Editorial: Labourism: the end of the road (1994)

Editorial from the August 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

So Tony Blair is the new leader of the Labour Party. A man whose insincerity is patent, reflected by his permanent false smile. A barrister, his profession is to sell his advocacy skills to anyone wishing to hire them, equally prepared to argue that white is black as that black is white.

Such flexibility is a useful — indeed essential — ingredient in the make-up of capitalist politicians who want to succeed. Because, when in office, they are called on to find plausible explanations for all the unpopular measures which the workings of capitalism force them to adopt. But for a Leader of the Labour Party?

Why not? Since when has the Labour Party not been a haunt of capitalist politicians? In recent years unsuccessful rather than successful ones, it is true. But that's the point. The professional politicians who lead the Labour Party have the same ambitions as their counterparts in the Tory Party: to enter the corridors of power and taste the fruits of office. Membership of a mere shadow cabinet is not the goal.

It is because they believe that Blair can bring them these fruits — by dishing the Liberals in the South of England — that the majority of Labour MPs backed him. But what about the rank-and-file Labour and trade union members who, for the first time, had a direct vote in the election of a Labour leader? What made them vote for a man like Blair who so obviously has nothing whatever in common with them? A man who could just as easily have been a Tory politician as a Labour one - in fact who nearly was.

During the campaign the candidates all felt compelled to pronounce a word that has not been heard in polite Labour circles for a long time: "socialism". Not that this was something to be welcomed. The less the Labour Party is associated with the word "socialism" the better, as far as we are concerned.

We would be only too happy if Labour politicians were never to use the word again. In view of their record over the years in administering capitalism in the only way possible — in the interest of those who live off profits and against the interest of the rest of us — they have no right to use it. They have brought on it nothing but shame.

But cynical politicians that they are, the three candidates calculated that, faced with an electorate of Labour and trade union activists rather than the voters generally, this might pick up a few votes for them. Even Blair let is be known that he was a bit of a "Christian Socialist" (whatever that might be).

Christian maybe, but Socialist never. He openly supports the market economy and all that goes with it: profit-making, keeping wages down to be competitive, means-testing state benefits, maintaining weapons of mass destruction, export or die, etc, etc, etc. So, of course, do Prescott and Beckett, not that that prevented the SWP from arguing in its own tortuous way for a vote for Beckett "without enthusiasm" but only as Deputy Leader not Leader (work that one out if you can).

As Blair re-assured capitalist investors via the Financial Times (11 June): "We want a dynamic market economy. It is not merely that I, as it were, with hesitation acknowledge that this is the way we have to go. I say that it is positively in the public interest to have a dynamic market economy."

Nobody who can praise the capitalist economy in this way can be a Socialist, even if his conscience might lead him to toss beggars a few coppers rather than kick them.

But the candidates needn't have bothered to pretend to be socialists. It wasn't "socialism" that swayed the Labour rank-and-file but the same consideration that swayed the MPs: who was the person most likely to get disillusioned Tory voters to vote Labour rather than for Paddy Ashdown and his Literal Demagogues? Who, in other words, was the best Liberal look-alike?

Blair's election means that the Labour Party will now complete even more rapidly its transformation into a Liberal party. Labourism, as the doctrine that the working class can improve its position by sending trade unionists into Parliament to enact pro-worker reforms within capitalism, is dead.

We are back in the situation that existed a hundred years ago, before the Labour Party was formed, when both the major parties were united in their commitment to uphold and promote the profit-driven market economy that is capitalism. In those days the choice at election times was between Sir Graball d'Encloseland and Mr Samuel Sweater. Today it is between Alan B'Stard and T D'Stard. It's back to square one, a measure of the complete failure of Labourism to do anything about getting rid of capitalism.

Instead of Labour gradually changing capitalism into something better, capitalism changed Labour into another openly pro-capitalist party as committed to the profit system and the market economy as the Tories and Liberals.

Labour never was a socialist party, so socialists never had any place in it. This is now even more true than ever. The place of socialists is in a separate Socialist party, committed to democratic action to bring about a society of common ownership, democratic control and production directly for use not profit, and with it an end both to class privilege and the market economy.

Marx and the workers' movement (1982)

From the August 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marx was not just a passive commentator on the British political scene in the 1850s. He was also a participant in the Chartist movement, at least until 1856, and in the campaign waged by David Urquhart (1805-1877) against what the latter saw as "the Russian menace".

After its failure in February 1848 and the repression which followed, Chartism was never again a mass movement. The National Charter Association, and its Executive, did however survive as an organisation, though many former Chartist leaders got involved in other movements. Fergus O'Connor, who had been elected MP for Nottingham in 1847 (the only Chartist ever to be elected as such) lost his seat in the 1852 election. He was later declared insane and died in a mental asylum in 1855 (Marx's generous obituary of him appeared in the Neue Oder Zeitung (NOZ) on 15 September).

Bronterre O'Brien formed a separate organisation in which emphasis was put on the social changes to be made once the Charter had given the working class political power, such as the nationalisation of land and the railways and the establishment of a single State bank. The O'Brienites became in fact a distinct sect within the British working class movement which survived into the 1880s, whose members Marx was to meet later during his second period of participation in the working class movement in Britain between 1864 and 1872.

Others campaigned to repeal the so-called "taxes on knowledge" — the stamp duty and taxes on paper and advertisements which artificially raised the price of newspapers to a level beyond which many workers could afford. Others, such as Harney, supported Urquhart's anti-Russia campaign. The Chartist Executive split in 1852 on the question of whether or not to co-operate with the middle class Radicals to achieve the aims of the Charter. Those who, grouped around Ernest Jones, wanted Chartism to continue to be a working class movement hostile to the capitalist middle class set up their own organisation.

Of the Chartist leaders in 1848 it was thus Jones who emerged as the champion of militant Chartism in the 1850s. He had been released from his two-year prison term for sedition at the end of 1850 and in 1851 started his own paper, Notes to the People, which the following year became a weekly called The People's Paper. Marx, who was in close touch with Jones, contributed articles to this paper from 1852 to 1856.

In the 1852 General Election, as Marx reported in the New York Daily Tribune (NYDT), Chartists put up a number of candidates, including Jones at Halifax. He polled — and this was not reported by Marx — a mere 37 votes, a confirmation that the vast majority of workers were excluded from the vote, but also of the decline of Chartism since 1847, in the same constituency, Jones had polled 280 votes. But the Chartist movement had always had its ups and downs, corresponding with periods of depression and prosperity.

The early 1850s were a period of prosperity, though not of working class inactivity. The widescale emigration of the period temporarily put the working class in a stronger bargaining position. Successful strikes for higher wages became more and more frequent. The culminating point of this strike movement was the year 1853. Jones decided that the time was ripe for a Chartist campaign in the industrial districts of England and in June left London for the North to address a number of mass meetings, a speaking tour given good coverage by Marx in the NYDT.

While Jones was in the North one of the biggest industrial disputes of the 1850s was brewing: the lock-out of the Preston cotton workers. Preston was one of the three main centres of the Lancashire cotton-spinning industry, the other two being Ashton and Stockport. In the summer of 1853 the cotton spinners of Stockport went on strike for a 10 per cent wage increase — which they won, thanks to financial aid from other groups of workers. In the autumn the cotton spinners of Preston, joined by the weavers, made a similar demand on their employers.The employers' answer was a general lock-out and by October 18,000 workers in Preston were without work or wages.

