Who Rules Britain? (1943)

From the June 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

Who are the Real Rulers of Britain?

This question was set and replied to by Professor H. J. Laski and Captain L. D. Gammans, Conservative M.P. for Hornsey, in the New York Times, and reprinted in the Evening Standard (March 29th and 30th, 1943).

That such a question should be debated at all in the pages of the capitalist press may surprise some of our readers. However, this issue is common topic among the workers here, whilst the dollar kings of the United States find it useful occasionally to deride the feudal moss with which British capitalism is still bedecked.

Professor Laski’s contribution is useful—so far as it goes. But it only goes half-way. For reasons best known to himself, the Professor shrinks at the implications of some of his own conclusions. Where he does not shrink, he clothes the living facts his article does contain with the cap and gown of academic jargon.

Here is how Professor Laski begins.

“The law which constitutes the form of government," wrote Saint-Simon nearly a century and a half ago, “is less important as it touches the happiness of a people—far less—than the law which constitutes property. It is the law of property which determines the real character of the people."

This is merely a half-truth. It draws a distinction between ownership of property and the mode of government. This distinction does not exist. The political constitution of a country corresponds to the needs of its property-owners, the people who own and control the means of life. In Britain the government depends on adult suffrage, and minorities are allowed to express contrary opinions. But to appreciate this fact does not mean that we must endow the British ruling-class with virtues they do not possess.

Professor Laski evidently feels under an obligation to the British ruling- class for their “permission" of political democracy. Such “permission," however, is not the prerogative of rulers. It is a historical product, based upon the needs of capitalism at a particular stage of its development. The decisive fact is this: That this particular form of governmental laws alone enables the owning class of Britain to secure the support of a majority of the population.

Having conceded to the mass of the people the right to elect their rulers, the question stands: Who does, in fact, control political power in this country?

Professor Laski answers, and rightly answers, that it is “the propertied class or their representatives . . . in whose hands all the vital controls of State power remains."

He goes on to specify the ruling-class elements in detail.

"Politically, the ruling class expresses its purpose through the Conservative Party. Anyone who analyses the composition of this Party in the House of Commons cannot avoid the conclusion that its essential purpose is the protection of the interests of private property in the means of production. Forty-four per cent, of them are directors of public companies; between them they hold nearly 1.800 directorships. All important economic interests are represented there—banks, insurance, railways, shipping, iron, steel, engineering, textiles, electricity supply, coal, oil, tobacco, foodstuffs, newspapers, and so forth."

On the role of our land-owning aristocracy he is equally enlightening:

“The great aristocrat of to-day is not merely a landowner. Like the Duke of Montrose, he may be a banker; like Lord Burghley . . .  he may be a director of a railroad, a bank and an insurance company. And if to persons in the Conservative Party connected with the peerage we add members who hold either a baronetcy or a knighthood, we find that nearly 250 members of the House of Commons out of 815 fall into this category."

So far, so good. Since the demise of the Liberal Party after the last war, it is undeniably the Conservative Party which embodies the will and the interests of the propertied class in Britain. But then comes a gap in the argument. Professor Laski is completely silent on the two periods during which a Labour Government was in office. True, on both occasions it was a minority in the House of Commons (though in the second period—1929-1931—they constituted the largest single party in the House). The Professor’s silence is easily understood when it is born in mind that he himself is a prominent member of the Labour Party. For flowing logically from his own arguments is the inescapable conclusion that on both occasions the Labour Government willingly acted as caretakers for the property of the British capitalists.

Here is revealed the fundamental flaw in Professor Laski’s contribution. For there is no recognition of the fact that no matter which party assumes the responsibilities of government, whether it be Conservative, Labour or any other movement which may arise in the future, real power will remain secure with the owning class, so long as the avowed programmes of these parties—their labels notwithstanding—do not solely aim at the expropriation of the present owners of the means of production, etc., and their transference to ownership by the whole of society.

This is Socialism and, of course. Professor Laski's Labour Party does not aim at Socialism. Perhaps that is why he ends his article by asking tamely “whether Britain's ruling-class will adapt itself to post-war conditions by maintaining and extending its well-known capacity for compromise." As if the abolition of capitalism could ever be a matter for compromise!

Nevertheless, the substance of his article merited a better rejoinder than the naive platform-foolery which serves Captain Gammans as "argument."

"The majority of the British people," he says, “will have none of Professor Laski's Marxian theories of class struggles."

And again: "He has revived the theory of the ruling-class conception of government which the British electorate time and time again has refused to accept, and which to-day is as dead as the dodo in British political life."

But the issue of this debate is not which view a majority of the electorate appear to hold at the present time. The allegation which Professor Laski makes and which, as quoted above, is backed up by facts and figures, is that the propertied class impose their political rule  through the Conservative Party. This allegation Captain Gammans does not attempt to refute. The mass of the people, including the workers, seem to have all kinds of ideas floating in their heads, from Churchill-worship to astrology. To what extent these ideas correspond to the realities of the world to-day is quite a different matter. Captain Gammans certainly appears to hold a very low opinion of the intelligence of people when he makes the following claim:

"With two short intervals, the Conservative Party was in power during the twenty years between the two wars. There is no reason for it to be very much ashamed of its record at home."

This is the kind of statement calculated to bring even the deadest of dodos back to life. Mass unemployment, slums, the wholesale reduction of the workers' standard of living (enforced, as in the case of the miners in 1926, by a lockout), all this pitiful record of poverty and downright starvation imposed consciously and deliberately on a people by the wealthiest ruling-class that ever existed—culminating in a world war! It is obviously not in the nature of a ruling-class to have any sense of shame.

Captain Gammans attempts to bolster up his boast by a reference to the social services which he claims "have effected an almost unbelievable improvement in the health and general well-being of the community."

The emphasis here must certainly be placed on the word "unbelievable." Enquiries conducted previous to the war by nutrition experts, such as Sir John Boyd-Orr, revealed that at least a third of the nation did not receive a sufficient income per head to provide themselves with the minimum food required to maintain a reasonable standard of health. And has Captain Gammans asked the Army Medical authorities to give him the percentage figures of working-class recruits found in good health?

