Bigotry – as good as gold (2010)

From the April 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard 

One MP who won’t be going back to Westminster is the Reverend Paisley.

A month off his eighty-fourth birthday, Ian Paisley announced his impending retirement as the Member of Parliament for North Antrim in the British House of Commons. If he has not retired a very rich man he must have been exceedingly profligate for during much of his political career he was one of Europe’s biggest political earners on salary and expenses simultaneously from the European Parliament, the British Parliament, the various Northern Ireland Assemblies. Additionally, of course, he had invented the Free Presbyterian route to heaven, incorporated it into an established religion catering for anti-Papist bigotry where he enjoyed the paradoxical role of ‘Moderator’.

 

For Paisley it has been a Rags-to-Riches career but whereas some parents leave their children riches in the form of money or property, the wealth that Paisley inherited was of a different coin. It was the vulgar, religious fundamentalism of both his parents. Ironically, in a place where history has injected religious bigotry deep into the culture of the working class it was an inheritance with the potential to be as good as gold

 

In the late 1950’s and early sixties Ian Kyle Paisley surfaced in the media breathing fire and brimstone, proclaiming the Pope to be the anti-Christ and distilling a malignant politico-religious gospel of separateness and division. For most his bellowing exhortations made him a figure of fun, a religious clown; but the media which would have ignored him if he had been talking sense gave him space and Paisley had an acknowledged genius for manipulating the clever dicks of the press.

 

His behaviour was so outrageous his bellowed vapourings about ‘old red socks’ – Paisley humour for the Chief Executive Officer of the Catholic Church – were absurd and his buffoonery initially embarrassed middle class and aspiring middle-class Protestants. But in the acres of Protestant slumdom, where the ruling Unionist leadership spoke the same bigotry at election times, Paisley’s taunts about the Unionist aristocracy – the Party leaders who then lived in the sort of house that Paisley now lives in – were being heard.

 

The basis of division

The captains of Ulster industry in the early decades of the 20th century had reacted violently to the idea of their political incorporation in an all-Ireland state where the IRA’s political arm, Sinn Fein, proclaimed the ‘first duty’ of the state to be the build up of native capitalism behind tariff walls and import quotas. Such a policy would have been ruinous to the well-developed industrial capitalism of the north that had effectively been nurtured within the political structure of British capitalism and remained dependant for its market on what was then called Empire Preference.

 

This was the core issue that had created division between the two parts of Ireland. Ulster capitalism had developed with British capitalism after the Industrial Revolution, Throughout the rest of the country economic development had been inhibited by an especially restrictive type of landlordism. When a native bourgeoisie did emerge in the latter part of the 19th century its political demand, articulated first by the Irish Parliamentary Party and later by Sinn Fein, was the legislative freedom to protect its fledgling capitalism from, in the words of Sinn Fein ’English and other foreign capitalists’.

 

The issue was a conflict of interests between the Ulster capitalists and their market requirements and a burgeoning southern capitalism but, inevitably, it was the working class that provided the foot soldiers and took the casualties. So truth and lies were mulled in a vile concoction of hatred to motivate the troops.

One side of that vile concoction represented Ian Paisley’s knowledge of history which he welded onto a particularly virulent brand of religious fundamentalism as a tribal battle cry. It was not a new weapon; Lord Randolph Churchhill, Edward Carson, Lord Craigavon and their political ilk had used it successfully.

 

Gutter politics

But these were new times. The British Government had made known to the Unionist government its embarrassment when the architect of South Africa’s Apartheid laws, Hendryk Frensch Verwoerd, responded to British government criticism by saying he would give up his restrictive legislation in exchange for the British tolerated Northern Ireland "Special Powers Act" .

 

Paisley probably saw this as a compliment but in the higher echelons of Unionism religious sectarianism was becoming considerably less strident. The effects of the 1966 Anglo-Irish Trade Agreement, the post-war decline of heavy industry – severely felt in Northern Ireland – and the enticements of the impending European Union were reflected in a diminution of the old bigotries. Elements in the governing Unionist Party, like the Prime Minister, the aristocratic Captain O’Neill, were less inclined to don the gutter raiment of sectarian politics. But that gutter and its political opportunities were still there and gutter politics was a Paisley speciality.

 

The easing of the political climate between the two Governments in Ireland became manifest when Captain O’Neill invited his southern counterpart, Sean Lemass, to visit Stormont. However, the delicacy of the rapprochement was pointed up by the fact that O’Neill’s cabinet colleagues were not told about it beforehand,

 

Paisley got word of the impending visit, probably from elements within the police, and when Lemass’s car arrived at Stormont he attacked it – with snowballs! That was the evening’s main item of news!

He seemed impervious to embarrassment. On one occasion the courageous Methodist preacher, Dr Donald Soper, addressed an outdoor meeting in Northern Ireland. Paisley attended and threw a Bible at him. Soper, a graduate of Speakers’ Corner, Hyde Park complimented Paisley for keeping his hat on as a protection against roving woodpeckers!

 

Border campaign and IRA surrender

In 1956 the, then, Leninist-influenced IRA, under pressure from a new republican terrorist aspirant in Ulster, commenced a ‘Border’ campaign in a blaze of glory. IRA personnel raided a British Army barracks in Armagh and removed a substantial quantity of military ordinance under the noses of careless squaddies. It was the IRA’s single victory in a desultory, attritional saga which continued until 1962

 

The end was inglorious and remarkable: the IRA virtually surrendered; it called the failure of the nationalist population to give it support ‘selling its heritage for a mesh of pottage’ – a reference to British ’welfare’ capitalism – and announced the further pursuit of its aims by constitutional means. It should have been a momentous occasion for Ireland. Finally, after decades of intermittent warfare the gun was being removed from politics.

 

The IRA, pursuant of its undertaking to become a constitutional political organisation, established Republican Clubs pledged to fight constitutionally for universal suffrage in local government elections, as well as an end to gerrymandering of local government ward boundaries and religious discrimination in employment and housing.

 

Unionist control of an area of Ulster politically tailored to ensure that Protestant hegemony would be permanent in the new state of Northern Ireland had been established by the threat of terrorist violence in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Unionist overlords like Lord Craigavon and his political playmates at Stormont showed a contempt for the working class irrespective of its religious identity. When protests about social conditions could be labelled ‘Catholic’ they were disregarded; if similar protests emanated from a ’Protestant’ source it was countered by the argument that the protesters were disloyal and were playing into the hands of the IRA.

 

The government could handle the insignificant military threat of the IRA. It had the largely Protestant paramilitary police backed-up by the ’B’ Specials, an armed Protestant militia. What it couldn’t handle was any rational defence of its social deficiencies, its sectarian discrimination and its draconian laws. Without the threat of the IRA political debate could prove dangerous. The government’s unstable Minister of Home Affairs responded to this new democratic challenge; he simply banned the Republican Clubs making them an illegal organisation.

 

But whereas there had been an insignificant response to the IRA’s Border campaign from within the northern nationalist community the campaign for Civil Rights found a ready response not only among nationalists but including the broad Left. O’Neill’s attitude was conciliatory but he was a prisoner of reaction within and without his own Party and the most violent opposition to the demands for elementary democratic rights was orchestrated by Paisley and his cohorts who have the effrontery to pose as ‘Democratic’ Unionists.

 

In the fashion of the movement for black liberation in the US, the chosen weapon of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association was the organisation of protest marches. Similarly, like the Ku Klux Klan and race bigots in the US, Paisley and his fellow bigots used the tactic of the counter-demonstration and the Home Affairs minister banned or restricted Civil Rights’ demonstrations ‘to prevent civil disturbance’.

 

But, of course, there was civil disturbance; the Civil Rights people could not allow themselves to be neutered by the threats and the violence of Paisley, the mob or the clearly partial brutality of the police. Television brought its graphic pictures of violence to the capitals of the world; Paisley’s violent ranting became a media export without embarrassment to him or his followers, and it was becoming incumbent on external agencies to ‘do something’ about Northern Ireland.

