Orange peel and peppered bread (1987)

From the August 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

When reaching the age of 70 you tend to look back and reflect on your life. I experienced twice going hungry. First as a boy in 1926 during the General Strike when I would pick up orange peel from the gutter to eat on the way to Stratford Market where I went to look for food. Dustbin raking was futile, turning up mainly fishbones. Also difficult, as others also used this method to exist.

The second time was in 1942 when I had to visit the Relieving Office weekly to pick up a bright blue form which said "Rent 12/6d, Food 10/-, Coal 5/-" - a total of £1.38 to keep a family of four.

The pawnshop had our eiderdown, overcoat, marriage rings and much else besides: this avenue of revenue was now exhausted. What else could I do? We were fed up with pouring hot water on dry beard, peppered for flavour. I would be caught stealing, and this would make matters worse. No fines in those, days, only prison.

In desperation I did some work as a film extra; untraceable, as on the wall of the Relieving Office was 'Mr So and So went to work between . . . and . . . He did not declare his earnings and was sentenced to six months' imprisonment". Therefore you could say I owe the capitalist system between four and five years in prison!

Such experiences make you think hard and give you a deep sense of the real values of life. Your dignity and confidence are, alas, gone for ever. To quote Charles Chaplin "Once you have been very poor no amount of money can retrieve the position". I am still waiting to confirm the latter part!

Food was in shops, not for the hungry but to be sold for a profit to those who could pay. Now, on reflection, I can only smile bitterly and try to help organise the overthrowing of this vile system of capitalism. Relating this story of mine while canvassing for The Socialist Party, somebody said "surely the capitalist system has done something for you. There must be something." The door had nearly closed when I said "Yes, there is something; it made me a socialist -  the only hope in this world of chaos".

Cyril Watkinson

A Propaganda Tour In America (1958)

From the November 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

The writer was appointed by the E.C. as fraternal delegate of the Socialist Party of Great Britain to the World Socialist Party Conference, held in Boston on 30th and 31st August, 1958.

A propaganda tour of North America was arranged in conjunction with the World Socialist Party, the Socialist Party of Canada, and a number of sympathisers in Vancouver.

On arrival at Boston, on Friday, 29th August, a warm welcome was given, Comrades Rab and Gloss having stayed up all night to meet the plane. Saturday and Sunday was spent at the World Socialist Party Conference, and at one stage it did not seem likely that the writer would ever leave Boston, such was the hospitality shown. A meeting was held on Boston Common on Labour Day, Monday, 1st September, at which Comrade Gloss (Boston local), Comrade Miller (Detroit local), and the writer spoke. The meeting last three hours, and gave me my first experience of speaking to American audiences. This was the first meeting held on the Common for some years, and was attended by approximately 200 people. Over £2 of literature was sold.

On Tuesday, 2nd September, I left for Los Angeles, California, a distance of about 3,000 miles, and was met on arrival by Comrade Evans and his wife. Again, the same warm hospitality was shown me. The Los Angeles and district programme was a very full one. September 4th, Long Beach University by the sea, 192 present; September 5th, Monteray Park, discussion with Socialist Party of America (Reformist), 28 present; September 6th, return visit to Long Beach University by the sea, open-air Debate 190 present. Saturday evening, 6th September, guest on Tom Duggan's T.V. programme, Channel 13, 10.30 p.m. This was a 20-minute interview, which covered a wide range of subjects relating to Socialism. This was the first time a Socialist speaker appeared on television there. This television station caters for some two million viewers. Some of the questions referred to "Money under Socialism," "Is the American worker better off?", "Is Russia Socialist?", 'Has the S. P. G. B. any connection with the Communist Party?", "The object of the Socialist Party," "The international character of Socialism," and numerous other questions. Unsuccessful attempts were made to get a tape recording of the interview from the T.V. studio. Sunday, 7th September, 10 a.m., Santa Monica Forum, Lincoln Park, a meeting dealing with the failure of the British Labour Party. Sixty people attended this meeting, which terminated at 12.30 p.m. On the same day in the afternoon there was an an outdoor meeting in McArthur Park, Los Angeles; 200 present and approximately 30s. literature sold. This gave the writer his first baptism of American Communists, who interrupted in the beginning, but finally listened. The meeting lasted two hours, Comrade Fred Evans being the chairman. The stay in Los Angeles came to an end with a dinner, which was attended by a number of Comrades and their wives. After the dinner, tape recordings were played, conveying greeting from Comrades in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Scotland, England, and Canada.