What seems to have escaped the Captain's notice altogether is this question:

How is it that one section of the population is in a position to dole out social services and another, a majority, is forced to accept them in order to keep alive?

Surely the answer to that question alone can tell us who rules Britain.

Sid Rubin

Inquest on the I.L.P. (1943)

Book Review from the May 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fenner Brockway's "Inside the Left" (Allen & Unwin, 15/-) contains no original contribution to Socialist thought nor even an adequate restatement of old theories. Brockway says of Sir Stafford Cripps (p. 264) that Cripps "has no experience of the working-class and he has no real knowledge of Socialist theory. . . . I doubt whether he has ever read Marx or any book of fundamental Socialist economics." Brockway has experience of the working-class and has probably read more about Socialist theory than Cripps but it is not unfair to say that he has.no real understanding of it. In this he is a representative figure in the I.L.P. The I.L.P. membership, taking each incident of the working-class struggle in isolation, are able to use what they know of Socialist theory and past experience to discuss the pros and cons of short-term courses of action but have no clear idea of Socialism or of how capitalism is to be abolished. They have no standard, except a sentimental desire to do some immediate good to the workers, by which to measure their actions. When their actions happen to be sound it is only by accident. They have theories but no theory, aims but no aim, enthusiasm and energy but no direction.

Brockway's book is full of interesting incidents and observations. It is written with candour and is honest according to the author's lights. It is like the many books written by competent journalists who have "been there when it happened"; and like some of those books it will be a useful work to the critical reader but without the living of it and the writing of it having been of much use to the author from the point of view of acquiring understanding of what is going on below the surface of things.

The chief use of the book will be to serve as a warning of the futility of attempts to build a Socialist movement on a foundation of sentiment, hero-worship, and reformism and (though he may draw no useful conclusions himself) Brockway is completely candid in showing this, as one or two examples will indicate.

Of the I.L.P. in the war, 1914-1918, he writes: —

   The Party membership was not so united as the National Council. The I.L.P. had no clear-cut philosophy or policy at this time; its idealism impelled it to oppose war, but Socialist sentiment was up against another sentiment, the intense emotion of patriotism, and probably one-fifth of the Party succumbed (p. 47). 

And again: —

    . . . the truth is that the I.L.P. had no unifying anti-war philosophy. One section of it was pacifist; another was opposed to a "balance of power war" on the continent but in favour of national defence; a third, while ready to take part in a class-war, was not prepared to support an imperialist war, though even this section had no thought-out revolutionary tactic (p. 52).
    We were not revolutionary Socialists. We were democratic pacifists (p. 55).

He admits by the way that MacDonald's attitude was never that of complete opposition to the war, and gives (p. 56—59) an interesting and fairly convincing explanation of how McDonald, by a political error of judgment or the swift movement of events, found himself isolated when in fact he was hoping to place himself at the head of a powerful group (including Lloyd George) hostile to Sir Edward Grey's foreign policy.

After 1918 Brockway devoted himself to the anti-war movement, believing that solid resistance to war could be built on the sentimental reaction against war that was then the fashion. He received from Bernard Shaw a sensible comment on its uselessness. This was in a letter (26 July, 1922) refusing to address a peace demonstration:—

   I grieve to say that I don't believe in these demonstrations. People who get emotionally excited about peace are precisely the people who get emotionally excited about war. In this matter, action and reaction are equal. Lloyd George will do all that is necessary to make the nation send Xmas cards to all the other nations until he wants to send them to the trenches again. Ten minutes after that he will have them telling stories of enemy sergeants (probably French this time) with their pouches full of gouged English eyes and throwing bricks at you as you are dragged back to prison (p. 135).

Brockway acknowledges the truth of this—afterwards.

    Writing in this year of war crises, 1939, one realises how. superficial was the effect of imposing No More War demonstrations which we organised from 1922 to 1924 and how justifiable was Mr. Shaw's cynicism.

Another illustration of the I.L.P.S floundering relates to a much later period, 1931-1933.

   I was elected chairman of the I.L.P. at Easter, 1931, and remained chairman until the end of 1933. During this period the I.L.P. disaffiliated from the Labour Party and began its inner struggle towards a revolutionary Socialist position. In the course of this inner struggle the I.L.P. experimented in many directions, at one time approaching the Communist International, and at another moving towards the Trotskyist position, at one stage attaching its hope to united fronts and at another reverting to purism, at one period going all out to prepare for Soviets and at another recognising again the value of Parliament (p. 237).

To see this in proper perspective it needs to be remembered that 1931 was after the I.L.P. had been in existence for nearly 40 years.

A last example is the attitude of Brockway and the I.L.P.. towards leaders and leadership. As a youth Brockway was constantly being swept off his feet by oratory. John Morley's " finely-phrased oratory awed me, but I felt more enthusiasm for the audacious speech of a young recruit to Liberalism—Mr. Winston Churchill " (p. 11).

This was before his conversion to "Socialism" but his attitude to leaders did not change. He was "entranced" by Keir Hardie (p. 17). He was a "Shaw worshipper" (p. 22), and MacDonald "expressed his opinions with the manner of a god and I felt at least that I was in the presence of a great man . . . his rich organ-like voice and oratory captivated me" (p. 35). He tells of a speech (in French) by Jean Jaurès, which Brockway "could not follow" and which probably not "one man in a hundred" of the audience understood, "but we all understood that he was illustrating the rise of the workers from slavery to freedom, and at his final cry of triumph we were all on our feet cheering with him" (p. 36).

