The Weight of the Chain (1939)

From the October 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

In “Wage Labour and Capital” Marx states that the forest of arms begging for employment becomes ever denser and the arms themselves ever leaner.” He points out that this is the inevitable result of the growth of the means of production, under capitalist conditions, but he says also that this development is at the same time in the interests of the working class—the sooner capitalism reaches the limits of its expansion the better.

In June, 1936, The Economic Journal contained an article by A. E. Feavearyear on “Capital Accumulation and Unemployment,” in which he endeavoured “to make an estimate of the rate of capital accumulation in this country in recent years and, secondly, to give some indication of the quantity of investment likely to be required to set the present unemployed to work and provide for future recruits.”

The result of Mr. Feavearyear’s investigations are of great importance and, whatever one may think about his conclusions, it must be admitted that he has been painstaking and thorough in his work; he gathered an enormous amount of data and carefully sifted it before attempting to point out its significance.

It is obviously impossible, within the scope of an article, to deal exhaustively with the writer’s views : we will let him speak for himself.

 “The whole subject is obviously bristling with theoretical difficulties. For instance, how are we to value the capital? Is it to be the written down value of the fixed assets together with working capital, or the market value of the business as a going concern—that is to say, in the case of a company, the total market value of the share and loan capital ? The chief objection to the latter is that where a business has been keeping its workpeople fully employed for some years, but making little profit and paying low dividends, the valuation will be too low, and where a business has temporarily had the advantage of windfall profits the valuation is likely to be much too high—that is to say, much greater than the cost of erecting such a business. … As the most practical method it was decided to take, for mining, manufacturing, and trading concerns, the sum of the paid-up share and loan capital at par, the reserves, and any long-term bank loans, less any substantial outside investments. The method involves the assumption that sundry debtors and cash are together equal to sundry creditors, and it values as capital goodwill and any other intangible assets which may remain in the balance sheet.”

The following table can be followed with comparative ease. The inquiry has been restricted by the fact that for only a limited number of firms is there any published information of the staff they employ, and in some of these cases, where there are subsidiary undertakings, it is not possible accurately to relate the capital to the labour.

In addition to the figures given above we have other information.

In his estimate of the national capital in 1928 Sir Josiah Stamp placed the total of farmers’ capital at £450 millions, excluding the value of land and buildings. If the total of the operative staff at that period is taken at the round figure of one million, the average per head is £450.

Public utility undertakings of all kinds have a very high average of capital per head, due chiefly to the heavy absorption of capital in mains, whether they be water, gas, or electric mains, or telephone trunk line. A London gas company, for instance, has a capital of £4 millions and a total staff of 2,500, with an average of £1,600 per head; and a London electric, supply company a capital of £9 millions, a staff of 2,700 and an average of .£3,300 per head.

If all the assets of Railway Companies are taken together, including steamboats, canals, hotels, the total capital is £1,020 millions and the total staff about 630,000, the average per head being £1,620.

In the case of Shipping Companies there is the shore staff as well as the crews. A line of twelve cargo vessels of about 5,000 tons each stood on the owners’ books at £903,000 and employed crews numbering 600 altogether, an average of £1,500 of capital each.

In 1931 the book value of the P. and O. fleet of forty-six vessels was about £15 millions and they employed crews totalling 11,000, the average capital being £1,360 per head.

The Empress of Britain was reputed to have cost £3 millions and her crew numbers about 720, while the Queen Mary, which has cost £5 millions, apparently requires a crew of only 1,270. The average is about £4,000 in each case and it is clear that building luxury liners is a very costly way of giving permanent employment to the new recruits to industry.

“If we deduct from Sir Josiah Stamp’s figure of £18,045 millions for the total wealth of the United Kingdom in 1928 the value of the land and items such as furniture and movables, which are not a part of the industrial equipment, we have a sum of £14,000 millions as the value of the capital being used to house and employ the working population, which, for an occupied population of 21 millions, represents an average of £666 per head. Since by far the greater part of this is old equipment and old houses, it seems unlikely that the average amount of new investment required to house and employ the additional personnel for which the nation still has to provide each year can be much less than £1,000 per head.”

This is certainly interesting, especially when we perceive the gigantic developments now taking place in the armament race.

Where will our masters obtain the necessary capital with which to employ those at present unemployed in the production of munitions, etc.? The workers are compelled to forge the very chains that enslave them. Let’s see what Marx says:—

“The law by which a constantly increasing quantity of means of production, thanks to the advance in the productiveness of social labour, may be set in movement by a progressively diminishing expenditure of human power, this law, in a capitalist society—where the labourer does not employ the means of production, but the means of production employ the labourer—undergoes a complete inversion and is expressed thus : the higher the productiveness of labour, the greater is the pressure of the labourers on the means of employment, the more precarious, therefore, becomes their condition of existence, viz., the sale of their own labour power, for the increasing of another’s wealth, or for the self-expansion of capital. The fact that the means of production and the productiveness of labour increase more rapidly than the productive population expresses itself, therefore, capitalistically, in the inverse form that the labouring population always increases more rapidly than the conditions under which capital can employ this increase for its own self-expansion.