On to Vancouver from Los Angeles, a distance of something like 1,200 miles, flying up the American Western seaboard. An hour's halt at San Francisco gave me the opportunity to telephone Comrade J. McDonald, for years one of the stalwarts of the Pacific Coast. Arriving at Vancouver via Seattle, seven Comrades provided a reception committee at the airport. Tuesday, 9th September, a radio broadcast was arranged at 5.30 p.m. on C.B.C Radio. This was an interview with Mr. Ian Errol in a programme entitled "On the Scene." The main points covered in the interview were the difference between the Socialist Party and Reformist organisations, like the C.C.F. of Canada, Social Democrats, Germany, British Labour Party, etc., and "Was Russia Socialist?" We were given a tape recording of this interview, and it was played to the recent Autumn Delegate Meeting. Wednesday 10th September, a meeting was held at the C.C.F. Hall, North Vancouver, on "The British Labour Party." About 40 people were present. The next day I was able to take a six-hour boat trip for a change and landed at Victoria, Vancouver Island. Comrades Luff, Broomfield, and other Comrades, real old-timers of the movement, met me at the pier. The same hospitable reception, and concern for my personal comfort was shown. Later in the evening a meeting was held in a local C.C.F. hall, 45 being present. A very good collection was taken up, and four members of the audience, including a Dutch seaman on a visit to Victoria, became yearly subscribers to the SOCIALIST STANDARD. I returned by boat to Vancouver on the Friday evening. Saturday, 13th September, an informal discussion was held at the home of two young Comrades. This was most interesting and some tape recordings were played. Three further subscriptions were received for the SOCIALIST STANDARD for two years. In the evening a meeting was held at the Moose Hall, Vancouver, at which 150 people attended. This was an outstanding meeting, and the energy and resource employed by those Comrades who organised it is well worthy of mention. Practically every parked car and cafe in Vancouver was adorned with the handbill advertising the meeting, usually without the consent of the owner. The title of the meeting, chosen by the Canadian Comrades, was "World Unrest—Why?" The meeting never flagged; it started prompt at 7.30 p.m. and finished at 10.50 p.m. It could have gone on until midnight. Comrade Ray McLeod was chairman. The S.P.G.B. Propaganda Committee are repeating this meeting at Denison House, Victoria, S.W., on Sunday 30th, at 7.30 p.m. The writer met many members of the old Socialist Party of Canada, one of whom had travelled 80 miles to attend the meeting, and reckoned it was worth it. Sunday, 14th September, concluding meeting in Vancouver, Stanley Park Forum; again, an outstanding meeting, subject "Socialist Theory and Practice." The hall was overcrowded, over  100 being there. The bulk of the meeting was taken up with discussion, and no less than eight opponents took the platform in opposition. After the meeting the writer had to catch a plane for Winnipeg, leaving Vancouver 11.30 p.m. A rush to the Airport, and a night flight over the Rockies, and the World's Breadbasket, arriving early morning at Winnipeg about 1,200 miles away.

Comrade Shepherd was there, and took me as a guest to his house. A little social was arranged that evening, and I was introduced to pretty well every Winnipeg member of the Socialist Party of Canada. Tuesday evening, September 16th, an address was given to the Winnipeg Trades and Labour Council, 62 delegates were present, and we received quite a good write-up in the Winnipeg Free Press under the heading "Socialist Raps Labour." Next evening we held a meeting in the Market Square, and an average audience of 40 people listened. This was the first meeting held there for eight years. On Sunday afternoon, 21st September, a meeting was held at the Labour Temple, Winnipeg, on the subject "Problems of British Workers." Approximately 45 attended, Comrade J. Milne was chairman. A number of social gatherings were arranged for my benefit, and a tape recording of greetings was made at one of these socials. Comrade Love, who is over 80, starting the proceedings. The Socialist Party of Canada still discuss the impact which Comrade Gilmac's visit made last year, and how he redoubled their enthusiasm. The late Charlie Lestor, who spent many years in Canada, Moses Baritz, and Adolph Kohn, were all held in high regard. The tales and tribulations of these early pioneers were amusing and refreshing to listen to, as told by their contemporaries.

I left on Monday, the 22nd, early in the morning, for New York, via Toronto. Flew over the Great Lakes and Niagara Falls, arriving New York 4.30 p.m. Another dinner and social was provided by members: again, great hospitality.

Two meetings were arranged, one at Union Square, 14th Street (nicknamed Red Square during depression), and 85th Street. The latter meeting was not proceeded with, although police permission had been received. Instead, we held both meetings at Union Square, at which we distributed about 200 copies of the Western Socialist. Attendance was very good, ranging from 250 to 350. Outdoor speaking in America is pretty well the same as in England, except that the weather is more reliable. There is no special police difficulty unless you cause obstruction. After a tour of New York, including Harlem, Stock Exchange, I left for Boston on the 25th September, renewed old acquaintances, and a meeting was arranged for Friday, September 26th, at the W.S.P. headquarters, Nathaniel Hall, subject "Socialism and Atomic Extinction." About 40 people attended this meeting. A meeting arranged for Saturday afternoon, Boston Common, had to be abandoned because of rain. On Sunday afternoon, September 28th, a meeting was held on Boston Common, the last meeting of the tour, at which Comrade Gloss and myself were the speakers. There was an average audience of 200. Sunday night I said farewell to the American Comrades, and caught a plane back to Britain at 10.20 p.m.

In all, the tour covered 15,200 miles. Apart from the radio broadcast and television appearance, a total of 18 meetings and lectures were held.

It is not our normal practice in the Socialist movement to mention individual names, but the writer feels it would be less than human if we did not appreciate the efforts of Comrades Rab, Gloss, Morrison, and numerous others in Boston; Comrade Fred Evans in Los Angeles, Comrades Roddy McLeod, Eve Smith, Ahrens and Holtby in Vancouver, Comrades Luff, George Jenkins and others in Victoria, Comrades Milne, Shepherd, Jenkins and many others in Winnipeg; and Comrades Davies, Coombs, Kilgour, in New York, Without the organisation on this inter-Continental scale, the tour as such would not have been possible. It is gratifying to note that the Socialist movement is the only movement which has a common message between the Continents, and contains people who are actively organising and have the ability to organise such an ambitious project. That it was done once means it will be done again and again.

The writer hopes that he may be privileged again in future to renew his acquaintance with his Comrades on the American Continent. They are a grand bunch.