Of course it can be said that this emotionalism, like admiration for the art and artifices of actors, is harmless; but in politics where it is played upon by leaders to sway the emotions of followers without regard to their understanding it is not harmless, far from it. Brockway gives a striking example of how harmful it can be. He had become thoroughly mistrustful of MacDonald because, among other things, MacDonald was working early in 1914 for a definite Labour Party alliance with the Liberals at the General Election. When Keir Hardie died MacDonald spoke at a memorial meeting in Glasgow and "many of those who heard him say that his oration rose to heights greater than they had ever known in human utterances. If there were doubts about MaoDonald before in the minds of Scottish Socialists, this speech removed them. The extraordinary loyalty of Glasgow to MacDonald, which was responsible for his election to the leadership of the Parliamentary Labour Party in 1921, and was never dispelled until the betrayal of the workers by the second Labour Government, had its roots in this speech more than in anything else " (p. 65. Italics ours).

Can anyone read this and not perceive the truth of the S.P.G.B.'s claim that dependence on leadership is a menace to the working-clam movement and that not emotionalism and leader worship but knowledge, understanding and self-reliance are the workers' road to emancipation?

Yet Brockway (who incidentally mistrusted MacDonald but for years deliberately refrained from passing on his grounds for mistrust to the workers) is still, at the end of his book, putting the case for leadership and hoping to find leaders who will be "worthy of the name" and who will "not be tempted by careerism" (p. 342), and stating that, in the final struggle for Socialism "and the critical period of the transition following it," of course large power of direction must be given to the leaders" (p. 345). True, Brockway desires that "even then the final decision on issues of principle should remain with representatives of the workers," but he does not explain how a movement of workers brought up to be spell-bound worshippers of oratory and personality are going to acquire the knowledge and self- reliance necessary for the task of breaking the spell. 

Edgar Hardcastle

Greasy Pole: Laughter At A Price (2017)

The Greasy Pole column from the February 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough! It isn’t fit for humans now, There isn’t grass to graze a cow. Swarm over, Death!

Was John Betjeman’s 1937 despairing plea to Europe’s rampant air forces to put a halt to the menacing industrialisation of that Berkshire town with its vulgar profiteers but to spare the bald young clerks who add those profits? But it was not long after this that Slough nurtured a young man whose talents as a cartoonist were devoted to exposing the very social structure and circumstances that Betjeman despaired of: It’s not their fault they do not know, The birdsong from the radio. Steve Bell was raised in Slough at the grammar school where he enjoyed the Art lessons (and the novels of P.G. Wodehouse) but had something of a conscientious objection to being duffed up on the rugby field. So he moved up north where he could develop his illustrative skills along with burgeoning passions for left wing protest to the point that when his work was published worldwide, he was decorated with numerous honorary degrees and repeatedly named as Cartoonist of the Year. Early on in his time he fathered a succession of characters such as David Cameron as a speaking condom, Harry Hardnose as a newspaper editor and Able Seaman Kipling aboard a Royal Navy warship in the Falkland war. Such disrespect for the noble, enriched eminences of the social system of class was bound to provoke outrage, which served only to emphasise the truth that Bell at his most perceptively offensive was merely illustrating with an unfailing eye the facts of capitalism in its exploitation, cruelty and deceit.

HIGNFY

In whole this process is often referred to as satire, which can yield an impressive income when it is transmitted in the right place and time. For example there was the television programme Have I Got News For You (HIGNFY) – a kind of panel game in which two personalities – Ian Hislop and Paul Merton, each with a partner, presented themselves to ameliorate popular dismay at some current events by exploiting anything about them liable to cause a laugh. Between these two, as a kind of conductor orchestrating the laughter, was Angus Deayton. There were rumours that Hislop and Merton were resentful of the fact that Deayton was paid £50,000 for each programme, which was a great deal more than they got. There was some concern that they took their revenge on him when in October 2002 he was sacked after big headline revelations in the red top press that he was in the regular habit of taking drugs such as cocaine and using a succession of prostitutes – all of which was officially beyond the bounds of the programme. But HIGNFY has lost none of its appeal since then.

Straight Women

One of its recent victims was Nicky Morgan, the Tory Minster and MP for Loughborough. Among her ministerial jobs was in 2013 as Economic Secretary to the Treasury and soon afterwards Minister for Women – excluding the bit in the title about Equalities – which was said to be due to her voting against the proposal for same-sex marriages which, said her detractors, made her just the Minister for Straight Women. She was locked in an enduring clash with Minister of Education Michael Gove   over his proposals which did not prevent her supporting his later bid to become Tory leader. On another matter she accepted donations from a constituent who was at the head of a local radio programme and of a company specialising in security – which involved spying on other political organisations in order to develop legal advice to be passed to the opposition.

Trousers

These events were politically undermining, keeping Morgan in an uncomfortable spotlight and some of her comments led to her leader Theresa May issuing terse instructions that a person she identified as ‘that woman’ should not be admitted to any cabinet meetings discussing Brexit. Then Morgan made matters worse by sneering at May after she had posed on a couch wearing – or perhaps 'displaying' would be a more appropriate word – glamorously patterned leather trousers. The news that this garment had cost £995 did not help May’s efforts to persuade us that she stands for a government of the ordinary hard working struggling folk; even worse that the people who make the trousers in some Far Eastern sweat shop are paid some £1.49 an hour. Dismissing Morgan from the government did not cost anything like that and amid the uproar it was overlooked that Morgan was herself not averse to a bit of expensive leatherwear because she is often seen carrying her bits and pieces in a handbag made of the stuff, which at £950 had cost almost as much as May’s legwear. Morgan’s response to this humiliation was to withdraw from a pending appearance as one of the panel alongside Paul Merton on HIGNFY. Perhaps she did this in the hope of keeping a low profile but that did not happen because the programme responded by substituting her handbag.