“Within the capitalist system all methods for raising the social productiveness of labour are brought about at the cost of the individual labourer; all means for the development of production transform themselves into means of domination over, and exploitation of, the producers; they mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a man, degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine, destroy every remnant of charm in his work and turn it into hated toil; they estrange from him the intellectual potentialities of the labour process in the same proportion as science is incorporated in it as an independent power; they distort the conditions under which he works, subject him during the labour-process to a despotism the more hateful for its meanness; they transform his life-time into working time and drag his wife and children beneath the wheels of the Juggernaut of Capital. But all methods for the production of surplus-value are at the same time methods of accumulation; and every extension of accumulation becomes again a means for the development of those methods. It follows, therefore, that in proportion as capital accumulates, the lot of the labourer, be his payment high or low, must grow worse. The law finally, that always equilibrates the relative surplus population, or industrial reserve army, to the extent and energy of accumulation, this law rivets the labourer to capital more firmly than the wedges of Vulcan did Prometheus to the rock. It establishes an accumulation of misery, corresponding with accumulation of capital. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time, accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole, i.e., on the side of the class that produces its own product in the form of capital.”

Marx was evidently full of moral indignation when he penned this analysis; he often wrote at a white heat, for it was his passionate sympathy with the victims of the industrial revolution that made him see the importance and significance of facts which were hidden from the academically minded economist.

Karl Kautsky says: 

“Political and social struggle is impossible without moral indignation against the opponent. The moral indignation against given political and social conditions, against the material oppression of the social powers, is therefore the first and the last, the basic form of the manifestation of the class differences, the most primitive and lasting mainspring of the class struggle.”

And then he states, referring to Menger’s ethical theory and the statement of some reviewers, that it was identical with the theory of ethics of the Materialistic Conception of History:

“To say that the conception of historical materialism is generated by the material conditions of society, is the same as Menger’s conception, that it is generated by material force is just as false and misleading as is the oft-repeated confusion of material conditions with the material interests of the individual, which reduces Marxism to that low level of ethics according to which all morality is reduced to egoism. People who so represent and propagate the Materialist Conception of History may consider themselves good Marxists, but they really belong to those who reflect little credit on the Marxian teachings, who made Marx shudder and with whom he begged not to be confounded.”

“….. While the growing contradiction between the changing social conditions and the stagnating morality expresses itself in the Conservative, that is, in the ruling classes, in growing immorality, hypocrisy and cynicism, which often go hand in hand with a weakening of the social instinct, the effect upon the rising and exploited classes is entirely different. The interests of those classes stand in direct opposition to the social foundations which created the reigning morality. They have not the slightest reason to defer to it, and all the reasons to oppose it. With the growth of their consciousness of their opposition to the existing social order, grows their moral indignation, their opposition to the old, antiquated morality, to which they oppose a new morality, which they advocate as the morality of society as a whole. Thus there arises in the rising classes a moral ideal, which grows in intensity with the growth of the power of these classes. At the same time, as we have already seen, the social instincts of these same classes gain in strength and are particularly developed by the class struggle, so that with the intensity of the new moral ideal grows also the enthusiasm for the same.”

Capital is the means of exploitation. It is the chain on labour’s limbs and grows heavier.

Slavery is involved in the wages system. As a result of realising the cause of their enslavement the working class will obtain a knowledge of what is essential to their emancipation.

When they understand what capital is and the place they occupy in society as a result of being bound to it the working class will generate within themselves the will to be free.

Charles Lestor

Correspondence: The Partition of Ireland (1939)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent (L. C., Paddington, W.9.) asks us what is our attitude “regarding the partition of Ireland.”

The question of the demand by the Government of Eire for the incorporation of Northern Ireland in a united, independent Ireland is one which really requires full and detailed treatment in order to make plain the correctness of the Socialist attitude of refusing to support either side. While the problem of Irish nationalism is, broadly, the same as the other problems of nationalism, it can only be properly understood by taking into account the extent to which many of the present generation are influenced by the events of past centuries, and by dealing with the arguments put forward by the various groups in defence of their actions and attitude. The Socialist view is that the problems and conflicts, arising from capitalism do now prevent, and will continue to prevent, the large and small racial and language groups of peoples in the world from living together harmoniously. Neither the creation of small would-be independent nations nor the forcible incorporation of unwilling groups in larger States, will work satisfactorily as long as international commercial rivalries keep stoking the fires of national hatreds.

One argument used in the past by advocates of Irish nationalism has been that until the national question is settled the workers will never be able to recognise their world-wide community of interest in the abolition of capitalism. As against this the Socialist points out that nationality problems never will be settled under capitalism. The efforts to do so under the Versailles Treaty illustrate this.

Moreover, national movements tend invariably towards methods of force to attain their ends, as witness the traditions of the Irish factions. This in itself is a factor which militates against the spread of Socialist knowledge.

Editorial Committee.

Correspondence: Capitalist Opposition to Socialism (1939)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the February issue of the Socialist Standard we answered a question asked by a correspondent (D.G.D., of Clapham) regarding the measures Socialists would take after they had gained political power. D.G.D. put forth the view that Socialism would be born out of conditions of chaos, his actual phrase being “the crash.” In our reply we stated: “This is a mistaken view. Chaos could arise, and does arise, when a minority seizes power and tries to introduce more or less fundamental changes against the wishes of the majority of the population, or when the majority are apathetic and lack understanding of what is being done. But the inauguration of Socialism implies . . . the support and understanding of the majority of the population.”

A new reader, L. H. Tickner (N.13), writes to give his comments on our reply. He suggests that there may be a crash when the working class has gained political power, owing to the violent opposition of the capitalist class.

He says: “It appears to me that … a certain amount of force in the initial stages of the transition (from capitalism to Socialism) will be essential to suppress the property interests, arms-mongers and financial magnates, unless I over-rate their power to-day.”

