Facts for Socialists (1937)

Pamphlet Review from the August 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Fabian Society have just published the 14th edition, revised and enlarged, of "Facts for Socialists" (46 pages, 6d.). It contains the usual valuable collection of figures as to the unequal distribution of incomes and property, together with information about the extent of malnutrition, the volume of pauperism and unemployment, the condition of the depressed areas, overcrowding, industrial accidents, hours of work, strikes, trade union membership, etc. It is marred by the usual Fabian misconceptions about the nature of Socialism, but its facts and figures make it a first-rate aid to propagandists. 

P. S.

"New" Ideas With Whiskers On Them (1938)

From the August 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard

During the second week of July the News Chronicle printed an article deploring the miseries suffered by emigrants to Canada and discussing a new scheme that proposed to bring organisation into the matter.

Looking through an old magazine (The Lady's Magazine) for January, 1820, the writer came upon the following: —

   A difficulty has long presented itself, in contemplating the subject of emigration to Canada, and other Colonies, and parts of North America, that while, on the one hand, we are told of the abundance to be found in those countries, and the room which they offer for innumerable emigrants; on the other we find that, of the multitudes who have gone in quest of the promised blessings, a vast proportion have encountered the severest distress.

The writer then goes on to explain a scheme proposed by a Mr. Kendal for assisting emigrants and providing them with information. Institutions for this purpose were to be established in London and in the Colonies.

That is over a hundred years ago and still the same problems arise and with them the same bright ideas for abolishing the problems—problems that defy abolition as long as capitalism, with it's passion for exploiting wage labourers, remains.

Gilmac.

National Hatred: A Capitalist Weapon (1939)

From the August 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

From the earliest days of working-class history, racial hatreds and national antagonisms have repeatedly been an obstacle to working-class solidarity and organisation.

Capitalists and their agents know the value of keeping alive these antagonisms. They know quite well that, whilst the workers remain divided racially and nationally, their own privileged position in society will remain secure.

It is largely to divert the attention of the German workers from a critical examination of the true cause of their poverty, from an examination of the capitalist system, that the Nazi set them against the Jews. However, it would be a very serious mistake to think that Hitler has the monopoly of this technique of hindering working-class organisation. On the contrary, it would be difficult to find a capitalist class of any country which has not at some time or other stirred up its workers against those of another nation or race. 

The British capitalist class has done its share of this sort of thing. For example, a few years ago the Press of this country used to regale us week after week with atrocity tales about Russians. This was partly due to the fact that the true significance of the Russian upheaval was not understood by the capitalists. So long as they mistakenly thought that socialism was being established in Russia, they did their best to make the workers of Britain think that Russians were the arch-enemies of civilisation. When it was discovered that Russia was developing along capitalist lines, these stories became less frequent. In recent years, the Japanese, Italians and the Germans have taken the place of the Russians in the British Press. This is because the capitalists of Japan, Italy and Germany threaten the interests of the British capitalists.

We are not suggesting that there is no truth in these atrocity stories; very likely, most of them are true. The point we wish to make is that they would not be given so much publicity unless the British capitalist class wished to rally its workers to the defence of British capitalism against the attacks of likely aggressors.

Little publicity is given to the French method of railway construction in Equatorial Africa. And yet for sheer brutality it is equal to anything perpetrated by the Germans, Japs or Italians. What fine stories the British Press could give us about French Imperialism—and would give us—if British and French imperialist interests were in conflict.

Londres, the French journalist, in his book “The Land of the Black,” describes the construction of railways in the French equatorial colonies as follows: —

   “Here the Negro is used instead of machinery, instead of everything else, in fact. He takes the place of the machine, the motor-lorry, the crane. And were it only possible, he would be used instead of explosives, too !
   "The Negroes died like flies. Of the 8,000 that came to Batignaloes only 5,000 were soon left, and then 4,000, and later 1,700. New recruits had to take their places. . . .
   “We started to hunt the Negroes. Our men caught them as best they could with the help of lassoes, etc. We put 'collars' on them, as they are called here. . . . The death rate increased. . . .  'We must reckon with a loss of six or eight thousand people,' said Governor General Antonette, ‘or give up the railway.' But the number of victims was greater. To-day it already exceeds 17,000, and there is still about 200 miles to go! . . . We are woodcutters in the human forest." (Quoted in George Padmore's "Life and Struggles of Negro Toilers.")

Again we venture to say that if French capitalist schemes of aggression were threatening British capitalist interests to-day, such stories as the above about the French (and many others like them) would be plastered on the front pages of the dailies, with the juiciest of headlines.

Racial hatreds have been of great service to the capitalist classes of America. Both in Latin America (Brazil, Cuba and Colombia) and in the United States, the idea is carefully nurtured among “white" workers that the “black" is his enemy. Here we have the capitalists importing negroes to work in their concerns because they can force them to accept low wages, and then doing all in their power to rouse white against black so as to prevent them from joining forces.

Incidentally, the same thing happened here last century. Irishmen were brought to England to work at cheap rates and then the capitalist played off the Irish and English Workers, one against the other. About this, Marx wrote in 1869: —

   "The English bourgeoisie has not only exploited Irish poverty in order to worsen the condition of the working class in England, by the forced transplantation of poor Irish peasants, but it has, moreover, divided the proletariat into hostile camps. . . . The average English worker hates the Irish as a competitor who lowers his wages and level of living. He feels national and religious antagonism towards him. . . . This antagonism between the proletarians of England is artificially cultivated and maintained by the bourgeoisie. It knows that in this antagonism lies the real secret of maintaining its power" (Italics are Marx's.)

