which the IRA reserves for its Army Council, the power over life and death for anyone on these islands — or indeed, further afield, if these mysterious seven people so decide — it is fair to ask who are they and how did they come by their awesome power.

The secret lies in the interpretation Sinn Fein and the IRA put upon the results of that famous election in 1918. Sinn Fein became the government of a mythical Irish Republic, a new 32-county independent Irish state and the IRA became the army of the Irish republic. The new ‘government’ reserved the right to delegate its powers to the army’s controlling body, the Army Council of the IRA. With the luxury of perpetual power without the inconvenience of accepting any of the subsequent electoral verdicts of the people of Ireland, north or south, the IRA, which, at some points in its history has numbered only a score of largely inactive members, can elect seven people, unknown to the general public and even to republican supporters, who have power over the lives of people and power to repudiate any democratic decision of the people.

It is the current Army Council, seven people who can seriously believe they have rights over and above the whole people of these islands or of Ireland alone, who have decided to revert again to the bomb and the bullet. That people who can accept such nonsense can wield such power is frightening but, despite the selective and blinkered condemnations of politicians and opinion formers — whose grossly undemocratic powers are, also, frightening — what passes for freedom and democracy in capitalist society has usually been founded on force and, always, capitalist peace is, at best, an accommodation between conflicting interests.

John Major and his pompous representative in Northern Ireland, Patrick Mayhew, were indignant about the decision of the IRA Army Council to end the ceasefire. Both pointed out, as we have so often done in the past, that the Provisional IRA have no democratic mandate to wage war. This, of course, can not be challenged but when Major and Mayhew make the claim it is on the back of the assumption that Britain has a democratic right to wage war in Ireland — for, of course the role of the British Army in Northern Ireland has been to resist a challenge to British power in Ireland. When, it is reasonable to ask, did a British government seek a mandate from the people of Ireland, or, even, the people of the UK, to rule Ireland and to wage war in pursuit of that rule?

Violence

Pressed to a defence of its violence, the IRA draws analogies with its opponents and, of course, the British and the Unionists have been as ready as the IRA to use violence, or the threat of violence, when it suited their interests. To the socialist, however, the claim that you are no worse than your opponents seems a poor defence!

Britain’s role over the centuries has been brutal in Ireland and at times almost genocidal. Neither the Irish nationalists nor the unionists have been shy about using violence and in the present century it was the threat of illegal armed violence by the Unionists and their friends in the British Conservative Party that presaged the nationalist violence of 1916 and 1919/22.

The ceasefire broke down because of the utter hypocrisy of the British Government and the Unionists and the absurd strategy of the seven people who form the IRA’s Army Council. The argument that they will not negotiate with men of violence used by interests that are themselves no strangers to violence is hypocritical and when viewed empirically, shown to be nonsense. When Unionists use this form of cant it simply means that they see the IRA as militarily defeatable; if they envisaged the IRA as having the potential for a military victory, ‘common sense’ would gain a new fashion within Unionism!

Unfortunately the politicians in Northern Ireland have learned little over the past twenty-five years, especially the Unionists — apart from ‘loyalist’ spokespersons thrown up by the paramilitaries. Paisley was rabble-rousing and Trimble was looking over his shoulder and trying to compete with Paisley and both were intent in translating the IRA ceasefire into a victory for old-style Unionism. Ironically, Unionism’s potential victory was in the willingness of the IRA, for the first time ever, to discuss the establishment of agreed and stable institutions in Northern Ireland which the whole of nationalist Ireland had traditionally proclaimed to be an ‘unstable political unit’.

Decommissioning of illegal weapons became the peg Unionism decided to hang its policy on — as though the problems that created the desire for weapons would disappear if the guns were out of the way. There was no ‘decommissioning’ of angry tongues; Paisley bellowed the sectarian nonsense which is his political stock-in-trade and, when wiser council was called for, Trimble was competing with Paisley at Drumcree!

Of course the IRA are murderers; killers of innocent men, women and children. But they are not alone; they are part of a grand conspiracy against real peace and democracy in Northern Ireland and the components of that conspiracy are the self-interested politicians who see in the possibility of peace the eclipsing of their squalid political careers.

And after the recent killings by the IRA, the predictable reaction — indeed the nearest thing the IRA may have had to an excuse — was the latent hatreds which its actions re-awakened especially among prominent politicians and journalists. It was hard to believe that the baying voices with the quite proper accusations of senseless slaughter and challenges of right were around a few years ago when Major and his ‘army council’, without any recourse to democratic consent, undertook the slaughter of the innocents of Baghdad.

Behind all the ideologies and conflicts that underlie all wars and all violence are the contradictions created among peoples by the divisive interests of capitalism. It follows that the only real ‘peace process’ is the struggle to end capitalism and institute a democratic system of social equality in which such interests could not exist. 

Richard Montague

Our Parliamentary Campaign (1938)

Party News from the June 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Local Labour Party Wakes Up

For months past we have been making an organised move to contact the electorate in East Ham North, where we are running a candidate for Parliament at the next General Election.

The result is that the local Labour Party has issued a circular warning its members against the Socialist Party. The following is an extract from ; the circular: —

   “. . . . Socialist Party of Great Britain. Some of our members may have been confused by the campaign for members which has been run by the above-named organisation. We want it to be clear that the Socialist Party of Great Britain is a small, intensely bigoted organisation, claiming to be the only pure disciples of Karl Marx. They have no connection with the Labour Party, are not affiliated, and have no belief in Parliamentary Government, except to demonstrate its futility. They have announced that they intend to run a candidate in opposition to the Labour Party in East Ham North at the next General Election. Members ought to know where to place an organisation which is insane enough to split the working-class at a General Election". 