Once again a solidarity campaign was launched by the trade unions to raise money from other sections of the working class. Ernest Jones joined and played a prominent part in this campaign. he suggested the calling of a "Labour Parliament", to be composed of delegates from workers and trade unions in the Lancashire area. In November a Chartist meeting in Manchester voted for the calling of such a congress, referring to the need for "a united and mass movement of the working classes, based on a national organisation, and guided by one directing body" (quoted by Marx in NYDT, 12 December 1853). The Labour Parliament did not in fact meet until March 1854, by which time the Preston workers were well on the way to defeat. Marx was elected an honorary delegate and, unable to attend, sent a fine statement of his faith in the capacity of the working class to emancipate itself, which was published in the People's Paper.

Marx covered extensively the 1853 strike wave for the NYDT, describing his series of articles on the subject as his "history of strikes" (letter to Engels, 30 September 1853). Basing himself on an analysis of economic trends, he had said right from the start that the Preston workers were likely to fail as they had left their demand for a wage increase too late. They should have demanded it earlier in 1853 or in 1852 as there were signs, even in September and October 1853, of a downturn in activity. Under these circumstances, Marx argued, the employers were likely to welcome a stoppage of work while they cleared the surplus stocks that were building up.

This may well have been one of the employers' considerations, but they probably did not expect that the workers would put up such a fight before being finally defeated. The lock-out had begun in October 1853. By March 1854, when the Labour Parliament met, the Preston workers had still refused to give in. The employers then resorted to employing blacklegs, both men and women, from the agricultural districts of Ireland. The workers naturally opposed this and the employers had a number of their leaders arrested for "molesting and obstructing" the blacklegs. The workers held out for another month or so before going back in May without the wage increase they had originally demanded, though the charges against their arrested leaders were not proceeded with. This was a defeat for the working class, but the Preston workers' determination and the support they had from other workers, which had allowed them to hold out for seven months, must have had some effect on the employers, making them think twice before again taking on the cotton workers in this way.

Marx, as we have noted, did not really expect this and other strikes to succeed in view of the changed economic situation. This is not to say that he was not in favour of the strikes taking place. Far from it. The workers had to test the situation. As Marx said, in a comment which shows the extent to which he had grasped trade union tactics:

Under certain circumstances, there is for the workingman no other means of ascertaining whether he is or not paid to the actual value of his labour, but to strike or to threaten to do so" (NYDT, 17 October 1853).

Further, if workers did not fight to maintain their living standards they would be reduced to the level of slaves, incapable of emancipating themselves. Criticising those socialists and others who opposed strikes Marx wrote:

I am, on the very contrary, convinced that the alternative rise and fall of wages, and the continual conflicts between masters and men resulting therefrom, are, in the present organisation of industry, the indispensable means of holding up the spirit of the labouring classes, of combining them into one great association against the encroachments of the ruling class, and of preventing them from becoming apathetic, thoughtless, more or less well-fed instruments of production. In a state of society founded upon the antagonism of classes, if we want to prevent slavery in fact as well as in name, we must accept war. In order to rightly appreciate the value of strikes and combinations, we must not allow ourselves to be blinded by the apparent insignificance of their economical results, but hold, above all things, in view their political consequences. Without the great alternative phases of dullness, prosperity, over-excitement, crisis and distress, which modern industry traverses in periodically recurring cycles, with the ups and downs of wages resulting from them, as with the constant warfare between masters and men closely corresponding with those variations in wages and profits, the working classes of Great Britain would be a heartbroken, a weak-minded, a worn-out, unresisting mass, whose self-emancipation would prove as impossible as that of the slaves of Ancient Greece and Rome. We must not forget that strikes and combinations among the serfs were the hot-beds of the mediaeval communes, and that those communes have been in their turn, the source of life of the now ruling bourgeoisie (NYDT, 14 July 1853).

This, of course, is the same perspective of a political movement — here described as "one great association" — of the working class developing out of trade union struggles that Marx had learnt from the experience of the pre-1848 Chartist movement and had expressed both in the Poverty of Philosophy and in the Communist Manifesto. For Marx, it was this that was the importance of the 1853 strike wave. Even if the strikes failed economically, they would have helped raise the political consciousness of the workers:

. . .  should, as I suppose, the depression prove lasting, the work people will soon get the worst of it, and have to struggle — very unsuccessfully — against reduction. But then their activity will soon be carried over to the political field, and the new organisation of trades, gained in strikes, will be of immense value to them (NYDT, 17 October 1853).

and,

I have repeatedly stated that the turn-outs of the men, by beginning at too late an epoch, when the opportunities afforded by the unprecedented prosperity were already vanishing away, could not prove successful in an economical point of view, or as far as their immediate end was concerned. But they have done their work. They have revolutionized the industrial proletariat, and, stirred up by dear food and cheap labour, the political consequences will show themselves in due time (NYDT, 16 December 1853).

Marx was a little over-optimistic here. There was to be no Chartist revival. After the defeat of the Preston workers, the Labour Parliament quietly disappeared. Jones returned to London. An important factor in this ebbing of working class activity was the fact that since March 1854 Britain had been at war with Russia in the Crimea (a war which, incidentally, both Jones and Marx urged the workers to support). The war dragged on for two years and it was only in 1855 that Jones relaunched agitation for the traditional Chartist demand for the reform of Parliament to achieve an effective universal male suffrage. Marx once again let his enthusiasm carry him away, declaring in the NOZ of 6 March 1855:

A few months more, and the crisis in the manufacturing districts will reach the 1842 level, if not surpass it. But as soon as its effect is generally felt by the working classes, the political movement, which among these classes has been more or less drowsing for the past six years and has retained only the cadres for new agitation, will begin again.

In June Marx attended a mass meeting in Hyde Park to protest against proposals before Parliament to tighten up the law on Sunday opening and drinking. It was obviously the first time that he had ever seen a meeting of this size and he was so carried away that he reported for the NOZ (28 June) that "the English Revolution began yesterday in Hyde Park". In fact of course it was nothing of the sort and over the next few years even the Chartist "cadres", faced with the passivity of the working class, began to to become disillusioned and demoralised.

Marx continued his collaboration with Jones and the People's Paper during 1856. In April he made one of the speeches at a dinner held to mark the fifth anniversary of the paper's first issue, his first public speech in English. Once again he expressed his confidence in the ability of the working class to take humanity on to the next stage in social evolution.

1857 was an election year and Jones was, as on previous occasions, a candidate, this time in Nottingham, O'Connor's old constituency. This was the election Palmerston had called to get a vote of confidence for his administration and in which the Radicals suffered a serious reverse.

Jones' paper was now in financial difficulties and the working class appeared to be completely apathetic; there were no strike waves, nor political discontent. This led Jones to reconsider his whole strategy and to drop his opposition to collaboration with the middle class Radicals to achieve democratic reforms. In fact he went so far as to be prepared to give up all the demands of the Charter except universal suffrage, thus ceasing in effect to be a Chartist. The deal he hoped to make with the middle class radicals was their accepting universal suffrage in return for the Chartists (whom Jones presumed to speak for) giving up the demand for secret ballots. This deal was to be made at a Chartist-Radical conference which Jones was planning to call. When Jones made this proposal in November 1857 Marx broke with him; thus the article on the "Divine Right of the Hohenzollern" which had appeared on 13 December1856 turned out to be the last article marx wrote for the People's Paper.

Jones' Conference took part in London in February 1858, but did not result in much. Jones was disowned by other Chartists, including Bronterre O'Brien, who proclaimed their loyalty to all six points of the original Charter. Financial difficulties forced Jones to sell the People's Paper to a Radical newspaper group later that year and it thus appeared as a separate publication. Jones resumed his profession as a barrister, though he was again a candidate in Nottingham in the 1859 election.