The question he asks is the following: “Do you really think that capitalists will be eliminated in a simple manner, without a big fight on their part not to give up their power to the workers ? … It will have to be a fight—even (in the extreme) to the death, will it not?”

Reply.

We would point out to our correspondent that the capitalist class (including the sections of it he mentions) possesses power to-day because it has control of the machinery of government, including the armed forces. Not always has the capitalist class been so powerful. H was not able to become the most powerful class in the State until it had wrested from the feudal aristocracy a share in the control of the machinery of government.

To-day, the capitalist class still controls the machinery of government. But this is due only to the fact that the working class is immature. The workers still believe their problems can be solved within the framework of capitalism. Consequently, at each election, they send to Parliament and to the local councils members of the capitalist class, or other people prepared to uphold the capitalist system of society. Thus do the “arms mongers and financial magnates” get their power.

When the workers realise that they constitute a slave class and that their slavery and all its accompanying evils will remain as long as capitalism itself, then they will become Socialists. They will cease to give their votes to the supporters of capitalism. Instead, they will elect Socialist delegates to Parliament and to the local councils. Since the working class forms the majority of the population, nothing but its lack of political knowledge prevents it gaining control of the machinery of government for the purpose of carrying out its own wishes.

The power of the capitalist class will have vanished.

Whether the capitalist class will be foolish enough to attempt to fight to maintain their then hopeless position is a question we cannot answer categorically. We do know, however, that were the attempt to be made, it would be impossible for them to put up serious resistance. They would, of course, be rebels in revolt against society, and by rebelling they would make their already hopeless position still more hopeless : their unconstitutional action would cause many waverers to support the Socialists—the side of law and order. The puny efforts of the rebels would be met by the highly developed and organised might of the armed forces.

Our correspondent’s question, then, boils down to this : “Would a small number of capitalists try to retain power by fighting, when they would be met by the bulk of the population in control of the armed forces?”

It is obvious that such a question need detain us no longer. Certainly no “crash” of society could result from such an incident.

Clifford Allen

Letter: Socialism and the Well-paid Managers of Industry (1939)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. R. Jessop (Spalding) asks : — 

”How will the well-paid managers and supervisors (the working variety) be persuaded to do their job during the period of transition from Capitalism to Socialism?” He adds : —

“Whereas it is quite true that the workers at the present time organise production and distribution, it is, generally speaking, a fact that those in responsible directing, overseering and organising positions are sufficiently well paid as to make their co-operation at .the outset of Socialism, on a basis of equality with their present ‘inferiors’ somewhat problematical. Yet we must have their help to keep the wheels of industry going, until we can train class-conscious Socialists to succeed them.”

Reply.

Our correspondent finds himself troubled by this question because he attaches too much importance to the size of wages received by managers and supervisors, and because he overlooks other factors.

Although some managers and supervisors do receive wages which are high compared with those of other workers, this is not sufficient to raise them up on to a plane, so that they become immune from the evils of capitalism and from Socialist propaganda. With the development of capitalism, the security of even well-paid managers is made more and more uncertain.

Capitalism is constantly revolutionising its methods of production. The competition for markets, the struggle for profits is always forcing capitalist firms to improve on their methods of producing commodities, and forcing them to cut down the cost of production to the lowest possible level. Consequently, old branches of industry are scrapped as soon as they fail to produce the required profits, and the manager as well as the ordinary working men have to look for fresh jobs.

Then, again, in order to cut down expenses, capitalist firms often amalgamate departments, so that fewer departments do the work that was previously done by more. These changes, too, mean that managers are displaced, so that their true position in society—wage slaves, dependent on the capitalist class for their livelihood—is made clear.

The insecurity of this section of the working class is increased owing to the fact that nowadays capitalism produces more technical specialists than it can use. It is not uncommon to find firms having numbers of workers as well-trained, as well-fitted for the job of manager, as the manager himself. Works do not close down when the manager falls ill or dies; the rest of the staff simply carry on as usual with very little difficulty. When a manager’s post is vacant and advertised, there are many applicants. Because many highly-trained workers cannot obtain the jobs they have been trained for, they will, in time, realise that capitalism is their enemy, and will turn to Socialism. They spend the years of their youth in studying, they (or their parents) pay University fees they can ill afford to pay—for what ? Frequently they leave the University to find they cannot obtain a job: very soon capitalism shatters the dreams of their youth. In this way does capitalism produce its own grave-diggers, for one day such young men will swell the Socialist ranks.

Lastly, the “high wages” of managers and supervisors are not as hard and fast as our correspondent thinks.

The insecurity of the better paid workers persists—and WILL PERSIST AS LONG AS CAPITALISM LASTS. This will eventually be understood by those workers, and this will force them to become Socialists. Should any managers, etc., show themselves to be hostile to Socialism when the working class gains political power, they will be replaceable by other specialists equally well trained.

Other aspects of this question were treated in the Socialist Standard March, 1935; Sept., 1933; June, 1923.

Clifford Allen

More Blessings of British Imperialism (1939)

From the September 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the February issue of the Socialist Standard we gave evidence of the plight of the coloured workers in the West Indies. In the April issue we drew attention to the way natives were being suppressed in the British colonies of Cyprus and Kenya.

News of brutal suppression comes now from Sierra Leone. Mr. George Padmore, General Secretary of the International African Service Bureau, tells of the state of affairs in Sierra Leone in a letter to the Manchester Guardian Weekly (June 16th, 1939).