Hattersley

That was just one example of how HIGNFY might keep its reputation for ruthless responses to popular politicians who reject an opportunity to appear with them. There was Roy Hattersley, or Baron Hattersley PC FRSL, who when he refused to appear was not substituted by costly luggage but by a tub of lard – which was justified by Paul Merton on the grounds that there were similarities in appearance and style of operation. Hattersley first came into Parliament in 1964 as MP for Birmingham Sparkbrook. He had previously failed to win at Sutton Coldfield in 1959. He then devoted considerable energy to being selected for another seat, trying twenty-five constituencies until he was accepted at Sparkbrook and went on to win there. During his time in the Commons he held a variety of shadow and ministerial jobs and after Labour’s disastrous defeat under Michael Foot in 1983 he became Deputy Leader under Neil Kinnock, who was Party Leader until he had his own disaster in 1987. Alistair Darling admired Hattersley and ‘…enjoyed working with (him). He is good company, convivial and thoughtful’. He remembered the advice Hattersley gave him in 1988 after inviting him to join his shadow Home Affairs team: ‘You’d better remember that in politics there is no such thing as gratitude’. Which should have counted when Leo McKinstry in The Spectator derided him as ‘…this charmless figure of epic mediocrity’. 

Laughter may be a defence against the essential nature of a social system which judges everything through a price and when profit can be reaped from the sale of entertainment. To change that would really be News For You.

Ivan

Where Reformism Fails (1943)

From the March 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

The dispute between Reformists and Socialists is not a very easy one to disentangle. This is partly due to the variety of arguments put forward by reformists, but above all to the failure of reformists to grasp the Socialist explanation of the problem that has to be solved.

The problem is not that of a social system that is satisfactory on the whole and only needs improvements here and there. If it were the reformist would be on the right road —but then there would be nothing in the Socialist case for the abolition of Capitalism.

Nor is the problem that of a social system which started as capitalist but is steadily evolving towards something fundamentally different, Socialism. If it were there would be nothing in the Socialist explanation of the true nature of Capitalism; that it is a system the character of which is determined by its being based on the division of society into two antagonistic classes, a capitalist class which possesses the means of production, but does not produce, and a working class which produces, but does not possess. The Socialist points to the fact that though capitalism changes in superficial ways, its foundation does not change. The capitalist class are as much the owners and controllers of land, factories, railways, etc., as they were 60 or 100 years ago. Capitalism changes but not in essentials. It does not evolve to Socialism. While the capitalists remain in control of political power they will continue to avert any change which would deprive them of their ownership. They constantly introduce reforms to deal with the most resented effects of their system, but they firmly resist attempts to interfere with the foundation of capitalism which is the cause of the evil effects.

Socialism cannot be achieved without a social revolution, that is a change in the property basis of society, from private ownership to social ownership and democratic control.

In the past most reformists held one or other of the first-mentioned views; either they believed that the social system is essentially sound but needed improvements in detail or they believed that an accumulation of reforms would ultimately produce a fundamental change. We need not here concern ourselves with the first group, since the workers who believe this now are certainly a diminishing number; but the second idea is still the idea that guides the majority of supporters of the Labour Party. The idea is wrong and harmful, not so much because those who hold it labour largely in vain, but because while they continue to hold it they will not direct their efforts to the real task that has to be accomplished.

That the idea is wrong can be seen if a little attention is given to the results of the activities over a number of years. Have those activities been fruitless? If we judge by the very large number of reform measures passed by Parliament in the past 50 years we would say that they have been very fruitful; but if we go to the heart of the matter and ask whether capitalism has become a system in which life is comfortable, happy and secure for the workers we see that the gulf between reformist hopes and their practical achievements is enormous. The legislative changes are too numerous to count but nothing material has been altered thereby. The workers are still poor, still haunted by unemployment and insecurity. The capitalists are still rich, still in control of power. The explanation of this seeming paradox is absurdly simple once it is grasped. It is that reforms do not reform capitalism, nor is that the intention of those who introduce them. Reforms are not positive improvements added to a firm structure but piecemeal measures to alleviate the worst effects of new evils (or old evils grown more acute) as they arise. As each new evil arises or old evils get permanently or temporarily worse the cry goes up that something must be done. The reformers step in with their proposals, but the capitalist State, when it tardily takes action, just does the least that it believes will suffice to patch up the evil. The reform may be a gain for the workers if it is compared with the worst state of the evil just at the time when the reform is introduced, but it may mark a worsening of the workers' position compared with the position a few years earlier when the evil was of smaller dimensions, and still more so when related to society's growing powers of producing wealth. The reformer, however, looks only at the immediate alleviation and forgets that capitalism can go on producing new evils as fast as old ones are temporarily dealt with. As Bernard Shaw, Sidney Webb and others (most of whom failed to act up to their own knowledge) wrote in a "Manifesto of English Socialists" exactly 50 years ago: "Meantime small improvements made in deference to the ill-formulated demands of the workers, though for a time they seem almost a social revolution to men ignorant of their own resource and of their capacity, will not really raise the condition of the whole people."

These words might well be studied by men and women who to-day acclaim the Beveridge Report as "almost a social revolution."

There are still other reformists who say they realise that Socialism is the only solution, and that it requires a basic change in the foundations of society after political power has been obtained for that purpose. Their case for advocating reforms is rather different. They argue, as did Shaw and his associates in the above-mentioned Manifesto, that reforms give the workers more leisure and less anxiety so that they are better able to turn their attention to Socialism; or else they argue that the struggle for reforms is part of a valuable and necessary educational process for the workers. Both arguments could with greater justification be made for the trade unions, where the workers wage their own struggle over wages and conditions of work. Where the argument fails in its application to the Labour Party's efforts for legislative reforms is that it overlooks the part played by the openly capitalist parties. Fifty years ago it was supposed that a Labour Party would take the lead in securing the introduction of more or less drastic reforms, up to and including the time when there would be Labour Governments able to take the initiative in drafting bills and pushing them through Parliament. Nothing like that has happened. Can anyone point to any outstanding Act of Parliament associated in the public mind with the Labour Party? Do the workers remember the two Labour Governments for any bold measures they introduced? On the contrary, despite the spade work of the Labour Party, outstanding reforms are associated with their political opponents, particularly Lloyd George and now Sir William Beveridge.