The question of co-operation with the Radicals had been a controversial issue within the Radical movement right from the start, from the time of the first Chartist Convention in 1839. This was because the working class and the capitalist class did in fact have an interest in the extension of the franchise, the former to gain a weapon they could use later to achieve their own emancipation, the latter to weaken the political power and privileges of the landlord class. Not even Marx was opposed on principle to a co-operation between the working class and the capitalist middle class to achieve the democratisation of the British political system. What Marx was opposed to was the working class giving up its political autonomy and becoming just the tail-end of the middle class Radicals.

Marx always accepted that the Radicals had a role to play in the fight for political democracy in Britain. Indeed he was very interested in the conditions which might lead them to fight for this in a determined way. He described the Radicals as "the party of the self-conscious bourgeoisie: (NYDT, 25 August 1852), by which he meant the class-conscious section of the bourgeoisie, the section which realised that there was a conflict of interest between their class and the landlord class which could only be settled when the latter had been deprived of its power and privileges. Thus John Bright stated in a speech quoted by Marx in another NYDT article that "everything the country has gained since the revolution of 1688 . . . has been gained in a manly contest of the industrial and commercial classes against the aristocratic and and privileged classes of the country" (NYDT, 23 February 1853). This was the sort of talk from the capitalist middle class that Marx liked to hear. He wanted their "manly contest" against the landlord class to be successful, so as to create the conditions for a straight fight between the capitalist class and the working class, in which the newly-won vote would be a weapon in the hands of the workers.

So the question at issue between him and Jones was not over whether or not there should be an alliance between the working class and the capitalist class to achieve the Charter (effective universal suffrage) but over how this alliance should arise. Marx wanted, if you like, the middle class to ally itself to the working class rather than the working class to ally itself to the middle class.

In 1850 Marx and Engels had written:

Despite this split and the emergence of more extreme demands, the Chartists, remembering the circumstances under which the Corn Laws were repealed, still suspect that in the next crisis they will once again have to form an alliance with the industrial bourgeoisie, the Financial Reformers, and that they will have to help them defeat their enemies, forcing concessions from them in their turn. This will certainly be the position of the Chartists in the next crisis (Neue Rheinische Zeitung Revue, May-October 1850).

This conclusion was based at that time on their experience of the abortive German bourgeois revolution and the roles the middle class and the working class had played in it. But greater familiarity with the English political scene did not lead Marx to alter this view. In one of a series of articles he wrote for the People's Paper analysing Gladstone's 1853 budget, he discussed what might happen if Gladstone's proposal to bring taxes on income from landed property into line with those on other incomes was rejected by the landed interest in Parliament:

If, however, the country party once more obtain the upper hand, the middle class cannot get rid of them without remodelling the rotten oligarchic parliament and then it is no longer in their power to agitate for a limited reform, but they must go the whole length of the people's demands. The people, of course, can never without abandoning their principles and their interests, join and appeal to the middle class but for the bourgeoisie, it would not be the first time that they are forced to throw themselves on the shoulders of the people (PP, 30 April 1853).

Marx felt, in other words, that the working class should concentrate on building up its own strong, independent political movement, which the capitalist middle class would then be obliged to offer concessions to, in order to win its support for the struggle against the landlord class. Jones had once favoured this policy too, and Marx had supported him for doing so, but Jones was now proposing to go to the middle class party — the Radicals — offering them concessions in return for working class support. For Marx, such a policy meant the working class "abandoning both their principles and their interests" and he severely criticised it.

Marx, it should be added, was equally critical of the capitalist middle class for not waging thoroughly enough the "manly contest . . . against the aristocratic and privileged classes of the country" of which Bright had spoken. He noted how they accepted aristocratic government as long as it pursued policies in their own economic interest and were only prepared to struggle against it when it departed from this tacit understanding by bringing in some measure to benefit the landlords at the expense of the capitalists. This led Marx to favour what the French call la politique du pire, to support the worst alternative, in this case to prefer a reactionary aristocratic government defending the privileges of the landlord class to an aristocratic government which pursued capitalist class policies. Only in this way, Marx suggested, could the middle class be goaded into taking action to end the political privileges of the landlord class, so clearing the way for the working class to use the resulting political democracy in its own interest, against the capitalist class.

Thus, in the same article on Gladstone's budget in the People's Paper, immediately preceding the passage we have already quoted, Marx wrote that the defeat of Gladstone's proposal to equalise taxes on landed and other incomes

would certainly promote the interests of the people. One thing is clear: as long as an aristocratic coalition does the work required from them by the manufacturing and trading class, the latter will neither make any political effort themselves, nor allow the working class to carry their own political movement (PP, 30 April 1853)

Marx was deluding himself if he really thought that a reactionary government, whether under Palmerston or the Tories, would lead to a "revolutionary" situation. Certainly Palmerston's victory in 1857 did goad the radicals into insisting more forcefully on the need for an extension of the franchise; but how wrong Marx's assessment was can be seen from the fact that Lord Palmerston's personal opposition to reform delayed, without inciting any serious popular discontent, any move in this direction till after his death in 1865 and that the Second Reform Act, when it came in 1867, was passed under a Tory government.

The 1850s ended with another lock-out that assumed national importance. For some years trade unions in the building industry had been agitating for a reduction in their working day from 10 to 9 hours. In the summer of 1859 one employer dismissed a trade unionist for having taken part in a delegation to him to put forward this demand. His fellow workers naturally responded by going on strike. The London building employers decided to use the occasion to try to break the power of the building trades' unions. They locked out their workers, saying that they would only re-employ those who agreed to sign a "document" repudiating trade unionism. Other trade unions throughout the country rallied round the building workers and the dispute continued for six months. It was finally settled in February 1860 in a draw: the workers dropped their demand for a 9-hour day and the employers withdrew "the document".

A direct result of the builder's lock-out and the solidarity movement around it was the creation of the London Trades Council in May 1860, at a meeting called by the builders' strike committee. Trades Councils, which already existed in some other towns and cities, were committees formed by delegates from the various trade unions in a particular area. They were mainly concerned with trade union matters, but also provided an opportunity for trade unionists to discuss broader political questions. Some of those who were prominent in the London Trades Council were very much interested in politics, not just matters of immediate concern to workers such as the law on trade unions or the extension of the franchise, but also in foreign questions like the American Civil War and the campaign for Italian unity. It was this new generation of working-class militants who were to replace Jones as Marx's contacts when he resumed participation in the working-class movement in Britain in 1864.

Adam Buick

Nottingham Branch Report. (1911)

From the June 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

DIRTY ANTI-SOCIALIST UNION TRICK AT THE LACE TOWN.

Since the formation of the Nottingham Branch last July we have been spreading that working-class enlightenment which must precede the workers' emancipation. We soon got to grips with the enemy, and a debate was fixed up with a follower of the "meek and lowly one." Comrade Anderson did the needful, and we disposed of a good deal of literature and increased our membership, besides showing the antagonism between Socialism and religion—a gratifying result.

Next the Anti-Socialist Union made an appearance and held at meeting on the Market Square. We promptly challenged the speaker. a Mr. Glover, to debate, and to our surprise and delight, he accepted the challenge, and said he would be prepared to meet our representative on the following Sunday. Evidently he was unaware that a branch of the S.P.G.B. existed in Nottingham, as I will shortly show.

We made the necessary arrangements for the debate, and them on the Saturday our opponent informed the branch that owing to the religious objections of his Conservative friends, he could not debate on the Sabbath. Yet on the same day he advertised the debate in the local Press, and was in the Market Place with his carriage on the Sunday night.