 

Almost single-handedly Paisley had let the genie of sectarian violence out of the bottle and, Ironically, created the material conditions for the re-emergence of the IRA, this time supported by the people who had previously rejected it and its political objective and who now saw it as a weapon of Catholic defence against loyalist pogroms.

 

A Pyrrhic victory

Northern Ireland is governed today by a coalition of political parties organised within the D’Hondt system effectively devised to provide for norms of compromise within a power-sharing system. Effectively, however, power resides in the coalesced numbers of what was Paisley’s DUP and the IRA’s political arm, Sinn Fein. under the compulsion of the failure of each to achieve its primary purpose.

 

Together they stand as a memorial to the decades of violence they visited on the people; together – the cowards loading the guns and the fools firing them – they gave us the thousands of corpses, the tens of thousands of maimed. Together they built the ‘Peace’ walls and the ghettoes where the coloured rags of opposing tribal identities mark brands of hatred and yesterday’s foot soldiers draw their dole and envy the trappings of power which their leaders now share with their erstwhile enemies

 

For the socialist, Northern Ireland makes a good case study for those promulgating the notion that political violence is the ultimate weapon in the struggle for socialism; that ‘revolutionary situations’ can be created out of the political chaos of capitalism. But working class consensus, not division, must be the foundation of a socialist society in which the dynamic is human co-operation. Traditionally, socialists have responded to those who cite minority violence as a possible reaction to the achievement of socialism by saying ‘peacefully if we may; forcefully if we must’ . When we see the aftermath of political violence we must fervently hope that we never ‘must’.

Richard Montague

Tiny Tips (2010)

The Tiny Tips column from the April 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Most of today’s African fighters are not rebels with a cause; they’re predators. That’s why we see stunning atrocities like eastern Congo’s rape epidemic, where armed groups in recent years have sexually assaulted hundreds of thousands of women, often so sadistically that the victims are left incontinent for life. What is the military or political objective of ramming an assault rifle inside a woman and pulling the trigger? Terror has become an end, not just a means:

[Link.]

Megamansions. With an estimated billion-dollar cost, Mukesh Ambani’s under-construction 27-story Mumbai skyscraper eclipses previous records for the world’s most expensive homes. No two floor plans for the inside of the lavish tower—known as Antilla–are alike and each space uses different materials, such as one bathroom’s Gingko-leaf sinks with stems guiding the running water into their leaf basins. In the U.K., Russian-Israeli diamond magnate Lev Leviev owns the Palladio, an extravagant 17,000-square-foot manor outside London, which he bought for $65 million in January 2008. (That works out to $3,824 per square foot.) The home has a bulletproof front door, a goldplated  pool, an indoor cinema and a hair salon for good measure:

[Dead Link.]

It takes more than 4,000 gallons of water to make a $20 bag of pet food. Researchers predict the end of cheap water around the corner:

[Dead Link.]

A record number of people contacted a debt charity last year but about 160,000 of them were so poor they could not be helped:

[Dead Link.]

It is no exaggeration to call this gendercide. Women are missing in their millions—aborted, killed, neglected to death. In 1990 an Indian economist, Amartya Sen, put the number at 100m; the toll is higher now.

[Link.]

The World Health Organisation has estimated that around the globe up to 2.6 billion people – or a third of the world’s population – do not have access to proper toilet facilities. More than half live in China and India. The UN’s target for providing proper facilities for all people is 2015. Up to half a million people in India are engaged in what is termed “manual scavenging”: cleaning toilets that have no sewage system and carrying away waste or “night soil” on their heads or in carts. The practice has been officially outlawed but persists because in many places there are no alternatives:

[Link.]

20+ African countries are selling or leasing land for intensive agriculture on a shocking scale in what may be the greatest change of ownership since the colonial era:

[Dead Link.]

The Haitian Tragedy (2010)

From the April 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Haiti spent more, in 2008 servicing the country’s debts than it did on health, education and the environment.

In our February issue (Haiti—an un-natural disaster) we noted that the earthquake in Haiti, and similar disasters, are presented as unavoidable disasters; and that, to some extent, this is true. But we stated that it is not a coincidence that the number of victims is clearly related to the degree of their poverty. This was true regarding the Asian tsunami and the Katrina hurricane in New Orleans.

Seumas Milne also says (Guardian, 21 January) that “It is uncontested that poverty is the main cause of the horrific death toll: the product of teeming shacks, and the absence of health and public infrastructure.” In his view, this is the direct consequence of an uniquely brutal relationship with the outside world—notably the US, France and Britain, stretching back centuries. There is some truth in this, although not all Haitians were, or are, poor.

Says Milne:

  Punished for the success of its uprising against slavery and self-proclaimed first black republic of 1804 with invasion, blockade and a crushing burden of debt reparations, only finally paid off in 1947, Haiti was occupied by the US between the wars and squeezed mercilessly by multiple creditors.

For decades, the US backed the dictatorships of the Duvaliers. Just 30 years ago Haiti was self-sufficient in its staple of rice. In the mid-1990s, however, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forced it to slash tariffs, and the US dumped its subsidised surpluses on Haiti. Most of the peasant farmers were forced out of business, squatted in Port-au-Prince, and many will have died in the earthquake. The United States also imposed lending conditions on the country, forcing the government to privatise the already minimal health, education and public services, and cut back the minimum wage.

The Duvalier Dictatorships and the CIA

From 1957 to 1971 Haiti was ruled by François “Papa Doc” Duvalier and, following his death, by his son, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc”, both “anointed” “President for Life”. The US trained and armed Haiti’s counter-insurgency force, although much American military aid was covertly channelled through Israel.

After “Baby Doc” was forced into exile to France in February 1986 (in a US Air Force jet), the United States continued, now quite openly, military aid, supplying the Haitian Army with trucks, communications gear etc. in order “to maintain order”. Between the departure of “Baby Doc” and the date scheduled for elections in November 1987, the administrations were responsible for the deaths of more civilians than “Baby Doc” managed in 15 years of dictatorship. Meanwhile, the CIA managed to “spring” from prison two of Duvalier’s notorious police chiefs, and send them into exile, saving them from certain execution.

Haiti has never had a mass, reformist working-class party. In 1930 two “intellectuals”, Max Hudicourt and Jacques Roumain, attempted to form a communist party, but it was largely stillborn. In 1946 a clergyman by the name of Félix d’Orléans Juste Constant, founded the Parti Communiste d’Haiti (PCH). It too disbanded the following year. Shortly after a rival quasi-communist party, the Parti Socialiste Populaire (PSP), was founded. It disintegrated rapidly by 1949. But in 1959 Roger Gaillard, a former member of the PSP, founded the Parti Populaire de Libération Nationale (PPLN), which claimed to be a mass, nationwide organisation; it was badly weakened by police harassment and repression by 1965. It was basically reformist, with much in common with Fidel Castro’s 26 July movement.

Aristide the Priest

At the time of “Baby Doc”’s flight to France, there was one man who did have a mass following, particularly in Port-au-Prince. He was Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a Catholic priest and advocate of “liberation theology”; but looked upon by opponents, both in Haiti and in America, as a revolutionary, but in fact a populist reformer. He denounced the upcoming military-dominated elections, and urged his followers to boycott the elections, saying “The army is our first enemy.” He was condemned by the Vatican.

The elections were scheduled for the 29 November 1987—the CIA funded a number of candidates. In the event, the elections were postponed ostensibly because of unrest and violence in the country. According to William Blum in Killing Hope, “…the candidate favored by the military government was declared the winner in balloting widely perceived as rigged”. Writing in 1994, Blum continued:

  There followed more than two years of regular political violence, coup attempts and repression, casting off the vestiges of the Duvalier dictatorship, and establishing a new one, until, in March 1990, the current military dictator, General Prosper April, was forced by widespread protests to abdicate, and was forced by a civilian government of sorts, but with the military still calling the shots. (p. 371)

Pressured by the United States, the Haitian government called an election later in the year. Reluctantly, Aristide became a candidate of a coalition of reformist organisations. Despite intimidation, Aristide was victorious with 67.5 percent of the vote. He took office in February 1991, after a coup attempt against him failed in January.