A few extracts from his letter seem to indicate that the freedom so often boasted of in connection with the British Empire is unknown in Sierra Leone. Here are a few points from his letter : —

“During the past months a number of strikes have occurred in the Gold Coast and Sierra Leone, British colonies in West Africa. In Sierra Leone the workers’ leaders were arrested and kept in prison for one month and eight days without trial, in order to demoralise the strikers and force them back to work. All these efforts at official intimidation have, however, been without success. In order to arrest the development of free trade unionism and to curb political activities of the workers, an attempt to impose upon the natives the most repressive legislation is now being made.”

Laws are about to be passed by the Legislative Council (“a body on which the workers have no representation on account of the property qualifications, which exclude them”). The results of these laws, says Padmore, will be : —

“1. Where natives of Sierra Leone are sentenced to deportation they will be segregated in special areas in concentration camps, and if they or their family are in possession of any kind of means compelled to contribute to their maintenance there.”

“2. Any British subject (Englishman, Scot, Australian, West Indian, etc.) who renders any assistance to native workers and peasants in Sierra Leone in forming trade unions or co-operative societies can be arrested and deported from the colony.”

“3. The Undesirable Literature Ordinance will empower the Governor to prohibit the publication, importation, circulation and reading in the colony of any book, pamphlet, newspaper, magazine or any other kind of literature which in his opinion is undesirable. The possession of such proscribed literature will constitute a criminal offence punishable by two years’ imprisonment.”

“4. The ordinance outlining penalties for incitement to disaffection is aimed at subduing agitation among the armed forces. In Sierra Leone unrest is widespread, not only among the industrial workers, but throughout the Civil Services and armed forces. The new ordinance will prevent any soldier from purchasing and reading of his own will any book even so remotely revolutionary as George Bernard Shaw’s ‘Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism.’ . . . All persons and premises may be searched upon suspicion of harbouring such literature or being connected with agitation, by force if necessary.”

It will be noticed that the authorities in Sierra Leone, in order to keep their coloured wage-slaves in subjection, are using methods which, we are told, are foreign to “the democratic spirit of Britain,” but peculiar to the Fascist states.

Mr. George Padmore ends his letter by asking those “British people who value their own liberties and respect those of other nationals” to send letters of protest to the Secretary of State for the Colonies.

We sympathise with the natives of Sierra Leone, but we are afraid that little can be achieved on their behalf by sending letters of protest.

The British are in Sierra Leone to exploit the natives, to make profits for a parasite capitalist class, and make profits they will, even if this means untold suffering for thousands.

If the workers of Britain wish to end the suffering now forced upon natives within the Empire, they will have to end their own sufferings also. They will have to take matters into their own hands. They will have to gain control of the machinery of government with the express purpose of abolishing capitalism, for, as long as capitalism lasts, brutality in many forms will be found. This is only to be expected when to-day there is a class in society which lives on the backs of the workers, which lives by exploiting them. Profits must be produced to enable our exploiters to live in idleness and luxury—that is a law of capitalism. What the consequences are for the millions of toilers is of little importance to the capitalists. As long as the profits are forthcoming, the workers can live in poverty, dwell in slums, be blown to bits in war. If the workers acquiesce in capitalism, they must expect brutalities, every day and everywhere.

Incidentally, what hope one can place in “protests” to help the natives of Sierra Leone can be seen from a letter to the Manchester Guardian Weekly, published in the very same issue as Mr. Padmore’s. It is from “A British Resident” in Cyprus and deals with affairs there. The writer complains that the intervention attempted by the Manchester Guardian on behalf of the natives some months ago has been fruitless. He writes: —

“In December last you called, in a leading article, for action by Parliament. Some questions were asked, which were more or less unsatisfactorily answered; but since then nothing has been done, though things have tended to become more and more repressive, especially in regard to attempts to form trade unions.”

In Cyprus, he says, “newspapers have been suppressed, partially and entirely, or placed under censorship, without the offence being specified, and without the offender being given a chance to argue his case before a responsible tribunal.”

It is clear that the British capitalist class is being hypocritical when it directs the attention of their workers to the brutalities performed in Germany, China and other states.

To those workers who are growing tired of their own exploitation and would like to bring a speedy end to the brutal suppression which capitalism causes everywhere, we extend an invitation. We invite them to join with us in our struggle for Socialism—a system of society which will bring to an end their own exploitation and “will involve the emancipation of all mankind without distinction of race or sex.”

Clifford Allen.

Since the above was written there comes news of still further strife within this glorious Empire of “ours.” The Evening Standard (June 17th, 1939) reports that: “Renewed strike troubles in Jamaica led to a pitched fight in one of Kingston’s main thoroughfares. The fighting lasted an hour, and I was ended when police fired warning shots over the heads of the crowd.”

And it is this “one big, happy family” (the British Empire) you are asked to lose your life in defending. Remember that, Fellow Worker !

Pseudo-Democracy and Dictatorship (1939)

From the September 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

The lot of the Conscientious Objector is, as usual, no “Bed of Roses.” Witness the bitter facts of the first Birmingham Tribunal. One young wage slave who had the “Downright Impudence” to state his refusal to participate in any of the Government’s ALTERNATIVES was immediately entered for service with the Militia ! What a strange way of Administering Democracy?

All wage slaves are called upon to “Fight for Democracy” in order to preserve their Liberties, yet this self-same “Democracy” forces them into occupations which best serve the interests of the Capitalist “War Machine.” Farewell, Liberties !

Where then is the difference between Dictator­ship and Pseudo-Democracy?