Mr. Glover's object was obvious. He asked from the carriage if there was an I.L.P. man who would take the platform. A member of the S.D.P. got up, and, as might be expected, Mr. Glover dealt with the reform position, the refusal of the Labour Party to support the Woolwich amendment, Right to Work Bill, etc.

The brave defender of capitalism, after this honest and clean and typical Anti-Socialist manoeuvre, wrote to the head office of his Union saying that the "Socialist Party" had funked the debate.

This proves our contention that the A.S.U. have nothing to fear from such conglomerations of freaks as the S.D.P. and the I.L.P.

Several lectures have been given at the Notts Cosmopolitan Debating Society by our comrades Anderson, Fitzgerald, Neumann, Kent and Watts, on subjects appertaining to that working class education which it is our mission to extend. Space will not permit me to give an account of all the good work done by these lectures. The last of them was on "Socialism and Religion" and our comrade the lecturer gave the "rainbow-chasers" something to chase.

One apathetic reformer wanted to know when we are going to stop pulling to pieces and begin to construct. The answer was when we have cleared the rubbish out of the way.

S. 

The Edwardians (1954)

From the June 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

We all sniggered, not long ago, over Uncle Fred's best suit in the family album; whatever could Aunt Alice have seen in him? Now, perhaps, we know, because what they wore before 1914 is a cult in 1954. Spiv clothes are out and Edwardians are in at the dance halls and on the monkey-parades—dull colours, baggy velvet-collared jackets, drainpipe trousers, straggly ties. Not quite the same as Uncle Fred, though: to-day's model stands in a crepe-soled plinth and is crowned with an elegant perm.

Something new in the world of fashion is often something old. In the last four or five years, reminiscent styles of one sort and another have recurred persistently, from spectacular waistcoats to the flat caps that were introduced to southern England by north-country football fans in the late nineteenth century. The full Edwardian rig first became news for the picture papers when popular dandies adopted it—a comedian, a politician and a film actor.

Then, in 1953, it jumped to the headlines: a fight among Edwardian-dressed adolescents on Clapham Common. One died of stab wounds and another was hanged for it. People became aware that the costume was no longer merely a sartorial idiosyncrasy. More drab and uneasy-looking as it passed into the too-cheap, too-smart gents' outfitters, it was multiplying as the dress of truculent youthful gangs. With increasing frequency it was mentioned in court cases of offensive rowdyism. In a few months its wearers were christened "Teddy Boys"; it has become, in fact, the hoodlums' uniform.

The same ideals and circumstances lead to the same attire often enough. You can usually tell the artists from the visitors at an exhibition; a shorthand-typist is not likely to be taken for a factory girl, nor a Conservative for an anarchist. The most famous example from recent years is the spiv, who established a cartoonists' golden age with his drape and his shoulder-padding and his fist-sized tie-knot. There is nothing unconventional or new in the assumption of a common, near-uniform dress by suburban larrikins. In the past, when an adolescent's income was shillings instead of pounds, the same tendency was exhibited from time to time but on a lesser scale; before 1939 there were "trilby-hat gangs" on the corners and round the coffee-stalls.

The public concern about the "Teddy Boys" is concern over the behaviour-patterns that are the grounds for their association. Ideals in uniforms have a more organised, impressive look about them; and by and large it is delinquency that wears the Edwardian uniform. Delinquency, not crime—and there is a considerable difference. A black marketeer or a street bookmaker is not a delinquent; on the other hand, a bunch of young men who make a street intolerable to passer-by may not be criminals but are obviously delinquents—that is, they have a consciously anti-social pattern of behaviour.

What causes delinquency? Everybody knows: the bishops, the leader-writers, the psychologists, the headmasters—they all know. Unhappy homes, insufficient religious teaching, low moral standards, American comics, amusement arcades — the whole modern "anatomie of abuses." And, as is often the case, the more remedies are proposed the worse the thing becomes. While the Edwardians flourish, the serious, train-their-character youth movements wane; the Boy Scouts, which in the 'twenties and 'thirties sent thousands of hairy-kneed sixteen years-olds hiking through the countryside at summer week-ends, now is a little-boys' affair. The "Teddy Boys" have their own character and their own culture.

Mostly, they are youths between leaving school and being conscripted. That in itself is an obvious important factor: the sense of aimlessness, of having time to kill, must be tremendous. Here are you: kept at school up to fifteen, and at eighteen they want you again. In the meantime, for three years only is your life your own—except that whatever you propose, the State inexorably disposes at the end of the three years. And when you are in "the bleedin' Kate," there sis generally one of two things: either fighting or twenty months of organised time-killing. The Edwardians lack purpose in life—and it isn't surprising.

There is, too, the desire for manliness, which is seen largely in terms of loudness, roughness and "seeking the bubble reputation." The desire is probably more potent to-day than at any previous time. One reason is that a soldier, even an eighteen-year old one, must be a man, and perhaps a stronger reason is that there is no longer any segregation or much reticence between the sexes. A girl of seventeen has achieved womanhood in appearance and, as often as not, in experience, too; her male counterpart, lacking her natural and circumstantial aids, can only make valiant efforts towards corresponding ends.

Several supposed causes of delinquency have already been mentioned. The most commonly cited—probably because it is the favourite with the clergy and at school prizegivings—is lack of religious teaching. Strangely enough, the Edwardians have had more of that than most people. The 1944 Education Act gave religion a stronger footing in the schools than at any time since compulsory education began—and not every generation is subjected within a decade to pietistic profusions for a victory, a monarch's death and a coronation. It may be argued that religion teaching is only effective in the home; but no religion is more family-based, and more exacting, than Catholicism, and no cities have more crime and delinquency that those with large Catholic populations, like Liverpool and Glasgow.

Certainly no-one would deny that broken or unhappy homes contribute to delinquency; overcrowded homes, too. The absence of stability and affection can and does give rise to emotional conflicts, frustrations and resentments against society. Plenty of delinquents come from apparently good homes, however. There is a good deal of glib talk about adjustment and maladjustment, psychiatric terms that have passed into popular currency. Adjustment means a condition of harmony with the social environment; what of the person, then, who us adjusted to European civilisation in this present age? A. S. Neill, the high priest of "progressive" education, has written much about his achievements in adjusting recalcitrant or delinquent children from well-to-do homes. What is achieved? They are in harmony with predatoriness, violence, suspicion and power; in harmony—with a diseased society.

Delinquency is a way in which people react to personal or group situations. More important still, the reaction is something learned from society. The whole behaviour-pattern of the "Teddy Boys"—the shiftlessness, the truculence, the irresponsibility—is their reaction to what society has given them and their display of what it has taught them. Behind them is the entire structure of western urban civilisation which, Frankenstein-like, creates its monsters and lives in fear of them.

There is no quick, easy answer to the problem. It is not enough to think of this or that, of broken homes or a sense of frustration, as the cause. You must ask why the family is disintegrating; why so many people in our world are frustrated and unhappy. Social misconduct is no more the result of deliberate personal choice that it is the product of heredity or constitution (and that myth, thank goodness, has long been exploded). Society, through the law and the majority of public opinion, assumes that the delinquent is merely malicious, and deals accordingly with him. "You want a damn good thrashing," five East London Edwardians were told last week before the magistrate fined them. And even where there is better understanding, the social circumstances to which delinquency is a reaction remain.