So far so good! But why Labour Party members should be “confused” between the Socialist Party of Great Britain and their own party is difficult for us to comprehend. Perhaps the authors of the circular would care to try again with an explanation of their statement. Perhaps they mean that our activities have set the minds of their members to doubt the validity of the Labour Party’s claim to be a Socialist organisation. We can assure them that our own propaganda will do that good and proper. Our exposure of capitalist politics and economics must inevitably reveal the Labour Party as an organisation which is pro-capitalist in outlook and method.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain has never announced that we intend to run a candidate in opposition to the Labour Party. What we have stated is that our candidate will stand for the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of Socialism. As all the other candidates, including the one from the Labour Party, will support capitalism in one way or another, we shall be in opposition to them all.

*      *     *

“A Small Organisation”

What a statement! The Labour Party was small at one time, and we well remember in its early days it was constantly charged by the Liberals that it was “splitting the votes of the progressive forces" whenever it ran candidates for Parliament.

We would hardly remind the East Ham Labour Party that there was a time when the entire Labour Party representation could have been carried to Parliament in a four-wheeled cab.

” Parliamentary Government”

We challenge the East Ham Labour Party to substantiate their statement that we do not believe in "Parliamentary Government.” We charge them with confusing the minds of their own members, inasmuch as underlying their statement is the suggestion that we think that Parliament is futile. We flatly deny this misrepresentation of our position. May we ask them to read some of the literature we have distributed in the constituency, in which we show the importance of controlling Parliament and the whole political machinery as a means of establishing Socialism ?

We suggest that the East Ham Labour Party might care to arrange for a public debate with us; we are as anxious as they are that their members should not be confused.

*      *     *

More S.P.G.B. Canvassers Wanted

Now for a few words to our own members. The campaign in the constituency is steadily and surely gaining ground.

The East Ham Branch has arranged a series of lectures, and this must be made widely known.

Outdoor propaganda meetings have, and are, being held, but all this is not enough. A number of members have already canvassed some of the wards with satisfactory results. Some of them report that a discussion about Socialism on the doorstep, in the passage or the parlour, is sometimes welcomed by people who dislike answering the door to the landlord and the men with the vacuum cleaners.

We know that personal contact is a most effective way of making our case known, and we are sure that no member of the Socialist Party would like to feel that, but for his or her inactivity, our campaign would have been more successful. Therefore, we appeal to all who can do this to let us know as soon as possible. We must have more canvassers, and we intend to run a school, if necessary, to show how canvassing is done. Let us hear from you.

Robert Reynolds

(The Parliamentary Committee.)

These Foolish Things: One World (1996)

The Scavenger column from the February 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

One World 
  

“. . . A Brave New World is being created out there. Not, as one hoped, by one world idealists or UN diplomacy, but by the global corporations for the simplest of all reasons—profits. The state can either play along with them or have delusions of grandeur. The cost of delusions will be severe and will, be paid not by politicians but by the citizens.” Meghnad Desai, Professor of Economics, London School of Economics. Letter in the Guardian, 24 October 1995


Mine!

Over 100 million landmines have been laid in 64 countries. They are still being laid. Eight million old ones still lie buried. Five hundred people are being killed and injured by them every week. But mines are a very profitable product, so the likelihood of production and sales being halted in capitalism is rather small.


Top Gun
  

 “No amount of impassioned argument by lawyers and no predictions of the tragic human costs of possible conflicts can obscure the fact that international law simply does not prohibit per se the use of nuclear weapons.” Conrad Harper, legal adviser to the US State Department, said. The US held nuclear arms for self-defence and deterrence, he said. Reuters.


Up

Serious accidents in the mining industry are up by more than 28 percent, according to the first official figures since privatisation . . .  [At Thoresby] one worker died and seven were given hospital treatment after a huge outburst of oil and gas 1,000 feet underground. Guardian. 2 November 1995.


Down
  

 “I am one of the miners involved in the tragedy at Thoresby Colliery on October 12. Just 48 hours before the underground accident that killed Andrew Fielding, we were visited at the face by members of the management team and the safety engineer. We reported that the fumes gave us headaches, dizziness, nausea and some of our men were vomiting. The fumes were getting stronger each shift. The management’s attitude was that we would have to persevere. They told us: ‘The fumes are like dog shit—you might not like the smell, but it won’t hurt you.’ We were actually sent a bottle Olbas Oil to put into carbon masks to disguise the smell and 100 paracetamol tablets for our headaches . . . “ Peter Davies, letter in the Guardian, 2 November 1995.


Out

The report of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), 15 November 1995, states that the number of refugees in the world being looked after by the Commission is now 27 million, but that contributions to the fund for improving their conditions are decreasing . . .


Social cancer

Booming sales of cigarettes to developing countries including China, Russia and Brazil have helped BAT Industries, Britain’s seventh biggest company, to record pre-tax profits of £1.8 billion in the nine months to the end of September.

BAT, whose brands include Lucky Strike, Kool, Kent and State Express 555, said the figures, up 22 percent on the same period last year, reflected an exceptional performance from its tobacco division. Guardian, 9 November 1995.

The Scavenger

The Scavenger thanks readers for items sent in. Regrets some will have to be held over to next month.

Shrapnel Splinters. (1915)

From the August 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dilly, Dilly, come and be killed.

Why are all the labour crooks visiting “the front"?

Is it merely to run round telling us what a picnic it is?

War is hell — Capitalism is war — therefore, Capitalism is hell.

When are “we" going to dig the German Fleet out "like rats"?

Why has the gas-bag hero of Sydney-st. been so quiet lately ; is he waiting for it to come off?

When Mr. Churchill said : “There are worse things than bloodshed," had he a prophetic vision of losing his job?

Now that the value of physically fit men (such as shunters) has risen so, are we within sight of the adoption of automatic couplings?

Who are our merchant seamen most grateful to — the man who lowered the Plimsoll line “with a stroke of the pen," or the men who raise it with a torpedo?

Which is the easier death, to be “gassed" in a bleaching-powder factory, or "gassed" in the trenches? St. Helens chemical workers want to know.

Is it true that the miners who have enlisted don’t like trench warfare because it presents no change from the features of death by gas, explosion, fire, and earthfall of their trade?