J. D'Arcy.

Debate. S.P.G.B. versus The Communist Party (1933)

From the July 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

On Sunday, May 7th, a debate took place at Grove House, Leyton, between S. Rubin for the S.P.G.B. and Ralph Fox for the Communist Party. The audience of 150 was keenly interested and took full advantage of the questions and discussion which followed the debate. The time allowed to the debaters was somewhat short, but Comrade Rubin was able to state the Party's case and covered a great deal of ground. The debate was a very successful piece of propaganda for the Leyton Branch.

The Chartists (1987)

Book Review from the June 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Chartists — Popular Politics in the Industrial Revolution, Dorothy Thompson (Wildwood House Ltd., 1986, £6.95)

This is a paperback edition of a work first published in hardback in 1984. The reviews which appeared then made the point that this work represented the most comprehensive treatment to date of the Chartist movement. On the whole this view has considerable justification.

The book makes clear that working class participation in the Chartist movement was greater than many suppose. There were three main political strands in Chartism. Firstly, a small far-seeing revolutionary component. Secondly, reformist elements which, as capitalism developed, attached themselves to the coat-tails of the Liberal Party for most, if not all, of what remained of the 19th century. Thirdly, there was a strand that was really looking backwards to pre-capitalist days when in many ways people had more control over their lives than is permitted under capitalism. There was, for example, resistance to state control of education, with the object of retaining the informal system of earlier times whereby craft skills and other knowledge was passed from one generation to the next within a relatively small community.

Interesting details are given of the reaction of opponents of the Chartists. The following sentiments, expressed by Elliot Yorke, MP for Cambridgeshire, were no doubt felt by many:

If gentlemen think there is nothing to be dreaded from our rural labourers, I fear they are greatly mistaken. I do not believe there is any village in my neighbourhood that would not be ready to assert by brute force their right (as they say) to eat fully the fruit arising from their own labour . . . Every parish in this neighbourhood is . . . ripe for any outbreak. (p. 175)

Whereas nowadays all kinds of arguments are put forward to try to show that the workers do effectively receive the full fruit of their labours, and that the profit of capitalists is the reward for their own effort as well as ensuring future prosperity, the above statement is brutally frank. This MP seemed to accept that the worker is robbed but was determined, by "brute force" if necessary, to keep things that way. The propaganda with which we are familiar today — in which socialism is portrayed as an unworkable utopian pipedream — appears to be of somewhat later origin, appearing after the more brazen "you could but you mustn't approach had ceased to be subtle enough.

E C Edge

Why I Joined The S.P.G.B. (1975)

From the July 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the stormy period of the economic crisis of 1928-33 I was a member of the Communist Party. I joined in 1928, the year of the commencement of the first Russian Five-Year Plan. This plan inspired me, and as I thought that they were building Socialism — I wanted to support it. I was enthusiastic and arrogant, and walked into a Communist Party meeting and said that I wanted to join. No questions were asked me, except for my name and address, and I believe a few pence for a membership card, and I was in.

In 1931 at the time of the hunger marchers, many party members believed that the revolution was just "around the corner: and that we could expect that the country would soon be involved in some sort of civil war as a transition to Socialism. I found this idea extremely hard to swallow, and made myself unpopular by saying so.

During my membership of the CP there were the mysterious Moscow trials when many of the "old guard" of the Bolshevik Party confessed that they were wreckers, saboteurs, spies and fascists, and many heaped abuse upon themselves. They were mostly shot on their own evidence, just as happened in the Middle Ages to witches who confessed to causing storms at sea and spreading plagues. Stalin murdered about twenty of the twenty-eight old Bolsheviks who sat round the table with himself and Lenin at the meeting of the Third International in 1919. Men like Radek, Zinovief, Kamenef, and Bukharin. I was unable to accept that Stalin alone was right and that he had been surrounded by wreckers.

When I tried to discuss this point in the party I was accused of Trotskyism. I then knew my days in the party were numbered. Had I been living in Russia, these line would never have been penned — it would have been Siberia or a bullet.

I made many visits to Germany during my Communist Party days, both before and after the Nazis came to power. I watched the Nazis and Communists fighting each other, and could not figure out how Socialism could come from such methods. The Nazis called themselves National Socialists and the Communists also claimed to be Socialists.

I noted that the Nazis after they took power ruled with the aid of the Gestapo and the concentration camps — plus of course the support of millions of thoughtless workers who had voted for them. Russia also had its Gestapo, the KGB (or NKVD as it was then) and their concentration camps. Both systems were headed by a ruthless dictator who showed the world that they were prepared to stop at nothing to hold the reins of office. Both regimes were totalitarian, and held fake elections in which Hitler and Stalin polled 99% of the votes. Both countries marched into Poland and both into Czechoslovakia with the pretence of going to the aid of the Czechs.

Lenin's books (I've read the complete works) are little more than a verbal attack on Kautsky and Bernstein, and of course any Russian who ever opposed him. Hitler's Mein Kampf is also a tirade of abuse against the Jews and Communists. Both Russia and Germany had trade unions — not to protect the workers' wages or hours of work, but to make them work harder and not to grumble. Both Stalin and Hitler persecuted intellectuals. The Russian trade unions and the persecution of dissidents still continue.

While still a member of the CP I went to a meeting of the SPGB on Russia. After the lecture there was the usual allotted time for questions, and I lost no time in seizing this opportunity.

The answers to my questions did not satisfy me, and I said so. Then came a period of discussion and I was invited to take the platform for five minutes and put my case. Without hesitation, and full of cock-sureness I mounted the rostrum and let off my steam. Then came the answers of the SPGB. This did not convince me — but it shook me, for I never imagined that anybody else but CP-ers knew anything about Russia, Marxism or Socialism.