The mistake made by the wage slaves at Birmingham was in Objecting to War only. . . . The REAL Objection should have been AGAINST THE SYSTEM OF SOCIETY which produces Wars and not merely against ONE of the MANY evils of Capitalism.

Russell.

Cases from the Courts (1939)

From the September 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

Re-Written for the Socialist Standard. (The original reports appeared in the “Evening Standard” of July 3rd and 24th.)

Sambo, the curly-haired negro worker, was not drunk. His work consisted of playing the guitar to theatre queues. But he had stolen one bottle of gin and one of whisky. He was sent to prison for a month.

Another gentleman did not steal any whisky. He did not need to, for he was a company director. The evidence added that he was a good-living, religious man. But he had some whisky at the house of a friend, and was later charged with driving while under the influence of drink. He was fined £5 (which he could afford) and was disqualified from driving for a year.

It will be noticed that Sambo’s offence was one against property. Hence the comparatively severe sentence of a month’s imprisonment. No to turn to the other case. Anyone driving a motor vehicle under the influence of drink is a potential manslaughterer. But human lives under capitalism are not valued very highly. Hence our friend the director got away with a nominal payment plus the inability to drive his own car for a twelvemonth. (Of course, there are chauffeurs!)

Under capitalism it is evidently much better to be a company director than to be a queue musician. We hope that Sambo, after his month’s rest cure, will line up for the blood transfusion test.

An old man, 76, entered the court. He was charged with being poor. The technical charge was “wandering and failing to give a satisfactory account of himself.” A policeman had found him sleeping on a bench in a park close to Mayfair. Asked if he had any money, he said, “No.” The policeman invited him to go to the London County Council institution at Charing Cross, but he re­fused to go, saying, “We don’t get enough to eat there.” (What do you say to that, Herbert Morrison?) In court it was disclosed that he lied when he said he had no money on him. Actually, he had twopence and a pair of scissors ! Nothing else. “A week in custody won’t do him any harm,” said the magistrate. So that was the end of Edward—for the time being. Capitalism—and the Law—had got out of their quandary.

This was the case of a man who, despite his poverty, had declined to be regimented into the meshes of the P.A.C., and preferred the compara­tive liberty of the streets, the parks, the pubs., and the police courts. Capitalism, however, is such that a poverty-stricken old man cannot choose the three former to the exclusion of the latter. Notice, inci­dentally, how he was not even allowed to sleep in peace in a public park.

Ramo.

Letter: Problems of Socialist Administration (1939)

Letter to the Editors from the September 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent, L. H. Tickner (N.13), referring to our reply to ” D.G.D.” in the February issue of the Socialist Standard, writes : —

“You say that (when the working class has gained political power) ‘changes will be introduced in orderly fashion … in co-operation with their fellows in other lands.’ (L.H.T.’s emphasis.)

“While this is right in theory, it occurs to me that, if this condition is essential, Socialism may be expected in, say, a hundred years’ time, or may be that is just a little pessimistic or optimistic?”

Reply.

Socialism in this country alone is impossible.

It is unthinkable from many points of view, one of which concerns our reader’s question.

It is unthinkable that capitalism will force the workers of England to become Socialists, and not have the same effect on the workers of other coun­tries. When the British worker is ready for Socialism, his fellow in the industrially advanced capitalist countries will also be ready. Workers of all countries are faced by the same problems, the solution to which is the same—Socialism.

Having gained political power in their respec­tive countries, Socialists will together plan the working of the new society. Obviously, it will be in their interests to do this in an efficient, orderly fashion. For instance, it will be necessary for them to ascertain, roughly, what things are required, and in what quantities. Then the necessary steps to fulfil these requirements can be taken. The required number of workers will be able to set to work on their different jobs.

As countries are dependent on one another for different articles, it will be necessary for Socialists of different countries to co-operate.

We are unable to oblige our correspond when he asks us to prophesy the date of the Socialist revolution.

We would, however, remind our reader that, nowadays, movements often grow quickly. For example, the German Nazis within a few years grew from a small divided minority into the largest party in the German State. Similarly, we believe that once the Socialist movement has got a firm footing, it will grow rapidly.

The question asked by our correspondent, and other questions of a similar nature, have been dealt with in the following issues of the Socialist Standard : —

August, 1927. November, 1931. September, 1933. June, 1932. February, 1938. February, 1923.

Clifford Allen

Outdoor Propaganda (September) (1939)

Party News from the September 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

Cooking the Books: Is inflation going to increase? (2021)

The Cooking the Books column from the July 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Markets were right to be spooked by the threat of rising inflation’ was the headline of an article by Philip Aldrick, Economics Editor of the Times on 15 May. Nowadays the word has come to mean simply ‘an increase in the general level of prices’ (David Smith, Times, 2 June).

Originally, as the word suggests, inflation referred to an over-issue of a paper currency in the sense of printing more than the economy needed for its transactions; in which case the currency depreciated, resulting in a rise in the general price level.

The price of individual products can go up for various reasons such as an increase in paying demand compared to supply or to a fall in productivity. In fact, for most products, the tendency is for their real price to fall due to increasing productivity, though this is masked by the depreciation of the currency causing the money price to rise.

A rise in the general price level is something different. It is a rise that affects all products. The most common cause of this is a depreciation of the currency due to too much being issued. Currently the policy of monetary authorities nearly everywhere is to bring about a rise in the general price level of about 2 percent a year. This is why prices rise continuously from year to year. Inflation already exists; what is worrying some economic commentators is that it might rise above this level.