What is to become of the mangel crop now that those patriots who cannot pull a trigger in the trenches have been frustrated in their noble endeavour to commence operations on the moors on the 5th instead of on the 12th?

“The enemy in their victors’ march know not what they are doing. Let them beware, for they are unshackling Russia."- (LI. George at Bangor, Aug. 5th, 1915.)

May we, then, be permitted to say ‘hock!" to those who are about to unshackle Russia?

"If right is worsted in this conflict civilisation will be put back for generations."- (Same speaker, same time, same place.)

May we, then, be permitted to assume that it is wrong that is unshackling Russia, and right, in the persons of Russian autocracy and its noble allies, that is preventing it from doing so? Or is the solution lo the riddle this—that Russia unshackled is civilisation put back?

The .lohnson-Jeffries fight was banned from the Cinema halls, but the Willard-Johnson fight was not. Is this change of policy due to the discovery both in France and England that the man of colour is morally fit to fight the white man (and therefore to give him a hiding) or to the fact that in the first case the black man won, while in the second case he lost? I only want to know where we stand on the colour question.

Bill Bailey

Editorial: Is Martyrdom the Test of Truth? (1926)

Editorial from the March 1926 issue of the Socialist Standard

Amongst the ideas which pass for argument with the Communists is the notion that their party is right because their leaders are imprisoned.

If this idea was sound, we should follow the crowd of various speakers and writers who have suffered imprisonment. Pacifists and Suffragettes, Anarchists and Syndicalists, and Reformers of every shade who at one time or another have been imprisoned.

If this policy were correct, the terrorists, nihilists, Social Revolutionaries, Menshevists, are the best parties to follow because they have suffered imprisonment and death in larger numbers than the Bolsheviks. In fact, the opponents of Lenin in Russia used that very argument. They claimed their parties had suffered untold tortures and exile under Czarism and therefore claimed they were most feared by the despots. Look again at the Anarchists and other propagandists of deed. Have they not been hounded and imprisoned the world over, from Kropotkin to Emma Goldman? Why not support them on that account ? The Industrial Workers of the World in the United States have been jailed and brutally beaten in great numbers. Did that stop the Communist International from declaring them reactionary? Did it stop the Communists in America opposing them outside and breaking them up from within?

This line of shallow reasoning so common with Communists now, is an example of their general shallowness. One minute they want to be with the masses, the next minute they “glory” in being picked out from among them and imprisoned.

But their cry of martyrdom is a thin cry. Their policy naturally invited prosecution in the same way as the reactionary policy of sabotage advocacy did years ago. It was likely to be a nuisance to the Capitalists or at least some Capitalists thought so.

The Communists differed in no way from similar elements in trying to get off. From an array of counsel to pleading they were out for higher wages, shorter hours, etc., and to seeking to put their theses in the background—these attempts to escape imprisonment take the edge off their cry of martyrdom.

It is not for us, however, to let the Capitalists choose our party for us. It is for us to examine policies and judge whether such policies will be effective for emancipation. We do not let the brutality of the Capitalists blind us to the futility of the C.P.

From The Eastern Front (1949)

Party News from the November 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

In East Ham South the preliminary shots of the election battle have been fired. All parties contesting are now busy with propaganda meetings and door-to-door canvassing. Unlike the S.P.G.B., however, the canvassers of the other parties are far more concerned with catching votes than spreading information. “Trust us” each of them say in turn, and in less than a month I have been invited to join the Labour, Conservative and Communist Parties. So long as you can write your name you’re in!

In connection with this recruiting campaign, the Labour Party have been parading their M.P., the Rt. Hon. Alfred Barnes, P.C., M.P., round to meetings in various school halls. At the one I attended there were twenty-three faithful followers and three S.P.G.B.-ers. Time was allowed for questions, but apparently not for answers. Upon being asked for a definition of Socialism, Mr. Barnes, recognising the politics of his questioner, said that he wouldn’t give it as we’d only disagree. Really, Mr. Barnes! After further questions we finally challenged him to a public debate. Proudly surveying his enormous audience he informed us that he had no intention of getting an audience for the S.P.G.B.! Could it be that Mr. Barnes has no desire to face a large audience himself?

The Tory rally was again like the vicar’s tea party, complete with pauses for applause at the mention of Churchill and the Empire. Between them, in spite of protests from S.P.G.B.-ers in the hall. Baker White, M.P., and candidate Jordan, referred no less than twenty-seven times to the Labour Party as “Socialists.” Ignorance or dishonesty? Questions were taken in writing and answered with facetiousness. Any attempt to speak from the floor was drowned by the slow claps and jeers of three hundred Tory democrats. While expressing ignorance of the S.P.G.B., Mr. Jordan agreed to debate with us. Whether, in light of his newly gained knowledge, that promise will be fulfilled, remains to be seen.

Last, and least, the Communist Party, who not so very long ago were urging the workers of East Ham to support the Labour Party, have entered the arena by giving their candidate’s life story to the local press. He is a local man; he is married; he has so many children; he is a lighterman; he is an expert on inland waterways. I wonder what it is all supposed to prove? They hold Saturday evening meetings at which S.P.G.B.-ers are especially unwelcome. A challenge to debate three or four years back earned us the title of "social fascists,” and a challenge made earlier this year was discreetly ignored. No doubt they remember Hornsey Town Hall.

So far as our own campaign is concerned, satisfactory progress can be reported. The door-to-door canvassing which began in January, has so far resulted in one hundred regular readers of the STANDARD, as well as well over ten pounds’ worth of pamphlets sold. Our difficulty now is keeping up with the “call backs” and offers from Tottenham and Wood Green Branch to open up new territory have been gratefully accepted.

Our outdoor venue at the Cock Hotel on Sunday evenings proved itself unsatisfactory, due to the local rowdies, both adolescent and adult, so we have moved to Heigham Road opposite East Ham Station. Audiences of more than a hundred, intelligent questions and good literature sales have caused both branch and visiting speakers to express satisfaction with the new station. At the other end of the constituency the new mid-week station at the Boleyn Hotel is showing promising results.

As the election draws nearer, the battle will no doubt intensify. Every house in the borough must be canvassed, every elector made aware of the S.P.G.B. To do this we need YOUR help. If you live within distance of the constituency and are prepared to lend a hand get in touch with the branch secretary or members for specific details..

The more seeds sown now, the greater will be the harvest of conscious working class votes for Socialism. Into battle!

Ronald.

Letters: Clique of Political Gangsters (1997)

Letters to the Editors from the April 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Clique of Political Gangsters

Dear Editors,

Writing in the February Socialist Standard ("Militant Dishonesty”), Adam Buick comments: "Imagine what a Trotskyist dictatorship would be like; not too different from a Stalinist one. we would suppose." Very true.

Leon Trotsky was every bit as ruthless as Joseph Stalin. His only problem was that he lost out to Stalin in the inevitable power-struggle following the Bolshevik coup d'état in Russia, in 1917, and was expelled from the country, and ultimately killed in Mexico City by one of Stalin's henchmen.

It should not be forgotten, however, that Trotsky supported the dissolution of the democratically-elected Constituent Assembly on January 6, 1918, because the Bolsheviks were in a minority; that Trotsky, together with Lenin, argued that the trade unions should be subordinated to the government; and. following Trotsky’s appointment as Commissar of Military Affairs, he established the death penalty for disobedience under fire into the Red Army, and restored the saluting of officers, of whom many were former Czarist officers, and other privileges for senior officers. In December 1919 Trotsky submitted his proposal for the "militarisation of Labour"; and on December 27, the Soviet government, with Lenin’s approval, set up their Commission on Labour Duty, with Trotsky. as Commissar for War, as its President. Trotsky stressed that coercion, regimentation and militarisation of labour were not mere emergency measures; but that the Soviet state had the right to coerce any citizen to perform any work, at any time of its choosing. Just as Stalin did, with his forced labour camps, ten years later. In February 1921 strikes broke out in Petrograd and Moscow, after the government had announced that the very meagre bread ration was to be cut by a third. In the Kronstadt naval base, the sailors rebelled; and, on March 5, Trotsky issued an ultimatum, demanding the immediate and unconditional capitulation of the sailors, saying “only those who surrender unconditionally may count on the mercy of the Soviet Republic".

And so on . . .

Had Trotsky won and Stalin lost in their struggle for power, the outcome in the Soviet Union would most certainly have been the same: the emergence of a state-capitalist dictatorship (Lenin admitted that Russia had become a state-capitalist dictatorship even before he died in 1924). ruled by a privileged and parasitic minority of bureaucrats and apparatchiks. Even limited bourgeois democracy was anathema to Leon Trotsky.

And this is the man that the Militant Tendency, now masquerading as the Socialist Party, eulogise. Socialists must confront them, demand to speak in opposition at their meetings (as socialists allow opponents at theirs), and expose them for what they are—an anti-socialist clique of political gangsters. There is no alternative.

Leading members of "Militant/Militant Labour" might well argue that they were unaware of the existence of the Socialist Party. However, Peter Taaffe. editor of Militant since 1964. and now general secretary of their party, has mentioned us, as "Socialist Party" (without the "the") in writing, in his long and turgid tome. The Rise of Militant (Militant publications, London, 1995. Chapter 54. p.544). "Euro-Elections": "Militant Labour and Scottish Militant Labour decided to nominate Tommy Sheridan as a candidate for the European elections in Glasgow . . . He beat the Tories, Liberal Democrats, Greens, Socialist Party, Natural Law Party and the Communist Party of Great Britain” (emphasis mine).

So, there we are.

Peter E. Newell, 

Colchester, 

Essex

What’s in a name?

Dear Editors,

The news that the Trotskyite wing of the Labour Party is to call itself "The Socialist Party" has rightly caused consternation among true Socialists. But then, so many other bodies have adopted similar tactics this century. Even the New Labour Party, under Tony Blair, has many members chaffing at losing their "Socialist” identity.

The trouble is that nowhere in the world is that word “Socialism” recognised in its true meaning, apart from by an insignificant few, who ruffle no political surface anywhere . . . after ninety-two years of intensive propaganda.

The word "Socialism" in its true meaning has always failed to communicate itself, simply causing greater confusion.

Why not shut the door on this useless piece of baggage and let your objectives be your title? For example: “The One World Moneyless Society Party"?

In one stroke confusion is ended. Only true Socialists can follow you down that path. That word is made redundant. It has never served its purpose and has no future.

Sam Levitt

London, NW3

Reply:
We don't agree. While it is true that the word "Socialism" has become distorted this century to mean state capitalism even for most of those who consider themselves socialists, the word still does convey, better than for instance "moneyless society" which suggests a mere economic change, what we stand for: a society where productive resources are commonly, i.e. socially, owned and where people cooperate. i.e. act socially, to produce what is needed. After all, we say that humans are social animals, and what better name for a society where humans can develop their social potential to the full than "socialism".

Editors

Marxian purity?

Dear Editors,

I’ve been generally looking sympathetically at the website of your Canadian counterparts for a few months now, and have finally decided to write to you with some general enquiries vis your organization: some statistical and some theoretical, since what is said in the web-site intrigues me. If I may then, I have some questions to ask:

What are your general political activities? If you’ll forgive me, from the tone of the website you seem to adopt an approach of revolutionary predeterminacy (it will come when it comes) and of Marxian purity, gained at the expense of activity. It sounds like your general support for the abolition of property is your only goal, and that you do not work to oppose (by actions) capitalism as it stands but defer all action to the time of the "inevitable revolution". This rather strikes me as a theoretical purity gained by a loss of effectiveness.