At a meeting of the Communist Party a few days later a critic asked a few questions in a perfectly orderly manner, and he was pounced upon and silenced and called a fascist. As for taking the platform in opposition — that was quite unthinkable. This showed who was democratic, and it did much to convince me which party had a sound case.

When I decided to join the SPGB I was surprised to learn that there no "sign your name and you're in". I was carefully questioned on my ideas about Russia, and my understanding of Socialism.

This procedure keeps the party small, but if we admitted all and sundry, we may have a larger membership, but we would soon cease to be a Socialist Party.

H. Jarvis

Cooking the Books: Don’t ask Jevons (2011)

The Cooking the Books column from the April 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last November’s Monthly Review carried an article by John Bellamy Foster, Robert Clark and Richard York on “Capitalism and the Curse of Energy Efficiency. The Return of the Jevons Paradox” They recounted how in his presidential address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1863 the leading capitalist (and arms manufacturer) Sir William Armstrong raised the question “as to whether Britain's world supremacy in industrial production could be threatened in the long run by the exhaustion of readily available coal reserves”. The authors went on:

“In response, William Stanley Jevons, who would become one of the founders of neoclassical economics, wrote, in only three months, a book entitled The Coal Question: An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of Our Coal-Mines (1865). Jevons argued that British industrial growth relied on cheap coal, and that the increasing cost of coal, as deeper seams were mined, would lead to the loss of ‘commercial and manufacturing supremacy,’ possibly ‘within a lifetime,’ and a check to economies growth, generating a ‘stationary condition’ of industry ‘within a century‘. Neither technology nor substitution of other energy sources for coal, he argued, could alter this.”

Jevons (1835-1882) is known to students of Marxian economics but only as bit of a joke for his view that economic crises were caused by sunspots but also for his theory that prices were determined by their marginal utility to consumers.

H. M. Hyndman called his 1884 lecture defending the labour theory of value “The Final Futility of Final Utility”. In it he also took a sideswipe at Jevons’s theory of crises saying that “Jevons’ Commercial Crises and Sun Spots may be left to gather dust on its neglected shelf, until some writer, with nothing better to do, thinks it worth while to publish a monograph on ‘the Strange Hallucinations of Professors of Political Economy’.”

Jevons was of course just as wrong about coal becoming exhausted as he was about crises being caused by sunspots. Coal in Britain is not exhausted even today, only not mined as much as it once was, due to the relative cheapness of oil and gas as alternative sources of energy.

The “Jevons Paradox” that Foster and the others were interested in says that economies in the use of some material aimed at reducing its consumption will in fact, by making it cheaper to use, actually increase this. This is why they called energy efficiency a “curse” today. Economies in the use of oil and coal under capitalism, they said, will lead to more not less being consumed, and so not reduce the threat of global overwarming.

This is a problem only because under capitalism the competitive struggle for profits to accumulate as more capital that is built-in to it forces enterprises to use the cheapest methods and materials so as to keep the price of their products as low or lower than those of their rivals. It’s called “being competitive” or “maintaining competitiveness”.

In a socialist society energy efficiency would not have this perverse effect. It really would cut the consumption of coal and oil (and, similarly, for other non-renewable resources) as neither the imperative to accumulate capital, nor profit-seeking nor economic competition would operate.

Cooking the Books: Pie-crust Pie-chart (2015)

The Cooking the Books column from the January 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Did you get one? The government propaganda sheet, that is, sent to some 24 million people recorded as paying income tax or national insurance on ‘How your tax was spent in 2013-14’.

What stood out – and what you were expected to see standing out – was a huge slice of a pie-chart for 'welfare'. It amounts, if you do the arithmetic (which the propaganda sheet doesn't), to a quarter of the whole pie. How terrible, we are supposed to conclude, all that money going on welfare for scroungers who are too lazy to work.

However, imagine for a moment that we are living in a rationally-organised society, one geared to meeting people's needs, and that the pie-chart was measuring not money spent but real resources used. 'Welfare' would then be the goods and services consumed by or for certain people to ensure that they 'fared well'. But who are they?

The government propaganda sheet doesn't help but the Institute for Fiscal Studies does, in an article on their website 'What is welfare spending?' (www.ifs.org.uk/publications/742). They break the 25 percent into 'personal social services' for people in care (4 percent), public service pensions (3 percent), other benefit spending on pensioners (4 percent) and other benefit spending on those of working age (14 percent).

So, 11 percent of the pie is going to people who have retired from work or people needing to be cared for, children and the disabled as well as the elderly. What's wrong with that? A rationally-organised society would certainly cater for the needs of people in this position and devote resources to this, in fact more than today though allocated on the basis of need and as of right rather than final or average salary or pensions contributions (if only because nobody would be working any longer for a wage or a salary).

That leaves 14 percent of the pie going to people under retirement age, but some of this will be going to people who are disabled or who are temporarily sick. That would still happen in a society geared to meeting people's needs. As to the able-bodied unemployed, they would no longer exist as everybody would be free to contribute work to society instead of being forced to be part of capitalism's industrial reserve army or be included in the 6 percent rate of unemployment that economists say is 'natural' under the market system.

But back to capitalism where what the pie-chart is showing is how capitalism distributes some of society's resources. Three other slices of the pie, amounting to nearly 17 percent, stand out as waste: national debt interest (7 percent), defence (5.3 percent) and criminal justice (4.4 percent). Talking of scroungers who contribute nothing, a good example is the capitalist holders of the national debt who are getting a much larger income than Job Seekers Allowance without having to work. The remaining nearly 9 percent goes to maintain the coercive part of the state machinery, which would not need to exist in socialism (for that's the rationally-organised society we're talking about) where only the non-coercive and non-financial parts of central administration would continue.