Over-issuing the currency is not the only reason why the general price level can go up. It can also go up when, as in a boom, the demand for all goods runs ahead of supply as capitalist enterprises seek to make hay while the sun shines, producing more to sell, so increasing the demand for raw materials and labour (it always ends in overproduction and so a fall – a slump –in production),

Something similar is what some economists are expecting to occur when the Covid restrictions are finally removed. Andy Haldane, the Bank of England’s Chief Economist, has written of a ‘move from bounce-back to boom without passing “go”’ (Times, 10 June). Unused consumer purchasing power has built-up because shops have not been fully open and because many people have been working from home, so saving travel and lunch costs. It’s going to be a sellers’ market, where businesses can put up their prices without risking losing customers. As Smith put it with reference to restaurants:

  ‘Businesses are responding logically to the release of pent-up demand. If they can raise prices and restrict the special offers they used to need to attract customers, they will do so.’

Aldrick adds that businesses will also be in a position to pass on increased transport and materials costs:

  ‘In the short term, business will want to raise prices. They could absorb higher costs by squeezing margins, but with more debt to service and many cash-rich households able to pay up, why would they?’

The implicit assumption behind both these comments is that businesses don’t have a free hand but can only increase prices when ‘the market can bear it’. They can’t raise prices above this level (at least not without losing customers) even if taxes, wages or other costs go up. If the market won’t bear it, then they have to let their profit margins be squeezed. On the other hand, if the market will bear it they can increase their price even if their costs haven’t gone up.

What the economists are saying is that, due to the demand built up during the Covid restrictions, the market will be able to bear it and the general price level will rise as a result.

Info War (2021)

Book Review from the July 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Sacking of Fallujah: A People’s History by Ross Caputi, Richard Nil, Donna Mulhearn. Massachusetts Press, 2019.

In 2016, the city of Fallujah in Iraq, with a population of around a third of a million, was utterly destroyed. It was the third time that it had been under sustained military assault as a consequence of the United States’ invasion of that country. This book looks not at the military tactical ‘war porn’ side of these pacifications, but at the human cost, and the ways in which power was inflicted on that city.

A large chunk of the book is spent defending the right of the population of Fallujah to take up arms in resistance to the invading forces. It also spends some time distancing them from the fighters of ISIS (according to the authors, although ISIS fighters were present for the third battle of Fallujah, they had interposed themselves in the conflict, rather than the Fallujans particularly seeking to join the cause of the Islamists).

Some of the details of how the US fought in Fallujah are instructive. The first battle of Fallujah was shaped by classic counter-insurgency problems. The US had laid siege to the city, creating the prospect of a humanitarian disaster (they also blamed insurgents for using the civilians as human shields, despite the fact that the US themselves had locked them in). Pictures beamed around the world meant the battle was one of propaganda as much as bullets.

This can be illustrated by the fact that as part of the second attack coalition forces took control of the hospital, because they considered the staff there to be ‘terrorist sympathisers’ who put out claims of casualty numbers that conflicted with the coalition’s own announcements. Uncontrolled journalists were barred from the zone. They were determined not to lose the image war a second time.

The book spends a great deal of time discussing information warfare, and the supposed firewall between the psyops and info war that US forces use abroad, as compared to the image management they use at home. Given that they specifically chose to treat independent journalists as a war enemy, it is interesting to note that that was precisely the tactic later adopted by the Trump regime as part of its propaganda operations. It is unlikely, to say the least, that the skills and techniques of info war are unlikely to be brought home, especially when the info warriors get demobbed. They note that one Associated Press photographer ended up being held for two years for unstated ‘security’ reasons.

The second battle involved intense bombardment and house to house fighting. Although civilians had been warned to leave, and many did, it’s thought around 50,000 remained, caught in the crossfire. The authors note that the US soldiers themselves didn’t know much about who they were fighting and why, they simply went into the meat grinder, where many died.

After the second battle, the city was in a ruined state, riven with resentment. The largely Sunni city soon became embroiled in the factional tensions the US (and to an extent Iran) were fomenting in Iraq as part of the ongoing struggle for control of the country post-invasion.

As US forces drew down, the Fallujans rebelled again, and this time their struggle was caught up in the battle against ISIS. It was the turn of the Iraqi government to lay siege to the city, and once again, civilians were forced out into camps, and bullets and bombs laid waste to whatever hadn’t been destroyed in previous assaults.

The clearances of the city, the disruption of services – water, electricity, medicine – were a health crisis within a war. The book deals also with the potential fact that the war has led to ongoing health crises, of high infant mortality, birth defects and cancers. The book is even-handed over the precise cause of these observed trends, but clear that they do exist, and must surely be chalked up to the horrors of modern war being inflicted on that delicate system that is modern urban living.

Pik Smeet

Evolution and Revolution. (1905)

From the July 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

The “New Method” is evolutionist. The “New Method” is reformist. The “New Method” stands above all for legality. In order to fully understand it in all its beauty, in all its power, we must first study its conceptions of evolution, reform, and legal revolution. Let us proceed in this order and commence with evolution.

The partisans of the “New Method”, quite honestly, without doubt, put certain stupidities into the mouths of revolutionists, which naturally appear to them quite in order. The revolutionists, they say, believe that the social revolution will be the result of a coup, a struggle with the police, or, better, to employ the favourite expression of (is it necessary to name the minister?) “the stroke of a magic wand”. The revolutionists are travestied as social magicians or miracle-workers; and the realists of state Socialism — in theory very idealist — never miss an occasion of showing their sovereign contempt for these dreamers of impossible catastrophes. They alone are in complete agreement with modern science, founded on the principle of evolution. The revolutionists are romanticists, Utopians. Has not Bernstein himself said that Marx even was but a common Blanquist?