Something that has happened to myself, when arguing for socialism and against vanguardism. is that I have been presented with two arguments: 

1. That how will it be possible to bring the proletariat round to a revolutionary consciousness without a minority vanguard (and further what use then is such a party as yours?).
2. That a world-wide revolution is not possible both because of the impossibility of the world-wide proletariat rebelling simultaneously, and further that the capitalist imperialist system has damaged the development of many countries, thus preventing them from having the infrastructure necessary to progress to communism. And I wonder how your party can answer these arguments, because my usual response is to bluff my way out of them, as I can't see a real answer (particularly vis the awakening of revolutionary consciousness of the people).

I would be grateful if you could help my curiosity—thank you.

Bill Martin

Lancashire

Reply:

Our general political activities consist in propagating the idea of socialism. This involves publishing leaflets, pamphlets and a monthly magazine, holding meetings, debating with other groups, contesting elections, all with the aim, at the moment, of spreading a knowledge of what socialism is and of inciting a desire for it. Later, when a majority have come to want socialism, the aim will be to dislodge from power, through democratic political action, the supporters of class privilege and the profit system.

We certainly do not believe in "predeterminacy": that all we have to do is sit around and wait for socialism to come. Capitalism certainly paves the way for socialism, but people make history and it is people who will have to make the transformation from capitalism to socialism. What socialists can— and must—do is accelerate this.

In one sense we who are already socialists are a "vanguard": we have become socialists before the rest. We are certainly a minority. But the question is: how should that minority act? Lenin’s answer (echoed today by the myriad Leninist. Trotskyist. Maoist, etc. groups throughout the world) was that it should seek to lead the workers; this was reinforced by his (mistaken) assumption that the mass of workers were not in fact capable of understanding socialism anyway and was accompanied by advocacy of a rigidly centralised and top-down form of organisation. This is what "vanguardism" generally means and what we mean by it when we denounce it.

The answer we give as to what a socialist minority should do is that socialists should seek to “agitate, educate and organise" workers for socialism. This is based on the assumption that not only can workers understand socialism but that a majority of them must before socialism can be established. It follows from this that seeking to be a leadership cannot advance the cause of socialism, only the spread of socialist knowledge can. It also follows that Socialists should organise themselves, not as an elite general staff, but as an open democratic party, so prefiguring the mass socialist party they expect to emerge and indeed so prefiguring the inevitably democratic nature of a socialist society.

Is the idea of a world-wide revolution realistic? Why not? After all, capitalism is already a world-wide system, in fact it is now more than ever a single world system. Even theorists of capitalism are beginning to recognise this with their talk of "globalisation". They are right. What it means is that if global capitalism is to be replaced it can only be replaced globally, by another global system, world socialism.

It is up to those who think it unlikely that when the idea of (world) socialism catches on it will do so more or less evenly in all parts of the world to explain why they think it will catch on first in some countries before others (and in which). To us, the more realistic supposition is that of an even growth, because conditions are essentially the same everywhere and because socialism is the idea of a world society (and also, of course, because the international socialist movement will be consciously working to try to ensure an even development of socialist ideas).

Capitalist-imperialist development has certainly held back the development of many parts of the world, but remember socialism is not something that is (or could be) established separately in different countries one by one; it is a world system. Like capitalism. When we socialists say that the resources of the world are (more than) sufficient to eliminate world hunger and poverty and provide a decent life for the whole world's population we are talking about productive resources on a world scale.

Editors

The Capitalist Never Learns - Part 2. (1932)

From the August 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Continued from July issue.)

The Crises of 1929 and 1873 Compared.

For the purpose of comparison with the present, the crisis of 1873 is probably the most interesting of the crises of the nineteenth century. It lasted for six years, from 1873 to 1879, and before it had fun its course its effects had been felt in practically every country in the world. The period before 1873 had been one of enormous expansion everywhere. New developments in communications, due to railways, steamships and the telegraph cable, had opened up new areas, had created a demand for capital equipment of all kinds, and had revolutionised the production of foodstuffs. Immense increase in wealth and business activity resulted from these developments and from the introduction of limited liability, which fostered the founding of companies for every conceivable purpose. European countries, such as Germany and Russia, which had lagged behind in economic development, began to make rapid strides. Loans to Governments and the flotation of private companies enabled machinery, plant, etc., to be imported into developing countries. "Between 1860 and 1876, more than £320 million was raised in the London money market upon foreign Government loan issues. In the same, period half as much again was raised upon the credit of the Governments of India and of other parts of the British Empire. £232 million was paid up in the same years on the shares and debentures of private companies engaged in railway building or other enterprises outside the British Isles.”, (See "The Migration of British Capital,'” by L. H. Jenks. Pub. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1927, page 280.) In every financial centre the values of securities, etc., soared. There seemed to be nothing that could hinder the growth of wealth, and industry and international finance seemed to have entered into the golden age.

Then, in May, 1873, the bubble burst in Vienna. Prices of securities had been run up by speculators on the Vienna Bourse, just as they had been on every other Stock Exchange in the world, and just as they were in Wall Street and elsewhere in the period preceding the crash in October, 1929. Finally, the speculation petered out and security prices tumbled more rapidly than they had risen. The consequence was, to quote Hyndman, “panic, chaos, wild despair, hopeless madness, collapse of confidence, complete crash in business.” These terms are to be heard to-day when the effects of the Wall Street collapse of 1929 and the failure of the Credit Anstalt in Vienna last year are discussed.

The depression soon spread to the neighbouring European States. By September, 1873, America was in the throes of the severest crisis of its history. In U.S.A., from 1869 to 1873, there had been what Hyndman described as a “marvellous boom in West and East alike,” owing to the rapid railway development that had taken place and the opening up of the West. Writing in 1892 of this period, Hyndman uses words which find an echo in the accounts of the boom in America that ended in 1929. He states :—

  Those who have been in the United States at such times know the sensation of general well-being and universal progress which is felt throughout the country. Nowhere is a period of prosperity more suddenly and surely exhibited in the lives of the people . . .  the whole nation thought itself on the full flow of continuous improvement, (p. 108.)

Finally the period of overbuilding of railways and rash financing came to an end. Half the railways fell into the hands of receivers, “banking house after banking house came down, and the New York Stock Exchange was closed, only opening again on 30th September. Great commercial and distributing houses were also obliged to suspend payments: Not a single industry remained unaffected by the collapse. There was a.glut in every department of trade. From a third to a half of the workpeople in the Eastern States were said to be without employment. The number of actual “tramps” during the winters of 1873 and 1874 was placed as high as 3 millions out of a whole population of little over 40 millions. All prices were down and yet goods were unsaleable. Cotton, wheat, wool, lead, iron, steel, leather were all selling from 20 per cent. and more below the prices they had fetched before the crisis” (pp. 116 and 117).

The likeness between the situation in the U.S.A. in 1873, as described by Hyndman in the sentences just quoted, and the situation to-day is sufficiently obvious for further comment to be unnecessary.

The 1873 crisis was not felt so acutely in England as in other countries, but this country did not escape unscathed. To the era of foreign financing that had preceded 1873 succeeded a period of insolvency and defaults. In this respect the history of the years 1927 to 1932 merely repeats that of the crisis half a century ago. In 1873 the bankers announced that the Honduras Government was in default.

   Costa Rica, Santo Domingo and Paraguay defaulted in the same year . . . . To relieve a desperate financial situation in Spain and keep King Amadeus on the throne, bondholders consented to a funding of the portion of the interest then due. There was, in consequence, a, heavy fall in Spanish stock, a 'collapse of credit, the abdication of King Amadeus, civil war and complete default in June, 1873. By this time foreign Government securities were tumbling madly downwards in price. . . .  In November, 1873, the Bank Rate in London was at a minimum of 9 per cent. and the recession in stock prices began slowly to spread into industry and commerce. In the following year all South America became depressed as the currents of capital, which had moved to that region, ceased to flow. Then . . . . the suspension of interest payment by Bolivia, Guatemala, Liberia and Uruguay. Insolvency spread to Turkey, Egypt and Peru." (Jenks, pp. 291 and 292.)

Finally, in 1875, defaults on foreign loans had reached such a point that a House of Commons Committee was set up to inquire into the whole position. The revelations contained in its report find a counterpart in those how being made before an investigating committee sitting in America which is inquiring into the question of foreign lending during the 1927/8 boom.

One other aspect of the 1873 crisis in England is worth referring to, because the same features loom large to-day. The price index in 1873 stood at 111. '

   There now set in a fall which continued without interruption until a low point of 81 was reached  in 1879 . . . . export values fell off dramatically, while quantities could, with difficulty, be increased. But there was more food, and more copper, and more iron and wool for which to pay. Great Britain did it out of the surplus which had formerly been available for foreign investment. For the twenty years ending in 1874, Great Britain had been exporting an average surplus of capital of about £15 million. She had done this in addition to re-investing abroad all of the earnings upon foreign investments already made. These, by the ’seventies, amounted to at least £50 million a year. At this time the surplus capital exports above this ran well over £30 million. Within the space of three years this item of the British balance of payments entirely disappeared and became, in fact, reversed. (Jenks, pp. 332/3.)

Jenks goes on to say that by 1876 Great Britain “could scarcely balance her requirements of food and raw materials with the manufactures she could export and the freights her merchant marine could collect. The export of a capital surplus was over.” He estimates that Great Britain’s capital surplus reached £56 million in 1872, and dwindled to £1½ million by 1876. From then until 1880 there was a deficit each year, amounting to £110 million for the five-year period. The deficit reached its peak of £38 million in 1877. When allowance is made for the expansion in wealth that has taken place since the ’seventies, these figures show that the “adverse balance of payments,” of which we hear so much to-day from economists and politicians, is not in any way remarkable.

Before leaving the 1873 depression, let us see how, at the time, it was explained. A contemporary writer, quoted by W. T. Layton in his “Introduction to the Study of Prices,” stated that the following causes were “generally regarded as having been especially potential ” :—

   “Over-production, ” “the scarcity and appreciation of gold," “restrictions on the free course of commerce,” through protective tariffs on the one hand, and excessive and unnatural competition caused by excessive foreign imports, contingent on the absence of “fair" trade, or protection on the other; heavy national losses occasioned by destructive wars; the continuation of excessive war expenditure; the unproductiveness of foreign loans and investments; excessive speculation and reaction from great inflations; . . . . a general improvidence of the working class.

The above "explanations” of the 1873 depression, which were current at that time, are identical with the popular attempts to explain the present depression. And yet we are told that the present depression is of a kind unknown to the past!

Given the time and the space, every single feature of the present crisis could be shown to have its counterpart in one or other of the crises of the nineteenth century. In 1931 the Bank of England borrowed from the Bank of France in order to protect the exchange value of sterling. It had done the same in 1839 and 1890. (See Andreade’s "History of the Bank of England,” p. 367.) The financial manipulations of Kreuger recall those of Nicholas Biddle in the thirties of last century. (See Jenks, Chap. III.)

Finally, the remedies now proposed are the same as in the past. To-day we are told that if trade is to recover, prices must be raised, and that for this purpose recourse must be had to bi-metallism or to a managed currency, of gold or of paper. These panaceas for our ills are as old as the ills themselves. Bi-metallism was being advocated in 1817. It was resurrected frequently during subsequent crisis, particularly in 1896, when W. J. Bryan, candidate for the American Presidency, made his famous speech in which he declared: “You shall not press down upon the brow of labour this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”

In 1817, also, proposals for a gold currency system, under which "money contracts should be ‘corrected' by reference to a price index number,” were put forward by Lowe and Thomas Attwood respectively. (See "Financial Reconstruction in England, 1815-1822,” by A. W. Acworth. Pub. P. S. King & Son, Ltd., 1925, pp. 83-90.) The present schemes of our economists like J. M. Keynes represent little advance on these proposals of more than a century ago. They are of interest as showing how the present crisis lacks even the originality of provoking new proposals for its cure.

The foregoing only touches the fringe of the subject, but it may at least serve as a warning against unquestioning acceptance of the contention almost universally made that the present crisis is not part of the usual trade cycle, but is entirely different in kind from any crisis that has gone before. It may prevent those who stop to consider the matter, from being gulled into the belief that by currency manipulations and international conferences of politicians and business men a new era of permanent prosperity can be ushered in.

One further warning can, perhaps, usefully be given. It is frequently maintained that because commodity prices have fallen, because Governments and companies have defaulted, because investments in securities no longer yield the income they did three years ago and show a shrinkage in market value, and because established firms all over the world have failed, that the wealth of the world has diminished. In fact, the real wealth of the world to-day is greater than it was in 1929. It cannot be measured by the prices of shares and securities on the Stock Exchange. When fundamentals are considered, it is seen to consist in the accumulation of consumable goods and equipment produced by the expenditure of labour in the past, and in the supply of labour available to operate and add to that equipment in the future. Changes in prices of commodities and securities have not reduced this real wealth. This assertion runs so counter to what is usually written and said on the subject, that it may be worth while quoting the view of an economist whose ”orthodoxy” cannot be questioned. Professor T. E. Gregory of London and Manchester Universities, has written :—

  In so far as equipment and human labour continue to produce as fruitfully as before, society, as a whole, suffers no loss even if the market values of the securities representing the nominal value of the productive enterprises of the community undergo a decline, and society, as a whole, gains nothing if these securities rise in value. The real wealth of the U.S.A. was no greater as a result of the phenomenal rise in stock market values in 1928/9 and is no less because of the subsequent decline; for the real wealth of a country consists of the stream of goods and services which can be consumed and not of the nominal value of the securities issued by the enterprises producing these goods and services. (See Outline of Modern Knowledge. Victor Gollancz, Ltd. 1931, page 651.)

That capitalism does not secure a satisfactory distribution of the products of industry at the best of times, and that it imposes aggravated suffering on the workers in its periodical crises of "over-production,” is something that it is beyond the scope of the present article to discuss.

B. S.

Editorial: The Wages of War. (1915)

Editorial from the February 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

Now that the glamour of glory and the frenzy of patriotism have evaporated somewhat and the east wind of Imperialism is becoming less satisfying, the workers may well pause to consider the serious problem of impending starvation.

The price of food and fuel rises, and the wages bill falls. It is an anxious question, too, for our masters, and one that becomes more serious as the cost of living mounts higher and the volume of jingoism declines.

That our masters will voluntarily deal with the matter only the politically blind will for one moment imagine. The Government will rush to the assistance of the shipping shareholders, who have taken advantage of the crisis more, perhaps, than any others; they will recompense owners for the destruction of their interest producing property, if destroyed by enemy warships; they will stand by the big banks and the vested interest generally; but the workers, hit the hardest because they have no reserve to fall back upon—they get short shrift indeed.

If ever adequate steps be taken to restore the standard of living to the normal, they will not be taken until it is feared that the hungry populace will become dangerous and threaten internal trouble.

With all the optimism of the Press and the glib assurance that “our” food supply is safe while Britain rules the waves the facts point clearly to a period of starvation in store for those who, in the best of times, are always short of the necessaries of life.

The August returns showed a drop in the aggregate of wages of 30.5 per cent., and a further fall of 11.4 percent. was recorded in Sept. October returns a recovery of 6 per cent., while November wages are still 5.5 per cent. higher.

Mr. J. A. Hobson ("Fortnightly Review," 1.1.15) records it as a serious fact that “the aggregate of wages at the end of November stood at 11.4 per cent. less than a year ago” The aggregate of wages is a far more important measure than either the figures of unemployment or the returns of rates of wages in a question of the standard of living, and in conjunction with this serious falling off in the average income of the worker must be taken the enormous increase in the cost of living.

The same writer says:

   "After the sharp rise in the early days of August prices of fool fell until by Sept. 12th they are found to reach a level of about 10 per cent. above July. Since then prices have been again rising, being. at the beginning of December, 17 per cent. higher than the July level in towns and 15 per cent in the country.”

Since then prices have mounted higher and higher, the most conservative figure being given by the “Board of Trade Gazette" (Jan., 1915) as 18 per cent. increase for December over the July (pre-war) prices.

The greater part of the workers' expenditure is upon food, but a large item is fuel. All kinds of fuel have increased in price. According to a circular issued by the South Metropolitan Gas Co., the contractors' charges on the transport of coal is equivalent to an increase of 10s. per ton, and whether your beverage be tea or beer, that too will "cost you more."

To that “third of the population continually on the verge of hunger” the conditions implied by these figures mean privations undreamed of by fair and foolish females who slobber over the horrors of war and help save a parsimonious government's expenditure, and incidentally starve some working girl by sewing shirts for soldiers in the trenches. If the pinch is felt now, while the "war trades” are booming, and the price of bread rises so readily while we are assured that there is more than sufficient wheat gathered and growing to supply the wants of the world, what will happen when the inevitable slump arrives, caused by the slackening in the production of war material and by a real scarcity of the crops to be gathered? The workers of the world will then receive in full measure the reward of war.

A Common Belief (1942)

Film Review from the January 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Well, why not?” With that question in their ears and with the appealing close-up of the old man in their minds, the audience saw the end of the film, "The Common Touch.”

I had read only a few hours previously that this film was rather more intelligent than usual, but I doubt if the critic who made that remark saw it in the way that I did. It was a propaganda type of show and was certainly more intelligent than usual in its artful and subtle appeal to the mass of people to believe that all will be well with the world if things are left in the hands of the wiser and more decent type of master.

The film finished where the crooked director of a firm of builders had been caught trying to put a fast one over the owner of a doss-house. The brave, clean, young hero, son and heir to the late head of the firm and now its chief, promised, in a letter to the habitués of the doss-house, to find alternative accommodation for them while the old building was to be demolished. The new building, when erected, would contain some of the things that they now needed, but the atmosphere would remain the same. Titch, the odd-job man of the place, turned to the old man and asked, ” Do they mean it?” The old man replied, ”They mean it this time,” which caused Titch to exclaim that it would be heaven on earth, and the old man closed with, "Well, why not?” and I felt that the audience thought likewise, that it was meant this time, as also were the promises of better world this time after the present trouble is finished.