So, what the government propaganda sheet is unwittingly showing is how capitalism wastes society's resources and is not geared to meeting people's needs, ie. not catering for everybody's welfare. Thanks, Mr Osborne.

Backwaters of History - 2 (1953)

From the October 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Babeuf Conspiracy

The prisoners were working feverishly at their tasks on the walls of their prison. The escape had to be made that night or it would be too late. The plans for escape had been well made. The guards had been won over, tools had been smuggled to the prisoners, and their friends outside would be waiting this night with horses to carry them away to some place of safe hiding. There were only a few hours left.

If they could not escape that night they were doomed. Their trial, which had lasted for weeks, would end the next day and none of them were in doubt of the verdict. It would be death for some and, at least, transportation and imprisonment in some penal colony for the remainder. During their trial they had made little effort to defend themselves. Instead, they had used the courtroom as a forum to expound their political views and publicise their activities. Now, it was at an end and this planned escape was their only hope.

They were accused of an attempt to overthrow the government by armed force. To make their present troubles worse, their attempt had almost succeeded and the government was now taking no chances. In fact, a number of the government's political opponents had been arrested and thrown into prison with the insurrectionaries even though they knew nothing of the attempted insurrection, merely because it was a convenient opportunity to get rid of them.

The year was 1796. The revolutionary fervour that had swept France during the past few years was petering out. The wealthier section of the new French capitalist class was in the saddle and was tightening its grip on the reins. In all revolutions where the wealthy capitalists struggle against the feudal aristocracy they rely for support upon their less wealthy capitalist friends and the peasants and workers. They hide their own political objectives and pay lip service to the political and economic aspirations of their supporters. In the early stages of the struggle all these elements are united, but as soon as the feudal opponents are subdued each element strives to achieve its own separate ambitions. The capitalists join hands and use their newly won political power to wipe out any organisations that the peasants or the workers may have created. Thus they stabilise the revolution by checking any tendency to carry it to limits dangerous to themselves.

That was the position in France in 1795. A number of active revolutionaries who voiced the ideas of some of the workers had formed an organisation known as the "Equals." Francois Noel Babeuf, who later called himself Gracchus Babeuf, was the prime motivator in this organisation. During the revolutionary period he had thrown away his comfortable livelihood and reduced his family to poverty in his enthusiasm for his cause. He had published a paper called "The Tribune of the People" mainly at his own expense, and, through its columns, had not hesitated to violently attack most of the leading men of the revolution. Danton, Robespierre and Hebert had experienced the venom of his pen.

Babeuf, Germain, Darthe, Antonelle, Buonarroti, Didier, Massart and others met at the "Pantheon" on the working class quarter of Paris and became known as the Society of Pantheon. The society grew in numbers until the government became alarmed and closed the meeting place and dissolved the society.

Babeuf and his friends then set about building a secret organisation to prepare an insurrection. Their object was mainly communistic. They claimed that political freedom was useless without economic freedom and that could only be achieved by the wealth of the community, in particular the land, being held in common by all the people. They published much literature, most of it written by Babeuf. In the "Manifesto of the Equals," "Analysis of the Doctrines of Babeuf," "An Opinion on our Two Constitutions,: "Triumph of the French People against its Oppressors," "Address of the Tribune to the Army," and other broadsheets, they set out in detail their insurrectionary objectives and their plans for the future society.

In those days the idea of social evolution was little known. Social organisation was conceived to be the result of a contract between the members of society. If the existing contract was unsatisfactory it became necessary to devise a new one.

The plans for insurrection went ahead at full steam. Darthe and Germain were Babeuf's right hand men. They introduced to the secret society a certain George Grisel who was an army captain stationed at the camp at Grenelle near paris. Grisel was given the task of winning over the troops at his camp. Germain secured the allegiance of the legion of police and other military sections became attached to the insurrectionary movement.

Seventeen thousand men, all experienced fighting men, were eventually enrolled and Grisel ensured the support of the troops at Grenelle. In addition the workers of Paris were expected to rise as soon as the insurrection was under way. Men from the provinces joined and a few members of the government flirted with the movement. Supporters were attracted by the claim that the constitution instituted by the Robespierre government in 1793 and since discarded, was to be re-introduced.

All was ready. The organisation was well prepared. Officers and generals were appointed and detailed plans were prepared. Everyone waited. The leaders hesitated. Then came catastrophe. George Grisel proved to be a government agent who was passing on all the detailed information to his employers. The troops at Grenelle were not recruited to the movement and the government struck at the eleventh hour by arresting all the leaders.

A feeble attempt to get the insurrection going without the leaders was soon suppressed and afforded the government the excuse for hunting down all those suspected of revolutionary sympathies in Paris and its environs, and many executions took place.

The leaders were imprisoned at the Abbaye and Temple prisons and later taken in cages like wild beasts to the town of Vendôme where they were to be tried.

Then, with their trial almost over, came the plan for escape. The digging and scraping was finished; a breach was made in the prison walls and they were ready to make their get-away. Someone had been careless in hiding the evidence of their work on the prison walls. The authorities became suspicious and the attempt to escape was thwarted.

So, the prisoners entered the court room to face the tribunal for the last time. The court was crowded with sad sympathisers of the prisoners. Even the foreman of the jury was sentimentally affected. Fifty-six of the accused were acquitted, five were condemned to the island fortress of Pelée, and Babeuf and Darthe were condemned to death. As soon as the verdict was announced Babeuf and Darthe attempted to commit suicide by stabbing themselves with improvised daggers made in prison. They were seized and only succeeded in wounding themselves. The next day they went manfully to the guillotine and their beheaded bodies were thrown by the executioner into the sewer.