The driving force of our society is profit. All its institutions and ideals are shaped by that motive. So, in consequence, are its problems, and while the basis remains they will remain; or, if one apparent problem disappears it does so only to be replaced by another. A few years ago it was the spivs; now it is the Edwardians. The real answer to delinquency can only be found by establishing a social situation which will not set some in conflict and teach them lessons of power and fear. And that means not punitive legislation, not religious teaching, but the abolition of profit-based society.

Robert Barltrop

Complicity (2015)

From the June 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Whilst discussing the Atlantic slave trade of the past and the part played in it by the British a friend said that he felt some guilt about it. This, no doubt, was due to the part that his ‘nationality’ plays in his sense of identity. The ‘sins of the fathers’ were, for him, visited upon all who are ‘British’. In contrast to this I felt that the guilt was to be focused on the ruling class of the time and that he was blameless for their crimes.

However a case could be made that if we do not oppose the criminal actions of the ruling class of our own time then we are, indeed, complicit. This is compounded by the fact that much of the wealth that gives the capitalist elite their power in this country was derived originally from the slave trade. While underlining the continuity and importance of history this fact also illustrates the difficulty in allocating collective responsibility for the actions of some members of a community. That there must be some level of collective culpability is surely indisputable since we would all take some moral responsibility for our actions (or inactions) and this must include our political activities.

This year sees the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration/death camps and the complicity of the German population in their existence is still hotly debated by historians. Nobody would dispute that the members of the Nazi Party were complicit in these terrible crimes but what of those who voted for them originally and can those who did nothing to oppose the Nazis gaining power be exonerated from some culpability? Merely pointing at Hitler and Himmler and claiming to be ‘just obeying their orders’ provides no moral or political justification for committing inhuman acts. After they came to power there’s no doubting the level of fear that forced many into actions they would never otherwise countenance but there were many who were, to some degree, ideologically sympathetic -- and not just in Germany. Some would shrug or throw their arms in the air saying something like: ‘That’s an extreme example which could never happen again’ or ‘Any attempt to explain the Holocaust would be merely a rationalisation since the magnitude of the crime is incomprehensible’.

In contrast to merely despairing about ’the human condition’ socialists seek to explain Nazi rule in its historical and political context because of its importance in warning us of what can happen during one of capitalism’s inevitable episodes of extreme economic and political instability. This period also has important lessons for us in respect of keeping a close eye on the actions of those who would take advantage of such instability, both of the left and right wing. Above all it teaches us that any level of moral and political complacency towards the activities of our ‘leaders’ can and does lead to disaster - we must accept responsibility for the actions of those who do so in our name unless we oppose them politically.

It has long been recognised that people acting in a group can behave differently than they would as individuals. Lynch mobs and football hooligans are classic examples of this type of tribal behaviour. Nation states rely on this psychology in times of war as the individuals who compose their armies would never ‘cold-bloodedly’ murder another human being in their everyday lives. Of course all kinds of political conditioning are needed for this to happen but perhaps we can pick out one that might help explain the seemingly complacent attitude that many exhibit when nations murder in their name. Because of the numbers involved - sometimes millions when nations are at war – there is a kind of dilution of moral responsibility. Someone who would suffer great guilt if their actions or inactions were to cause a family member, friend or neighbour an injury (let alone their death) does not feel the same level of responsibility for the deaths and injuries that occur in a war that they supported (or did not oppose).

After the conflict dies down (wars rarely end neatly) the subsequent analysis might reveal that the causes were not quite what was claimed (as with the recent Iraq war) and so a debate ensues where blame is apportioned. The leaders and their advisers are questioned but rarely condemned or punished for their mistakes or crimes. But what of the people who let it all happen in their name? This is when the ‘dilution’ of moral and political responsibility comes into focus. Bush and Blair take the lion’s share of any guilt (which, of course, they strongly refute) then the ’intelligence’ community (for ‘sexing up’ the WMD dossiers), then perhaps the military leaders or even the oil companies etc., so that any culpability that is left is felt to be so negligible that it’s not worthy of consideration. Such a contrast to individual moral responsibility - nobody would defend their immoral activities by claiming that the murder they committed was somehow diminished by the volume of the other murders carried out that year or that the person they beat up suffered less injury than the victim of another thug. We socialists are appalled by the level of complacency shown by the mainstream political parties, voters and the politically cynical in this regard. How and why did we get to such a position where seemingly nobody takes responsibility for their political actions? 

At the heart of this we have the contradiction inherent within capitalist culture where, on the one hand, we are told that everyone is a competitor and there’s ‘no such thing as society’ and on the other hand we are told that we’re part of a ‘nation‘. The latter designation is usually only called upon in times of war or when some group are to be demonised as ‘immigrants’. Liberals tend to think of the world purely in terms of individuals as their ideology forbids any group or class consciousness and this is partly why they find the concept of collective complicity so difficult. Another reason for absence of any feelings of political responsibility for the actions of the state is because of the ‘professionalisation’ of politics. Westminster seems to many to be another world where ex public school boys play some kind of exotic role playing game that somehow decides national policy. The majority are completely alienated by this anachronistic theatrical nonsense and feel no relationship with (or responsibility for) the strange decisions that are made there.

In an integrated global economic and political structure like capitalism nobody can escape the consequences of its existence. We are all responsible for what happens in the world because capitalism has truly made it ‘one world’ –  in this respect, there’s no ‘third world’ or ‘developed world’. As long as we allow the political elite to do the bidding of the parasite class we are all complicit in their crimes. Only working for socialism can provide you with an ‘alibi’ should one ever be needed. When the majority feel morally and politically responsible for the world, as most do about their actions in their ‘private lives’, then we are all finally motivated to change things.

  ‘What did you do during the war daddy?’

  ‘I opposed the war and what caused it before it began, my son’.

Wez.

Obituary: Lisa Bryan (1961)

Obituary from the May 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lisa Bryan tragically died on March 29th at the age of 32. The previous evening she had been working at the Party Head Office finalising arrangements for the Conference Rally. This was typical of Lisa. Joining in 1947, her life in the Party had been one of ceaseless activity, serving on occasions as Central Organiser, Party Auditor, Executive Committee member, and finally (a job she held for over 10 years) on the Propaganda Committee.

She excelled in this work but regarded it as no more than a necessary duty. Her element was that of socialist propaganda, and as a speaker and occasional writer for the SOCIALIST STANDARD, she found the most satisfaction.

She had a fine, resonant voice, and it was a pleasure to listen to her. At street corner meetings the slim, attractive girl on the SPGB platform, clearly enunciated the socialist case, commanded respect. In the lecture hall, her material was thoroughly prepared and delivered with economy. Her learning was wide and deep, yet she was severely critical of her own ability.

Perhaps this provides a clue to Lisa Bryan's rare quality. Many women, unfortunately, still accept and delight in playing the role of the "second" sex. Not Lisa! She expected to be treated as an equal and the standard she set for herself was the highest. Hence the exacting demands she often made on herself.

In her Branch (Paddington), at Conferences and in internal Party discussions, her counsel was calm and constructive. Her tongue could also be sharp. The speaker who failed to attend a scheduled meeting, the literature secretary who let his accounts get into a muddle, the member who took Party work flippantly, all discovered this. But her reproof was administered with humour and understanding.

And yet, when all this has been said, one has hardly begun to describe Lisa Bryan. Socialism for her became inseparable from her whole person, affecting all her feelings and attitudes. To know Lisa was to make a friend, and her friends were many and diverse. Her loss will be felt far beyond her comrades in the Socialist Party.