And so Jean-Bertrand Aristide became President of Haiti.

But he did not even get any reformist legislation enacted by Parliament. Nevertheless, the military was much concerned by the arrest of a number of para-military thugs, his policies against drug smuggling, and his attempts to depoliticise the army. Aristide was, however, not anti-business. He encouraged American capitalists, and to please the IMF, he fired 2,000 government workers.

It was all to no avail. In less than 8 months, on 29 September 1991, Aristide was successfully deposed by a military coup, in which hundreds of his supporters were massacred and thousands fled to the Dominican Republic. He was saved from being murdered by the French ambassador. The new military dictatorship was largely supported by the local bourgeoisie. And the Vatican immediately recognised the government. The Bush Sr administration unofficially gave its blessing. Haiti was back to “normal”.

Aristide’s Return

In the summer of 1993 the United Nations mediated talks between Aristide, living in exile in Washington, and the Haitian military government; the leader of the junta, General Cédras, would step down by October, and Aristide would return as president. But October came and went without the military permitting Aristide to return. Indeed, they stepped up their repression of his supporters, including the assassination of his justice minister, Guy Malary. Meanwhile, the CIA spread rumours in Haiti that Aristide was mentally ill. It was not true.

An organisation of American States (OAS) human rights team accused the Haitian military regime of “murder, rape, kidnapping, detention and torture in a systematic campaign” to terrorise all those Haitians wanting a return to democracy. Amnesty International reported the same. The Clinton administration in Washington wanted the military out of power, but without actually having to do anything, including invading the country. Nevertheless, changing tactics, the CIA, with numerous agents in Haiti, launched a major covert operation to topple the military regime. It was not a success. But change was a’coming.

In September 1994, the Clinton administration told the Haitian military leaders they had just four weeks to resign. The US would have to take control. Yet again. So, on 19 September US forces began to arrive in Haiti. Initially, they were welcomed by the majority of the population; they first arrested, disarmed and also shot many of the former Haitian military; and permitted some of the leaders to escape into exile. And they sealed off, and protected the homes of many of the local capitalist élite, “Washington’s natural allies” (Los Angeles Times, 1 October 1994).

Jean-Bertrand Aristide returned to Haiti in mid-October, courtesy of the US army. He received, in the words of William Blum, a reception of “joyous celebration”. But, unbeknown to a majority of his supporters, he was somewhat different Aristide who had, three years previously, been disposed and exiled to Washington. In the words of the Los Angeles Times (1 October 1994):

Almost every aspect of Aristide’s plans for resuming power—from taxing the rich to disarming the military—has been examined by the US officials with whom the Haitian President meets daily, and by officials of World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other aid organisations. The finished package clearly reflects their priorities. Aristide has obviously toned down the liberation theology and class-struggle rhetoric that was his signature before he was exiled to Washington.

Indeed, Aristide embraced market economics with zeal and enthusiasm. He also agreed to publicly announce that he would not attempt to stay in office to make up the time he had lost in exile. So much for the firebrand priest—even as a reformer.

Haiti—a Client State

In Killing Hope William Blum claimed that Haiti’s international function will be to serve “transnational corporations” by opening the country up to further investment and commerce, with minimum tariffs and other restrictions; and offering itself, primarily in assembly industries, and as a source of export labour. He added: “What appears to be certain is that the rich will grow richer, and the poor will remain at the very bottom of Latin America’s heap.” Under Aristide’s successor, it can only get worse. As Seumas Milne observed, new IMF loans require Haiti to raise electricity prices, and to freeze all public sector pay, where the majority exist on less than two dollars a day.

Infant mortality rate is about 80 per 1,000 (neighbouring Cuba’s rate is 5.8). Around 50 percent of Haiti’s adults remain illiterate. Former president Bill Clinton wants to build up Haiti’s export-processing zones,. But, as Milne comments, “… more sweatshop assembly of products neither made nor sold in Haiti won’t develop its economy nor provide a regular income for the majority”. Haiti currently owes the IMF around a billion dollars. Gary Young, writing in the Guardian (1 February), reported that Haiti spent more, in 2008, servicing the country’s debts than it did on health, education and the environment.

Meanwhile, the United States pours thousand of heavily-armed troops into the country (yet again). and “The Street”, a US investment website, says that the earthquake provides such American corporations as General Electric, Jacobs Engineering and Flour, with the opportunity and potential to benefit. Of course.

Following the earthquake, a commentator on French television advised his viewers and listeners that “Haiti is not a suitable place to take a vacation.” He can say that again.

Peter E. Newell

Working together (2010)

Book Review from the April 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Social Economy. Ash Amin, ed: Zed Books £19.99.

The concept of social economy is a rather vague one, and is not helped by the use of other terminology (such as ‘solidarity economy’ or ‘third sector’) to refer to the same or similar notions. Broadly, though, it describes the provision of goods and services by organisations which are neither profit-making and privately-owned nor run by the state, whether national governments or local authorities. It covers, then, at least workers’ co-operatives and various voluntary groups.

Amin argues that the present recession is an opportune time to consider alternatives to the profit system. With case studies from Italy, Poland, the Philippines, the US, Canada, Argentina and Brazil, this volume presents a spectrum of different examples, from workers taking over bankrupt companies to housing co-ops and small farmers getting together to market their own produce. The question which arises, though, is the extent to which what is described here really does constitute a ‘third way’.

It is a widespread finding that wages are lower in social enterprises than in others. A survey from Italy, however, suggests that employees in the social economy are on the whole more satisfied with their work than other workers, largely because of the importance they assign to social usefulness and helping disadvantaged people. On the other hand, social enterprises have to behave like ordinary capitalist concerns in many ways: there is still wage labour, those who arrive late for work can have their pay deducted, and enterprises may close if trading conditions are not favourable.

But many social enterprises do show that workers can organise themselves and run production without bosses and employers telling them what to do and ordering them around. It must be acknowledged, though, that this does not mean leaving capitalism behind, since they function within the capitalist economy and indeed are often supported by governments. The editor writes of ‘making money, markets and the productive system work for human development, ecological preservation, spatial equality and collective fellowship’. Noble goals, but only achievable without money and markets.

Paul Bennett

The Pieces Together: All Right For Some (2010)

The Pieces Together column from the April 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

All Right For Some

“The Mexican telecoms magnate Carlos Slim Helu has been named the world’s richest man, with a net worth of $53.5 billion (£36 billion), the first time since 1994 that the top spot has been held by a non-American. The annual billionaires list published by Forbes magazine shows that the number of billionaires increased from 793 to 1,011.” (Times, 11 March)

The Income Gulf

“The President of Azerbaijan suffered embarrassment yesterday when it was reported that nine luxury mansions in Dubai worth millions of pounds had been bought in the name of his 11-year-old son. … The Washington Post newspaper reported that they were bought in a two-week shopping spree last year for about $44 million (£29 million) -10,000 times the average annual salary in Azerbaijan.” (Times, 6 March)

Conspicuous Consumption

“One of the many stresses of being a billionaire is the difficulty in choosing between purchasing a yacht or an island. Happily, designers this week unveiled plans for a ‘moving island’ that renders the conundrum redundant. Designs for WHY 58×38 were unveiled at the Abu Dhabi yacht show this week. … The motor yacht is, as the name suggests, 58 metres long and 38 metres wide, providing a total guest area of 3,400 square metres, and weighs in at 2,400 tonnes. It boasts a maximum speed of 14 knots, and a price tag, when built, of $160 million.” (Guardian, 3 March)

The Price of Garments

“Several hundred people protested in Dhaka and Gazipur yesterday after locked gates were blamed for the death of 21 people in a fire at a Bangladeshi factory that made sweaters for H and M. Most of the victims of the blaze were women who suffocated on the top floor of the seven-storey Garib and Garib factory. The nephew of one of the victims said that the gates had been locked, trapping them. The National Garment Workers’ Federation said: ‘These workers were killed by the factory’s blatant disregard for worker safety’.” (Times, 27 February)

Double Exploitation

“More workers are taking on a second job to make ends meet. A survey for the law firm Peninsula suggested that the proportion having two jobs had risen from 26 to 28 per cent in the past year.” (Times, 1 March)

50 Years Ago: A Message for Aldermaston Marchers (2010)

The 50 Years Ago column from the April 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

When the first French atom bomb was exploded a few weeks back, General de Gaulle exclaimed, “Hurrah for France!” He knew that he was really saying hurrah for destruction and death, because that is what military power means. But military power is only necessary to modern states because in peace and war, they are struggling for economic advantage. This is a world where everything is produced with the intention of selling it profitably, which means that sellers compete for markets, manufacturers for plentiful raw material sources and transporters for trading routes. These are the disputes which, when everything else fails, are settled by force—by war (…)

In these conditions, national states are bound to maintain a military machine to fight for the interests of their ruling classes and to equip that machine with the most powerful—the most deadly— weapons possible. It is futile to expect them to do otherwise. In 1917, it would have been suicidal for them to have thrown away their tanks, or in 1944 their bombers. In 1960 they are similarly reluctant to give up their nuclear bombs. There is only one way to deal effectively with this problem. Go to the roots. The capitalist system is the cause, from beginning to end, of modern war and the horrifying methods of its prosecution.

Marching from Aldermaston, sitting in the mud at Swaffham, or lying in jail, the nuclear campaigners deserve our respect for their concern with one of the horrors of modern society. But we can only regret that so much energy is wasted in such a topsy-turvy movement. If it is desirable to abolish one weapon of war, how much more so is it to get rid of them all? Or to get rid of war itself?

(From article by Ivan, Socialist Standard, April 1960)

Greasy Pole: Michael Foot – An example of principles? (2010)

The Greasy Pole Column from the April 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

A handy tool for a balanced assessment of obituaries of the Great and the Good is to be aware that the more fanciful the praise for the deceased the greater the relief that they are no longer around to cause any trouble. Consider, for example, the tributes to Michael Foot on his death, at 96, last month. This is Gordon Brown, overlooking that during Foot’s life he would have been one of his consistent opponents: “…a man of deep principle and great idealism…one of the most eloquent speakers the country has ever heard … An indomitable figure who always stood up for his beliefs…” Here is Tony Blair, the intensity of whose antagonism towards Foot would have rivalled that of Brown: “…a giant of the Labour movement, a man of passion, principle and outstanding commitment…” Finally, still dealing with Prime Ministers, this is Margaret Thatcher “…a highly principled and cultivated man…if I did not think it would offend him, I would say he is a gentlemen…” Except that that was not a comment by Thatcher after Foot had died; it was what she thought at the time she had crushed him in the 1983 election. Principle? Idealism? Passion? The fantasies about Foot live on, like a virus infecting those who promote themselves as successors.

Journalism

He was swept into Parliament in the Labour landslide of 1945, when the votes showed that the lies about a safer, healthier world emerging from that greatest ever human crisis had been gratefully absorbed. Foot’s constituency was Devonport in Plymouth, where his comfortably powerful family (his father had been an MP, one brother was an MP, another became Governor of Cyprus) had their affluent home. Before that he had worked as a journalist on the New Statesman and Tribune. Aneurin Bevan, whose reputation as a viperous left-wing orator had not been an obstacle to him forming a close friendship with the Tory press baron Lord Beaverbrook, suggested that Foot (“…a young bloody knight-errant…”) would be a useful employee for one of the unconventional lordship’s newspapers. Perhaps because of Beaverbrook’s seeming vulnerability to those he saw as fellow rebellious misfits Foot was placed in a job which refreshed him with regular pay rises until he became editor of the scandalously strident Evening Standard. In 1945 Foot transferred to the Daily Herald, part-owned by the TUC but later transmogrified into Rupert Murdoch’s Sun with its Page Three girls and screeching headlines.

Guilty Men

By that time Foot’s reputation as a rebel had been cemented into place, although it was typically impulsive rather than consistent. In the 1940s one of his most successful projects had been as the co-author, with two other journalists, of the book Guilty Men. Published by the Left Book Club, this was a best-selling polemic against the Conservative government’s apparent preference for negotiating about – or appeasing – Nazi Germany’s expansionism instead of building up British forces. Guilty Men does not spare Foot’s political allies: “Up to the arrival of Hitler on the scene, the Labour Party officially went through all the antic motions of ‘resisting militarism‘. This consisted of adopting pretty well every half-baked disarmament proposition that was drawn up, and annually voting against the Service estimates”. But effective a rant though that is, it takes no account of the fact that Foot had not always opposed disarmament. In 1933, when the Geneva talks, aiming at multilateral disarmament, broke down he came out in favour of unilateral disarmament . His election address in 1935, when he stood unsuccessfully for Monmouth, attacked the Tory Prime Minister Baldwin for his policy of re-armament, stating that “…the armaments race in Europe must be stopped now”.

Falklands

More recently, Foot has presented himself as “an incessant and inveterate peacemonger” – which was not taken seriously by anyone with so much as a passing acquaintance with his history. Among other attitudes, he supported the formation of the US dominated NATO military alliance and the American policy of propping up the dictatorship in South Korea before the war began there. The audacious cynicism demanded by this was starkly exposed over the Falklands war. In an emergency debate in the Commons on 3 April 1982 the rage of the Tory hawks left Thatcher, in the words of one observer, “humiliated” and of another “strangely halting and subdued”. But Foot changed the course of the debate with a passionately belligerent speech demanding that there was “…a moral duty and political duty and every other kind of duty” to send in the task force to eject the Argentinian occupiers. This “peacemongering” was pleasing to a number of remarkable allies for Foot. Like Edward du Cann whose chairmanship of the Lonrho conglomerate was memorable for Ted Heath’s description of it as “the unacceptable face of capitalism”. Like Julian Amery, a leading light of the Monday Club. Like the late Alan Clark, an “historian” whose pitiless egocentricity and human aversion found expression in his excusing the wartime atrocities of the Waffen SS as “heroic cruelty”. Later, in the controversy over the torpedoing of the Argentinian cruiser Belgrano when it was sailing away from the battle zone, Foot was in favour of the attack, even if it did cost hundreds of lives. And this was an opinion which he steadfastly held to.

Principles 

Was Foot trying to re-assure his admirers, as well as his antagonists, when he greeted his election as Labour Party leader in 1980 with the bold declaration “I am as strong in my socialist convictions as I have ever been”? He did not offer any clear definition of the word, which encouraged the assumption that his “socialism” was the kind of confused, panicky responses to capitalism’s crises, notable for the depression of workers’ life standards, which he had been closely involved in during his time as a minister under Callaghan. This had reached its nadir with the Winter of Discontent and, no matter how compulsively Foot wheedled and manipulated at resuscitation, the end of that government in 1979. Among other problems for the Labour Party then there was the exposure of the fact that Foot’s “principles” were as worthlessly malleable as they needed to be in capitalism’s abrasive politics. 

Ivan

Will capitalism collapse? (1927)

From the April 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

Five years ago in these columns (Feb., 1922) the present writer criticised the doctrine of the “Collapse of Capitalism.” During the same month a leading member of the Communist Party admitted that the plans of the Communists for world-revolution were bound up with the acceptance of this catastrophic view of social development, and agreed, in answer to a question, that ten years would prove or disprove the soundness of their view of events. Ten years would show the Communist movement within striking distance of final victory in this country, or it would show Communist policy to be false and the Communist Party would be deservedly dead and damned. Another Communist, Mr. Palme Dutt, likened capitalism to a house in imminent danger of collapse. It was beyond repair—reforms could no longer prop it up—and there was no time to organise and educate the majority of the workers to a recognition of the need for deliberate steps to take over power from the ruling class and set about reconstituting society from the bottom upwards. The “psychological moment” had arrived, capitalism was in ruins, we must get out or go under. (I wonder what has happened of recent years to our old Communist friend, “Psychological Moment ? Did she die of overwork and hope deferred, like “Soviets for Britain” and the “United Front”?)

Half of the allotted time has passed, and many Communists themselves have now come to see either that the theory of collapse was radically unsound, or that the nearness of that happy event was grossly exaggerated. We would be pleased to see the Communist Party approaching a more realistic view of the working-class position, but unfortunately, in driving out the false conception of social revolution, the lessons of experience have in many cases driven out also the desire for revolution itself, and large numbers of disappointed ex-Communists have followed Ellen Wilkinson, Philips Price and Walton Newbold into the ranks of the anti-revolutionary Labour Party, or have altogether lost their interest in politics. The Communist Party in this country, judged by results, and especially in view of the enormous sums of money spent on advertisement and propaganda, has not been a success, and its want of success can be ascribed to this erroneous theory more than to any other single factor. If that theory were correct, it would be sound to attach far greater importance to getting the attention and sympathy of politically backward workers, than to educating them. It would be wise to try to develop “mass organisation” of the unemployed and manoeuvre Communists into official position in the Trade Unions and the Labour Party. But the theory was all wrong, and the abundant enthusiasm of Communist members has brought no good to their party or to Socialism. Where, now, are the unemployed organisations? What is there to show for the energy devoted to supporting Labour candidates and trying to get into the Labour Party? After fluctuating violently and falling as low as 3,000, the membership of the Communist Party has during 1926 leapt up again and is now, apparently, about the same as in 1920. Is this progress? It is certainly not the success they looked for. Communism in the eyes of the mass of workers has come to be associated not with the real and unassailable Marxian position, but with a press-distorted version of the policy of the C.P.G.B., and the ability of the press to misrepresent is largely due to the foolish actions and erratic changes of policy on the part of Communists themselves.

What, then, is this theory which has, in our view, done so much to give a wrong direction to the efforts of many workers? In its most general form it is a belief that friction and the contradictions which result from the basic structure of capitalism will inevitably produce an economic crisis such that the system itself will cease to function. The War, by increasing productive powers and at the same time blocking so many of the normal channels of capitalist trade, aggravated the problems of the capitalist class to a degree which would make collapse certain and imminent. Declining trade, industrial depression, growing armies of workless, stupendous burdens of war debts and taxation, a more than ever infuriated struggle for markets and raw materials— these were the bombing party who were going to blow capitalism into the air.

Where is this conception at fault? In the first place, let us make it clear that it is not Marxian. A system of society is not a pack of cards, or a house, or a piece of mechanism; it is a complex organisation of human beings. The organisational machinery of capitalism, like actual machinery, has no power or purpose of its own; it is governed and, if necessary, changed, by the class who are in control of society. Capitalism might conceivably be rent asunder and destroyed in a long-drawn-out struggle for mastery between contending classes, but, barring the failure of the natural physical basis of human life, it cannot fall and cannot be revolutionised except by the actions of the men and women who compose it. That capitalism contains within itself the germ of its own destruction is not inconsistent with Marx’s words, “Man makes his own history.” The development of capitalism has brought with it a deepening of the cleavage between wage-earners and property-owners, and has relegated the latter more and more to the position of a passive parasitic class simultaneously with an undreamed of growth in their individual wealth and their power over the lives of the workers. The interests of the workers more and more obviously conflict with those of the capitalistic owners of the means of wealth production. “From forms of development of the forces of production these (property) relations turn into their fetters” (Marx, “Critique of Political Economy,” Kerr, 1911, page 12). In this process lies the germ of the destruction of capitalism. The production and distribution of wealth on capitalist lines do not become impossible; the system does not cease to function, but it becomes visibly an anachronism and therefore detestable to the workers. A period of revolution begins, not because life has become physically impossible, but because growing numbers of workers have their eyes suddenly opened to the fact that problems which they hitherto accepted as part of man’s unavoidable heritage have become capable of solution. Life need not have become worse than before—it may have become better—but it becomes intolerable from the moment of realising that only the interests and institutions of the ruling class prevent it from being better still. From that moment the workers forget the consolations of religion and the innumerable conventional barriers in the way of action, and concentrate their energies on attacking the privileges of the capitalist class. Mere suffering, whether through unemployment or a declining standard of living, will not automatically produce such a result. It will not do so if the material conditions are not ripe for solving the problem, or if the victims lack knowledge of the solution or lack confidence to act. Famine in India produces apathy, not revolution. Unemployment in England may do the same.

In other respects, too, those who held the theory of the collapse of capitalism were mistaken. They produced evidence, but their “facts” were one-sided, and their conclusions did not logically follow.

They selected the British Empire, and particularly Great Britain, as their example. The staple industries, they said—iron, coal, and cotton—were in a bad way. Competitors were stealing the pre-war markets of British producers, production in these lines was declining, and exports generally. Unemployment was great and growing, new producing and exporting countries were coming into the field, and pre-war competitors were rapidly recovering or surpassing their pre-war levels of production. On this evidence the outlook appeared to be gloomy and hopeless for the capitalist class ; but was the picture a complete one? It would take too long to deal with each industry, but it should suffice to mention some general conditions which were, and still are, ignored and which upset the assumptions behind that argument. First of all, it must be remembered that technical advance is always accompanied by the scrapping of old and the quick growth of new processes and new industries, and the country which has, like Great Britain, concentrated largely on a few main industries is naturally most affected either by world disturbances of trade or by the exploitation of new processes. But, however difficult the transition might be, was there ever any warrant for the belief that British capitalists would prove less willing or less able to adapt themselves than others? And does the bankruptcy of an old industry accompanied by the prosperity of a new one spell ruin for the capitalist class as a whole? Cotton might be depressed, but artificial silk has been taking its place. Coal might be in difficulties (as it was all over the world) but oil and electricity have been going forward by leaps and bounds. The amount of capital sunk in all branches of the very prosperous British electrical industry is estimated at no less than £768,000,000, and Sir John Snell predicts that the number of units of electricity generated will be trebled within 15 years (Daily Telegraph, Jan. 3). The development of the chemical industry has been crowned last year by the formation of the £65,000,000 Mond Combine. What has misled some observers is the quite natural desire of the capitalists in declining industries to howl their woes from the housetops, and the equally natural reticence of those in other industries who were making enormous profits.

Again, allowance should have been made for the familiar recurring depression which is a century old feature of the system. Such a depression affecting almost all the world in 1921, no more justified the prophecy of ruin and collapse for British capitalism than depression did in pre-war days. Since 1921 unemployment in this country has been almost halved, currency problems in most European countries have been from a capitalist standpoint satisfactorily solved and no one now supposes that the war debts present any special difficulty. To say that pre-war capitalism had its problems, too, and that a return to approximately pre-war conditions does not signify undisturbed stability, is true, but the essence of the case for the collapse of capitalism is that the war marked a turning point and the beginning of a new and troubled era from which there could be no return to the piping days of peace as it was known before 1914. Incidentally it must not be forgotten that even then the prototypes of the communists of to-day went on generation after generation making similar rash forecasts of collapse.

Much use has been made of figures showing a decline in exports, but rarely do the figures justify the use which is made of them. Although Great Britain depends largely on exports in certain industries, by far the greater part of production in this country is for the home market. The volume of production as a whole can and during the past few years undoubtedly has been increasing, while exports have been decreasing. Profits have since 1922 continually grown in this country, but declared profits again give only a partial indication of the magnitude of the proportion of wealth retained by the employing class. For years it may be the deliberate policy of expanding industries to devote to new plant the surplus which would otherwise appeal as dividends.

It is not suggested that the real position of the British capitalists is easily estimated. Our present purpose is merely to show that hasty answers based on a few declining industries are inadequate and certainly exaggerated, if not wholly wrong. It is by no means incompatible with the evidence presented that the nature of capitalist industry in this country is changing. The transition may be difficult and may disclose features which do not fit into current popular methods of measurement, but difficulties do not mean collapse, and it is always worth considering whether the standards of measurement may not themselves be inapplicable.

But even if British capitalism were doomed to lose its place in the front rank, does that signify a collapse of capitalism? If America ousts Britain is the system itself any weaker? If Europe and England become financial dependencies of the United States banks is it any less necessary for the workers to overthrow capitalism? Just as the decline of the cotton industry implies no necessary weakening of British capitalism, so the transfer of the supremacy from Europe to America may well be a cause of strength to the capitalist system; it is certainly not evidence of a collapse. Similarly the difficulties of the British Empire occasioned by the revolt of dependent countries, like India and Egypt, etc., only shows how virile capitalism yet can be.

India and Egypt, China and Mexico, are going through the painful birth processes of capitalism. British capitalist interests may suffer, but capitalism is not being undermined. In passing it is as well to repeat that in our view the danger to British capitalism from these quarters has been generally misunderstood and largely overestimated.

Let us face the facts. Capitalism is strong, and the capitalists are growing wealthier. They have forgotten their post-war panic and are confident of the stability of their system. The machinery of capitalist organisation, the banks, foreign trade, etc., may bring their problems, but it is absurd to suppose that the capitalists will in the long run allow unprogressive members of their own class to imperil the system by persisting in methods, such as unrestricted competition, which have become more dangerous than useful. The confidence of the capitalists in the stability of capitalism rests on the docility of the working class. Capitalism continues because the workers unthinkingly accept it. To devise means of prolonging this convenient condition of the workers’ minds is the chief and potentially fatal problem of the capitalist class. Capitalism will not collapse. It will end when the workers organise to bring it to an end. To educate and organise the workers for that purpose is the only problem with which Socialists should concern themselves.

Edgar Hardcastle

Letter: An Anarchist defence of private property (1927)

Letter to the Editors from the April 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following letter has been received from an anarchist reader of the S.S. We append our reply.

There are two Socialisms, one based upon individual subordination and the absolute denial of private property (Marxian and Kropotkin Socialism), the other based upon individual sovereignty and the insistence upon private property (Proudhonian Socialism). Marx attacks liberty—Proudhon attacks privilege. Marx attacks capital— Proudhon attacks monopoly. Marx thought capital was one thing and labour product another. He would abolish wages by confiscating all capital to the State, that is the conscription of all wages and workers— Militarism, Bureaucracy ! Marx said value could not be determined, yet he says that the worker produces four and receives one. How did he find that out? Marx ignored the money question ; like Kropotkin, he was an absolute dud in finance. Marx thought profits, or that part of the product kept back by the employers, was the only means of exploitation worth mentioning, yet profit is simply the difference between what a man buys goods at and what he sells them at. I contend that competition in the supply of a currency divorced from its metallic or specie basis would abolish that difference ! Why, to-day the four hundred millions interest on the National Debt will admit of eighty thousand to live at the rate of five thousand a year, who need not own any means of production or engage in any enterprise, and who can look with philosophic calm on all your strikes and riots as long as the State remains intact ! Why, even Lord Rothermere, through his Daily Mail, has been clamouring for the Government to tax the Channel Islands because Mr. Houston and other millionaires were flying there to dodge Karl Marx, the old Tory tax collector. I shall insist that every trader shall, like the proprietors of theatres, state the amount of tax on each article, including beer, spirits, and tobacco. This will educate the workers and expose the cowardice, hypocrisy, and criminality of your Labour champions and all politicians and invaders. I will conclude with a few questions. (1) Are not the working classes deprived of their earnings by usury in its three forms—interest, rent, and profit? (2) Is not such deprivation the principal cause of poverty? (3) Is not poverty the principal cause of illegal crime? (4) Is not usury dependent upon monopoly, and principally the land and money monopolies? (5) Could these monopolies exist without the State at their back or the sanction of the Government?

Ground rent exists because the State stands by to collect it and to protect land titles rooted in force and fraud, otherwise the land would be free to all and no individual could control more than he could use. Interest and house rent exist because the State grants to their bankers the sole right to monetise the capital and securities produced by the workers, and to issue credits thereon to finance war and to create parasites by endowing churches, colleges, and hospitals, inspectors innumerable, presidents, chairmen and staffs for boards of trade commissions of enquiry, censors for cinemas to see that you get plenty of military and religious dope; staffs for wireless and for ratifying district agreements, with the Labour Party supporting Army and Navy officers as Parliamentary candidates whose interest is, like the lawyers, to increase taxation, and thus ensuring the slavery of the workers by pawning the future products of the workers and their children to the State ! So we have discovered our enemies—the financiers, the State bankers, the currency jugglers are the vipers sucking at the vitals of industry, and the State, the Government, the public trustees are their protectors and co-operators, which only free labour can detach and kill.

Give the workmen their economic independence by giving them free access to the means of life which come without labour, and they will produce and exchange their wealth. As for the usurers and their protectors, stripped of their power to steal, they will have to join the ranks of labour or starve. This is where I stand, and I invite any and all to meet me here and whip me if you can. I should close here, but I must tell you that the Labour Party is the last refuge for bankrupt aristocracies and broken down thrones; hence the riddle of their titled and military members !

T. H. Mahony.

Our Reply.

This is the third letter we have printed from Anarchist individualists, and it betrays the same vagueness and misconception as those from previous correspondents. There is no attempt made to deal with the economic development and tendencies of our time, and no effort is made to show how private property in the great means of production can exist without a rich owning class on the one side and a vast working and non-owning class on the other. The first accusation to be noted is that “Marx attacks Liberty” ! Where does not occur. The only Liberty Marx attacks is the Liberty to rob ! The sheer nonsense of our critic talking of “Kropotkin Socialism” is an example of the general confusion in his letter. Kropotkin opposed Socialism and stood for “absolute individual liberty”—whatever that might mean. Our critic is referred to the complete answer to Proudhon given by Marx in his work, “Poverty of Philosophy.” Monopoly is a direct result of competition and is inevitable under capitalism. The statements made about Marx in the above letter clearly show that Mr. Mahony has never read Marx. Marx shows in “Capital” that the product of labour becomes capital because the product of the labourer is the property of the capitalist and only a portion in the shape of wages is returned to the worker.

Marx did not propose putting capital in the hands of the State, but that the producers should own the means of wealth production in common, and with the abolition of private or class ownership the State would die out.

In the same sentence our critic accuses Marx of advocating the abolition of wages, and then says Marx advocated the conscription of wages !

Marx advocated neither. The gem in the above letter is the statement that Marx says that Value could not be determined ! Actually all Marx’s economic writings— “Value, Price and Profit,” “Wage Labour and Capital,” “Capital,” “The Critique of Political Economy,” and others—all state that value is measured by the amount of labour socially necessary to produce an article.

The joke of claiming that Marx ignored the money question is evident to the merest tyro in Marxian study, for, apart from the “Poverty of Philosophy,” the great three volumes of “Capital” and the “Critique” deal specifically and completely with the money question. Marx alone was able to demonstrate the secret of money and showed the actual part played by money in capitalist economy.

If there is any other source of exploitation but that occurring in withholding the product of labour from the producers, it would be interesting to have it stated.

The crude notion that a metal or specie currency is the cause of exploitation is completely answered by the facts of modern life wherever there is a paper currency. No tinkering with currency or allowing any person to issue it would touch the simple cause of slavery and poverty—the ownership of wealth by a section of the population, and the dependence of the rest upon that section for permission to work and live. If the National Debt was abolished, the workers would be no better off, because they do not pay for the debt, but interest and principal is paid for by the employing class out of the surplus values taken by them in production.

The fact of the Daily Mail clamouring for the taxation of millionaires who try to evade taxation by moving to the Channel Islands shows the truth of our position. The capitalists, having to bear the general expenses of government (out of the proceeds of exploiting the workers), are anxious to make all capitalists contribute.

Taxation does not concern the workers. If there were no indirect taxes at all, the causes of working-class poverty would still remain. The questions asked by our correspondent are easily answered.

(1) Rent, interest and profit are three parts into which the surplus taken by the industrial capitalist is divided. These three forms result from private ownership and can only be abolished when the producers own the means of production.

(2) The cause of poverty is stated in answer to Question 1. Rent, interest and profit are not the fundamental causes, but these three forms of stolen wealth are effects of capitalist ownership of the means of production.

(3) Modern crime is due to the material conditions resulting from class ownership.

(4) Interest is a result of private ownership and is legalised by all capitalist Governments as a useful means of carrying on trade and commerce for them.

(5) The State is not at the back of the Capitalists. The State is the Central Committee of the capitalist class and carries on the executive affairs on their own behalf. All private property society needs a State to rule the subject class and to conduct and regulate the affairs of government in the interest of the ruling class.

Economic independence for the worker depends upon their free access to the land, factories, workshops, machinery, etc., and all other means of production.

But as the modern methods of producing involve large-scale production and associated labour, the means of wealth cannot be owned individually by each worker. They are too vast and beyond the means of any producer. As they must be co-operatively worked, so they must be commonly owned. There is no other solution. Individual ownership by the few rich non-producers, with the resulting poverty of the many—or common ownership by the producers themselves for their own comfort and enjoyment. That is the position our critic has to face.

The evading of this important fact of economic evolution by our Anarchist critics, and the calm assumption that we are living back in the days when means of production were small enough to be owned individually by the producers—these two points make all attempts at much discussion with them futile.

Adolph Kohn

Answers To Correspondents. (1927)

From the April 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

A. Lile (Swansea). -

T. C. Morris the South Wales organiser of the Labour Party, has never contributed to "The Socialist Standard." Non-members are not permitted to write for our columns except as correspondents.

De Moc (Essex). -

Name and address must accompany all correspondence intended for publication or reply.

A Look Round. (1927)

From the April 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

Who Pays For Royal Trips?

Those who must have the support of the majority of the workers in their present mental state must also of necessity appeal and act in a manner which will not arouse hostility, even although not in the workers’ interest. Whether such appeals are the outcome of sincerity or duplicity does not alter this fact. In the debate on the expenditure for the Duke and Duchess of York’s Australian trip we have a useful illustration, the Labour members being, of course, well to the front.

Mr. Scurr “did not think that this is a time when this visit ought to have taken place, considering the distress existing in the country.” Mr. Buchanan “thought it unjustifiable to expend this money on a useless visit.” Dr. D. Shiels seemed quite charmed because those in Australia “who belong to the same movement as we do are looking forward to the visit,” as they regard the Royal Family as “the symbol of the unity of the Empire.” How truly democratic these Labourites are ! Perhaps the “best” was what Mr. Kirkwood got off his chest:—

  Here we have got to pay for the sending out of their Royal Highnesses on this excursion, which is simply a joy ride. … I know the responsibilities that my own class are carrying at the present moment and they are very heavy. …. The Duke of York and his wife are being voted this £7,000, and who has to pay for it? The working class has to pay for it— my class, my fellow tradesmen; the engineers, with their £2 15s. a week; the miners have to pay for it. I wish the working class were here just now. I wish they had their eyes on me protesting here on their behalf.” (Hansard, Feb. 17th, 1927.)

This is just clap-trap. The inference is that if capitalist expenditure were curtailed, the money so expended would flow straight into the workers’ pockets. Actually, the enormous wealth you produce is the property of your masters, and that the portion returned to you (wages) never does much more than pay for the food, clothing, shelter and incidentals necessary to sustain your class as efficient units of wealth-producing energy. When you have purchased these necessaries, you could not give any away and maintain the efficiency your masters require. You are too closely rationed for that. How, then, can you pay for anything beyond these rations and incidentals? What you actually receive as wages is not the mere money, but what it buys. 60s. with high prices is no more to you than 30s. with low prices, if it only maintains the same standard of life. It is the money payment that permits the illusion so dear to the workers that they “pay for everything.” Those who retain all you PRODUCE, minus the fraction they return to you in the form of wages, must meet the expenditure incurred in maintaining their Royalty, their navies, armies, paupers, criminals, lunatics, and so on. Though you pile wealth mountain high, the wages system never gives you more than subsistence. These capitalist agents endeavour by any means to hide this fact, because they recognise that for you to have a clear understanding of the cause of your poverty would fit you for the working out of your own emancipation. In that case you would send them about their business, for the capitalist henchmen that they are. At present their only chance of keeping place and pelf is by preventing you from gaining knowledge of your class interests.

* * *

Is Production Too Small?

  But the total production of the world has never been sufficient to keep the population of the world in decency, that is to provide that all shall live up to the standard recognised at any given time as desirable. (Sir Ernest Benn, Times, Nov. 17th, 1926.)

The above is one of those meaningless ambiguities beloved by the so-called business men of to-day. Any standard work dealing with industrial history or a summary of the applied science and inventions of the nineteenth century would show that our potential powers of production were multiplied in that period far beyond anything the human family were ever likely fully to utilise. Allowing for the limitations imposed because capitalism produces only for sale, Dr. Russell Wallace, in “The Wonderful Century,” calculated that our producing capacity at the end of the century had grown ten times faster than the population. Ample evidence is available to show that as far as production is concerned the poverty question was no longer a problem with the coming of modern manufacture and mass output. We learn from a magazine to which Sir Ernest Benn has himself contributed many times : —

  Of all the agricultural countries of the world Canada stands first in ratio of increase of production in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Wheat production at the end of this quarter century was over 600 per cent. greater in yield than in 1900, oats 200 per cent., barley 500 per cent., rye 600 per cent. … It is, in the light of these facts, and prospects, not an exaggeration to say that we are only beginning to grow wheat in Canada.” (Business Organisation, March.)

What applies to agriculture applies equally to manufacture. The fact that in practically every leading industry (agriculture included) production has had to be curtailed, makes Sir Ernest Benn’s statement look childish. The following is only a sample of what takes place with tea, rubber, cotton, wool. etc. :—

  The steel cartel has decided to reduce production by 1,500,000 tons for the first three months of 1927. (Daily Chronicle, Dec. 11th, 1926.)

We do not expect our masters to point out the cause of our poverty; their privileges as landlords, shareholders, and dummy directors are based upon our exploitation as producers. Obviously, then, it must be the workers’ task to convert those material means of providing comfort and security for others into the common property of all. Then, not only could the race be kept in “decency,” but a life of grandeur could be made available for all.

* * *

The Source of the "Social Evil."

It is in the very nature of the reformer to take for granted the continuance and the inevitability of the present system of society. After years and years of tinkering with social evils separately, and seeking to sum up the net result of their efforts, they are often in their more honest moments driven to confess utter failure and despair.

A committee of experts recently made extensive enquiries on an international scale upon the White Slave Traffic, and a lengthy report has been made to the League of Nations. Among some of the causes enumerated are :—

  Bogus offers of employment in a foreign country are not infrequently used as a means of leading girls to become prostitutes. . . . The contracts also are often drawn up in terms so harsh that the girl who signs one has little or no security. Governments would be well advised to protect their nationals against victimisation of this character. (Times, Mar. 12th, 1927.)

It is almost needless to point out that those who must seek employment, bogus or otherwise, here or elsewhere, are girls of the working class. They have no more security here in “free” England than have their male counterparts in wage slavery. Here, too, the terms of living for thousands upon thousands of girls are so harsh that whole armies are driven to live in the same way as that which is deplored in these Continental cities, considered such sinks of iniquity. A country that can boast 80,000 fresh cases of venereal disease yearly (pamphlet issued by the Council for Combating Venereal Disease) has little right to claim Britain to be the “one bright spot.” Our ruling class, however, are essentially hypocritical, a relic of the Puritanism with which they helped to fight their way to power. The sentiments of this report are akin to the canting ethics of the cotton lords who shed crocodile tears for American slaves whilst fighting legislation aimed at preventing them from working their own child operatives to death. After a column of proposals the Committee practically admits its whole work to be a waste of effort, for we are told :—

  The measures to which we have referred above are not likely to be successful while the incentive of money-making remains. Profit is at the bottom of the business. (Ibid.)

While profit is here held responsible for one evil, we claim that it is production for profit in the wide sense—the capitalist system—that engenders other evils. In our pamphlet, “Socialism,” we show how it begets unemployment, intensified exploitation, and the misery and general poverty from which our class suffer. We have no time to wring our hands and bemoan the foulness of a particular social evil, but carry on our work of spreading the knowledge that Socialism is the remedy for all of the economic problems of the working class.

* * *

Is Socialism government ownership?

Sir Herbert Samuel is a Liberal who makes a few assertions, dubs them Socialism, shows their absurdity, and then congratulates himself that “it won’t stand criticism.” In the “Forward View” (quoted Westminster Gazette, 14/3/27) he writes :—

  But the Labour Party committed two great errors. First, it definitely bound up its fortunes with the theory of Socialism. And Socialism has not been able to stand criticism. . . . the idea that here was a panacea which would cure poverty and unemployment, did not pass the calm examination of practical, impartial minds.

The Liberal is, of course, practical; his remedy, like that of the Labour Party, is to perpetuate the system that produces the evils that they are always going to remove. With years of office and a huge majority, they still have to leave poverty and unemployment to the Young Liberals. The others have grown old in the cause of such stirring reforms as Labour Exchanges, Insurance, and Home Rule. And what, pray, is this panacea that impartial minds can’t pass? Is it Socialism, or only what Samuel, through ignorance or imposture, calls Socialism? It is, he falsely says :—

  …. Transferring the greater part of production, distribution and exchange from private enterprise to some form of public ownership and management. (Ibid.)

This he calls Socialism, but he is only repeating the confusion spread by the Labour Party and their leaders, like Mr. Hartshorn, who says that :—

  The Post Office was really the one big Socialist organisation that had ever been built up in this country. If they could introduce the same principle and the same spirit into the other great industries they would be able to build up a great international brotherhood.  (Vernon Hartshorn, Labour P.M.G., Observer, May 5th, 1924.)

State activities such as the Post Office are run like other capitalist concerns : their profits either go to relieve taxation, or Government bondholders take them, instead of receiving dividends as shareholders in a private company. The workers remain under the State concern as before—wage-slaves—even if their condition is not worsened owing to co-ordination, speeding-up, and consequent displacement of large numbers.

  So far from being a charge on the community the Post Office has in the thirteen years 1912-13 to 1924-25 made a profit of 44 millions, all of which has gone in relief of taxation. Since 1914 there has been a decrease of more than 24,000 in staff, while much work has been added to the Post Office. This has resulted in speeding up and overwork. (Daily Herald, Dec. 14th, 1925.)

Apparently what the Labour Party look forward to is an international brotherhood of overwork and speeding-up. In Australia they have had Labour and State activities for years, yet we get the following admission from those who support the same thing at home here :—

  Australia has had more experience of Labour Government than any country in the world. Some people may expect it to follow from this that Australia is the most Socialistic country in the world ; but, alas ! for democratic illusions. . . After years of office it has nothing to show except pettifogging reforms, and it has actually condoned and encouraged the dominance of Finance capital in its area of control. Is there any guarantee that in Britain politicians of the same school of thought will do otherwise. (Labour Magazine, Nov., 1926.)

No, they will not do otherwise, even were they the most straightforward men who ever took office. Not until the number of workers wanting Socialism is greater than those who are opposed or apathetic, can it be at hand. Socialism is common ownership. Public ownership is State capitalism. Emancipation cannot take place without the former, which involves the abolition of capitalism, and not a mere change in its form.

W. E. MacHaffie

Progress and pauperism. (1927)

From the April 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is now over nine years since the Great War ended, and, in spite of the feeling aroused in the minds of many that capitalism was staggering to its doom, the machinery of production, or perhaps it would be better to say the organisation of capitalism, appears to have practically recovered from the many dangers that threatened it during the perilous period of changing over from war to peace conditions.

How marvellous the recuperative powers of capitalism must appear to those who are carried away by the seductive theory that we have only to sit tight and await the working out of the “blind forces of production,” which are supposed to be driving the system to an undesired grave, without the assistance or intervention of the human element” ! The advocates of this view lug poor old Marx in by the scruff of the neck to support their erroneous ideas, on the plea that the Materialist Conception of History is the basis of the theory. The two men who worked out the Materialist Conception of History—Marx and Engels—were tireless in pointing out that in the process of human history there were two fundamental factors—man and his environment—and that it was human beings who struggled, and not environments. It is the action of shackling environment upon man that gives the punch, forcing man to act; the pressure of slavery, for instance, that urges the slave to free himself.

However, this is not quite what I intended to write about when I sat down. Sidney and Beatrice Webb have just published a volume on “English Poor Law History,” and Clifford Sharp, reviewing it in the Daily News (11/3/27), makes some observations that are interesting and also startling to those who are not acquainted with the earlier history of this country.

It is interesting to note, for instance, that destitution, in the sense that we moderns so bitterly know it, was practically unknown in the Middle Ages, that not until the beginning of the commerce that has made some people so wealthy, was it necessary to codify by statute the various methods of helping those who were poor. Perhaps the quotation itself would be more informing than a few remarks upon it—so here it is :—

  The chief fact that is likely to strike the unlearned reader of this story is that once upon a time there was no Poor Law at all in England —or anywhere else for that matter. The poor were “God’s poor,” and their needs were dealt with by the Church and by personal alms. So it was in this island from the Middle Ages down to the time of the Tudors. There was, of course, then practically no such thing as “destitution” in the modern sense, for the poor were mainly serfs or villeins, and had feudal lords who employed them and provided for their ordinary needs (!); and it was only sick folk and unattached travellers or vagrants, who were ever actually destitute.

Of course, farther back still, before the feudal lords so kindly employed the serfs and villeins, there was a time when the people employed themselves and, with the limited means at their disposal, saw to it that no one was destitute except when accident or famine or something similar occurred, in which event all went hungry together.

But is it not remarkable that learned professors and politicians should boast loudly of the enormous strides made during the last few hundred years in productive methods, when there has grown up in our midst a poverty problem of an appalling extent. When one sits back and thinks, the position appears in a comical light— there was little destitution in England until England became wealthy and prosperous ! Then one reviews one’s own life, with the struggles to keep the wolf from the door, and begins to wonder who or what is the “England” that has become wealthy. A little further thinking and wondering, and at last the realisation dawns upon the wonderer that it is only the few who “own property” that have become wealthy. The mass who produce the wealth are poorer than they were, in the sense that they have to struggle harder for what they get, and that the actual amount of destitution is proportionately greater.

Since its beginning in the time of Elizabeth, the Poor Law has answered its purpose : it has kept the hungry multitude from doing anything that would seriously endanger the system that provides wealth and comfort for the few out of the blood and tears of the many. And as long as the capitalists are far-seeing enough not to be too niggardly with their “almsgiving” schemes, the system might stagger on for an indefinite period.

This brings me back to the idea underlying the remarks I made at the beginning. In spite of all that the employers do, and may do, to throw dust in the eyes of the workers, the shoe pinches, and sooner or later the workers, being intelligent human beings, will have a look at the shoe to see what the real trouble is. Slowly but surely the idea is taking root that the cause of working-class misery lies in the nature of the modern system of wealth production, and sooner or later, owing to the fact that they have brains which draw upon their experience for thoughts and ideas, the workers will grasp the fundamental fact that they must exert themselves to transform wealth production from a basis of private ownership to a basis of common ownership in the means of producing wealth. The slumbering Chinaman is stirring : it is time for the West to awake !

Gilmac.