George Padmore, in his "Life and Struggles of Negro Toilers," has much to say about the methods used by the capitalist class of the United States to cause black and white workers to hate each other. He says (p. 62) that “some of the most active agents of the Oppressors are the preachers, who go round the countryside stirring up racial hatred and mob law against the Negroes." He tells, too, how after the lynching of two Negroes, Shipp and Smith, at Marion, Indiana, pictures of their charred bodies were sold in the shops of the city of Terre Haute. "Over 3,256 Negro farmers and workers have met their death at the hands of white lynching mobs between 1885 and 1930" (p. 50).

With regard to Latin America, Padmore has noticed happening there what Marx observed in England. He writes: "The national bourgeoisie and the Yankee imperialists . . . consciously foster the feeling of national chauvinism and race prejudice among the native Negro and white workers against the Negroes from Haiti and Jamaica. Cases are not rare when these foreign black slaves become the victims of most brutal chauvinistic persecution on the part of the native workers themselves, who are made to believe that by doing so they are defending their own economic interests.

   "With respect to wages, both the native and foreign Negroes always receive less wages for the same amount of work as the white workers, while the imported blacks get even less than the native Negroes. Through this method of wage discrimination the imperialists and the native capitalists are able to split up the class interest of the workers into different parts and play one off against the other."

The fact that the agents of capitalism are able to stir up workers of one country against another is proof of the immaturity of the working class. It is a proof that up to now the workers are without a true understanding of their position in capitalist society. They are still ready to consider their own interests identical with those of their master class.

C. A. Allen

How Henry Ford Smashes Trade Unions (1940)

From the August 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

[The following article, from the “Nation,” New York, May 4th, 1940, throws light on the attitude towards Trade Unions shown by Henry Ford in the U.S.A.] 

The Ford Reich

Labour-union organisations are the worst thing that every struck the earth because they take away a man’s independence.— From “Ford Gives Viewpoint on Labour,” a booklet distributed in Ford plants.

In June, 1937, “Fats” Perry, then a trusted employee of the Ford plant at Dallas, was assigned to special work of a confidential, and strenuous, nature. On the twenty-third he informed his Superiors that two C.I.O. organisers were on their way from Kansas City. A few hours later two representatives of the United Automobile Workers of America arrived in town and went to a drugstore near the plant frequented by Ford workers. Several Ford workers introduced themselves. Three of them were stool pigeons, and one hurried across to the plant to report the presence of the organisers. Another sought out "Fats” Perry. “ I walked over there,” Perry later testified at the Labour Board hearing, “and one of the boys says, ‘There they stand back there ’ . . . . I heard them say something about Kansas City. I walked up and listened a few minutes . . . and I said, 'Who was talking so much about Kansas City? ’ He says, ‘ I was talking to some of my friends.’ I said, 'You are a union organiser, aren’t you? ’ He said, ‘If you call it that.’ He says, ‘ I am trying to line some of the boys up.’ I said, ‘ You line up out of that door before I throw you out.’ ”

One of the organisers, after being knocked down by the 226-pound “Fats” Perry, managed to escape. The other, a small man, was knocked down and carried out to a waiting car.   An unidentified man in a Ford Motor Company official car,” according to the N.L.R.B. trial examiner’s report, "drove up and told the group who had Guempelein (the organiser) to take him down by the schoolhouse and 'beat hell out of him.’ ” They did.

Perry had a squad of beefy fellows, most of whom had been members of the Ford plant’s champion tug-of-war team. They were paid regular wages but assigned special work. They kept their ears open. They “made the rounds of cafes, domino parlours, barber shops, and similar places in the outlying districts of Dallas.” They were equipped with "persuaders”—blackjacks, pistols, whips, lengths of hose. When not in use these “persuaders,” according to the trial examiner, were kept in the desk of the man who was head of the Ford service department in Dallas. The word "service” has interesting connotations in a Ford plant.

On July 3rd, Baron De Louis, the U.A.W.A. organiser from Kansas City who had managed to escape from Perry and his helpers in the encounter of June 23rd, returned to Dallas. Through a friend in Dallas, De Louis arranged an appointment with a Ford employee. The employee at once notified the Ford office of the meeting. Perry’s service squad was on hand and administered another beating. The squad was kept very busy that July. “On one occasion in mid-July,” according to the trial examiner’s findings, “Rutland (general body foreman at the Dallas plant) received word that two of the company employees had made some pro-union remarks while on a fishing trip He arranged to have them kidnapped by the strong-arm squad, taken into the country, questioned, and dealt with by that group.” On another occasion in July several men suspected of union sympathies, were ambushed at the home of a stool pigeon and beaten. On July 10th every member of the “service” squad was given a picture of W. J. Houston, Dallas attorney, who had acted for the U.A.W.A. An organised search for him was begun. He was located in a drugstore, where he was having a cup of coffee with a friend. One member of the group engaged him in conversation while the others assembled at the soda fountain. As Houston started to leave, he was attacked, knocked down, and severely beaten before police arrived. “Fats” Perry testified that Rutland was pleased. ”He [Rutland] said, ‘I heard you picked up Mr. Houston down there.’ I said, ‘Yes, they picked him up and like to beat him to death.’ He said, ‘That is a good job then. Maybe that will learn him to listen.’ ”

The service squad was thorough. On August 2nd an assistant foreman from the Kansas City plant was in Dallas on a vacation trip. He visited the Dallas office. When he came out, he found Perry and his subordinates waiting for him. They took him for a ride. He succeeded in proving that he was a foreman and anti-union. Perry then drove him back to town, ”shook hands . . . and wished him well.” A travelling salesman who had expressed sympathy for the union had a brother, an identical twin. He was beaten so badly on August 4th, 1937, that he never recovered his health. He died of pneumonia a few months later. The squad did not confine its activities to the automobile industry. On August 6th or 7th, according to the findings of the trial examiner, the general body foreman at Dallas called Perry in and told him “he had received a call from the City Hall police station, telling him that there was a union organiser in town who had been giving them trouble. . . .” The organiser was George Baer, an official of the United Hatters, Cap and Millinery Workers. Some of the boys picked Baer up outside a millinery house, knocked him unconscious, took him to the outskirts of town, and beat him up. When Perry arrived, "they greeted Perry with the statement that Baer was . . .  'in pretty bad shape. You better come look at him.' . . . They found Earl Johnson (one of the ”service” men) sitting on Baer on the floor of the car, with one knee in his stomach and the other on his head. Baer’s eye had been knocked out of its socket. Blood covered his face, his nose was smashed, his head was bleeding, and his teeth had been knocked out.” Perry testified, “I said, 'Well, you had better get rid of him. You better put him somewhere.’ And Buster Bevill suggested, ‘Let’s take the son of a bitch down and throw him in the river.' I said, 'No, we couldn’t do that.’ So we drove down the highway a ways and drove up in a field and throwed him out.”