Staunchly independent, asking little for herself, her humanity consumed her. She was consistently loyal to her friends; unstinting with help when they were in trouble; cheering when their spirits were low. We all depended on her for so much. Lisa Bryan was young and vital, her death leaves an awful gap. But her life enriched ours and we are the better for knowing her.

Paddington Branch.

In her Branch (Paddington), at Conferences and in internal Party discussions, her counsel was calm and constructive.

Debate: Labour Party and S.P.G.B. (1934)

From the December 1934 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Debate was held at the Working Men's Club, Holborn, on Friday, October 19th, on the question: "Which Party is working for Socialism, the Labour Party or the S.P.G.B.? There was an audience of 500.

The Case for the Labour Party

For the Labour Party, Mr. G. H. Loman, prospective Labour candidate for Kingston, first congratulated the S.P.G.B. on their analysis of the social system and the class struggle, which was the most clear, lucid, and logical which he had ever read. The Labour Party had the same object—Socialism. Its express aims were peace, freedom and justice among the nations; equal opportunity for all men and women for a healthy, self-respecting existence; and to convert industry run for private profit into a planned national economy.

Industry, however, could be socialised in all sorts of ways, he said—by confiscation or compensation. And the Labour Party had said it will pay compensation, so as to prevent inequities as between different sections of the community, and to avoid antagonising foreign Powers. We want Socialism introduced in as humane a manner as possible, and not to bring starvation in the place of poverty.

Now, said Mr. Loman, the S.P.G.B. says Parliament us the seat of power, but we believe you must first take over the financial machinery—the Bank of England. If the House of Lords were obstructive, we should abolish it as a legislative chamber. And, having a mandate from the people, we should use the armed forces to put down opposition.

Mr. Loman said that he expected his opponent to deal with the Labour Party's past. But it is not fair to quote the words or actions of leaders who have been repudiated by the solid rank and fie of the Labour Party. We have done with the reformism of the past. We are going to the electorate to tell them we are out to introduce Socialism, and to convince them that Socialism is a practical alternative to the present system. We agree that only the working class can achieve the common ownership of the means of production and distribution, and the Labour Party will not accept office unless it has a majority of votes for Socialism throughout the country. But the S.P.G.B. is being idealistic when it  says that the mass of the workers must first understand Socialism. The social conditions—starvation in the midst of plenty—will demand Socialism long before the workers are educated for it.

The theoretical principles of the S.P.G.B. are excellent, but it is not surprising that that Party is so small, since they oppose all other Parties—condemn the Labour Party for administering capitalism; condemn the Russian experiment as State capitalism; condemn the I.L.P., the Co-operative movement, the Communists and the Fascists. The S.P.G.B. may not have much of a past, and they do not seem to have much of a future. If you are going to get the sympathy of the workers you must first find a point of contact. The Labour Party tells the workers what Socialism means in terms of concrete domestic measures.

The Case for the S.P.G.B.

For the Socialist Party of Great Britain, "Robertus" first defined its object as "the establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community."

Socialism is necessary because everywhere we are faced with the contrast between untold wealth for a few and a very much-told poverty for the many. Three-fifths of the total income of this country, for instance, is shared by one-tenth of the people, whilst only two-fifths is left to be shared among the other nine-tenths. This contrast is only possible because one class, the capitalists, own the means of production; and the only remedy, therefore, for the poverty of the workers is to convert the means of life into the common property of society as a whole.

To do this, the working class must organise, consciously and as a class, to obtain control of the political machinery (which includes the armed forces). And this task is the task of the working class itself, without regard to leaders of lords (some of them created by the Labour Party!). For the successful termination of the class struggle involves the overthrow of the capitalist class and the establishment of a classless society.

Now let us compare this clearly-defined position with that of the Labour Party. Far from having abandoned their reform programme, they have apparently coined some of the S.P.G.B. phraseology, whilst still attempting to tinker with the effects capitalism—with profiteering, rents, slums, "peace"(!), public utilities—like all the other capitalist and reformist Parties. They call the recognition of the class struggle, "a narrow, class appeal, as all men and women of goodwill should rally . . . . etc." The Labour Party has grown by marrying its old reformist intentions to the unsound ideas of the workers, by studying and manipulating their ignorance. As Mr. Salter, a Labour M.P., has said in the "New Leader":

"There is not a single constituency in the country where there is a majority of convinced Socialist electors. We have plenty of districts, such as Bermondsey, where there is a Labour majority, but it is a delusion to think that the greater number of these people understand what we mean by Socialism. They neither understand it nor want it." 

No wonder the shipping magnate, Lord Inchcape, could say of the first Labour Government, "You have no need to dear these people."

Now, since Socialism is necessarily international in character, the question of foreign antagonisms does not arise. Nor is there any question, for the S.P.G.B., of either compensation or confiscation: it is a matter of restitution. Restitution to the workers of the world of the wealth which they alone produce. The records of history will testify that the rise of the capitalist class to power was made in complete disregard of compensation.

Here we have, world-wide, the private ownership of the means of life, and the consequent poverty and insecurity of the workers of the world. The Socialist Party of Great Britain declare that there is one remedy—Socialism—the working class must organise themselves as a class to obtain control of the political machinery (through which social power is wielded), and establish the common ownership and democratic control of the means of life by and in the interest of the whole of human society.

F. E. 

On the eve of 1917 (1982)

Book Review from the August 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the Eve of 1917, Alexander Shlyapnikov, Allison & Busby

The publication of Alexander Shlyapnikov's memoirs of Bolshevik Party work from 1914 to 1917 is a valuable contribution to our knowledge of what really went on in Russia in those years.

Shlyapnikov was remarkable; a Russian industrial worker, a skilled turner by trade, he journeyed abroad for six years, working in factories in Paris, London and Stuttgart, picking up a knowledge of languages and conditions in Europe before returning to St. Petersburg in 1914 as a "French" emigrant.

Re-starting work in the engineering workshops in St. Petersburg, he rapidly became a "key-man", solely responsible for establishing contacts, building precarious underground organisations and developing an amazing technique for evading arrest by the Ochrana (Secret Police). He never walked down the same street twice, never slept in the same flat two nights running, and never gave his name or any address. His accounts of his hazardous trips to wartime Stockholm, London (where he worked as a turner at the old Fiat Motor Works at Wembley) and New York to raise money by selling reports of Czarist Jewish persecution to wealthy New York Jews, make fascinating reading. The sheer physical stamina of his exploits in Finland and Sweden is astounding. He reckoned the "life" of an active Party worker before arrest to be about three months.

His description of the success of the workers in presenting demands and wringing concessions on conditions of Czarist repression bears out the Marxian contention that not even the most savage oppression could prevent them/

The workers in the munition factories were indispensable. There was a limit to the number of "agitators" who could be slung into uniform and sent to the front, only to cause more trouble when they got there. He gives an excellent account of conditions in wartime (1914/16) St. Petersburg and Moscow, showing the complete breakdown of the system, resulting in famine conditions which made further prosecution of the War impossible. The lengthy manifestos and leaflets of the St. Petersburg Bureau combined demands for the Democratic Republic, higher wages, the eight-hour day, and confiscation of the land, with references to the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of socialism.

Shlyapnikov took part in the first "Workers Opposition" to Lenin and Trotsky's Democratic Centralism in 1920, but subsequently made his peace with Stalin only to be arrested in 1930 — something Czar Nicholas failed to do. His end is shrouded in mystery; he disappeared. His international experience may have enabled him to escape back to France. As far is known, he did return to Russia on the invitation of his old buddy, V. M. Molotov, the Foreign Minister, to be driven straight to the Lubyanka Prison. 