Thus ended one of the first attempts by the workers to give expression to their class interests. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, referring to Babeuf and his movement had this to say:

"The first direct attempts of the proletariat to attain its own ends, made in times of universal excitement, when feudal society was being overthrown, these attempts necessarily failed owing to the then undeveloped state of the proletariat, as well to the absence of the economic conditions for its emancipation, conditions that had yet to be produced, and could be produced by the impending bourgeois epoch alone. The revolutionary literature that accompanied these first movements of the proletariat had necessarily a reactionary character. It inculcated universal asceticism and social levelling in its crudest form."

(Communist Manifesto, S.P.G.B. Edition, page 88.)

W.Waters. 

Books for students: -

"The Last Episode of the French Revolution," by Ernest Belfort Bax.

"The Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels," by D. Ryazanoff.

"Ten Essays on the French Revolution," edited by T. A. Jackson.

"Blanqui," by Neil Stewart

One of us (1982)

From the April 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Open Letter to Trade Unionists (1967)

From the December 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fellow Workers,

Trade Unionists should reject the argument that a policy of voluntary wage restraint is somehow better than one that is imposed. This is like saying that a prisoner is better off if he shoots himself in his cell, than if he is shot by a firing squad. In either case the result is the same.

This also applied to wage restraint, whether it is operated by the TUC or imposed by legal enactment. The end is the same and the politicians get what they set out to achieve at the very beginning, with the added bonus that the bulk of trade unions believe they have gained some sort of victory. Surely it is time that trade unionists, particularly those who claim to be Socialists, stopped to consider exactly where they are allowing themselves to be led.

The balance of payments crisis and the difficulties of increasing exports against foreign competition, which the official excuse for the government's wage restraint policy, is regarded as something new. The truth of the matter in that trade crises, often world wide, have been a recognisable and insoluble feature of capitalism for the past hundred years and more, and will continue as long as capitalism remains. Those politicians who talk of formulating a long-term policy to "put the economy on a sound footing" are ignoring the competitive nature of capitalist society. Even of the workers of this country co-operated 100 per cent with the government's proposals for wage restraint and with all the new productive methods of the employers, it would not solve the problem. True, that in so far as it would result in a lowering of production costs it might enable more goods to be exported, but this would inevitably cause other countries to intensify their efforts to reduce their production costs lower still in order to regain their share of world trade. If they succeeded, the capitalists of this country would be faced with the same problem once again. This is the everlasting rat race of capitalism, caused by the need to find markets for wealth that is produced primarily for sale in order to realise a profit.

The problems which confront us are not caused, as some would have us believe, by the failure of trade unions to change with changing methods of production, but because society itself has not changed. In spite of all the changes that have taken place, capitalism remains basically the same; the overwhelming bulk of wealth and the means of production remain the private property of a small percentage of the population, whose sole interest in the production of wealth is to produce commodities for sale and making profit. Modern production is social in character, the wealth produced is by the common effort of the whole of society, but it is not owned in common — it remains the private property of a few. Only by bringing the ownership of the wealth produced into harmony with the mode of production, that is by changing the basis of society from private to common ownership and producing wealth for use and not for sale and profit, can the gigantic means of modern production be fully employed without causing the upheavals we are experiencing today.

Yours fraternally

J. E. Apling,

Society of Graphical and Allied Trades (SOGAT).

Obituary: Jack Apling (1997)

Obituary from the September 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Jack Apling was an active member of West Ham Branch from the time he joined, in December 1939, until in the fifties when, because of concerns that living in the East End might be detrimental to the health of his children, the family moved to Harlow in Essex. He remained a member of the branch (later named East London), though his attendance was necessarily restricted, and is remembered as a quiet man, who was able to express ideas in a clear and concise manner. A bookbinder by trade, his "Open Letter to Trade Unionists" appeared in the December 1967 Socialist Standard, he signed it as a member of the Society of Graphical and Allied Workers (SOGAT).

Convinced that someone had to give the socialist analysis of current events, Jack made the most of any opportunity to do just that. Over the years he wrote countless letters to local newspapers, and his son has been told by local people that they took the papers in order to read his father's letters.

Comrades in Colchester Branch, to which he transferred when in his eighties, have gained inspiration from his determination to keep Socialism on the agenda, a commitment which was not diminished by old age or terrible illness. As recently as March, when his weight was only a little over five stones, and he could hardly push a pen across a page, he was still writing to local papers. He died on 7 July after a courageous fight against cancer. We extend sincere sympathy to his family.

PD

Material World: The Price of Oil and Fracking (2015)

The Material World Column from the January 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Revealing developments are going on at the moment on the world energy market. Coal has seen its price halved in the past year. The price of oil has fallen, by more than 40 percent since June, when it was $115 a barrel. It is now below $70. This comes after nearly five years of stability and some oil-producing countries want the OPEC cartel to restrict production so as to put up prices. The question being asked is why Saudi Arabia hasn’t cut back production as they have done in the past. There are, of course, a number of conspiracy theories. 

According to the Economist, curbing output to once again raise its price would benefit Iran and Russia, which Saudi Arabia does not want to happen. More likely, but not necessarily solely, the reason this is being opposed by Saudi Arabia is that it wants to keep the price low so as to discourage fracking. Saudi Arabia can tolerate lower oil prices quite easily for quite a while. It has $900 billion in reserves. Its own oil costs very little (around $5-6 per barrel) to get out of the ground. Low prices stem investment in other sources of oil, such as Canada’s tar sands or America’s shale, and this means more demand for low-cost ‘dirtier’ coal in future.