The Labour Party has worked up agitation for one demand after another, only to see them introduced by Liberal or Tory Governments which naturally reaped whatever credit there was to be obtained. Far from educating the workers towards some ultimate goal, the effect has been rather to persuade them that the capitalist politicians are not so bad after all, for do they not introduce measures similar in name if different in detail from those on the Labour Party programme? At the present time we see a spectacle that is still more remarkable, a Labour Party which believes in leadership yet devotes much of its efforts to popularising the leader of the Tory Party, Mr. Winston Churchill, and heaping its praises on a Liberal, Sir William Beveridge. So far has this gone that probably many Labour voters do not even know who is the leader of their own Party.

After all these years of effort by the reformist parties, capitalism is intact and as powerful as ever. It will continue to be so until such time as the workers turn their attention away from reformism to the task of capturing the capitalist citadel—control of the machinery of government —for the purpose of taking over the means of production and distribution for the community.

Edgar Hardcastle

Progress and Reaction (1943)

From the February 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

Already, before the war, there were numerous critics of the turn which human affairs had taken. The promise which early capitalism appeared to hold out to mankind had not been fulfilled. The industrialisation of the nineteenth century may have seemed then to open up new horizons of unlimited wealth for all. The social stagnation of a feudal agrarianism was swept away impetuously as machine upon machine fertilised man and nature into heights of productivity hitherto undreamt of. Economists and philosophers combined in lyrical praise of the new social order, and predicted that humanity had at long last entered the portals of a social system that could guarantee material well-being to all. "The greatest good of the greatest number” was the assured estimate of the new society's potentials.

But the new avalanche of wealth did not succeed in stifling the critical faculties of all thinking men. These could not help being aware of the fresh, profound social evils which the industrial revolution had brought into being. The newly begotten plenty brought no added comfort to the majority, but flowed mainly into the rapacious pockets of a favoured few. The masses of men and women, many of them forcibly ejected from their meagre but secure existence on the land, laboured unlimited hours amid the stench and filth of factories and mines. Their reward was hunger and disease. Even the children of this modern proletariat were not overlooked by the new class of economic masters in their hunt for profit-producers.

The grievous sufferings of the workers eventually led to opposition and revolt. The working class, “organised and disciplined by the very process of associated labour,” finally succeeded in securing some amelioration by the combined strength of their vast numbers. Trade unions and labour movements appeared all over the capitalist world. The new needs of scientific wealth-production demanded education on a mass scale. Comparative freedom of political expression was fought for and won. Labour organisations assumed increasing importance and influence in the affairs of state. The feeling was widespread that the way was now cleared for uninterrupted and substantial advances along the "road of progress.” As some of the early and most primitive anomalies of capitalism had partly been eliminated, so, it was felt, would, the more deep-rooted problems of poverty, bad housing, unemployment and war yield to the persistent efforts of “practical working-class politics.”

The minority, the Socialists, uncompromising in their advocacy of a social system based upon the Common Ownership of the Means of Life, were dismissed as "Impossibilists.” The doctrines of Marx and Engels, formulated upon the most penetrating and exhaustive investigation into the anatomy of capitalist society, provided scientific foundations for the view of Socialists. They proved conclusively that the expropriation of the capitalists by a Socialist working class was necessary to assure humanity as a whole the advantages held out by the new technique of production. These doctrines were attacked as "fallacies” or ridiculed as "out-of-date” by critics many of whom did not trouble to analyse the theories of Marxism. It was easier and more comfortable to "lead” the workers and in the process share in the good things which capitalism offered to the privileged. The watchword of the times became "The inevitability of gradualness.”

Since then a world-wide economic depression and two world-wars have shocked the “practical politicians” and many of their supporters out of their complacency. The policies of economic and political lassez-faire have largely been abandoned. On the continent of Europe they have been eliminated by forces whose outlook and methods are reminiscent of the dark ages of a mediaeval world. The spectacle of a continent, which in the past contributed an imposing array of men and movements, who have helped to illuminate the knowledge of mankind, now held in the grip of political adventurers, must on all accounts be a source of depression.

However, this state of reaction cannot be confined to the borders of Germany or the German-occupied countries. Nor can its roots be isolated from recent economic and political events and tendencies throughout the world. On the contrary, they are symptoms of a particularly virulent character reflecting the prevailing impotence of a society unable to solve its problems.

The war has done nothing to bring a solution nearer. The main social issues still await a much-promised settlement. The problems of unemployment and poverty in general still inflict their cares upon the minds of most people. The hideous slums, relics of the barbarous greed of capitalism a century ago, remain a token of the unchanged character of social relationships. The machinery of the “ democratic ” capitalist state bristles with powers of coercion, and the workers find restrictions of every kind drawing an ever closer dragnet around their existence. It may be argued that they are a temporary measure only, dictated by the necessities of war. But against that we have the statements of leading politicians. Thus we hear Mr. Bevin, Minister of Labour, proclaiming:

  Don't Ask for Old Liberty Back Too Soon.
 Mr. Ernest Bevin to-day appealed to trade unionists not to ask for their old liberty back too quickly after the war.

The report quotes him as saying:

  I would appeal to my fellow-workmen to insist that the country carries on some control for a considerable period. We want to do it, because if there is a sudden let-up, if we lose this discipline and control, we may get back into the orgy of speculation and chaos that we had at the end of the last war. (Evening Standard, January 13, 1943.)

We know what is in ruling-class minds. They want to level the economic ups-and-downs of their system through "planning" on national and international lines. They hope that the economic and political arrangements that serve them in war can be modified to serve their purpose in peace. But these "plans" involve many doubtful factors. They demand the agreement of capitalists, nationally and internationally. They need a quiescent working class. So far, capitalism has never been able to achieve such a permanent "truce." The competitive nature of the capitalist order has in the past doomed any permanent arrangements of an international and even national character. And what of the workers? Will they submit to the “discipline” that is the inevitable counter-part of capitalist "planning"? When the victory for "freedom” has been won and tyrants overthrown, what will be the attitude of the class that has born the brunt of the fighting? What will be the feeling of the workers in the defeated and devastated countries, the victims of war and persecution?