For all his battles, hardships and dangers, Stalinism was his reward. The book also brings home forcibly how pathetically backward and remote Russian conditions of political life were in 1914/16.

Horatio.

Comic book Capitalism (1978)

From the October 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

I don't know about you, but no matter the publication, I always read the letters page first. In Debbie a girls' magazine I recently came across a letter that struck a chord. It went on brightly about Blue Peter, show jumping — and then came the gem. "I don't get home from school until 5.30 and then I miss half the (TV) programme. And, knowing my luck, the part I miss is the best part."

Like I said, that strikes a chord. If you are addicted to Debbie with its "Secret of Fear Island", "Up to Date Kate", "Little Miss Featherfeet" and so on, real life is "I miss the best part". As a past victim of "Cannonball Kid", "Trained to Bust-up a Baldy's Team", "The Tough of the Track", I feel that "I miss the best part." Let's fact it; The Hotspur, Wizard, Girls Crystal and the Rover have done us all a disservice. Having learned about the world from them — we always miss the best part. These comic books taught us that life was worthwhile; that it was exciting and dramatic. We were thrown out of school unprepared for that harsh series of cliches that capitalism really offers the young worker.

"You will enjoy it here  . . . This job carries a good pension . . . There are excellent prospects of promotion . . . With this bonus scheme it is really up to you . . . Of course you must believe in the product . . ."

Don't know about you, mate; I was unprepared for it. In the last frame of a Cannonball Kid story our hero is depicted on top of an open-decker bus being driven through cheering crowds. He then reflects — by means of a bubble coming out of his ear —"Ah well scored a hat-trick at Wembley and bust up a Nazi spy ring at school—I wonder what next year will bring."

Unfortunately we are not thirteen years of age for ever. Too soon we are twenty or there abouts. So we start reading the Melody Maker or the New Musical Express. It's the same set-up though. Life is still worthwhile, exciting and dramatic. The only difference is that our villains are a little different. They are not cruel step-mothers who want to stop the ballet lessons (Debbie) or guys with big green heads from another planet (Eagle). Now the villains are the intriguing, mindless, unmusic-loving older generation.

Perhaps after the Beano, Bunty, or Melody Maker you regressed to the Socialist Worker or the Socialist Challenge. The villains there are hard-faced businessmen, multi-national companies or 'right wing' trade union leaders. The heroes are Lenin, Trotsky or some other "working class heroes" who are going to do something for you.

In actual fact, of course, life is not as simplistic as all that comic book nonsense would have us believe. George Orwell in an essay on Boys' Papers once speculated whether it would be possible to change the "right wing" bias of these young working class entertainments to  a more "left wing" bias. No doubt that excited some Maoist to bizarre notions of re-writing "I flew with Braddock" to "I marched with Mao" or some Socialist Worker zealot to contemplate the propaganda value of changing "Trained to Bust-up Baldy's Team" to "Trained to Bust-up Callaghan's Team".

Such notions are best left in the nursery along with all the other junk of childhood. The real villain of the piece is the way that society is organised. Everything that is produced to-day is produced for sale; the whole purpose of production on modern society is to realise profits. Every worker — "Boring old fart" or "way-out revolutionary" included — is a victim of this vicious buying and selling system. The important thing is not to climb Mount Everest in your bare feet (as Wilson of the Wizard did) but to survive in the commercial jungle of capitalism. A man or woman is not judged by how fast he or she can run (I believe Wilson once ran the mile in 3 minutes) but how much he or she owns. The majority of the population own little or nothing but their ability to work, and have got to sell that ability for a wage or salary. No wonder they feel "they have missed the best part". The "best part" is reserved for the owners of the factories, workshops and commercial undertakings.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain wants a new society;  a world where everything is produced solely for use; where the purpose of production is to satisfy human needs; a world without wages, prices or profits. This means a complete revolution in the economic basis of society. It means the whole world's resources are owned in common by the world's population. Such a gigantic transformation can only come about by the conscious act of a majority of the working class. A first step in that process is to leave behind the ideas of "heroes and villains" as portrayed in the comic books of our youth or the political comic books of the "right" or "left" wing.

I started off by saying that I always read the letters page first. Well, here's one I came across in the New Musical Express. The publication was encouraging its readers to send in what they term "smart ass one-lines"; these are usually distinguished by being more than one line and not particularly smart. One of them struck me though as being rather less silly than most; it stated:- "Life is like a shit sandwich. The more bread you have, the less shit you have to eat." On Breadless Ones, ponder such wisdom.

Dick Donnelly

Oscar Wilde and Socialism (1961)

From the January 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Soul of Man under Socialism by Oscar Wilde; included in "Essays and Poems of Oscar Wilde". Penguin Books 2s. 6d.

Oscar Wilde died before the Socialist Party had been founded. It would therefore be a barren exercise at this stage to debate whether Wilde was a Socialist in the exact meaning of that term. What is beyond doubt is that there is in this essay much that the Socialist will agree with. and much more that could form the basis of rewarding discussion. There is no need to be off by the title: by "soul" Wilde clearly meant nothing more than mind—his choice of words has no religious implications.

It is true that part of the essay has little to do with Socialism in any economic sense—nearly half of it is taken up by a diatribe against any attempt at dictation to the artist, whether by government or public opinion. But when Wilde keeps to what is directly relevant, it is a joy to read his sparkling prose, and to see how he hammers his points home.

What of the do-gooders, for example, who try to alleviate the ills of society by well-meaning charity? Wilde writes:

Their remedies do not cure the disease; they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease. They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor. But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible . . . It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of private property. It is both immoral and unfair.

Of the poor, Wilde says:

Why should they be grateful for the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table? They should be seated at the board, and are beginning to know it.

As for those of the workers who accept their conditions, who have "made private terms with the enemy":

I can quite understand a man accepting laws that protect private property, and admit of its accumulation, as long as he himself is able under those conditions to realise some form of beautiful and intellectual life. But it is almost incredible to me how a man whose life is marred and made hideous by such laws can possibly acquiesce in their continuance.

Wilde would have nothing to do with state capitalism that is now often passed off as "Socialism":

If the Socialism is authoritarian; if there are Governments armed with economic power as they are now with political power; if, in a word, we are to have Industrial tyrannies, then the last state of man will be worse than the first.

He saw that a revolutionary change in the economic basis of society was necessary, and that this would have inevitable repercussions in the social superstructure:

When private property is abolished there will be no necessity for crime, no demand for it; it will cease to exist . . . Though a crime may not be against property, it may spring from the misery and rage and depression produced by our wrong system of property-holding, and so, when that system is abolished, will disappear . . . Crime will either cease to exist, or, if it occurs, will be treated by physicians as a very distressing form of dementia, to be cured by care and kindness.

Of the future economic organisation of society, Wilde remarks: "The community by means of organisation of machinery will supply the useful things, and . . . the beautiful things will be made by the individual." By individualism Wilde means the full development of man's personality, the possibility of which has been crushed by the institution of private property. The whole essay could be summed up in this paragraph from it:

With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true, beautiful, healthy individualism. Nobody will waste his life in accumulating things, and the symbols for things. One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

This essay is a mine in which only half an hour's reading will reveal many Socialist gems.

Alwyn Edgar

The Communists' Reform Policy (1928)

From the August 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

"The fight against MacDonaldism should be advanced on the lines of unemployment being made a national responsibility with a definite scale of relief; for pensions at the age of 55 years, on a scale something similar to that suggested for the unemployed; the immediate nationalisation of the credit system and the basic industries (banks, Insurance companies, electricity generating supply, mines and transport, cotton and woollen textiles, and the rapidly developing artificial silk industry)."