The US is producing over 3 million barrels a day more than it did several years ago. And it is fracking that is doing it. According to the Institute for Energy Research ‘Nearly every barrel of new U.S. oil production can be attributed to the use of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technologies.’

In fact, the International Energy Agency has predicted that the United States will produce more oil next year than Saudi Arabia; the US might even pass Russia, which, at ten million barrels a day, is the world’s biggest producer. The US already produces more natural gas than Russia.

Over the past four years, as the price hovered around $110 a barrel, US corporations set about extracting oil from shale formations previously considered unviable. Their manic drilling—they have completed perhaps 20,000 new wells since 2010, more than ten times Saudi Arabia’s tally—has boosted America’s oil production by a third, to nearly 9m barrels a day, just a 1m b/d short of Saudi Arabia’s output. US domestic demand has apparently plateaued so this extra production is going on to the world market.

The boss of Continental Resources, Harold Hamm (whose fortune has dropped by $11 billion since July), has said he can cope as long as the oil price is above $50. Stephen Chazen, who runs Occidental Petroleum, has said the industry is ‘not healthy’ below $70.

The pain of this competition will be borne more by those new players who wish to enter the industry as many companies in the UK seek to do. Wells that are already producing oil or gas are extraordinarily profitable, because most of the costs are sunk. But the output of shale wells declines rapidly, by 60-70 percent in their first year, so within a couple of years this oil will stop flowing. It is far less clear if the industry can profitably invest in new wells to maintain or boost production. With their revenues now dropping fast, they will find themselves overstretched. A rash of bankruptcies is likely.

Nevertheless, the global oil economy, despite the ‘green’ goals, will be around for several decades. As two green pundits note pertinently:

‘The largest companies in the energy industry have concluded that policymakers are unlikely to act quickly enough to strand their current fossil fuel assets or make it unprofitable for them to continue exploring for new reserves. The oil and gas sector, in particular, is gambling on a business-as-usual model that projects out to a roughly $14 trillion investment in new reserves by 2035. This investment would correspond to a staggering amount of wasted capital should policymakers decide that these reserves cannot be burned’ (thehill.com, 9 December).

What this shows is the impossibility of a rational energy policy under capitalism as energy use under it reflects the relative prices of the various sources (coal, oil, gas, shale oil, etc) and changes as they vary. It highlights the utopianism of those environmentalists who think that shaping the market is a solution. There are just too many variables, most of them market-driven. Prices of fossil fuels collapse, demand for them then starts to rise and the market need for alternative sources such as renewables falls. But when prices for fossil fuels rise other fossil fuel sources then become profitable. Either way there is no significant reduction in the burning of fossil fuels and so no reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.

There's also a lesson for those who want to campaign against the use of fracking under capitalism. They should be careful what they wish for. They may get fracking slowed but not replaced by renewable sources as these are too costly, with a movement instead towards  . . . oil and coal.

We can concede that the present oil price war poses more questions than answers as the game is played. In the end, who knows how it will pan out? But, unlike those green economists, we never claimed that capitalism can be predictable or offer the solutions to climate change. We were never delusional enough to believe capitalism had the answers. 

ALJO

Little Children Suffer (2015)

From the January 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the iconic images from the early years of industrial capitalism is that of young children working in mines and cotton mills. Here we examine the history and current situation regarding child labour.

Labour by young children was at the heart of capitalism from the start. Factory production was preceded by domestic industry, whereby small-scale manufacturing took place in workers’ homes; this included the textile industries, where the earliest examples of factories arose. Working in their own homes, handloom weavers could have their children, perhaps as young as four, working alongside them. Down to the 1820s a cotton spinner working in a factory would often have his wife and children working with him, thus preserving the family group. Workers generally saw this last as a positive point, even in the unpleasant conditions of the early factories. Even after families working together in factories declined, children continued to work there. In 1851 there were 600,000 children under fifteen working in England, Wales and Scotland, including 180,000 in textile factories, 130,000 in agriculture and 38,000 in mines. Toiling in such unhealthy environments naturally led to many children suffering health problems, such as curvature of the spine, not to mention the lack of any decent education to speak of and little time or opportunity to play.

As a specific example, from 1813 George Courtauld employed girls, and some boys, aged ten upwards, as apprentices at his silk mill in Braintree. They came from London workhouses, and he paid the workhouse for each child. The children signed a contract that committed them to work at the mill till they were twenty-one. The company went on to become one of the world’s largest producers of artificial fibres.

Child labour was generally seen (by the wealthy, at least) as something entirely natural and unexceptionable, though various objections on moral grounds were made. Others saw it as socially advantageous, since idleness on the part of children was supposedly the road to criminality. There grew up a tension between the desire of some members of the capitalist class for abundant cheap unskilled labour power in factories, which children could provide, and the increasing need for workers with some basic education in terms of literacy and numeracy. Consequently the British Parliament introduced a number of Factory Acts to regulate working hours for children and women, the provision of education and various basic safety measures.

The 1802 Act limited the working hours for apprentices and required them to receive some form of instruction. More significant was the Act of 1833, which prohibited the employment of under-eighteens at night in textile factories. Children (defined as those aged nine to thirteen) could work a maximum of nine hours a day, and young persons (aged thirteen to eighteen) a maximum of twelve. Children could not work in textile mills, except in silk mills (where foreign competition was a problem). Similar regulations were gradually extended to other industries, such as to bleaching and dyeing works in 1860.