Many more questions could be posed. They would show that the capitalists are confronted by a social riddle that becomes more complex as the war drags its destructive way to eventual conclusion. There are some who believe the present conflict to be one of a series of social convulsions marking a revolutionary transition in social affairs. As to the kind of world that will emerge after these bloody "transitions," we are not informed. It may well be asked: "What can be expected to result from years of bloodshed and destruction, from hunger and persecution?"

The answers given by capitalists and their "Labour" supporters are not convincing. They seek to persuade the working class that a modified capitalism will not repeat the catastrophies of the past They expect to dazzle the minds of wage-slaves with promises of permanent doles and better social reforms.

"Progress by Reform" is the only hope they can hold out to a shattered world.

Sid Rubin

Rocky Foundations of the New World (1943)

From the January 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

The “brave new world" is still news, bat as its vague outlines emerge in the public speeches of allied statesmen and in various articles and statements by prominent people, the new world of dreams recedes farther and farther away. The jokes made by working men on the subject suggest that in general the view is held that the high-sounding phrases which have travelled round the world are but “sound and fury, signifying nothing."

An article in The Spectator (October 30, 1942), under the title "The Quest for Aims," put as definitely as anywhere else an interpretation of governmental view on the subject. Discussing the criticism that Russia and China “were not sure whether we knew what we were fighting for," the writer goes on :—

    Russia and China are both fighting because the soil of their country was wantonly invaded, the United States because her fleet, lying in a harbour of one of her oversea possessions, was made the object of outrageous and treacherous aggression. We, as a plain matter of history, because not our own territory, but that of Poland, which we had pledged ourselves to defend, was attacked by Hitler. Having entered it we have bound ourselves to make no peace till Hitler, and all he stands for, is swept away, and till Japan is finally crushed. That is a simple and sufficient statement of war aims.
    Peace aims are another matter. We did not go to. war, and never should have, to reconstruct the world, but so much of the structure of the world as it existed before 1939 has been destroyed by war that reconstruction is essential, and the task of planning that enterprise and carrying it out will tax all our wisdom and all our energies. Here it is a question of proceeding from the general to the particular, from agreement on principles to their application. The difficulty of even making a beginning is illustrated by the vigour of some of the protests against the apparently innocuous statement that we are fighting for the defence of Christian civilisation. That, it might be supposed, was of the nature of a truism, or near enough to a truism, to be incapable of being an irritant. A Christian civilisation is not a condition of life in which (to quote from last week's debate in the House of Commons) belief in the Athanasian creed is forcibly imposed. It denotes rather a regime, based on common conviction and consent, in which the virtues, Christian, but by no means exclusively Christian, of justice and truth and good faith and freedom of conscience and defence of the weak—the very antithesis of the qualities inculcated in the Germany of to-day—are accepted as the guiding principles of national as of individual life. 

We regret the length of the quotation, but the elusiveness of the ideas hidden in clouds of words makes it necessary in order to extract something concrete.

Here we see that the war is for the purpose of defending Christian civilization and the peace aims to reconstruct it from the ruins of war. In the first place reconstructing is rebuilding what has existed, not building something new, and secondly, justice, etc., etc., was the alleged object of the French Revolution, the American Revolution and various other upheavals since. The civilization we got from these was first of all the factory system with all its early abominations of child labour and so forth, and in recent years all the evils that church dignitaries and statesmen are now holding forth upon as ugly features that must never reappear.

As, however, the social system of pre-war days (Christian civilisation) based upon private ownership of the means of production, which involves the two antagonistic classes of capitalist and worker, is to be reconstructed then it requires no great thinker to prophesy that the evils of pre-war days will be with us in the future like old but disreputable friends.

This forecast is substantiated by the plan for the post-war world drawn up by 120 leading industrialists, who are, of course, typical representatives of the capitalist outlook, and, moreover, are the type of people who in the past have determined social policy and are economically and politically strong enough to continue to do so.

The signatories to the plan are interested in various industries such as banking, chemicals, munitions, engineering, coal, steel, etc. Among them is Lord Melchett, Lord Perry, Sir Samuel Beale, Sir Francis Joseph and Mr. J. V. Rank.

The Daily Express (November 11, 1942), discussing the plan in an article entitled "120 Big Business Men Plan their Post-War World," says it is “ based on the first essential: Private enterprise must stay,” with the profit motive included. They are against the extension of State ownership and operation in peace time, which they contend would he a national calamity. And further:

They do not think it is "theoretically possible” for “big combines and amalgamations to retard invention, restrict production, or maintain or raise prices unduly. It would, however, be checked,” they say, "by public opinion.”

This project of the “new world,” as sketched by influential capitalists, has a far better chance of reflecting reality than either the hazy promises of politicians or the groundless expectations of well-intentioned reformers.

An American writer, examining the future position of Britain in an article entitled “Can Britain Live in the New World Order” (Asia, October, 1942), has no illusions about the shape of things to come. To him it means an alteration in the balance of competitive power with Britain taking a back seat and helped along like a lame dog, as the following extract illustrates, and the lamest part of the dog is represented by the workers :—

No doubt the British will have to reorganise their economy. They will probably find it necessary to reduce the national standard of living. They will simply have to consume less and to produce more. British industry will have to be modernised and placed on a competitive footing; it will have to change to different lines of production. Britain will have to rely less and less on the traditional export stand-bys:—cotton goods, bulky iron goods, simple consumer articles, coal—and turn increasingly to the production of industrial machinery for export, machine tools, chemical products, complicated consumers goods, high quality textiles, including textiles of artificial fabrics. Above all, Britain will have to rely less on income from interest, banking and insurance services. Local agriculture will have to produce more of the foodstuffs consumed by the population. Finally it may prove necessary to resort to planned emigration.

It may be thought that the above unpleasant forecast is an over-statement by a prejudiced "foreigner,” but it also has a fair chance of representing the grim reality, and we may once again witness, as happened after the last war, posters on public hoardings with pictures of labour leaders embellishing exhortations to “produce more” in order to enable industry to get back on a paying basis.