These were some of the methods used by the Ford Motor Company to encourage workers in Dallas to do their bargaining individually. The facts set down here are taken from the record of hearings before the National Labour Relations Board of the Sixteenth Region.

Not According to Plan (1941)

From the August 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

When German capitalism essayed the task of staging a come-back, it built up a machine calculated to fulfil its function according to plan; but plans go wrong. For the first twelve months Hitler’s time-table was rigidly adhered to. Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and France—all fell like skittles. The mass attack with tanks and the supporting air armadas worked smoothly. Then the plan received its first check. The narrow channel could not be “tanked,” and for the first time millions of pounds worth of mechanism were useless and Germany could now only fight with one arm—the air armada. In this way Germany’s chance of victory was considerably reduced.

It now became possible for one country to hold out against Germany, who would have to fight without being able to smash through by using the heavy land weapons. The failure of this air war to destroy Britain put a spoke in the Nazi wheel and entirely upset the whole plan of world conquest. Having no Navy to replace the now useless tanks, Germany had to rely upon Italy to deal with the Mediterranean end of the plan. That was her undoing. The British Navy put paid to that and Musso. became one of the also rans. These material conditions reshaped the war, and the German war machine was pushed perilously into the one position its whole strategy had been planned to avoid; indeed, for which reason the German-Soviet pact was designed to help in avoiding—the war on two fronts: East and West. Here is a lesson in “dialectics.” The positive weapon becomes negative and Nazi race myths receive a nasty rejoinder. The Channel fails to respond to Aryan appeals. Now, had it been the Red Sea—

Germany thus has to revert to an eastern land campaign, and Roumania (oil), Yugo-Slavia and Greece go under. Germany planned for a short war and acted in line with her plan; but the very success of her military measures would be her undoing unless she could guarantee a short war. To achieve this end she unsparingly used up her oil and grain and the hoped-for short war failed. The resistance by Britain compelled her to accept a long war. Britain drew the German war machine further away until it reached the Middle East, and so increased the consumption of vital oil, grain and metal resources by that machine. Meanwhile, American material comes to Britain in ever-increasing quantities and leaves Germany exhausted. Nazi capitalism, having failed to win a short war, is compelled to prepare for a long war. This means huge reserves of oil and grain and metal. To be sure of this supply Germany must possess them, not merely buy them. Where are these to be found? RUSSIA! So Stalin’s pact in 1939 was but a postponement of the inevitable. Hitler and his capitalist gangsters can no more evade the social laws of capitalism than Canute could keep back the waves.

Lew Jones

Here and Now: Gone—But Not Forgotten (1942)

The Here and There Column from the August 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

Gone—But Not Forgotten

At the Labour Party Conference Mr. James Walker, M.P., replying for the Executive to the resolution urging the removal of the ban on the Daily Worker, said : —

  When our lads were standing on the beaches of Dunkirk, when they were wounded and bleeding on those beaches, had lost their equipment, and we called for the people of this country to rescue them, out came the ”Daily Worker” denouncing the war and telling the people that their sons and brothers were fighting a capitalists' war in the interests of the plutocracy of Britain.
 When Holland was being bombed and over-run by the Germans that paper was saying that Britain had spread the war to Holland. The “Daily Worker” has changed its attitude more than once since the war started, and how do we know if things change in the East they will not do the same thing again? (“Daily Telegraph," May 29th, 1942.)

Whatever future might be in store for the Communist Party of Great Britain, there is no doubt that it will never be allowed to forget its brazen, calculated and cynical changes of policy in relation to the present war. It is a curious thought that the inability of the Communist Party to get permission to republish the Daily Worker might in some way indicate the measure of respect held for British Communists by their Russian masters. British capitalism, in view of its debt to the Russian Government, would hardly ignore a hint from that quarter that the Daily Worker should be republished.

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Everything Will Be All Right

Everything is going to be quite all right—when this war is over. Everyone says so—except that very forthright defender of capitalist privileges, Sir Ernest Benn, and the Socialist. This is what Mr. J. C. Winant says about it:—

   Anti-Fascism is not a short-term, military job. Fascism was bred in poverty and unemployment. To crush Fascism at its roots we must crush depression democracy. We must solemnly resolve that in our future order we will not tolerate the economic evils which breed poverty and war. This is not something that we shelve “for the duration.” It is part of the war.
  We know there was something fundamentally wrong in the pre-war days when, on one side, workers were standing idle, and, on the other side, people were underfed, badly housed, short of clothes, and children were stinted on education and deprived of their heritage of good health and happiness
  What we want is not complicated. We have enough technical knowledge and organising ability to respond to this awakening of social conscience. We have enough courage. We must put it to use.

(“Daily Telegraph,” June 7th, 1942.) 