The above appears in the "Workers' Life" (July 6th), as the Communist Party's demands for the Cook-Maxton alliance to adopt as their programme.

Nationalisation of public utilities, etc., means State-ownership with the capitalists in control and capitalism being carried on.

This demand, together with the scales of relief for unemployed and pensions shows the utter hypocrisy and cant in the Communist attacks upon the I.L.P. which are made in Palme Dutt's "Socialism and the Living Wage." This book, written for and published by the Communist Party, says:

The workers will not be tricked into the fight for Socialism. Certainly the propaganda of Socialism must start from the simplest daily needs of life of men, women and children, and the failure of capitalism to meet those needs. But at the same time it must be shown that no short cut can find the way out, no magic panaceas of pretended reforms, money-control or other trickeries, but only the conquest of the means of production by the working class, and, therefore, as the necessary condition of this, the overthrow of capitalist class power and conquest of power by the working class; and it must be shown that this class struggle will involve heavy fighting and sacrifice, demanding the strongest discipline and solidarity of the working class.

Adolph Kohn

History as mystery (1998)

From the July 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

That’s what our rulers want because while we remain ignorant of our past they remain unchallenged. While we remain indifferent to history they reign supreme

The interruption of the Archbishop of Canterbury's sermon on Easter Sunday by gay rights activists caused a flurry of media attention that would normally have been absent from such a pointless event. In the ensuing babble about the Church's hostile attitude to gay sex the content of the original sermon was more or less overlooked. Dr Carey's scholarly and sophisticated contribution to the Millennium Agenda was that we have all forgotten our historical Christian values, and that is why the world's in a mess. His view is that we should "remember history".

Funny that the Italians and the French have the same word for "history" as for "story", implying perhaps that both are made up. What the Arch Cant means by history is of course the official Christian revised and approved version, with nasty bits removed or blamed on someone else, and plenty of selfless martyrdom and soft-focus heroic imagery. History as a religious, spiritual and moral work of art, an aesthetic template to guide our actions in the future, an edifying edition of the highlights of past.

But the past didn’t start as "Once upon a time . . ." and end with "happily ever after". It hasn’t ended, for one thing. For another, facts always get in the way of storybook fiction. Christian history, like everyone else's, was bloody, not nice. Christians slaughtered and burned and pillaged and tortured for the faith. The first crusades were against other Christians in Ireland and France. Dissent was ruthlessly suppressed for over a thousand years, while Jesus and the Blessed Virgin climbed into bed with every baron, prince and dictator with money to hire them, with the result that peasants like us spent centuries robbed blind by the kings and scared shitless by the priests. A very handy arrangement for them, but not for 95 percent of the population. Dr Carey seems to want us to "remember" what his Christians said on Sundays, but not what they did the rest of the week.

Who Cares, Carey?

Most people aren't interested in history. It's boring. It's irrelevant. It's just dates and more dates. On the other hand, if you were betting a large sum on a horse, you'd look up its past form, and if you were buying a car, you'd want to know its service record, and if buying a house, you'd be very interested indeed in certain mediaeval by-laws allowing common access through your front room. When buying into an entire social system, however, we seem willing to forgo any such caution or curiosity.

History is certainly boring and irrelevant in schools. This is not accidental. If you were in charge of a prison and you had to choose videos for the inmates to watch, you'd be unlikely to pick Colditz or The Great Escape. Similarly, when the owning class, represented in Britain by the CBI, exercises its considerable control over the national school curriculum, it is not keen to emphasise the historical struggles that have continually taken place between owners and the vast majority of the dispossessed. Instead it emphasises the historical struggles that have taken place between owners and other owners, a subject not nearly as relevant to most of us. Thus, people leave school baffled and bored by history, and the owning class gets its workers cut-price and docile.

I didn’t grow up a socialist because I didn’t know the idea of socialism existed. I distinctly remember being taught the Franco-Prussian War in school, but no mention of the Paris Commune, and the Crimean War, but nothing about Chartists. Marx was some hairy German yob who wanted us all to wear uniforms and shoot each other. The nineteenth century may have been boiling with revolution right across Europe but to me it was drawing rooms, cucumber sandwiches and the Charge of the Light Brigade. Even where the history syllabus could have been potentially worthwhile, the dreary school culture would always manage to rob it of any significance, and the bored, passionless delivery of the time-serving teachers was enough to convince us that knowledge of any sort wasn’t worth having, except for job purposes.

What we call our history is mostly false but we do everything that we do because of it. Our state-approved history is the reason we get up and go to work all day, pay bills, buy holidays, vote the usual way and generally follow in our parents' footsteps . . . all the way to the grave. And a fake sense of past has bequeathed a fake sense of present. With the contempt of long familiarity, we don’t really look at the present as what it is, an unique passing moment, but as a wallpaper for our individual habitat. Big things don’t change in this bland continuum we decorate our private worlds with wisdom. Banks don’t crash. Princesses don’t have fatal accidents. Revolutions don’t change society.

No Industrial Revelations

If the present in all its technological sophistication was sprung upon us suddenly, as if for the first time, like a revelation, perhaps we would see the exciting possibilities in it, but history, or the popular sense of it, has inoculated us against any sense of this potential. History disguises the present moment as a veil disguises a face. We can shout and protest with the passing anger of the moment, but we cannot presume to pit our puny voices against history's relentless vast yawn.

If, instead of being the motive power of revolution, history has become the pale and feeble provider of excuses for the status quo, if instead of a springboard it is a tether that keeps the future out of reach, maybe we should just forget it altogether. If the little is not enough, maybe nothing is better.

School-kids wouldn’t complain. No dates, no stupid kings and queens with numbers for surnames, no essays marked C-minus "Must try harder". The only losers would be historical theme parks, quiz compilers and all those keen to escape the present through books but unable to get on with science fiction.

Amnesia is Easier?

A human memory only one-day-old would annul long-lasting conflicts, old scores, disputes, campaigns, epic struggles and endless fiascos and tragedies. The wars of the world would be called off through lack of interest. Capitalism would collapse as people forgot who owned what and why it mattered anyway. Jew and Arab would tell each other jokes in the sun. Catholic and Protestant would share their Guinness and wonder what all the silly Parade outfits were for. Soldiers would forget how to shoot, prison guards wouldn’t bother to lock up, policemen would wander off and pick wild flowers . . .

Oh dear. A pinch of salt is called for I fear. In truth it is impossible to forget what once you have learned. Even if it were possible to be more ignorant of history than we already are, it would simply mean that the owning class would treat us worse than they do. They have it their own way as it is. While we remain ignorant of our past, they remain unchallenged. While we remain indifferent to history, they reign supreme. While we watch football instead, they laugh at us.

But there is room in our culture for a better understanding of history (and football too, if you insist). What they school out of us, we can bring back again. What they don’t tell us, we can find out. What they ignore, we can discuss. It is not just that we would have a stronger sense of ourselves in time and place. It is also a revolutionary process, because it means overturning old ideas and beliefs in a ceaseless effort to reinvent our present, and design our future.

The Archbishop of Canterbury's idea of history may exclude the venerable and well documented history of homosexuality, but it also excludes the venerable and even better documented history of class struggle. Dr Carey just doesn’t want you to know about those embarrassing bits. The owning class too would like to cover certain things up, or at least gloss over them. That’s why, for a revolutionary, it is always important to be curious. If we are to succeed as a class in emancipating ourselves, we must know the history and tactics of those who are against us. That way, when next they attack us, we will not be unprepared.

Paddy Shannon