The 1870 Elementary Education Act made school attendance compulsory in England and Wales between the ages of five and thirteen, but only in areas where there was a School Board which decided to introduce this. In 1878 the ‘half-time’ system was set up: children under ten could not be employed in factories and those under thirteen were required to split their time between school and employment. 

Incidentally, Karl Marx was quite keen on a combination of work and education, mentioning that factory inspectors felt that this made each more congenial to the child than limiting them to just one. And he looked forward to ‘the education of the future, an education that will in the case of every child over a given age, combine productive labour with instruction and gymnastics … the only method of producing fully developed human beings’ (Capital, vol 1, ch 15, sec 9). Much would depend, of course, on the age of the child and the kind of labour involved.

Further restrictions on children working were introduced in the first part of the twentieth century, together with further requirements for education. The 1918 Education Act put an end to the half-time system, though not immediately. In 1935 the Conservative government produced an Education Bill that would raise the school leaving age from fourteen to fifteen; but it allowed children to leave at fourteen if they had ‘beneficial’ employment. Many poorer workers needed the wages of their fourteen-year-old children, while many employers wanted the cheap labour power involved. One MP, the Duchess of Atholl, noted in the parliamentary debate on the bill that some work in textile factories required ‘small fingers’, and that excluding fourteen-year-olds would mean ‘placing a very serious handicap on one of our most important export industries … not one of our great commercial competitors in Europe has raised the school-leaving age to 15’. The Second World War prevented implementation of the Act, and children left school at fourteen until 1947. In the early fifties there were some proposals to put the leaving age back to fourteen again, but nothing came of these. It was eventually raised to sixteen in 1972.

And what of the current situation? It might be thought that children toiling in sweatshops and so on is a thing of the past. After all, even those who want an absolute minimum of government interference in the economy will generally agree that laws prohibiting child labour are acceptable. Surely capitalism in the twenty-first century has no need to employ children? In fact, globally child labour remains widespread.

The minimum age for employment varies across countries, being as low as fourteen in some places, with eighteen as a common minimum for hazardous work. But legal requirements are often ignored in the name of profit. Though the number is declining, 168 million children are reportedly still involved in child labour (this figure is taken from the International Labour Organization (ILO) website, which contains a lot of relevant information: www.ilo.org). In an echo of early capitalism, child workers mostly take part in unpaid work for their family, rather than being in paid employment. In sub-Saharan Africa, roughly one child in four is a child labourer. Furthermore, child labour is in no way confined to the poorest countries; one estimate from 2000 was that 300,000 children were working illegally in the US, and 2.5 million globally in ‘developed countries’, though such figures have to be taken with a large pinch of salt. In addition many child workers in developing countries work in effect for multinational companies, often via subsidiaries much earlier in the supply chain.

Over half of the 168 million are in hazardous work, defined as work which ‘jeopardises the physical, mental or moral well-being of a child, either because of its nature or because of the conditions in which it is carried out’. The very worst forms include trafficking, debt bondage, compulsory recruitment to armies, prostitution, pornography and drug smuggling.

Even mining and quarrying still employ around a million children, working deep underground in tiny tunnels, pounding boulders or using toxic substances such as mercury; this is primarily in informal, small-scale, often family-based operations. An ILO report from 2007 found that girls did not take part in underground extraction work, but could be used to transport rubble and pan for precious stones or gold. In Peru some girls as young as ten could work twelve hours a day in bars that served the mining community, leaving them open to physical and sexual abuse.

The ILO runs an International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour, which has the goal of ending the worst forms by 2016, but it is accepted that even this limited aim will not be met. The ILO has promulgated various conventions on child labour, and many countries have ratified these, but of course this does not imply that any significant action will be undertaken. In October 2013 the Third Global Conference on Child Labour was held in Brasilia: this produced a Declaration which noted that ‘child labour impairs the realisation of children’s rights and its eradication constitutes an important issue for development and human rights’. It speaks further of encouraging this and promoting that and strengthening something else, but it fails to recognise that child labour and its associated horrors will continue as long as global capitalism enforces widespread poverty, employers benefit from the employment of children, and the poorest workers and peasants have to resort to putting children to work in an attempt to relieve their own poverty.

Paul Bennett

'To The Advocates of Militarism'. (1916)

From the May 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

Compel them to come in, for there shall be
A feast well-spread, to suit the taste of all-
Ruin and pain and untold misery;
The downward trend, the devastating fall,
From every higher impulse; robes to wear
Woven of fraud, hypocrisy and lies.
Compel them to come in that all may share
This wolfish feast of bloodstained infamies.
Not yours the chains of slavery to break;
You heed no woman's sorrows, no man's groans,
No flag of freedom in the breeze unfurled.
Your passion is destruction, you would make
A world-wide graveyard full of dead men's bones.
Whence reeks a stench that sickens all the world.

F. J. Webb.

'In Time of War'. (1916)

From the February 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

If at this time of brute force paramount,
When death itself is made the creed of men;
When love is held of small or no account,
And beauty scorned alike of voice and pen;
There yet should be, hidden amid the crowd,
Some finer spirits, shrinking and alone,
Who hear the voice of Wisdom cry aloud
Before Life's temples, stricken, overthrown;
Now should they lift above the noise and strife
Their song of hope, of confidence supreme
In love and beauty; now indeed should scan
The wide horizon of a boundless life,
Wherein the poet's song, the dreamer's dream
Shall stem the mad brutality of man.

F. J. Webb.