Let us prompt a line of thought for the American. Ambassador. Let us not dispute those qualities of “social conscience” and "courage” to which his Excellency draws attention. We put to him or any who think like him the question: How are the evils of capitalism to be abolished without abolishing capitalism, i.e., the private ownership of the means and instruments of production? Mr. Winant cannot answer that question. The evils of capitalism are bound up with private ownership and production for profit. Production of things for sale, the scramble for markets, unemployment, glut, a state of things where capitalists hope for the Colorado beetle to destroy crops because the markets are already full of goods which cannot be sold—these will be at least as intense problems after this war as at any time during the history of capitalism. It would be a safe bet to say that they will be more intensified. Whilst the workers are now asked to increase production to defeat Nazi capitalism, the situation is likely to arise, when that object is achieved, where they will be asked (as after the la«t war) to increase production and to accept lower wages in order to defeat the foreign competitors of British capitalists. And ponder, too, fellow worker, that among these competitors are to-day the allies of the British capitalists! Miners are likely to remember the stories that were told after the last war of the low wages paid to Polish miners which were used as an excuse by the British mineowners to press the British miner to accept lower wages. It will not—and cannot—be essentially different after the present war. If pious wishes would change it, if to will that workers should not suffer the evils of capitalism had any effect, then the workers’ social problems would have disappeared long ago. As it is, the efforts of hard-headed and well informed reformers from Shaftesbury to Rowntree and Booth, as well as the modern political reformist movements, have demonstrated that there can be only one solution for working class problems, the dispossession of the private owners and the institution of Socialism by the working class itself.

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A Noble Lord on Democracy

News Review (June 18th, 1942) reports the following interview with the Marquess of Londonderry: —

  Facing his room in Park Lane’s Dorchester Hotel, the one-time pillar of the Anglo-German Fellowship talked like an old hand trained in the Vansittart school about the German instinct for domination, fertilised cunningly by Adolf Hitler. His only quarrel with Lord Vansittart is that, since he knew all along what the Germans were up to, he did not do more about it.
  "I firmly believe in the British Empire," said wealthy Lord Londonderry. There is only one Herrenvolk, in spite of Germany’s claims. We are the Herrenvolk. "The Almighty put us outside Europe so that we could rule better.”
  After the war, thinks Lord Londonderry, the world will be ruled by great influences—Britain, America, Russia, and the greatest of these is Britain. As for Lord Selborne’s idea of an Imperial Parliament, it appeals but little to him. It is "Democracy run wild. We have done enough of asking people what they want—we know what is best for them, and must tell them."
   Said he: "There is nothing totalitarian about this; it is just a case of guiding others on the lines of our convictions. It is real Democracy."
   Of course we must do away with slums and glaring inequalities, but that does not mean scrapping the system altogether. For expressing such views, continued his lordship, some of his friends had called him a Socialist.
  "The real Fascists or Nazis in this country are the T.U.C.,” added he surprisingly. "They want everything regimented.” All these thoughts the Marquess has put into a new book, which only awaits official approval and censorship before it is published.

A very nicely expressed attitude of ruling class mentality. News Review might have asked this erstwhile friend of the German Nazi leaders how he would describe the latter if the “T.U.C. are the true Nazis.”

As for the race superiority nonsense, “The Almighty put us outside Europe so that we could rule better,” we offer no prizes to the reader who guesses who is the famous person who says no more than this concerning the “inside” of Europe.

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Equality Under the American Constitution

After the noble lord on race and democracy it is depressing to read an account of racial prejudice and ignorance among workers, who should, and usually do, show better intelligence than their masters.

  Because 350 men protested against the arrival of negro employees, the Chrysler Corporation’s Dodge army-truck factory at Detroit shut down the plant for the day and sent all their 3.000 workers home.

   "Report hack to-morrow,” they were told.

   The men were told by their trade union leaders (says Reuter) that "they will have to accept the negroes. The union’s policy calls for equal treatment of negroes, and so does the American Constitution.”

("Evening Standard,” June 7th. 1942.)

Harry Waite

Work — the Only Hope (1943)

From the August 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

The January, 1943, issue of Time (New York) divulges the contents of a hitherto secret Memorandum prepared by the Allied Governor of Tunisia, General Giraud, presented last Spring to Marshal Petain. After deploring the reduction of working hours in France, before the War, as the explanation of France's "failure," General Giraud speaks most enthusiastically of the German regime.

  Admittedly, he says, the Germans have not perhaps got liberty, but there is certainly neither disorder nor Anarchy. Everywhere it is work, the only hope for a people who wish to live and live happily. May France remember and profit by it.

How on earth the French worker can he expected to support General Giraud, who quite openly expresses his admiration for Hitler in Germany, is hard to understand—to be consistent—he might just as logically be expected to support Hitler himself.

But then, quite a number of other people have said almost the same thing in days gone by; among them Lord Beaverbrook, Lord Croft, Lord Londonderry—and Mr. Churchill.

So, incidentally, did Mr. Charles Bedaux, whom lots of British workers will remember as originator of the notorious "Bedaux" system of speed-up. He said : "I am an out-and-out-Fascist"—he has now been charged with trading with the enemy (in this case, Germany).

It is said that he tried to buy the North Africa orange crop for the Nazis. He was a friend of the Duke of Windsor. He now faces ten years’ imprisonment.

The correspondent of the New York Times, nevertheless, considers that "90 per cent. of Frenchmen here still believe democracy can work."

Chas. Bedaux—like General Giraud—is a self-appointed authority on the great subject of work. So is Sir William Beveridge and Ernest Bevin, and Harry Pollit, with his appeals to the miners. The Socialist Standard is not the first to notice that the one thing all these experts on work never dream of doing is a spot themselves, of the kind they urge on others,

Horatio.

Control: Remote or Direct? (1944)

From the August 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

Five years of war have dragged by. Countries have been devastated. Food, machinery and lives lost. Millions of people have been moved about like cattle, cajoled or threatened into working long hours, and the products of their labours have gone up in smoke. In this country, we read, tuberculosis and neurosis are increasing. Little wonder, when the present state of affairs is taken into account. To add to all this, science, harnessed to the war machine, has ushered in a new and diabolical piece of machinery— the flying bomb.

From the stone hammers of the Stone Age we have now developed to the stage when it is possible to inflict destruction by remote control. The flying bomb is only a crude foretaste of what is in store for future civilian populations in wars to come.

Here is the important point. The Socialist Party of Great Britain argues that the only way in which we may abolish this fantastic state of affairs is to abolish the present system of society, and to establish Socialism in its place. We are being told that we can “take it" by people who have the best facilities for “taking it.” A cynical and hypocritical statement. Furthermore, whilst the working class is taking the brunt of the present war. their rulers are making flamboyant plans for the future.

If we think back a few years we can remember the times when the workers, striving for better conditions, were regarded as the lowest human types. They were often accused of being dirty and lazy when their accusers' system, capitalism, was responsible for withholding the means whereby they might earn their livelihood. Now, when the workers’ efforts are needed for the preservation of capitalist interests, concessions are very often eagerly considered.

No doubt an antidote will be found to the flying bomb, but the fact remains that it is a form of warfare come to stay. What then is to be done? Are we to go on perpetuating capitalism, with its wars, booms, slumps crises and general poverty for the workers, or are we to substitute a sane form of society?

It is for the working class to decide. Take no notice of the priests and politicians with their social reforms, housing schemes, and foolish ideas for a "new world."

We urge workers to study the case of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, that they may understand the economic causes of the phenomena already mentioned, and work for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of Socialism.

Chester.

More Mechanisation (1945)

From the August 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

Authors such as H. G. Wells and Jules Verne were at one time laughed at by their critics as cranks and eccentrics. Both Wells and Verne wrote prolifically of rocket propulsion, and Wells in particular wrote of robots doing the work of men. From the capitalist point of view this would be an ideal state of affairs. The workers now are troublesome fellows. They have to to fed and housed and this tends to draw upon the profits of the capitalist-class. They have to be educated too in order to do their complicated jobs and this has its disadvantages in that they do not stop, but go on learning. In order to counteract this millions of pounds have to be spent annually upon propaganda to keep them in order.

In the past when production has had to be speeded up, machinery has been introduced and human labour reduced. Sometimes the workers who are left go on strike and production is held up while tedious concessions are made. How much more convenient it would be if the work were done by robots. They would have no feelings and could be switched on and off at will, but these treacherous workers demand reductions in their hours of work; and there are some who even have the audacity to spend their leisure hours working for the overthrow of capitalism and the dispossession of their masters.

June 1944 was a month in which the Flying bomb made its debut. Later on we were threatened by rockets. The critics, bigoted as ever, pooh-poohed the idea. The following autumn the series of mysterious bangs were announced as the "impossible" rocket. Once more the critics and experts were confounded.

The war which has just reached its conclusion has greatly advanced all forms of rocket and jet propulsion, and in a press interview recently one of Britain's lending aircraft manufacturers, Sir Frederick Handley-Page, advanced some very interesting views. In answer to one question he stated that the rocket is the product of a nation short of manpower. He wont on to say : —

   “A man by the time he has reached the age of 21 and been trained as a soldier has expended 180,000 man-hours of his existence, and this is spread over 21 calendar years with no known way of shortening the time. At least 21 years are required if the shortage of man-power is to be made good."—Sunday Express, April 8th.

Here is a hint that future wars are expected and that men must be reared to fight. How fortunate for the capitalists that someone has thought of family-allowances and raising the birth-rate. Could it he that this is what our rulers have in mind?

One cannot fail to realise what Sir Frederick had in mind when he made his statement referring to the 180,000 hours of existence. He meant that with the present inaccuracies of the rocket adjusted it will he possible to have much bigger and more devastating wars in a shorter space of time. Modern production can turn out rockets in enormous profusion. There is no need to wait for men to grow up. In the meantime we can observe the intense international strife. The seeds which will germinate into the next war.

Instead of allowing ourselves to be the tools of the master-class; to be housed in hovels, bred, fed and buried cheaply, slaughtered on battle-fields, packed into factories or superseded by machines we must take control of the world's resources ourselves and use them for our own comfort and advantage.

Chester.

Are Scientists Free? (1946)

From the August 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

When the first atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima, it awakened many workers to a new interest in scientific discoveries. They have been forced to realise, as never before, how intimately these discoveries affect their daily lives. A a result of this, a spate of “Science for the Masses” articles has appeared in the popular press. Those written by John Langdon-Davies are a regular feature of the Daily Mail.

One of them, “Science Can’t Stay Chained” (6/5/46), reveals a state of mind in the writer that must be typical of many scientists to-day. It is becoming more and more evident that once a discovery has left the laboratory it enters the sphere of power politics and commercial interests. Such has been the fate of atomic energy and penicillin. Of course, there is nothing new about it. It has been going on ever since capitalism came into existence. To-day we are witnessing the culmination of that process, and the scientific worker has no more control over his product than any other member of the working class. This is true of the scientist who is not already employed by some private industrial concern, or by the State, an increasingly rare specimen nowadays.

Mr. Langdon-Davies is very worried about it all. "Scientific discovery is being mishandled,” he says. "The danger is not what the scientists are doing, but the use being put to their work by half-educated politicians.”

As an example of the scientists’ loss of freedom, he mentions the recent case of Dr. May, who was sentenced to ten years penal servitude for revealing secrets of the atomic bomb. Mr. Langdon-Davies is not aware that the degree of education attained by politicians, like the grammatical errors of scientific writers, is quite irrelevant to the issue. These men are the servants of the capitalist state machine. They must serve the interests of the class it represents; interests that have slight regard for human rights, including the ‘‘right” of the scientist to share the fruits of his research with his colleagues in other lands.; interests that must continue to dominate society, so long as it is based on private ownership of the means of life.

Mr. Langdon-Davies reveals that penicillin is a monopoly of Britain and America. Referring to the recent fulminations of the Minister of Supply on the subject, he remarks: “He did not tell us that penicillin production is being kept a secret, just like the atomic bomb . . . if the French want to save babies from blindness, or the Russians to reduce the ravages of venereal disease, or the Norwegians to combat pneumonia, they must start their penicillin researches almost from scratch, or, of course, buy from us or the Americans.”

Again, "Penicillin is a joint concern between certain private firms and the Ministry of Supply ” and “will soon be sold to the taxpayer at a profit to somebody.”

Where stands our humanitarian scientist in relation to all this? However disinterested he may be in his efforts to alleviate human suffering, when the results of his research have become a commercial proposition he has no further say in the matter.

If we turn to the industrial field we find many examples of this. One of the earliest was the famous safety lamp, which, we are told, has been a great boon to the miners. Sir Humphry Davy refused to take out a patent for this invention; claiming that his sole object was to serve the cause of humanity. Did it make the pits safe for the miners when it was introduced? Quite the opposite. "Deeper and more dangerous seams were worked, and accidents actually increased in number.” (See "The Town Labourer,” by J. L. & B. Hammond, p. 25.) Nowadays, the introduction of safety devices in industry often results in a speed-up of machinery, thus forcing the operatives to work harder than they did before.

To return to Mr. Langdon-Davies, his solution to the scientists’ political problems is anything but scientific. He speaks vaguely of some form of public control, "or, at least, reference to public opinion,” whatever that may mean. Remove the secrecy and we shall all be happy. He doesn’t tell us how all this is to be done in the face of capitalist rivalries. He does not tell us because he cannot (and neither can anyone else).

The title of the article we have been discussing has greater significance than the writer intended. It is true that Science, or rather the immense productive forces that Science has released, cannot remain for ever chained and confined by the capitalist control of production. These forces, continually strive to break the capitalist fetters that bind them. Economic crises and war are the results of this strife, and it will one day force the scientists, along with the rest of the working class, to adopt the only possible solution, the abolition of private property and the establishment of a society where the needs of men and women will be the sole criterion for the production of goods and services. A society where scientists will be free to pursue their studies without restraint, secure in the knowledge that their discoveries can no longer bring disaster on mankind. In a word, the Socialist solution.

Bernard.

Mr. Strachey provides food for thought (1947)

From the August 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Labour Party Government is made up of all types of people. Many of its members have been political opponents in the past but are now "united" in administering British capitalism in its decline.

Perhaps one of the most interesting examples of a Labour careerist is Mr. John Strachey—present Minister of Food; one time follower of Mosley in his pre-Fascist days and later still high priest of the Stalinist variety of Leninism.

Here we have a typical expensively-educated suave politician who has built himself a career and a good living, on the immaturity of the working class. After graduating from Eton and Magdalen, John Evelyn St. Loe Strachey—to give him his full name—entered the offices of the I.L.P. This started him off on his literary and political career.

Inside the Labour Party he fell under the influence of Sir Oswald Mosley. He later joined Mosley's New Party but left Mosley before the B.U.F. was formed.

Then Strachey began his advocacy of Leninism in order to combat Fascism. Much of what he wrote in those days could be to-day used as a criticism of the present Labour Government. In those days when he posed as a "revolutionary" he often exposed the futility of the Labour Party and its policy of administering capitalism in the interests of the working class.

This is what Mr. Strachey had to say of Social Democracy in his book, "The Coming Struggle for Power ”:—

   '‘In general, therefore, we may prophesy the social democratic system will, more and more, become the mechanism by which the capitalists control the workers." (“Coming Struggle for Power," p.337, Gollancz edition).

He went on further, to accuse Social Democracy of preparing the conditions which give rise to Fascism.

   "Social Democracy becomes in fact ‘Social Fascism'."

In those days he studied and criticised the majority of capitalist economists; especially did he hit out at those economists who supported the Labour Party like G. D. H. Cole and Barbara Wootton. He even went so far as to assert that the Labour Party’s propaganda was the greatest danger to the working class.

   "In particular the writers, thinkers and spokesmen of the British Labour Party, who chiefly influence the British masses, consistently hold out the illusion of a pleasant, easy and non-revolutionary issue from the present crises. We have already analysed the content of this illusion. We have seen that it is based, whether consciously or unconsciously upon the belief that a new and prolonged period of capitalist stabilization is at hand, a period which will offer the objective possibility of a steady, slow transition to a more socialistic basis of society. This counsel is the deadliest of all the poisons which can be administered to the workers." (“Nature of Capitalist Crises," p.370-371, published by Gollancz).

What a piece of self-condemnation!

But Mr. Strachey soon dropped all those ideas when the British Empire was threatened. Instead of advocating “revolutionary defeatism," as a true disciple of Lenin, with the outbreak of war he joined the A.R.P., and later the R.A.F. He abandoned the Communist Party which, at that time, was calling the war an “imperialist war." From that time up to the time of writing he has been a supporter and member of the Labour Party.

His actual job during the war has been very well described by the Observer (June 2nd, 1946).

   "A critical moment was reached in the development of our bombing policy. Heavy raids on German cities caused heavy civilian casualties among German women and children. These concentrated raids might rouse the British public to objection. His weekly broadcasts gently took the public mind off the receiving end of the bombing attacks, and fixed it on the courage of the crews and the master plans behind the attacks."

Indeed, a nice occupation for an avowed internationalist.

So we see that Mr. Strachey has changed from an enemy of Labourism to a member of the Labour Government.

This does not come as a surprise to Socialists. For members of the S.P.G.B. realise that so long as the workers are not Socialists, politicians are able to change their policy at will because they receive their support from workers who give them blind allegiance.

The remedy is for the workers to do a little thinking for themselves. For when the majority of workers have become Socialists it will mean doom for the professional politician. For then the working class will have established a society which will no longer need Labour leaders or politicians of any sort.

G. W. Clark

Holiday Meditation (1948)

A Short Story from the August 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

He lay stretched out on the beach, and felt the warm glow of the sun and the faint sea breeze on his skin. To his left he could hear the murmur of conversation, and in the distance the delighted shrieks of children playing on the sand and in the sea. The sea mirrored the cobalt blue sky, and the foam was white where the waves broke. An occasional gull dipped on the waves, and flew off with a morsel of food. He felt that he was beginning to live. He looked searchingly at the scene before him, and sank back, closing his eyes, his thoughts lost in meditation . . . 

People seemed different on holiday: for a week or a fortnight in the year they were carefree. He contrasted in his mind the worn and worried faces that he saw in the tube trains every morning and evening going to and from work. Those dead pans were the same people who on holiday were happy. Of course he was no different. He would have to spend a lifetime at a monotonous job, with an occasional glimpse of what life could be like. Yet no doubt a life of leisure could also be monotonous, but there were such long stretches of work ahead, and at the end of it, what?

Work seemed to crush out any creative inspirations. He smiled grimly as he recalled having escaped to Epping Forest on Saturdays with his brushes and paints in order to attempt to catch on paper the changing shades of the green foliage. Yes, it was an attempt; that is all he could say, but the effort was worth while, because it prevented him from getting into a rut—of becoming a work beast. Of having no interest in life except work.

Why was. it that he hated work? He recalled that when he was young, life seemed like an adventure. Then he was fired with ambition. “Work hard, my boy, and you will reach the top of the tree,” was the advice of his father. Well, he had always worked hard . . .  He had long ago learned that efficiency did not increase his earning capacity. It is true that he had been grudgingly given a rise when he had married, but he still had only enough to eke out week by week, and this applied to the other chaps on the job. Did he hate work because a lifetime was expended doing the same routine, and of being denied the right to enjoy and have the good things of life. Or was it because of the mental conflict of holding a job he disliked, in order that he could exist. He had noticed of late that he had become more irritable. To him his future seemed hopeless. Yet there were thousands in a similar position to him. What did they think and feel? Or had they become part of the machines they tended? This was the machine age and the machines had left their mark. This was the age of despair, and the future seemed grim and dark.

He shuddered slightly. Overhead a seagull circled and dipped and gave its strident call as if to mock him.

S. W. C.

General Election, 1950 (1949)

From the August 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

Preparations for next year’s general election are under way. Unless some unforeseen incident precipitates the event, it can be expected before or during next summer. The two main protagonists, the Labour Party and the Conservative Party, have been having some preliminary slaps at one another for a few months past. The Labour Party tells us that it is planning for the future and is going to contest the election on the programme contained in its pamphlet, “Labour Believes in Britain.” The Conservatives have plastered the hoardings with posters telling us that with wise “national housekeeping” they will reduce the cost of living and that Nationalisation has cost “Us" £75,000,000, a drain on “OUR” income that they will stop. They have also completed their series of “Charters,” which will, no doubt, form their main election platform. Both parties are now adepts in the game of vote catching, although they will find it an increasingly difficult proposition in the future.

For members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain this forthcoming election has especial interest. We have, in previous elections, put one candidate in the field, but at the next election we shall contest two constituencies, Paddington North and East Ham South. That may not seem to be a matter for enthusiasm to some of our readers, but it is to us, and particularly to those of us who reside in the constituencies selected.

When we enter an arena with our candidate, it is not just a matter of another party muscling in on the time honoured game of fooling the workers. We do not treat the business as a sport, wishing our opponents good luck and congratulating the one who succeeds in collecting the most votes and a £1,000 a year job. We do not indulge in hypocritical handshaking with our opponents or in the “good-luck-old-man, the-best-man-has-won” bunkum. We are in deadly earnest. Our opponents represent our class enemies and there can be no truce in the class struggle. We do not even canvass votes as do our opponents. In fact we urge workers to refrain from voting for us unless they understand our object and are prepared to work with us for its achievement. An election campaign, for us, is a means of propagating our ideas amongst the workers at a time when political interest is rife and it is a means of gauging the development of Socialist ideas in the constituency contested. Further to that, of course, is the fact that, in contesting every possible election we are working towards the achievement of our object. Election campaigns that are successful in bringing more and more workers to an understanding and a desire for Socialism are preparing the ground for an increasing number of campaigns in the future.

It is not our object to look too far ahead at the moment. We are not focussing our attention beyond the forthcoming general election and our two campaigns. We arc getting ready. Our election agents are appointed and our candidates selected. Most of the work that is to be done at the moment will be done by our Parliamentary Committee and appointed members from the Paddington and West Ham branches. As the election date becomes nearer there will be loads of work for every comrade and sympathiser who has an hour or two to spare. The main task of the moment is to find the funds to pay the preliminary expenses. We must find suitable campaign premises in the constituencies NOW. We must consider and prepare certain printing matter NOW. We must have the necessary deposit NOW. Especially as the election date may be sprung on us earlier than we anticipate. We have estimated that the two contests will cost us about £900 and we need to get our hands on the major portion of that sum, right NOW.

The issue, whether we contest these two constituencies or not, does not depend on the amount of donations that we receive, but the success that attends our efforts most certainly does. Those readers of the Socialist Standard, whether they be members, sympathisers or just mildly interested, who want to help in the struggle to achieve Socialism should do so without delay. Those who would like to do a job of some sort, but have not the time or opportunity, can render us most timely assistance if they send along a few shillings. Our coffers are shallow, our need is deep.