What is the truth?

Let us first point out that all the great masters of contemporary Socialism, those very men who introduced into it the idea of evolution, and who have in some measure saturated the spirits of man with their ideas, Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Ferdinand Lassalle, Peter Lavroff, were throughout their entire lives convinced revolutionists. It is an incontrovertible fact, and we will prove it.

The social work of Marx has been compared with that of Darwin in the domain of Nature. In fact, his classic work, the "Manifesto," which alone perhaps, of all books of our time, contains in a small space (some thirty pages) so many great and fertile ideas, develops quite a system of evolution in capitalist society. In the "Manifesto" we see Socialism burst forth, as the very consequence of things, from the very entrails of capitalist society. It is capitalism itself which fashions its own “grave-digger”, the proletariat organised as a class party.

The Manifesto concludes with the ultra-revolutionary declaration which follows:

  “The communists consider it beneath them to cloak their ideas and designs. They declare openly that their end cannot be realised but by the violent destruction of the existing social order. Let the ruling classes tremble before a communist revolution. The workers have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to gain”.

Here we are very far from the theory “take care to make fear” (“Ayons peur de faire peur”) which has conducted its author to the ministry of commerce. Yet, Marx put to flight all the miracle-workers, all the manufacturers of little projects put forward as so many panaceas guaranteed to save society from the misery of capitalism. It is true that he had not foreseen the project for the participation of socialists in the central power of the bourgeois state, which renders the revolution altogether unnecessary, and, above all, dangerous. A revolutionary party which does not inspire its adversaries with fear is ripe for government. But, it will never “conquer the world”.

The idealist, Peter Lavroff, was in complete agreement with Marx, the materialist, on the question of violent revolution. Throughout all his glorious life he preached the Revolution in the name of reason, “justice and humanity”. He sought to establish scientifically that “every Socialist who thinks logically must be a revolutionist”. And he always added that the Revolution cannot be brought about without violence. Peter Lavroff introduced scientific philosophy into Russia, thus contributing more than anyone else to the overthrow of metaphysical and theological ideas in his country. He was the sworn enemy of miracles, and understood the miracle of social transformation by the word participation.

The partisans of legality are often pleased to quote a Preface of Engels where he traces a magnificent picture of the growth of the Socialist Party during the legal period. But the rascals forget to add that Engels himself protested against the publication, declaring that his ideas had been falsified through the omission of a conclusion containing an affirmation thoroughly revolutionist.

The statement of Marx is likewise invoked, that in England the Revolution could be achieved pacifically and legally. In his preface to the English translation of Capital, Engels, on including the words of his great friend, wrote: “But he never omitted to mention that he doubted very much if the ruling classes in England would ever accede to a pacific and legal revolution” (Capital. Introduction. 1887). Otherwise stated: the revolution will be superfluous if the dominant classes are in humour for committing suicide. It is perfectly evident that Marx, who thoroughly understood the economic condition of England, wished to say nothing more than that all the material and technical conditions were at hand.

In order to accomplish the Revolution nothing was wanted but the revolutionary lever. “Force is the midwife of every new society”. The pains and violence of birth cannot be overlooked on the grounds that the embryo should be allowed to develop in an easy and regular manner. One might as well overlook volcanic eruptions on considering that modern geology has abandoned the catastrophic theory of the formation of the earth. The new-born will develop pacifically, “legally”, but he comes into being revolutionary. The subterranean forces accumulate slowly, invisibly, but once arrived at a certain degree of intensity, they explode. “Revolutions in history are as necessary as tempests in nature”, writes Malon, whom our good evolutionists do not qualify as “sectary”. In truth, this class of “tempest” does not agree with ministerial combinations. But, since when do the phenomena of nature and history rest on the decrees of ministers, being “out of control”.

In 1887 at the Congress of Saint-Gall, Bebel, who of course is nothing but a romantic dreamer, declared:

“He who says that the final end of Socialism will be realised in a pacific manner does not know the final end, or, mocks us”.

Further. It is only during its scientific period that, based on the principle of evolution, Socialism becomes revolutionary. The great Utopians, Fourier, Owen, Saint-Simon were pacific in their methods. They preached the social transformation to make the “revolution” needless.

It was exactly at the time that the social reformers addressed the monarchs, assembled at Aix-la-Chapelle, soliciting their “Collaboration” in social reform in the name of “social conservation”. That was also the good old time when the noble dreamer Fourier used to look daily for his “millionaire”, pacific redeemer of suffering humanity.

The triumph of the truly realistic spirit was at the same time that of the revolutionary spirit. None but empiric minds who see no farther than the tips of their noses or who have some interest in cloaking historic truth, believe that revolution is contrary to evolution of which it is, in reality, only the fatal and irresistible outcome. Thus, the Utopian period of Socialism was pacific. The scientific period adopts revolutionary tactics.

Ferdinand Lassalle, who was the promoter of universal suffrage in Germany, a man of immediate action and pacific par excellence, recognised the revolution as a means of achieving any serious reform. He pointed out that many great reforms were brought about only by revolution. For him, as well as for every modern Socialist, revolution is but a moment, a period of crisis in the “normal” evolution of society, an evolution which comes to a head.

The abyss which our ministerialists seek to find between evolution and revolution under its sudden and violent form exists but in their imagination. But there exists an insuperable abyss between revolution and ministerialism.