It is taken for granted that Britain's carrying trade is gone beyond recovery, but it may well be, owing to war time concentration upon the production of the huge transport aeroplanes, that competition for sea trade will be replaced by competition for aerial transport, and thus a fresh fight for economic supremacy be inaugurated that will blot out the bulk of the present New World ideals.

Gilmac.

Shape of things to come (1981)

Book Review from the September 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mike Cooley, Architect or Bee? Langley Technical Services, 1980.

This is a tantalizing, awkward but informative little book. The question that Cooley does not answer is whether and in what way a socialist society could use the new technology—that is, automation, chips, computer aided design, computer-linked robotic production and so on. But he skirts around it and answers a hundred other related questions, so that all may find something useful here.

Cooley was a design engineer with Lucas Aerospace (he was sacked quite recently for taking time off work to propagandise the views in this book). His own attitude to modern technology shows an interesting evolution; he began by assuming that technology was neutral—that computers were inherently useful but that their use was perverted by what capitalist society demanded; he now thinks that the technology of any society is an integral part of its politics. The last point is worth labouring. Cooley holds that with a change in the politics of capitalism the uses of technology could change. Correspondingly, he holds that with a change in society the shape of technology must change. Consecutively, he holds that the drive to change society is linked with the drive to find socially harmonious uses for the new technology. For him these sum up the human/technology relationship. Such a position has led him to champion the Lucas Aerospace Corporate plan—a trade union-backed series of alternative production projects that are offered to industry, like vehicles for spina bifida cases in place of nuclear weapons.

Cooley thinks that something has been lacking in the socialist analysis of science and technology. We concentrate too much on the contradictions of distribution (poverty amid plenty) and neglect the contradictions of production (technological systems that produce an abundance of products by degrading skilled work). As a corrective he suggests that we should question the assumptions embodied in science and technology and find out whether the ideology of capitalism has helped to determine the experimental designs and theories upon which they are based. This balanced analysis would help us to determine the types of technology that would be compatible with a socialist society.

Computer aids to production have become very sophisticated over the last decade and a wide range of engineering components can be produced, inspected and delivered under continuous data processing control—including the design and planning of the product. It is important not to miss the last point. Gone are the days when a master craftsman suggested a new idea to a draughtsman and worked in conjunction with him to develop its design, materials, process treatments, properties and conditions of use. With data processing engineering there is only the draughtsman who draws the original design on a digitally coordinated board, translates this spatial information into numerical terms and types it into a central processor; the computer then specifies the entire sequence of movements required by all the machines under its control that are used in the making of the product. The other point not to miss is that this system works only for the range of product types and production operations that are given in the control programme, innovation outside this range is impossible; for that the system has to be re-programined, rebuilt or even replaced. The outcome is not merely that creative and co-operative work among craftsmen and designers is redundant, but that in factories with engineering data processing it becomes impossible.

The problem for a socialist society using this equipment would be to recognise when the process was destroying the potential for creative labour, or impeding technological innovation, or both. On this matter there can be no other guide than the tacit knowledge, skills and expertise of individuals; but on the face of it these may not be acceptable, because when this computer-controlled equipment produces a design for a component at the limit of its control programme, a craftsman may see it and only be able to say “it doesn’t look right to me”. Whereas the writer of the control programme and the system designers can produce masses of technical argument to prove that it will work, just by pressing the read-out buttons. Moreover the new components may function for several years before they fail and justify the craftsman’s intuition. The problem resolves into a social question—how much influence respectively do you allow the technical expert and the practical craftsman over production decisions when they are in dispute? In simple terms—who has the power to decide and how? If socialist society were to use present technology then its democracy could be tested by controversies about technics versus skill.

Computer aided design presents more problems still. There are now systems where a designer works with a light pen directly onto a video display unit, linked to a computer programmed with a design package. The designer has a basic idea for a building, he draws the rough outline on the screen and then gets the computer to manipulate this basic material with the set of subroutines in the programme. Effectively the computer can turn a few lines into a fully drawn Greek temple, or turn the basic specification for a tower block into a picture and project it on the screen in dramatic perspective. It can construct and display a picture of a non-existent structure in an architectural setting so that you can judge whether the proposed building will harmonise with the environment and will even give you a picture of what the outside world would look like from inside a building that was only an idea in your head a few minutes before.

“Terrific!” may be your first response to all this. Cooley suggests that “ugh!” may be your second. It hardly needs saying that the use of this equipment to capitalist society is to reduce reliance upon a range of architectural, draughting and civil engineering workers; resulting in redundancies, cutting of costs, increasing output and so on; bringing the design process under the “scientific management” of capital.

But what use would this equipment be to a socialist society? Once again there could be clashes between those who felt that architectural aesthetics were being obliterated in computer simulations and, however good it seemed on the screen, it wouldn’t be right to build a Centre Point on the Acropolis—or a Centre Point anywhere for that matter. Such disputes might be the stuff of life for a socialist society. Imagine two sets of protagonists flinging themselves into such architectural discussions with the zeal of William Morris in his crusade against industrial architecture, and the propagandist power of the Futurists for modern architecture. When they had exhausted themselves, a socialist society could count heads and do what the majority wanted.

But would the battle over ideas in such cases be an equal one if computer aided design takes over? It’s an interesting question and provides the core of Cooley’s book, although he doesn’t answer it.

The trouble with computer aided design is that on a large scale it will replace intuition, creativity and the sheer tactility that goes with the craftsman’s approach to the physical nature of production. As it does so the popular notion of good design becomes just a completed decision sequence in machine code. In one way computer aided designs can always be justified, because the programmes work with a simplified model of reality that raises no decision problems. While in the sophisticated reality of the craftsman all decisions arc reached in the face of bewildering complexity. The craftsman can rarely explain how he is able to identify and locate faults in a complicated machine just by listening to it running. But the programmer can explain in a million steps how his impoverished model of reality will yet deliver the goods. As victories for computer aided design go up, says Cooley, so does our hold on reality go down and with it the direct interaction between production systems and the real world. If this technology is utilised unchanged in a socialist society then the development of production will be out of control in fact, even with the purest form of democratic control being exercised over it.