In the struggle for Socialism we are emerging from the pioneer phase. Days of enthusiasm are ahead. Join with us in the only war worth fighting, in the only struggle worthy of working class effort, the struggle to end the system that deprives the workers of the fruits of their labour, the struggle so that poverty may give place to comfort, privilege to equality, and slavery to freedom. Don’t wait until the election date is announced and then roll up your sleeves and stride in to help. Roll up your sleeves and help by all means, but do not leave it too late, or the necessary preliminary work may not have been done through lack of funds. Even if it means going without a pint or packet of fags, dip into your packet and send a donation NOW. Emphasis on the NOW. Nothing you send will be too little and certainly nothing you can send will be too much. Cross your postal orders and make them payable to the S.P.G.B., then address your letter to E. Lake, S.P.G.B., Rugby Chambers, 2 Rugby Street, London, W. C. 1. And don't forget. DO IT NOW.

W.Waters

More Light On The Stalin-Tito Quarrel (1950)

From the August 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

A recent broadcast by Konni Zilliacus, reported in the “Listener” of May 11th, throws some interesting light on the dispute between Russia and Yugoslavia. It is also revealing in the matter of Zilliacus’ own position as a fellow-traveller of late, and as the broadcast was certainly sympathetic to the Tito regime he must be in grave danger of being branded as a Trotskyist-Titoist-Fascist.

The theme of the broadcast was that if the conflict between these two “Communist” countries could be settled then it might even be possible to “discover the answer to the most important question in the world— that is how to end the arms race and turn the cold war into at least tepid peace between the capitalist and communist world.” (Conclusion of his article.)

Ignoring this somewhat naive assumption regarding the problem of maintaining even a “tepid peace” in the present state of Capitalist Society, having given in his broadcast only a few examples of Soviet methods and duplicity when confronted with a recalcitrant satellite, it is incredible that Zilliacus could believe that Stalin would even come to regard an independent Yugoslavia as anything but a menace to an internally troubled Russia.

Zilliacus says for instance

  “While I was in Belgrade Moshe Pijade, a leading member of the Politburo of the Yugoslav Communist Party, published an account of the relations between Yugoslav Partisans and the Soviet Government during the war. It was backed by the actual text of telegrams and messages. It showed quite clearly that the Russians refused all help for a long time, on the ground that it was technically impossible, but really because they were trying to bring about some kind of arrangement between Draža Mihailović, representing the émigré Royalist Government in London supported by the Western Allies, and Tito’s Partisans. Moshe Pijade also related how, when he was in Moscow during the conference between the Russians and their Western Allies in 1944, Molotov in reply to his question patted him on the shoulder and said: 'The position as regards Yugoslavia is excellent.' It was only later that the Yugoslavs discovered, according to their account, that what was really discussed was dividing their country into Russian and British spheres of influence on a fifty-fifty basis.”

Further, after the breaking point between the two countries had been reached when the Soviet military and civilian advisers were withdrawn, the dispute went beyond a mere exchange of letters and an economic boycott was applied by Russia which was accompanied by “notes couched in threatening language, troop movements and frontier incidents, and a tornado of propaganda inciting the people to rebellion.”

The attempt to wreck Yugoslavia failed however, and now according to Zilliacus, “The people and the government are united and on their mettle.” He goes on to list the great changes which he claims are taking place, including the freeing of literature, science and art from political controls; economic decentralization and a vigorous campaign against bureaucracy; experiments in workers’ control. The sting however is in the tail: —

   “At the same time Yugoslav leaders are candid about how much remains to be done. One of the chief of them said to me, ‘We must admit that in the Socialist States we have not yet solved the problem of freedom.’"

One finds it difficult to reconcile “a united government and people” with the unsolved “problem of freedom.” The latter expression is reminiscent of the problem of maintaining law and order which so frequently occurs in bourgeois society.

J. L.

Party News Briefs (1951)

Party News from the August 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

Delegate Meeting Venue. A reminder to all Comrades and sympathisers that the Annual Delegate Meeting will be held at Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, W.C.1, on Saturday and Sunday, September 1st and 2nd. Commencing each day at 11 a.m. A social and dance will be held on the Saturday evening.

Provincial Branches and Groups have some very encouraging reports on outdoor propaganda. In Yorkshire the two London Comrades are having good meetings. York, Bradford and Leeds have been visited and Leeds has proved a very good spot, large audiences attending our meetings on the Town Hall Steps. Two Meetings were held in Nottingham on June 5th, one with an audience of 350 and literature sales 8/- and later in the day another meeting with an average audience of 800 and literature sales 22/-. The speaker reports that the audience was eager to hear the Party case and very little opposition was shown.

Swansea Group is arranging a debate in the near future with a local minister who will be defending, and the Party representative opposing, the ideas of Christianity. Brighton Group is holding excellent meetings each Sunday afternoon and evening. The seaside meeting spot was the centre of a visit for several London members on Sunday, July 8th. One meeting commenced at 3 p.m. and a most interested audience, varying between 500 and 700 people listened attentively. A member of the Labour Party took the platform in opposition during the afternoon. The meeting reluctantly dispersed at 5.15 for a tea break. At 6 p.m. the meeting again resumed and continued until 9.15, many of the previous audience were present. Good questions were put from an audience of 400 which hardly changed throughout the evening. Here again an opponent, this time a Communist, took the platform in opposition. Literature sales during the two meetings amounted to thirty shillings.

This brief report is of one of several meetings that have been held in Brighton this season and the Group members would appreciate the help of London Comrades. The meeting spot is at the Fishmarket, immediately off the beach, and if Members are thinking of a day at the sea, here is the place to enjoy the sea air and help along the Party’s work. Ealing Branch Comrades organised another trip to Southsea on Sunday, July 15th. An excellent meeting was held on the sea front during the afternoon, four or five London speakers addressed the meeting. Literature sales were good and at the termination of the meeting, two large groups of the audience continued to discuss points raised during the meeting.

This spot is well worth continuing, and the Branch is organising another trip on August 18th. Information regarding this can be obtained from the Organiser of Ealing Branch.

The telephone has now been installed at Head Office—MAC 3811—will members please note.

Phyllis Howard