Translated from the French of Charles Rappoport by P. J. Tobin

Books and Booklets.(1905)

Barnes (second from left) in 1906,
with other Labour Fakirs

Book Review from the July 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

Old Age Pensions By Mr. George Barnes, Secretary to the Amalgamated Society of Engineers.

In view of the fact that the average age of the working-class at death is about 30 years, the possibility of attaining to the opulence represented in the sum of 5s. per week 35 years after they have on the average shuffled off this mortal coil, would not, at the first glance, appear to be a matter of vital concern to ordinary wage slaves. Closer examination, however, shows that through some incomprehensible oversight of a beneficent capitalist providence, a considerable number of workers do manage to escape death in mine, factory, or workshop, or by starvation and other “natural causes,” and arrive at the stage of the sere and yellow with vitality sufficient to pump a thin stream of thinner blood through the channels that 65 years of hard living have not entirely clogged or shrivelled, and to maintain that flicker of energy necessary to hold the various portions of their bodies in something approaching their original form.

The precise number who achieve this great age is very uncertain, but Mr. Barnes feels justified in putting it down in round figures as one million. For these he proposes, with that “mystic insight” into, and “ fine judgment” of, the requirements of the aged worker which his biographer (in the same pamphlet) so highly applauds as elements most needed in a labour aspirant to a decrepid legislature, that the State should provide a pension of 5s. per week. As the cost of the keep of a pauper in a workhouse averages 9s. to 10s. per week in the country, and much more than that in London, it will be seen that the proposal does not err on the side of extravagance.

How the worker is expected to live upon such a munificent stipend, at an age when he is unable to wrestle with the scrag-of-mutton diet of his more vigorous days, Mr. Barnes does not explain. That they cannot live upon it he, parenthetically, appears to recognise. That they cannot augment the sum by thrift during their earlier years, for the very sufficient reason that any margin that they may have had in the course of their history was invariably on the wrong side—he admits. Then how are they to live, except indeed, in the way that Mr. Barnes appears to suggest, viz., by their children (if they have any) taking their pensioned parents in and catering for them at cheap rates—a fatuous suggestion, surely, in view of the general inability of the children to keep themselves.

Indeed and indeed, these “Labour leaders” in travail give birth to some of the most petty-fogging and inconsequential schemes that mind of man ever conceived. And to get his old age starvation allowance Mr. Barnes, says will necessitate the thorough organisation of labour upon a political basis. By that means alone he holds, can the essential steam be got up behind the demand. The folly of it! To get the working-class to concentrate upon a measure that not one in thirty will ever live to be affected by in the hope that those who do may secure a reward of 5s. a week upon which to starve! “As through a glass darkly” Mr. Barnes seems to see that only by fighting can the working-class achieve anything at all. Does he not understand that this implies that the capitalist-class will concede nothing except through fear? Does he not see, therefore, that the concession will be in proportion to the demand? Then why does he endeavour to fritter away the energies of the working-class upon a tuppenny-ha’penny old age pension scheme, when the workers can be just as easily organised upon the basis of their class interests and their energies directed to the demand for the full results of their labour? Educate the workers to a knowledge of their position and the reasons for it; to a recognition of the complete and irreconcilable opposition of interest existing between them and the capitalist-class, and to the extent that they grow in class-consciousness, to the extent that their forces are welded into an intelligent whole, to the extent to which they thereby develope into a formidable menace to capitalist interests, to that extent will the fear of the capitalist grow, to that extent will old age pensions and similar sops be offered by affrighted capitalism in an endeavour to stay working-class progress towards the Co-operative Commonwealth. As it is, Mr. Barnes is simply playing the capitalists’ game by keeping the working-class mind occupied with non-essentials.

A. J. M. Gray.

The International Socialist Bureau. (1905)

Notice from the July 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

The International Socialist Bureau desires to call attention to the following publications relative to the International Congresses which can be obtained at the Maison du People, Brussels, and at all the best booksellers:

• The International Socialist Congresses: Agendas, lists of delegates, resolutions, Paris, 1889; Brussels, 1891; Zurich, 1893; London, 1896; Paris, 1900 . . . (0.75 Frs.)
• The International Socialist Congress of Amsterdam, 1904. Agenda and texts of resolutions, offered in three languages . . . (0.25 Frs.)
• Reports and resolutions submitted on the questions in the Agenda of the International Socialist Congress, Amsterdam, 1904 . . . (1.00 Frs.)
• Resolutions in three languages on the questions submitted in the Agenda of the International Socialist Congress, Amsterdam, 1904 . . . (0.50 Frs.)
• The Socialist and Working-Class Organisation in Europe, America, and Asia with a supplement. The volume, of more than 500 Pages, contains the reports of the various Socialist Parties of the whole world on the political and trade-unionist movement from the Paris Congress of 1900 to the Amsterdam Congress of 1904 . . . (3.75 Frs.)

The number of copies of these publications on hand being very limited, it is particularly requested that all those who desire to obtain copies should do so at the earliest possible moment.

All orders must be accompanied by remittances made out in the name of Camille Huysmans.

The offices of the Bureau have been transferred to the Maison du Peuple, Brussels, and in order to avoid any delay all correspondence (letters, reviews, newspapers, etc ) should be forwarded to the following address: "The International Socialist Bureau, Maison du Peuple, rue Joseph Stevens, Brussels.”

SPGB Open-Air Meetings. (1905)

Party News from the July 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard