Cooking the Books: Unpaid Work (2018)

The Cooking the Books column from the November 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘British people do more than £1tn of housework each year – unpaid’, read the headline in the Guardian (3 October) reporting on a study by the Office for National Statistics, and went on: ‘Unpaid household work, such as looking after children, doing laundry and cooking, is worth £1.24tn per year.’

Many, including socialists, have pointed out that, in only measuring paid work, GDP omits whole swathes of work as the exercise of mental and physical energy. Not all work is employment.

The ONS arrived at its figure by calculating what people would have to pay if they got someone to do the work, not just of looking after the children, cooking and doing the laundry, but also of cleaning, repairing and maintaining the home (and garden), caring for an adult at home, and driving to and from work, the supermarket and school. Also included was voluntary activity outside the home.

To make the figures more understandable to the general public, the ONS divided the total figure of £1.24 trillion by the total UK population of some 65.7 million, to arrive at the figure of £18,932 literally per every person including children. This can be broken down by activity. Perhaps surprisingly the largest is transport at £5459 (29 percent). Next is child care at £5358 (28 percent). housing services (cleaning, etc) is £3037 (16 percent); food preparation £2400 (13 percent), laundering £1355 (7 percent), adult care £898 and voluntary activity £365.

The Times reported the survey under the headline ‘Washing Up? That’ll be £12,000, darling’, with this as what a ‘stay-at-home spouse’ could claim for household chores. But it is not just women who do this unpaid work as is obvious in the case of people living on their own; all the work will be done by them, whether a man or a woman.

Apart from adult care and voluntary activity outside the home, the work covered by the ONS survey is work in connection with recreating the mental and physical energies people sell to their employer and with bringing up a future generation of wage workers. This means that, strictly speaking, it is not really unpaid. The work itself is unpaid, but not what the person doing the work has to consume to be in a position to do it. This has to be paid for, and is out of wages or state payments such as child benefit and carer’s allowance. This is most obvious in the case of the stay-at-home partner; the food, clothes, etc they consume has to be paid for out of the wage of the working partner. The same applies to everyone carrying out the unpaid work, including those in paid work. Provision for them to create the mental and physical energy to carry out the unpaid work is included in wages.

This brings out the fallacy of the ‘Wages for Housework’ campaign. If the Times’ £12,000 were paid to the stay-at-home partner then the working partner’s wage would come to be reduced by the same amount. In fact if all this work were paid then wages would tend towards 16.2 percent of their current level as the percentage of consumer spending that the ONS says ‘was spent on direct costs for providing unpaid work services, mainly spent on fuel, renting and food.’ This means that in the ONS’s figure there’s double-counting with the greater part of people’s income from work and state payments. This does not make the statistics invalid or useless. They are interesting in revealing what goes into recreating labour-power – which when used by capitalist employers provides them with the unpaid labour that is the source of their profits.

Human relationships in socialism (2018)

From the November 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

By nature ‘human nature’ is gregarious and co-operative. It is the class division of society that has produced the ongoing alienation, competition and anti-natural behaviour we see. It has criminalised society. Socialism is the negation of capitalism which will be the last class society in history.

With socialism, gangsters’ cliques will lose their socio-economic breeding grounds. Their anti-social and anti-natural survivalist tricks – ‘the most violent, mean and malignant passions of the human breast, the Furies of private interest’ (Karl Marx) will fall into oblivion. Competition for possessions will give way to cooperation for life. Humans will regain their lost original nature once again by demolishing their ‘fear of freedom’ in a knowledgeable coherent relationship among themselves and with their surrounding nature, moving on to a higher phase of social progress, reaffirming equality, freedom, peace and happiness in unison, in harmony. ‘The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism’ (Karl Marx). According to him, with the dissolution of the power of money, private exchange and private property will cease to exist; ‘then you can exchange love only for love, trust for trust, etc …’ (Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844).

Marx and Engels held genuine socialism to be ‘Communismus, Socialismus, Humanismus’ (German Ideology, Chapter 4).

Engels clearly set out the progression: ‘State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous and then dies of itself. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of the processes of production. The state is not ‘abolished’, it withers away’ (Frederick Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific).

World socialist society will do away with classes and could be organised on a three-tier system of Local, Regional and Global Councils to deal with the administration of all their respective specific responsibilities relating to life, things, relations and problems. Money will go to the museums beside bronze axes. Private property and all its paraphernalia relating to money, wages, profits, private, joint-stock, state, multi-national, transnational and corporate et al. ownerships, and all selfish private interests as against social well-being, will be things of the past. Under such a global arrangement of things and affairs of life, the crimes of today will also generally be a thing of the past. In the event of any rarely occurring aberrations on the part of an individual member of society, the response could be educative and social correctional and compassionate counselling. Humans will have elevated themselves to a higher stage in history as a new-born humane species, leaving behind their prehistory of competition and conflict.

Binay Sarkar

Editorial: How Shall We Vote? (1989)

Editorial from the November 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

All the parties, except the Tories, discussed electoral reform at their autumn Conferences. Labour rejected it, but the minor parties—the Liberals, the SDP and the Greens—came out in favour as the only way of getting more of their members into the House of Commons. They also floated the idea of a pact with Labour to oust Thatcher in return for the introduction of proportional representation. Electoral arithmetic is on the side of the anti-Tory parties since at the last election, as indeed in the two previous ones, Thatcher and the Tories were returned even though four out of every seven voters rejected them. So is there a need for electoral reform?

We might as well give our answer straightaway: No, there isn’t. A majority seeking to replace capitalism by socialism only requires one thing of an electoral system under capitalism—that it should allow a majority opinion to reflect itself as a majority of seats in parliament. We are not interested in whether the system ensures a strong and stable government of capitalism nor in whether it ensures a fair representation of capitalist political parties. As the existing electoral system in Britain does allow a majority viewpoint to be translated into a majority of seats, we see no point in diverting our energies from our task of working towards the emergence of a socialist majority towards working for electoral reform within capitalism.

However, since socialism will be a fully democratic society we do have an interest in what is and what is not a fair electoral system since such a system will be an essential part of the democratic decision-making and administrative structure of socialist society.

From the point of view of democratic theory, an electoral system should ensure that the persons elected really are representative. The case against the first-past-the-post system that applies in Britain is that it does not necessarily do this when there are more than two candidates. This is because it allows a candidate to be elected with less than 50 per cent of the votes (that is to say, against the will of a majority of the voters), as were 45 per cent of MPs, of all parties, at the last general election.

There are various ways of avoiding this. Organising a run-off between the top two candidates in a second ballot (as in France) or, what amounts to the same thing, allowing voters to place the candidates in order of preference (as in Australia) and, if no candidate gets 50 per cent, to eliminate the bottom candidates and redistribute their votes amongst the others until one of them does reach this figure. This system, known as the alternative vote, is widely used in trade unions for the election of their officials and is favoured for parliamentary elections by some in Labour Party and even by some Tories. A variant of it, known as the Single Transferable Vote (STV) is applied in Ireland, both North (except for Westminster MPs) and South. Under it voters again place the candidates in order of preference but in a multi-member rather than a single-member constituency. A candidate is not elected unless, and until, after successive redistributions of the votes of the bottom candidates, they obtain a certain quota of votes. This is the system favoured by the Liberals, the SDP and some in the Labour Party. It is frequently described as a system of proportional representation even by its partisans but in fact it is not. It is essentially a system, like the second ballot and the Australian alternative vote, for ensuring that those elected attain a minimum level of representativity. It is only incidentally that, in a context of competing political parties, it ensures the representation of minority parties enjoying a certain minimum, but not necessarily low, level of support amongst voters.

As all these systems are compatible with democratic theory, no doubt they will continue into socialist society for the various delegate bodies that will form part of its democratic decision-making structure. Proportional representation, properly so-called, is a different matter as it presupposes the existence of competing political parties and was in fact devised precisely for such parties. It requires multi-member constituencies (which can be the whole country, as in Holland and Israel) and party lists rather than individual candidates. A great variety of PR systems exist in the various countries which practise it but these are all based on the principle that the seats should be allocated to the party lists in more or less strict proportion to the number of votes obtained.

The essence of democracy is popular participation not competing parties. In Socialism elections will not be about deciding which particular party is to come to “power” and form the government. Politics in socialism will not be about coercive power and its exercise and so won’t really be politics at all in its present-day sense of the “art and practice of government” or “the conduct of state affairs”. Being a classless society of free and equal men and women, socialism will not have a coercive state machine nor a government to control it. The conduct of public affairs in socialism will be about people participating in the running of their lives in a non-antagonistic context of co-operation to further the common good.

Socialist democracy will be a participatory democracy rather than the choice every four or five years, with or without proportional representation, between rival gangs of professional politicians that passes for democracy today.

Modern Technology and Socialism (1989)

From the December 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

In spite of its catastrophes and its social idiocies, industrial capitalism goes on from strength to strength. It establishes itself in new countries, turning more and more of the world’s population into members of the working class. It exploits increasing amounts of the Earth’s resources for commodity production. It turns out a growing mass and range of products to throw on to the market. It harnesses new discoveries, inventions, techniques and systems to expand and speed up production, distribution, travel, and communication. At the same time, of course, it pollutes and wastes and kills and oppresses on an ever-increasing scale.

Modifying Socialism

So far from casting doubt upon the socialist analysis of historical development, this accelerating and expanding progress provides daily confirmation of the inevitability of social change and the powerful impact of technology upon social structures and individual lives. The driver of a JCB is a different man from the navvy with his pick and shovel, not only in the way he does his job, but also in the way he views society and his place in it.

What is of particular interest to socialists is the way in which developments in capitalism modify ideas of socialism. Marx, and to a lesser extent Engels, was especially cautious about envisaging socialist society; and the wisdom of this is borne out by the fact that, in spite of their careful historical perspective, it is clear to us that even they could not help seeing the post-capitalist world broadly in terms of the conditions of their own times.

This applies just as surely to us today. We need to exercise the same caution when we allow ourselves to speculate upon the changes that the abolition of capitalism will bring about. Nevertheless, I do not believe that it is illegitimate to do this. What we must do, however, is acknowledge the relativity of our views. If each generation of socialists, then, sees the new society in a slightly different way because of changes that have taken place in capitalism, we shall be able to sustain a dynamic, rather than a static, conception of the liberated world for which we are all working.

The Dynamic of Technology

The underlying dynamic of social development is that of technology. While the relations of production, the class structure, within a social system are fairly rigidly maintained by the ruling class, the means of production are in a process of continual development, undermining that social structure.

In capitalism the rate of change has been incomparably greater than anything before in human history. In the hundred years since Marx’s death, the technological developments have been, if anything, more far-reaching in their social implications than those of the previous hundred years. In Marx’s day there were no motor cars or lorries and no road system which could have supported today’s mass of high-speed traffic. There were no aeroplanes or helicopters. There were no farm tractors, combine harvesters, milking machines or tuberculosis-free cattle. There was little domestic gas and virtually no domestic electricity so that there were no household machines such as vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, washing machines, or food mixers. Electronic engineering, with its wide range of applications from radio and television to computers, microwave ovens and automatic control systems, had not yet begun. There was no automation, no laser and fibre optics, no space engineering, no biological engineering, no atomic engineering, no man-made fibres or plastics, no stainless steel or even aluminium. It was a society of horse drawn vehicles, domestic servants, heavy manual work, cast iron and steam power.

Change in Perspective

The sort of socialist society which could have been erected upon such a technological base would, it has been argued, have had a relatively inflexible monolithic structure, with centralised units of mass production, centralised planning, limited consumption and ease of movement, and still a great deal of hard work. The changes that the working class of the world has developed since those days, under the whip of capital, have modified conditions of living and working, and particularly the prospects for future society, in a fundamental way. They have made the production of abundance a real and obvious social possibility. At the same time, of course, they have introduced the possibilities of obliterating all civilisation on Earth or making the planet itself uninhabitable. There is now very little that modern science and technology can not do, given sufficient resources and effort.

Small Dispersed Production

The technological progress that has been made in the last hundred years has, as is always the case, been the result of improvements, not only in devices or machines, but in materials, techniques and systems as well. One of the principal factors which made Victorian textile mills and engineering machine shops so large and noisy was their dependence upon single huge power sources such as steam engines or the early electric motors driving miles of overhead shafting and belting. Steady improvements in design, materials and precision engineering made the production of small electric motors easy and relatively cheap, so that every machine can now have its own—often a number of them—performing different functions.

Similar improvements in steel alloys, welded fabrication design and techniques have made massive cast iron frames for machines obsolete. Indeed, almost every process of production and distribution today uses less energy and a smaller quantity of materials than a comparable process did a hundred years ago, and, apart from the logistics of transporting materials to, and products from, a machine, it can now be sited almost anywhere within reach of a three-phase electricity supply.

Except for large products, such as ships or rolled steel girders, enormous manufacturing plants are no longer technically necessary. Capital may be able to obtain a few remaining economies in management and administration in large industrial agglomerations, although modern communications systems have overtaken most of these, but otherwise the trend is towards smaller and more dispersed factories. Capital resists this process at every step, striving to achieve economies of scale, but technology is pointing the way to a pattern of industry very different from the dark satanic mills of Victorian England.

Machinery and Profitability

One of the things that Marx draws attention to in Vol. III of Capital is that particular inefficiency of the capitalist mode of production which is caused by capitalists’ reluctance to install superior machinery. No surplus value is extracted from constant capital itself—this dead labour embodied in means of production. The fixed portion of it, represented by plant and machinery, is imparted to the commodities, little by little, as these items wear out. Even under the pressure of competition, therefore, the capitalist tries to extract the last penny of value out of his fixed capital before replacing it.

What improved machinery must do for the capitalist, if it is to justify its cost, is to increase the productivity of his workers (his rate of extraction of surplus value from them) to give a rate of profit equal to, or above, the average. The greater the outlay on fixed capital, however, the more dependent such profitability is upon the continuing buoyancy of the economy. But, of course, capitalism is incorrigibly cyclical and unpredictable. Expensive machinery lying idle in a slump represents growing losses for capital, to be set against the profits made in better times. In slumps, too, the real price of labour power is driven down—as we have seen in the first half of the 1980s. This makes more labour-intensive processes relatively cheaper and more profitable, offsetting the advantages of capital-intensive methods. Moreover, labour can be dismissed with a week’s notice. Machinery can not.

Automation

These considerations have made capital particularly slow to introduce automation, especially when wages are low, because automation is a highly capital-intensive way of using machinery. But this is only the distorted capitalist measure of its cost, in which, to survive, every individual company must extract its measure of surplus value from its workers. In social terms, as a means of using crystallised past labour to supplement and ease the toil of living labour, it is not much more expensive than other ways of using machinery. The potential of automation for post-capitalist, democratic society is enormous. When used in conjunction with computers it is virtually limitless in its possibilities.

The principle behind the wide range of devices and techniques used in automation is not a new one. Whereas tools, instruments and devices like wheels and levers may be said to supplement human limbs, and machines—themselves using tools—can be thought of as amplifying human energy and speed, automation represents an extension, an amplification, of the human nervous system and, with computers, the brain. Automation makes decisions and gives instructions for them to be carried out.

One of the famous examples of early industrial automation was James Watts’ steam engine governor. He used two iron balls attached to linkage to control the speed of his steam engines. Rotating with the engine shaft, the balls were spun outwards with centrifugal force. At a pre-set speed their outward movement, through the linkage, began to close the valve which fed steam to the engine and so reduced the power, and consequently the speed, again. The principle involved here is that of using error, and the extent of that error, to correct the error. Whether mechanical, electrical, electronic or optical devices are used, that underlying principle remains the same. The essential components are suitable sensing or measuring devices to monitor the behaviour of a particular aspect of the machine or process, communication links from those devices leading to servo mechanisms which control what is going on.

Computers used in situations like this add another dimension of sophistication. Instead of a number of monitoring devices feeding their quite independent instructions to the overall process—as, for example, in multiple domestic central heating thermostat—the computer receives these various inputs and makes a programmed decision based upon the information from all of them. Modern motor cars have computer fuel and ignition control systems like this.

Information

A point worth noticing about this sort of technological development is that the new element in the employment of machines is information. The information revolution, as it has been loosely called, is not just a matter of improved means of communication and recording systems amongst people. We now control an increasing number of machines purely by information. There is, for example, hardly a heavy lorry left on today’s roads in which the driver turns the front wheels for steering through direct gearing from the steering wheel. The size and weight involved is far too exhausting. Instead, his movements of the steering wheel are transmitted as instructions to the servomechanism which does the actual work. Of course, this is not an example of automation. Here, it is the driver who is sensing and making decisions upon the conditions of the road and his vehicle.

Guided missiles, on the other hand, do use automation principles of self-correction. By a process of constant checking they seek out the destination with which they, have been programmed and deliver their warhead to it. Bizarre as it might now seem, a socialist society, with no need for weapons, might well find this expensive method of transport appropriate for delivering some types of urgent supplies.

Remote Control

Operating machines by giving them information opens up other possibilities too. Information can be sent over almost any distance, as the control of the various exploratory space vehicles demonstrates. There are also a number of methods of ensuring that imperfect transmission systems do not allow garbled information to get through. Remote control of machines in dangerous or humanly inaccessible locations is now, therefore, becoming common practice—but only where capital finds it profitable to use it.

Remote control of more mundane machines, however, has a very low priority in capitalism. Except for control rooms in things like power stations or ships, capitalism tends to keep workers as close to their machines as possible so that they, themselves, can be under control. At the moment, the few applications of this facility involve peripheral uses such as telephone instructions to domestic machines at home by a few highly paid workers with not enough free time to get home themselves. The potentialities of remote control for the free society of the future are, in contrast, rich and liberating. A person who had taken on responsibility for a particular production process or service could monitor its progress and make adjustments from wherever he or she happened to be. With good satellite radio links, machines and equipment in isolated stations, performing a variety of environmental control or supply functions, could be supervised from almost any distance.

Memory

Immediate instructions to machines, however, become less and less necessary with the development of memory devices. From the punched card system of the Jacquard loom at the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present generation of computers capable of recording and storing immensely complicated programmes of instructions, the development of information storage in a form suitable for controlling machines has turned a quantitative difference into a qualitative one. Even the common computer programmes which can play chess against a human opponent have so many thousands of possible moves and countermoves stored in their memories that playing against them can seem like playing against another human being. In the same way, immensely complicated and subtle programmes of instructions for machines—programmes which learn from experience—can be devised to do almost everything that human operators can do.

Robots

The microminiaturisation and mass production of computer circuits on tiny silicon chips has made it possible to incorporate millions of small computers into everyday machines, just as we now use millions of small electric motors. Now all the human working functions have been simulated in machines. The skills of craftsmen and the diagnostic knowledge of doctors and other experts can now be fed into computerised machines which then operate like craftsmen and experts. Even speaking and understanding speech is in the rudimentary stages of development.

While most people are hardly aware of it, therefore: they are living in a world containing a rapidly multiplying number of increasingly sophisticated robots. Of course, the robot of early science fiction, walking on legs, using fingers, and even looking like a human being is a rather pointless product. It has all the limitations of the human being and none of its advantages. Real robots are purpose designed and greatly exceed human capabilities for each particular purpose.

One way of looking at this trend is to consider the modern generations of machines as an evolving population of slaves. As far as the technology is concerned, there is now no reason why human beings should do any of the dull, dreary or dirty jobs that are necessary to provide the wealth and services of an advanced, affluent society. Machines can—could if they were under the control of a free democratic society—do all of these tasks for us.

The Social Structure

Even to speak in these terms, however, points up the enormous disparity between what is possible and what capitalism is actually doing with these technological advances. There are already, for example, many millions of small personal computers in the world. But the vast majority of them are dedicated to playing games, mostly of the “shoot-em-up” or “shoot-em-down” variety. Escapism, which has made so many billions of pounds profit for the record industry and the film, television and videotape market, has now moved beyond the passive entertainment phase and is opening up a vast new field of interactive pseudo-experiences.

The other area in which all the sophistications of modern technology are being given almost unrestrained freedom to develop is very closely linked to the computer games market. It is that of fighting wars. Modern weapons and fighting equipment not only enhance human capabilities to an almost unlimited extent with their destructiveness, speed, accuracy, infrared vision, radar and laser location, and so on, but they can also “think” for themselves with the computers they incorporate. Capitalism is therefore distorting and diverting a very large part of technological potential away from the satisfying of human needs.

Paramount amongst those needs, once nourishment and health have been obtained, is that of freedom. But this is precisely what capitalism will not and can not provide, since it is only through restriction, repression and deception that the ruling class is able to continue to exploit the labour of the great majority of the population. As a substitute for freedom, capitalism offers commodities—or at least the chance to earn them—an ever-increasing mass and diversity of gadgets and thrills and sweets.

Socialism Now

The sort of socialist society that has become possible with these developments is already a very different one from that which was feasible in Marx’s day. But, also, the urgent necessity of removing capitalism before it removes us has become far more pressing.

The overall effect of the technological. developments of .the last hundred years, and particularly of the last fifty years, has been the increased potential for flexibility and freedom. Although centralised world-wide planning of production and distribution has become more and more possible with the evolution of electronic and satellite communication systems and the information-handling capabilities of computers, it has, at the same time, become less and less necessary or desirable.

There are bound to be democratic decisions taken about certain aspects of production and distribution from time to time, at local, regional, continental and even global level. But, for the great mass of adjustments and controls, ordinary channels of supply arid demand (real demand) will provide the most flexible and responsive basic system for regulating socialist society’s production and distribution. The almost infinitely complex network of manufacturers, growers, distributors and suppliers will, however, need well-organised communication and co-operation amongst themselves, as well as ready access to a richness of information about research, designs, methods, output, capacity, local preferences, etc. etc., which is simply impossible in capitalism.

The electronic stock control systems now in use in many major stores and the computer-controlled warehousing gradually being installed by large distributors already permit the constant monitoring of consumption of goods to be carried on, future demand to be predicted within quite fine limits and automatic, and almost instantaneous, re-ordering to be carried out. However, the anarchy of the market, the restricted and biased consumption enforced by the money qualification, and the jealous guarding and suppression of information carried on by nation states and almost every type of capitalist company that exists make it impossible to realise the enormous social benefits that could be derived from this information revolution.

Modern information systems make it feasible for anyone, anywhere in the world, who has access to a telephone-linked computer to find out all the specifications and quantities of goods or services that are available or in demand. Instead, today, thousands of programmer hours a year are being devoted to devising blocks to prevent such information being accessed.

In the post-capitalist world it is this greatly enhanced information network which will replace and supersede the market and the price mechanism. The immense volume of information about the daily facts and figures of all production, distribution and services which is in the possession of the working class—and which is today barely used, except to total output figures and compile balance sheets—will be accorded its true value in socialist society as the data for conscious social control of the means of life by every member of society. “Democratic control” will be far more than a matter of voting when contentious issues arise. It will be the continual exercise of informed individual power in the co-operative processes of sustaining and enhancing social life.

Ron Cook

The above article is the text of the Conference Lecture delivered at the Annual Conference of the Socialist Party in March 1989.

The Real Foe. (1914)

From the December 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fellow Members of the Working Class,—

Month after month the war goes on; nation after nation is drawn into the maelstrom’s vortex. To the original combatants have now been added Portugal and Turkey, while Italy is arming and Greece, Bulgaria, and Rumania are palpitating with the all-pervading blood-lust. Thus the “European War” assumes the character of a world struggle.

Meanwhile the million men Kitchener asked for at first have become inadequate. The war having developed into a “fortress war,” in which practically every available man and boy capable of carrying a gun, among a population of one hundred and twenty millions, is forced to add his body as a handful of clay to the ramparts about countries which belong to his exploiters, a torrent of blood is needed to flood the “enemy” from their trenches. Hence every “fit” man in these islands is required for the butcher’s job. What a spectacle International Capitalism is preparing!

With such a deluge of blood imminent, with such a colossal avalanche of suffering about to be let loose upon the world, it is pertinent to ask again, as we have asked before, what and whose mighty interest is worth such butchery, such prodigal wasting of precious life, such maiming of strong, shapely and eminently useful bodies, such wrecking of virile minds, such hopeless ruin and black devastation as is being spread over the fairest parts of the earth.

Those who call you to battle give many reasons why you should go. They talk of patriotism who wring fortunes out of the provision of shoddy khaki and rotten boots to the men upon whose boots and clothing the result of the war may ultimately depend ; they talk of the rights of small States who applauded the Jameson raid ; they talk of the sanctity of the bond who flouted the provisions of the “Railwaymen’s Charter” ; they talk of honour whose word swindled electorates have many times found to be as bad as their bond. But in their most candid moments they, realising that none of these vaporous phrases will suffice to cover the reeking, quivering mass of human agony they know they are about to spread over the plains of Europe, proclaim that, whatever the cause of the war, the result will be the smashing of the most serious industrial rival Great Britain knows. To the discerning ear this hoped-for “result” of the war proclaims itself the war’s real cause also.

If there is any sound argument in this for workingmen of this country shooting their fellow-workers of other lands, it will be revealed by logical reasoning. The argument will not, however, stand logical handling from the worker’s point of view. If we are to go out and shoot those who compete with us for work, it is folly to go outside the country to do it, for our closest and most direct competitors are not the foreign workmen, but our fellows in the same street.

But the whole theory that the ultimate competition lies between worker and worker is false. The true competitor of the worker is machinery. It is advancing machinery which provides the unemployed, and will continue to do so tho’ every German is wiped off the face of the earth.

That the masters’ argument may be sound enough from the masters’ point of view only proves the antagonism that lies between the masters and the workers. If German trade were captured, the profits yielded by that trade to German exploiters might pass into British pockets—but not your pockets. Your masters might wax fatter than ever, but at once they would begin to devise ways and means for enabling the extra wealth they had found a market for to be produced by fewer workers. As wages rose consequent upon the greater demand for workers, the advantages of the use of machinery would be extended ; the use of more and improved machinery would follow, with inevitable displacement of workers. This is how the unemployed army is produced, and no victories over foreign armies can alter that.

Since the ultimate competitor is not the German workers, but machinery, it follows that the real foe of the workers are those who own and control the machinery: the master class. It is their control of the instruments of production that changes those instruments from helpful agents to oppressive competitors, whose every improvement is fraught with dread to those who use them.

The banishment of poverty can never be secured by slaughtering wealth producers. The idiotic stupidity of butchering other workers can never improve the position of the working class of any nation. Only by ousting the master class from the possession of the instruments of labour (every improvement in which, under their control, is disaster for the workers) can those instruments be used to bring comfort, security, and happiness to all who labour.

The Executive Committee.

The Real Enemy of the Working Class is the Master Class. Workers Unite!

Anti-Bolshevik (2018)

Book Review from the March 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘The Kronstadt Uprising’. By Ida Mett. (Theory and Practice, www.theoryandpractice.org.uk)

In March 1921, after the civil war in Russia had ended with the victory of the Bolshevik government, strikes broke out in Petrograd and other cities demanding an improvement in living conditions, basically the ‘Bread’ part of the ‘Peace, Land and Bread’ slogan that the Bolsheviks had used to win enough popular support to seize power. In Kronstadt, an island fortress and naval base commanding access to Petrograd, the armed sailors went further. They deposed the Bolshevik officials, locked some of them up, and demanded free and secret elections to the soviets (councils), in effect a genuine ‘soviet government’ rather than the one-party rule of the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks responded by sending in the Red Army to suppress this challenge to their rule. At least 4000 insurgents were killed or executed.

This is a reprint of Ida Mett’s classic pamphlet on what happened. Written in French in 1938, it set out to refute the Bolshevik view that it had been a counter-revolutionary plot hatched by the French secret service, led by Tsarist generals, etc. She succeeded well enough in making her case. As a native Russian-speaker (she was an anarchist exile from Russia living in France), she had access to the proclamations and declarations of the Kronstadt ‘provisional revolutionary committee’ and was able to show that they were demanding the ‘soviet’ rule that was supposed to have been established in November 1917 following the overthrow of Kerensky, but which had in fact resulted in the dictatorship of the Bolshevik party. One of the declarations she quoted denounced the ‘state capitalism’ of the Bolshevik party. All of their declarations are now available in English translation on the Marxist Internet Archive website.

Her article was published in 1948 (not in 1938 as stated in this and previous English editions) under the title ‘The Kronstadt Commune: the bloody twilight of the soviets’. Mett explained in a preface to a reprint of the French edition in 1970 that the syndicalist publication, Révolution prolétarienne, to which she had submitted it turned it down on the grounds that it was too hostile to Trotsky who was then being hounded by the Stalin regime that ended in his assassination in 1940. (It wasn’t as hostile as the Kronstadters’ declarations, though, which denounced him as ‘Field Marshal Lord Trotsky’).

Lenin and Trotsky do come out badly as what happened at Kronstadt showed that Bolshevik Russia was already in their day a brutal one-party dictatorship whose leaders would stop at nothing to hold on to power, i.e. well before Stalin was in control. To this day the very mention of ‘Kronstadt’ makes Trotskyists squirm.

This reprint includes the preface to the original edition published by the old Solidarity Group in 1967 and one by Murray Bookchin to a reprint in 1971. It is not the complete pamphlet as the opening chapter on the revolutionary role of Russian sailors in 1905-6 and in 1917 was not translated and has not yet been.

Adam Buick

South Africa and Ireland: Lessons for the Misguided. (1914)

From the February 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

South Africa is in strike turmoil that has set the Union Government in such a panic that, in addition to the most elaborate military precautions, it is described as a revolution more than a labour quarrel. Yet the demand of the strikers is for the reinstatement of the men displaced by the economies effected in the railway service by a policy of retrenchment!

The Capitalists’ Risks

Making full allowance for the fact that any will do to hang a quarrel on when a quarrel is brewing, it is difficult to imagine a revolution in any way connected with what the red flag, that decorated the streets of Johannesburg, is supposed to indicate, being dependent upon a question of capitalist administration.

On the other hand, the Government in South Africa have expressed the opinion that the present trouble arises from the presence of “agitators,” and that when these are successfully deported the trouble will cease. This is flattering to the agitators, but very doubtfully true to facts.

The most successful labour agitator must have the conditions for his success present, and the discontent must arise from something material in addition to the appeals of the agitator. The following figures from an article which appeared in the "Daily Telegraph” (Jan. 15th, 1914) may help to explain the economic conditions on which the “agitator” had to work:

  In 1912 the Rand, as it, is colloquially known, produced in round figures, £37,000,000 of gold. Over £13,500,000 of that vast sum was paid in wages, £7,865,000 going to Europeans of whom 23,518 were employed on the mines, and £5,691,000 to South African natives, of whom 193,351 were employed. Stores and supplies consumed on the Rand cost nearly ten millions sterling; £5,800,000 was spent in development work, leaving a balance of about £8,000,000 to be distributed as dividends to investors who had furnished the necessary capital for the mining enterprises.

Why Safety cannot be Afforded

It is interesting to note that the “investors who had furnished the necessary capital” had already had that capital returned to them in dividends up to forty-four times over, drawing 12 per dividend.

The “Daily Telegraph” says further:

   Some of the Rand mining companies have made enormous returns to their shareholders. There are 115 companies on the Rand from which returns were received, and it is impossible to give details of all of them, but a few typical instances of high dividends may be mentioned. The Ferreira Company, since its flotation has paid 4,415 per cent, on its capital, and has distributed nearly four millions sterling in dividends. The Crown Reed has paid 2,404 per cent. ; the Johannesburg Pioneer 2,107½ per cent. ; the Emmer, 1,237 per cent. ; the Meyer and Charlton, 1,105 per cent, ; the Durban Roodeport, 1,100 per cent. ; the Crown Mines, 1,067½ per cent. ; the New Hereto, 992½ per cent. ; the New Primrose 817 ½ per cent. ; and there have been many distributions amounting in the aggregate to 200, 300, and 400 per cent, and upwards. The total sum paid in dividends by the Rand mines amounts to £88,159,489. If the whole of the Transvaal gold mines be included, the payments to shareholders reach the colossal total of £91,462,773 distributed between 1887 and 1912.

Then if we recall the articles that went the rounds of the Press last July on the occasion of the former strike on the Rand, which showed how short-lived the miner was on account of the mortality from a form of phthisis resulting from breathing the dust-laden atmosphere, we shall get a further glimpse of the motive force behind the agitator.

The Answers to Industrialists

Apart, however, from the actual conditions of labour for white workers in South Africa, which on the showing of the above figures represent a degree of exploitation seldom to be met with – and leaving out the industrial position occupied by the native blacks and the imported Indians, which is infinitely worse – the attitude of the Government is enlightening. There is a growing body of labour opinion in this country and elsewhere, that contemns and belittles the political forces which we Socialists pronounce of the very first importance. In South Africa a big strike is on, and a general strike is threatened, and the answer of the capitalist Government is the mailed fist—the mobilisation of all forms of the weaponed arm of the law. With it the capitalist Government can batter the working class into submission, whether it, be in Johannesburg or Dublin.

The same lesson was taught by the strike of French railway workers that was scotched in a similar way—by calling up the military reserve, many of whom were of the strikers.

That lesson was quite lost upon the Industrialists. They argue that a general strike will bring society to a standstill. Which may be true, but the working class are at a hungry standstill easily first. The workers cannot hope to starve the masters into surrender. In the starvation handicap the workers are half way along the course to start with. Nor can they fight the masters, while the latter control the fighting machinery. Nor can they lock the master out while he holds the keys. If and when they are ready to stop capitalist exploitation, and expropriate the master class, granting they will instinctively turn to direct and immediate force to express such a conviction, we ask as—How will they use the vote they already possess?

The Weapon of the Vote.

According to the attitude of the Syndicalist, he would not use it at all. To tell him that the vote is —or should be—the modern, civilised methods of registering the opinions of citizens leaves him cold. Historical explanations of the growth and significance of the vote merely cause his lips to curl. But the majority of votes controls the policy of government, and if you refuse the social expression of your opinion you leave the majority with the enemy; your case is lost by default.

To be ready to right against capitalism and to refuse to vote against it is to us sheer folly—folly in its own account, and rank madness when the voting is an essential preliminary to successful fighting, and may even render the lighting unnecessary. The “agitators,” therefore, in South Africa may be arch-Larkins, but they are not Socialists. For the Socialist always emphasises the importance of the political weapon. It is this very emphasis that has enabled the Labour members here to steal our thunder, and substitute the form for the substance. While we insist on the necessity of political representation for Socialism, they insist upon political representation only, with themselves as the representatives.

The colour or creed of the capitalist government does not matter in the least. When Larkin brought his fiery cross across the Irish Sea, in his first speech here, at the Albert Hall, he said it was important that the Dublin strike should be won, but it was a thousand times more important that the Home Rule Bill should go through. Which shows that Larkin doesn’t understand the working-class position. For does not the situation in South Africa show the Boer generals— Delarey, Botha, and the rest who were prepared to fight for independence for South Africa, hand in glove, shoulder to shoulder, with their erstwhile opponents against the working class?

What Larkin Does Not Know

And so in Ireland, the Home Rulers, with the passing of the Bill that Mr. Larkin thinks so important, would be found side by side with Carson, Law, Smith & Co. against the workers.

The incident in South Africa is a glaring instance of the fundamental nature of the class struggle, and a standing example of how it overshadows any sectional difference between the masters, which all Socialists know, and which Larkin does not.

The same thing is going on in Dublin. The authorities are inclined to blame the “agitators,” and made the mistake South Africa is copying of imprisoning them. The forces of law and order ran amok and battered people not wisely but too well. The official investigation that was to follow has provided an illuminating spectacle. The process of white-washing is so flagrant that a Liberal member of Parliament who saw the battering and was going to throw light on the investigation has been badly snubbed and is disgusted. It is to be hoped he makes a noise when Parliament meets, but it is to be feared he is too loyal a Liberal to have the heart to inconvenience an administration that is already up against difficulties enough. After his timely rescue of the Government last session when they were threatened with a minority on a snap division, surely he will not round on them now! They must explain things to him.

The conduct of the police, however, can only be considered from their point of view as indiscreetly over-zealous, and one can quite understand the displeasure of the legal luminaries engaged upon the difficult task of glossing over so rough a case, at an English M.P. “poking his nose in,” as they expressed it.

As the action of the police in Dublin was no different in kind, if it were in degree, from their action in Wales and in Cornwall, when a Commission does sit on the matter, it may as well include in its terms of reference those and other cases besides Dublin.

But the present writer is strongly of the opinion that if the working class do not want the police force, and the army, and the navy, and the bench, and the rest of the present social machinery, used against them, the only way is to grasp the power that wields these forces, which is to be had by the casting of a vote in the right way, with the consciousness and the intentions of the Socialist behind it. You must get behind the gun; you must guide the policeman’s baton from the centre of government. The capture of the political machinery is still the essential preliminary to a successful working-class revolution.

Dick Kent

" . . . saved before it is too late," (1914)

From the February 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

Will the pious Christian who last month stole a copy of the Socialist Standard from a public library in order to send us thereon the hope that one of our contributors might “be saved before it is too late," apply at this office for a copy of one of the Commandments which he got into the envelope evidently by error.

Answers to Correspondents. (1914)

Letters to the Editors from the February 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

From the same town (Coventry), on the same date, we received two queries on similar general lines, though, perhaps, different in detail.

G.S. wishes to know if he would be consistent in joining the S.P.G.B., as he believes in Industrial Unionism. H.K. says he agrees with the principles of the S.P.G.B. and also with the principles of the I.W.G.B., (meaning. I suppose, the Industrial Workers of Great Britain), and asks, would he be logical in joining the S.P.G.B.

The similarity lies in both stating that they believe in Industrial Unionism. But whereas H.K. specifies the particular type be endorses, G.S. merely gives the general phrase.

There happens, however, to be a common ground of agreement between all sections of Industrial Unionism, namely, that the workers can take and hold the means of production through an economic organisation, and this whether they add or exclude political action as a detail of their case.

This basic factor necessarily places its supporters in opposition to the Socialists, who maintain that the capitalist class rules through its possession of political power, and that the economic supremacy of the masters — that is, their ownership of the means of production — is entirely dependent upon this political power, through which they make laws and raise and maintain the force (Army, Navy, Police, etc.) necessary to carry out those laws in their own class interest.

The above position is laid down briefly in the Declaration of Principles of the S.P.G.B. Hence acceptance of these principles must — logically and consistently—include a rejection of the nonsense that the workers can “take and hold" the means of production by an economic organisation while the master class are left in possession of the political power.

How the workers could “take and hold" while the masters had control of the fighting forces, no Industrial Unionist has ever been able to tell us, though we have had numerous debates, oral and written, with them.

G.S. and H. K., therefore, would be acting illogically and inconsistently in joining the S.P.G.B. while accepting the principles of Industrial Unionism.

Jack Fitzgerald

Waste Making (1961)

Book Review from the June 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Waste Makers by Vance Packard (Longmans, 21s.)

Capitalism has solved the problem of production. The system of capitalism, which already exists over much of the world and is rapidly capturing the rest, has given birth to sufficient productive potential to satisfy all the reasonable demands of mankind. All that now remains to be done is to bring in a system in which these potentialities can be realised to the full. For this is where capitalism has failed. 

Mr. Vance Packard’s new book The Waste Makers (Longmans, 21s.) throws lots of useful light on this failure and shows how some American capitalists try to create new markets and increase their profits. Of course, like racegoers betting on the Tote, they can't all win: but they all try. Sometimes an arms race will provide them with markets, and the American upper class realises how important the cold war is in staving off a slump. As Mr. Packard says:

  Financial columnist Sylvia Porter noted that every time there has been a suggestion of a major cut in Pentagon spending “the stock market has gone into a tail spin.” On the other hand, in May, 1960, when the Russian capture of the U-2 plane was followed by the collapse of the summit meeting, Wall Street stock-market prices advanced during seven successive days.

But even the unprecedented spending on arms cannot solve their problems. Mr. Packard says that “during the postwar years, the amount of goods and services that one man can turn out in an hour has increased by about 3 per cent, every year." What effect this had upon human fortunes? One is that consumer goods are deliberately made worse, so that they will wear out sooner, and therefore have to be replaced. Marketing Consultant Victor Lebow made a plea for “forced consumption” in the Journal of Retailing in the mid-fifties: “We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced and discarded at an ever increasing late." Packard quotes General Electric decisions to “change" (without publicity!) the life of a 200-watt bulb lamp from 1,000 hours to 750 hours, and the life of the 2,330 lamp from 300 to 200 hours. The Vice-President of the Chrysler car company is quoted as saying the quality of cars “is not as good as 10 years ago.” A guided-missile expert is quoted as pointing out that there was no technological reason why television sets could not be built to last for eight years without repair; while (according to Packard’s carefully-marshalled evidence) the quality of TV sets was in fact deteriorating.

Another waste-making device is regular changes of style, so that with enormous advertising campaigns plugging the new style, everyone with an older car or refrigerator or set of china is made to feel out of date, and has to buy the newer style to keep up with the Joneses. In this connection the board chairman of the powerful Whirlpool Corporation told engineers at a washing-machine technical conference that “an engineer’s principal purpose as an engineer is to create obsolescence.”

Yet a further means of pushing goods is the never-never. Consume now, pay later. The result is that many American families now have a load of unpaid debts. A survey by insurance companies, says Packard, showed that the average American family was about three months from bankruptcy and for millions of families the disaster was much closer than that. One “solution” is for the wife—including wives with young children—to go out to work as well as the husband. Investigators for U.S. News & World Report found that Americans’ biggest worry was “money,” and “making ends meet.”

  A minister in Cedar Rapids. Iowa, reported that “in 75 per cent of the cases where people come to me with marital problems, money enters in." And a doctor in the same city said many of his patients’ aches and pains were caused by money problems. “You can buy a car on time and stretch the payments over thirty months, and you’ve got a chronic pain. You really have.”

And all this feverish drive takes place at a time when, according to an estimate by ACTION, the American national organization for civic improvement, it would cost about one hundred billion dollars to wipe out United States slums, and when, as Packard says, there are millions of families "unquestionably ill-fed. ill-clothed, ill-housed.”

This is a book which you should get hold of and read. You may disagree with the author's conclusions, hut the whole book is thought-provoking.

Alwyn Edgar

Worker's Prosperity in 1961 (1961)

Watford, High Street 1961 (Photo credit, Francis Frith)

From the June 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

The town of Watford, in Hertfordshire, is claimed by its Press to be one of the most prosperous in post-war Britain. One local weekly claims for it the distinction of being the second most prosperous town in this country—second after Coventry, in fact. Whether this held good after the motor car recession is not clear.

The sort of criteria applied are the number of vacancies at the local Labour Exchange, wage rates offered, enquiries for juveniles leaving schools. Income Tax returns, rents of shops, increase of population and, logically enough, price of house room either in rent or mortgage repayments. Unfortunately, this “prosperity” brings many unpleasant and disagreeable results.

In some ways, it is a miniature of what is happening on a national scale in Great Britain these days. A demand for labour raises its price. Higher wages bring workers from lower priced areas. And so Watford market resounds on Saturdays to the lilting song of the Celt, the guttural voices of the Clyde, the broad accents of the East Coast, and, to be sure, Mick and Pat, who never had it so good in “Ould Oireland.”. By the same token, a further 50,000 West Indians are coming to Britain this year, not as tourists looking at ruins,. but workers seeking jobs.

The employers, through their Government, can easily control this foreign emigration—turning it on, or off, as required, like a tap. They have always done so, as when Campbell Bannerman’s Liberal Government in 1906 boasted that any Jew landing at London docks with £15 in his possession might remain here, or when the successive American Governments at the turn of the century admitted emigrants by the million.

It is not quite so easy to keep them all at work once admitted, as all the historical cases show. The result of this in Watford is that Boom Town No. 2 is bursting at the seams. Although some employers, in their extremity, are making special provision for housing their workers, the unskilled (and paradoxically enough, even skilled building workers) are finding accommodation hard to get.

All this has prompted a local scribe to gently but firmly disillusion the large number of Easter Brides (and Grooms) about their chances of a roof in “prosperous” Watford. The local newshawk has taken the trouble to collect the facts.

So you want to rent a house? he says. Forget it!

“Mum and Dad never had the problem young couples in Watford today have to face. Before the war, there were houses galore for renting.” I haven’t let a house in years,” one agent told me. Even if one did come on to the market the rent would be at least £5 a week.”

So that’s out. There are a few houses—but they are all for sale only. Advances on mortgages are granted only to applicants in permanent and secure employment. ‘‘Watford’s terraced properties have priced themselves out of all proportion to their actual values. Houses built for £800 at the turn of the century are now offered for anything between £1,900 and £2,900, and they sell ” (Watford and West Herts' Post.)

The local writer goes on to say:

  To get the house, Bob [our hypothetical homebuilder] would have to afford weekly repayments of almost £5 a week, and sign a cheque for almost £400 to cover deposit and legal fees. . . .
  Another house advertised this week is a good semi-detached home in North Watford with garage space. The price: £3,750. . . . A £400 deposit would mean a loan of £3,350. . . . Repayments on this loan would work out at about £24 15s. a month. And how much would the legal and building society men want from you in fees ? Just under £100.
  What about interest on loans? That is the crippling thing these days. So many young Watford couples fail to realise just how much they will eventually pay for the house of their dreams. Borrowing only £2,500 on that terraced house Bob and Sylvia would, during those 20 years, repay the staggering total of £4,560. Almost double what they originally borrowed.
  With a loan of £3.500 and repayments of £24 a month, the couple, with this ball and chain firmly shackled to them, would pay back to the Building Society in 25 years the perspiring, hair-raising sum of £7.200. So do not think the Building Society is doing you a favour in lending you the money. They get it back with gold-plated interest.

What has our kindly press adviser to suggest? “If you are determined to live in this price-inflated piece of the country, then my advice to you is to live with Mum, live in two rooms, anywhere you can call home and save “ like blazes.”

But what are the harsh facts? Just as sellers seek the highest price—buyers chase the lowest, and there may be those who hope that new towns and estates will supply their need. Unfortunately for them the facts are these. At least 4,000,000 dwellings in this country today are over 75 years old. At least 10 million dwellings will be due for replacement in the next 25 years, to keep up with depreciation. That would require 400,000 houses a year. The Government post-war target was 300,000 a year. This has been dropped, and is not reaching anything like that figure today.

The present position is that slums are growing faster than rebuilding is taking place. Not only does this apply to slum dwellings, but to slum offices and slum industries as well . . . “At the present rate of building the indications are that the total of inadequately housed people will substantially increase over the next 25 years.” [Franklin Medhurst. Town and Country Planning Dept., Manchester University. Guardian. March 24th, 1961.]

The choice before the married worker is a very limited one. He can either pay up to £6 a week repayments, which includes £3 a week interest—or move further afield where rent and mortgages are lower. Then, if he wants the higher wages, he must pay fares, or run a car and spend time in monotonous travelling. Alternatively, he can live with Mum.

Horatio

Socialism and the anti-war campaign. (1910)

From the December 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

In our report of the International Congress at Copenhagen we referred briefly to the absurd proposals to organise the workers of the world to ensure “universal disarmament and the prevention of warfare”. But in view of the efforts of the British section of the confusionists to “enlighten” the workers on “the all important question of armaments or no armaments, warfare or no warfare” (under capitalism!) and particularly in view of the projected Mass Meeting at the Albert Hall, it is necessary to explain the Socialist position on this matter at greater length.

The Declaration of Principles of the Socialist Party state that the machinery of government, including the armed forces of the nation, exists to conserve the monopoly of the capitalist class of the wealth taken from the workers, and that in order to stop this robbery the workers must capture the powers of government, including the armed forces, so as to turn them into an agent of emancipation. That is unquestionably the Socialist position as it was expounded by Marx and Engels, the founders of scientific Socialism. Those who profess to-day to be the “International Socialist Movement” would not dare to challenge this statement.

However, it is possible to affirm a principle and act contrary to it, as the pseudo-Socialists both nationally and internationally prove. The main demands in the resolution which the German Social-Democratic Party forced upon the Congress were, compulsory arbitration upon international disputes, and Parliamentary action for disarmament and the prevention of wars. Yet this same party is responsible for the following pronouncement in the exposition of their Erfurter Program:

  As States and monarchs become ever more dependent upon the capitalist class, so the armies cease to serve merely the personal ends of the monarchs and are utilised increasingly for the purposes of the capitalist class. Wars are less and less dynastic and more and more commercial and national, which in the last instance can only be traced back to the economic conflicts between the capitalists of the various nations. The capitalist state, therefore, is not only in need of an extensive army of officials for the purpose of the law and police, but it requires also a strong military force. Both armies are ever on the increase in capitalist States, but in recent times the military force grows more rapidly than the army of officials.

Wars being the outcome of economic conflicts between the capitalists of the various nations, it is illogical and unscientific to attempt to abolish war while the economic conflicts remain. But these international reformers, hungry for votes, are ready to abandon the very principles they themselves set up for working-class guidance.

It is clear that the “anti-war campaign”, as such, is, from the working-class standpoint, absurd. Just as the class struggle cannot be abolished save by abolishing classes, so it is impossible for capitalist nations to get rid of the grim spectre of war, for capitalism presupposes economic conflicts which must finally be fought out with the aid of the armed forces of the State.

But in fairness to the German S.D.P. it must be admitted that they show some consistency in their anti-Socialist attitude, for, desiring to force the German Government to disarm, they, as a party, adopt the policy of opposing every Budget the Government bring in. it was because the Party representatives in Baden and other minor States violated this policy that dispute raged so furiously between “revolutionists” and revisionists before and during the last Party Congress.

In France, Belgium, Austria, Russia – in every country but England – the reform Internationalists follow this example of anti-Socialist consistency. Only in England the parties affiliated to the “International” clamour for “peace at any price” while supporting budgets which provide means of war, and agitating for a citizen army without military discipline – which they expect the “guileless” capitalist class to establish “in order to enable the workers, when enlightened, to shoot their exploiters into oblivion”.

During the discussion on the subject at Copenhagen, Ledebour (German S.D.P.) said when dealing with the anti-war resolution and Keir Hardie’s amendment recommending the General Strike to prevent war:

   I deny the right of moving such a resolution to anyone who in his own country supports the Budget. I deny this right, consequently, above all to our English comrades, who by their support of the Budget place in the hands of their masters the weapons which later on they can use for purposes of war. How can they take the liberty of proposing the General Strike to the parties of other countries who are far more anti-militarist than they happen to be? So long as they support the Budget and supply the arms let them not bring forward more extreme proposals than ourselves.

Hardie, in reply to this attack, assured the Congress of the Labour Party’s hostility to war, nay more, to militarism, and explained their support of the Budget as a matter, not of principle, but of tactics and practical politics.

Now to nail this impudent lie to the counter. In his last election address published in the Labour Leader for 11.2.10, Keir Hardie says: “The Budget, Old Age Pensions and the like, all have their roots in Socialism; that is why the enemies of the people spend so much time trying to misrepresent it”. If the Budget has its “roots in Socialism”, surely to support it must be a matter of principle, and if these measures are part of Socialism, the Liberals are Socialists and Hardie and the whole British Section of so-called Socialists again proven impostors. Further, the Liberals do not differ at all from Hardie and his party on the question of armaments. The Daily Chronicle (12.11.10) says: “It is the mad race in armaments which creates the atmosphere of hostility and maintains the tension”. The Liberal newspaper evidently takes up the attitude of dealing with effects, not causes, and the Labour Party are no more logical or convincing.

There is even more direct evidence of fraudulence in the attitude of the so-called English Socialist Section adopted at Copenhagen regarding the question of war and militarism. On March 18 Mr. G.H. Roberts M.P. (I.L.P. and L.P), speaking on behalf of the Labour Party in the discussion on the Naval Estimates in the Commons said:

  "There seems to be an idea in the minds of the hon. gentlemen that the Labour Party were strongly opposed to an efficient Navy. He did not think that anybody could point to any utterance that had been delivered from the Labour Party members that could give colour to deductions of that sort. The Labour Party looked upon the Navy as a form of national insurance” (Labour Leader, March 25, 1910).

How flatly this contradicts Hardie’s election vow, the Party’s declaration of hostility to militarism, and the attitude of the hypocrites at the International Congress at Copenhagen!

And the S.D.P. is not a whit better than the other branches of the section. Mr. Jack Jones, their spokesman at the Congress, supported the amendment in favour of the General Strike for preventing war, declaring that his organisation preach war against war, and that there is no reason to suspect the S.D.P. of pro-militarist proclivities.

But what are the facts? Hyndman in his lecture on “Tariff Reform and Imperialism” (Queen’s Hall, 18.4.10) said: “I am in favour of the maintenance of a powerful navy capable of defending this island and of protecting our food supply against any assailant . . .” and H. Quelch, the author of The Armed Nation (the title of which sufficiently indicates its pro-militarist contents), writes in an article on the Copenhagen Congress (Justice, 10.9.10):

  “The resolution on armaments is much more satisfactory, and we have little fault to find with the conclusions of the conference on this subject . . . We do agree with putting forward the General Strike as a means of preventing war”.

So those who demand a powerful navy and a citizen army “capable of defending this island and protecting our food supply”, also want to apply the General Strike, presumably to prevent them doing it! And those who (rightly enough) opposed the General Strike as a means to Socialism, on the ground that when the workers are sufficiently organised for a General Strike they are able to attain Socialism without it, clutch at it, not as a means to end the system which makes war, but as a preventative of hostilities!

The Socialist position is as follows: In society to-day there are two classes – the propertyless or working class and an idle class who own and control the means of producing and distributing wealth. The latter use this ownership and control to force the workers to work for them, and to submit to being robbed of the greater part of the produce of their labour. The master class, being but a tenth of the population, can only keep possession of the means of production by their control (through the political machinery) of the armed forces. While the master class have that control it is hopeless for the workers to attempt to seize capitalist property. It is sheer madness, therefore, to expect that the capitalist class would, because the workers demand it, either abolish the armed forces or hand their control over to the working class. That would be to abolish themselves as a ruling class. Further, the interests of the capitalists of one country clash with those of the capitalists of other lands, especially in the matter of obtaining markets, and so long as capitalism lasts there will be this clash of interests, necessitating ever-increasing armaments and the inevitable appeal to arms. It is absurd then to waste time and energy in an endeavour to convince the capitalists that wars are superfluous and a curse under capitalism.

Let the workers learn their position in society and unite to obtain control of the machinery of government, including the armed forces. Such action will make it possible for them to take possession of the means of production and use them for the benefit of all. In that way alone will they be able to usher in a system of society wherein universal unity of interests will abolish all war, be it between classes or nations.

H. J. Neumann

Editorial: Remember Tonypandy! (1910)

Editorial from the December 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some weeks back a strike occurred in the Moabit quarter of Berlin, during which the workers were brutally assaulted by the police and soldiers. The London Liberal Press saw in that outbreak the dire effects of Tariff Reform and an anti-Liberal Government! But recent events in South Wales, where under Free Trade and Liberal rule, the striking miners have been treated with barbarity before which the Berlin horrors pale, have exploded this idea. Moreover, the chief owner concerned is a prominent member of the Liberal party, and so greatly is he esteemed by them that they propose to raise him to the Peerage now that he has retired from the House of Commons. Wales, too, is such a stronghold of Liberalism that the events there show up Liberalism in no uncertain light.

It will be remembered that for years past the South Wales miners have been trying to get an eight hours Bill passed. But—manifestation of the fraud of capitalist reform—ever since this “Great Charter of the Miners” has been law they have been striking against its effects. The employees of the Cambrian Combine in the Rhonda Valley, and of the Powell Duffryn Co. in the Abedare district, have been driven to desperation by the harassing conditions imposed by the great Liberal mine-owners. Tremendous profits have been made—the Cambrian Trust have made a million pounds profit in the last dozen years with a capital only half that sum—yet the companies have added device to device in order to increase their spoliation, until thousands of miners can make no more than 2s. per day. And now the owners refuse to allow the men to take home firewood—a privilege they have had for half a century.

Altogether 20,000 miners are out, and in order to induce others to join them they have held demonstrations and appointed pickets, and the pickets have been attacked by the police. But the climax came on the 8th Nov., at Tonypandy. Prior to this the mine-owners became alarmed for the safety of their property, and determined to cow the strikers into submission by sheer force of arms. In the words of the Daily Chronicle (Nov. 8) “the Company, as a precautionary measure, had wired for a detachment of cavalry to protect the pits”.

Although “every available constable from the surrounding country had been summoned”, the Home Secretary sent over 1,000 metropolitan police—many of them being mounted and armed with swords—besides which about 1,500 soldiers, including many cavalry, were despatched. The hypocrisy of Churchill was shown by the statement he issued on Nov. 8, declaring that he had sent police instead of soldiers, whereas he had already ordered the 18th Hussars, North Lancashire Regiment, and the North Lancashire Fusiliers to Wales (from Tidworth, Salisbury Plain), and they arrived at Pontypridd next morning.

Boiling water was directed upon the strikers and live wires were put around the vicinity of mines, but notwithstanding all their savagery the Companies could not break the strike.

The night of the 8th saw the most bloodthirsty attack upon the workers that has been recorded throughout the strike. Men and women were bludgeoned, kicked and maltreated so terribly that hundreds were maimed and wounded beyond description. Even little children did not escape, and many are disabled for life. Samuel Royce, a miner, was murdered by the police that night; he had joined the Territorials some time ago to defend “his” country. What a tragic commentary!

For evidence of police brutality let us quote the Liberal M. P. for Merthyr. Speaking in the House of Commons on Nov. 15th Mr E. Jones, “referring to the conduct of the police and soldiers at Aberdare, said the people were bludgeoned a quarter of a mile from the mines, absolutely innocent people being savagely attacked. It was openly stated in that district that the policemen in this case were under the influence of drink, and many incidents pointed to the fact that the police had altogether lost their heads”. (Daily Chronicle, 16. 11. 10).

Although the soldiers have not been in action yet, they are being kept on the spot in case the police fail to satisfy the requirements of the colliery owners. In his official statement of Nov. 10th the Home Secretary said that he will not hesitate to use the military, and in the House of Commons (15th Nov.) he stated that “the Central Government has acted more directly than is usual or usually desirable”, and further said “I take full responsibility for all that has been done”.

In face of these admissions of the murderous nature of capitalist government, the workers should note the despicable conduct of those who claim to represent them in the House of Commons. That prominent member of the Labour Party, Mr. W. Abraham (“Mabon”) in the House of Commons on Nov. 15th said that “he declined to take any part in condemning the Home Office or the Government for the part they took at the commencement of the sad affair”. His attitude is that of all the other members of that wing of the Liberal party. For the sake of securing their seats and their salaries they are now engaged in supporting Liberals all over the country. In Dundee, for instance, the workers are being told to vote for the two “progressives”, who are Mr. Alex Wilkie and—the assassin Churchill! Elsewhere—at Bow and Bromley and at Deptford for example—the Liberals are carrying out their share of the bargain by telling their supporters to vote for the “Labour” candidates.

Mr. Keir Hardie is anxious for the Government to appoint a Committee of enquiry. Of course—many of those on strike are his constituents. But how childish to ask the capitalists to appoint a committee to enquire into their own conduct! It will be remembered that on the occasion of the Featherstone massacre the Liberal Government gave way (!) to public demand and appointed a Committee of enquiry. Here are the miners’ names: Lord Bowen, Sir A. K. Rollit, and Mr. Haldane. The result could only be the whitewashing of butcher Asquith. The traitorous Labour Party were dumb when the workers were slaughtered at Belfast in 1907 by order of the Liberal Minister Birrel. And Keir Hardie absented himself time after time in 1893 although Asquith challenged him to be present and accuse him inside the House.

Notice the impartiality of our capitalist masters. See what a sham the party divisions of Liberal and Tory are, when the issue is between the workers and the capitalists. When the Tory mine-owner, Lord Masham, appealed for soldiers to protect the Acton Hall Colliery, the Liberal Asquith immediately drafted troops to the spot, with the result that Gibbs and Duggan were murdered. Now when the Liberal mine-owner D. A. Thomas applies for military aid he receives it. The Tory party are in the same boat. When Penrhyn sought military assistance to subdue the starving quarrymen ten years ago it was readily afforded him. And in 1887 they sent armed mounted police to Trafalgar Square to disperse the unemployed—and poor Linnell was done to death.

The working class have many things to remember concerning the history of both political parties. The fact stands out clear that both political fractions have used every agency at their command to keep the working class in subjection. The hypocritical Liberal cries out against the Tory: “Remember Michaelstown!” what time he overlooks those landmarks in the class struggle—Featherstone, Belfast, and now Tonypandy.

The lessons of Tonypandy should be remembered by the toilers and driven home whenever support is asked for for the capitalist candidates. Capitalism stands for murder, whether direct as at Tonypandy or indirect as at Whitehaven, West Stanley, or at the Maypole Colliery—murder, whether in the enforced starvation recorded daily in the papers, or in the suicide of those unable to bear the burden of misery any longer.

The race for profits by our masters is a race that means misery, starvation and premature death for its victims the workers. Therefore our policy must be one of unceasing hostility to capitalism, whether “reformed” or not. Unceasing hostility to all is upholders, whether they label themselves Liberal, Tory, Labourite or Social-Democrat.

We cannot ever ally ourselves with that class whose hands are stained with the blood of our fellow toilers. We can never forget that in the struggle between the workers and the capitalists there can be no truce, no quarter, no compromise! The South Wales horrors have once again demonstrated this fact with the tragic emphasis of blood. It is for us to point again the lesson that the armed forces of the State—nay, the whole machinery of the State—exists but to conserve the interests of the ruling class. The capture of this State machinery must then be the object of our endeavours. Vengeance and our emancipation are one and the same thing, and must both be sought on the political field. If the miners learnt this lesson the masters would have cause to Remember Tonypandy!