In so far as the film implied that the distress of these wretches was aggravated by the crookedness and selfishness on the part of some of the rich, and that it could be lessened by intelligent, understanding action by the "decent” ones of the upper class, the film was largely true. But we could not expect the film to show that the poverty and hardship was caused by the same system of society that made the rich possible, and that all the understanding and intelligence and goodness on the part of these rich could not abolish this wretchedness. Nor could we expect the film to show directly that in such a society as we now have there will always be plenty of causes and room for such crookedness, and that as fast as one evil had been dealt with more would arise.

Moreover, in practice there is nothing to determine that the enlightened rich could have their own way even if they did desire to make the workers’ lot any easier; it is just as likely that all their work would be lost in trying to get their ideas adopted by the other members of their class, and while such a hypothetical position lasted the workers’ troubles would continue, and supposing that the “decent ” ones were defeated, what then?

As all Socialists know, the only people who can alter the society in such a way as to remove the causes of poverty, not merely to lessen it, but to remove it once and for all, and with this the cause of war in the world, are the workers. They will do this as quickly as they understand the basis of the system of the society in which they live. It is therefore incumbent upon Socialists to spread this understanding, and anything short of this is a waste of time, which soon leads to a waste of lives, by malnutrition (a euphemism for slow starvation), and sooner or later, by war.

S. C. Greenwood

Political Notes: Unhappy Birthday (1982)

The Political Notes column from the June 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Unhappy Birthday

May 10 this year was for some the first birthday of socialism in France. It was on this day last year that Francois Mitterand was elected President. He has not stood, and does not stand, for socialism and of course even if he did decide to support the idea of common ownership he would be incapable alone, or with the help of his fellow government ministers, of introducing such a system.

As it is, capitalism has ground on during the past twelve months under the diligent administration of the “socialist” government. When Mitterand won the election there was some anxiety that dramatic social change was on its way and a revolutionary new system was to be introduced. Those who were anxious soon had their worries quelled as it became evident that the real goal of the new government was to re-organise the poverty of the working class, and to oil the machinery of the profit system, in order that it might operate more smoothly.

Minimum wages and family allowances rose by 25 per cent and pensions by as much as 50 per cent, but prices were running high, taxes and social charges were raised steeply and wage-earners suffered a special surcharge to help fill the widening gap in the social insecurity budget. Unemployment, which Mitterrand vowed would never reach two million, passed that figure last October: and as the government wrestles with the problem of running a system of exploitation while making pious remarks about socialism, its inability to deliver the goods it promised becomes more apparent.

Among the reforms that have been introduced by the government was the abolition of the guillotine. As the rich get richer while the poor remain poor, and with mounting discontent in the working class in France, perhaps that reform was one of the more cynical proposals of the regime.


Good Idea

In a recent interview Tony Benn was asked the question: “Would-be socialists are worried that we don’t see a socialist country anywhere in the world that is working perfectly. Does that worry you?” His reply was as follows:

  We’re not looking for perfection, are we? Can you name one capitalist country that is working well? If you want to see where socialism is, it’s in a comprehensive school and in the Health Service where people are dealt with without regard to their wealth.

 (New Musical Express, 1 May 1982.) 

With these beliefs, Benn could probably be accepted tomorrow for membership of the Liberal Party. Comprehensive schools and the National Health Service are badly-equipped, second-rate services run on the basis of skimping and making the best of a bad job. They were designed to be cheap methods of conditioning working-class children for a life of political conformity, adequately (but no more than that) preparing us for lives of wage-slavery and providing a “patch ’em up and send ’em back to work” service for when injury or illness befall us.

Meanwhile members of the ruling class pay huge sums of money to have their children properly educated for the lives of idleness and leisure that they are to lead, and there is no trace of the NHS queues, inadequate apparatus, or brusque treatment to be found in the exclusive private hospitals.

Tony Benn’s interviewer was almost right. In fact there is no socialist country in the world working perfectly or imperfectly. At present socialism is only an idea: but remember that all products of mankind whether technical devices, like the typewriter, or social arrangements, like the trade union were ideas before they were put into practice.

Economic Crime

The Deputy Fisheries Minister thought he was on to a good thing when he found he could arrange the export of caviar marked as herring. The buyer abroad paid the lower herring price then sold the caviar at an enormous profit which was split with the Minister.

But all good things come to an end and the Minister was found out. This was especially nasty for him because he was a Deputy Minister in the Russian government and as his was an “economic” crime there could be only one outcome. He was shot.

The episode was reported in a long article, by the Russian Chief Prosecutor, in a recent issue of Pravda, which was heavy with dire warnings of the consequences for any more economic criminals. In fact such offences—bribery, embezzlement, currency fiddles are said to be increasing in Russia. Recently, for example, the mayor of a South Georgia town was executed after making about £100,000 in bribes in exchange for illegally allocating apartments to his “clients". The Chief Prosecutor storms that such offences are costing the Russian state millions of roubles every year: “No clemency should be shown” he warns.

Clearly, it is necessary to ask one or two questions. If, as is claimed, Russia is a “socialist” country in which everyone stands equally, how can a person commit, and benefit from, an “economic” crime? How can such crimes exist? How can bribery be effective unless there is an inequality of access to necessary things like food and housing? How can caviar be sold as herring unless there is a caviar- eating class and a herring-eating one? Is it not proved, by such evidence, that there is in Russia a privileged class and therefore an unprivileged one?

There are no two ways of answering these questions. Apart from the fact that socialism cannot exist except as a worldwide system, all the evidence supports the case that Russia is an unexceptional capitalist state. This means that we will find there all the elements of class privilege, with the unpleasant, conditioned behaviour which goes with it.