Information and understanding are the obvious keys in solving this problem. Provided that the population of a socialist world are aware of the situation then that society can provide self-adjustment processes and if they don’t work then it must abandon the technology. We must take the craftsman’s approach—suck it and see!

Cooley takes the leftist approach and strives to construct a theory of socialist development based upon current popular reactions against unemployment, nuclear power, the degradation of the natural environment and so on. The Lucas Aerospace Corporate Plan above mentioned is an example. Socialist society, says Cooley, becomes possible as the workers can conceive of an entire range of socially useful products to replace the destructive garbage that capitalism turns out. This would be an interesting point to discuss, but Cooley ruins it by describing the Russian revolution as a socialist transformation that went wrong, because Lenin introduced F. W. Taylor’s work measurement and control techniques after 1920; socialist production was thus supposed to have been converted back into capitalist toil. Howlers like this make you doubt whether he’s been talking about the same things as you all along. Particularly when he says that other countries are striving towards socialism.

How useful would computers be to a socialist world? The current crop of machines and programmes are laughably inadequate to represent even the noddy view of the capitalist system professed by bourgeois theorists. The original simulation of capitalism on a computer programme, written by Forrester in the late 1960s, was developed by Meadows, et al, in their doom-laden prophecy called Limits to Growth. Even in later sophisticated forms—Mesarovic and Pestel, Mankind at the Turning Point—it still does little other than predict that what is happening now is going to continue.

Cooley may well be right in a way he doesn’t realise. Computers are electronic aids in the production of surplus value. The design and languages of electronic processors stem from and are geared to quantitative assessments of production in units of currency-business languages. Can the current range of machines be used with programmes designed to sense human needs? Can the current-programming skills of computer personnel encompass the idea of production for use and free access? Let’s all become socialists and find out.

B. K. McNeeney

News From Wales (1963)

From the June 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Coinciding with the plans to close down railways in Wales comes the plan for the dispersal of the civil population in the event of a nuclear attack. The chief — and practically the only area of dense population in Wales — is the county of Glamorgan and a part of Monmouthshire, so the “plan”—if it can be so called—is presumably mainly concerned with the towns of Newport and Swansea and the City of Cardiff, together with the immediate surroundings. Swansea was named in Hansard as one of the 19 areas in England and Wales from which a part of the population might be dispersed.

The Civil Defence Authority, it is stated, would set in motion the scheme for assembling the threatened population in Swansea (it is not stated whether before, during or after the 10 minute warning), though one may suppose it will be during the 10 minutes period of grace. The tragic farce is that no one knows where or when the town’s population would be removed to safety (Western Mail, 9/4/63). “Details for dispersal plans do not exist,” states Mr. Thomas, Assistant Chief Defence Officer, “But I am sure that someone will get on the ’phone and tell us what to do"

These gentlemen are going to be extremely busy during the 10 minute interval — so busy indeed that they can only ensure that “ . . . 43 per cent, of the population would be dispersed . . .  to what are considered to be less likely areas.” We note with “gratitude” the facts that 57 per cent. of the townspeople are likely to be left behind, also that those who are taken out have no guarantee that they will be safe in their new location. The Western Mail points out that “It is widely recognized that the ‘fourth danger—’ fall-out—may even affect reception areas.”

To come back to where we started the “plan” states that the transport for dispersal would be mainly by train but that “other planner,” Dr. Beeching, has so arranged it that the main artery, the Central Wales line, will be non-existent!

The whole sorry business, then, amounts to this—that 70,000 people of Swansea are to be alerted in 10 minutes, are to be transported on a non-existent railway line to an area which is quite likely to be contaminated by the “fourth” hazard (fall-out), leaving 57 per cent, of the population behind. This problem is, indeed, full of disastrous overtones. It is probably the reason why Swansea has appointed an educated man, the town’s Director of Education, to see it through!

With this vital news in the air all other news appears flat, but for good measure, and to be fair, one must report that the various political organizations continue to be active on such vital items as demanding the issuing of police summonses, the recording of Council Meeting Minutes and Rate notices in Welsh, not to mention the singing of the Welsh National Anthem in cinemas and Bingo sessions.

Socialists in S. Wales, whilst constantly pointing out the complete chaos and the inability of the “planners” of capitalism (who cannot even “plan” their own demise with any accuracy) are all too often accused of being unrealistic and “idealistic.” A comparison of the present “plan” for evacuation with the Socialist proposition should quickly enable the critics to decide who are really the unrealistic ones.

W. Brain.

Charity begins at work (1963)

From the June 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

From time to time appeals appear in the Press or are broadcast on the radio to provide food or shelter for starving or homeless people in such parts of the world as Korea, the Congo or (latterly especially) Algeria.

Easter is traditionally the time when charitable appeals are intensified, and various bodies affiliated to the Freedom from Hunger Campaign then made a particular point of drawing attention to the contrast between the fitness, security, wealth of, for example, the readers of The Observer and the plight of the unfortunates in these countries. War on Want pointed out that so many were starving, homeless, suffering, orphaned or despairing; the Save the Children Fund asked for “shillings or pounds” to provide “food, warmth, life itself ” for starving children. The United Nations Association asked readers to covenant one per cent of their incomes for seven years to “help in education, research and training for the underdeveloped countries ” so that parent could be aided “in the fight for food ’’—heading this appeal, “ No Eggs for 2 out of 3 People in the World.” Elsewhere in the same paper the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief, yet another affiliated body, asked for help for “children with hunger-swollen stomachs—without food all day,” and mentioned 634 cases of malnutrition in one centre; it said that £2 would send four children daily meals for a month. Similarly, the previous Sunday in the same paper, War on Want claimed that £15 would provide a Tent Home for eight destitute Algerians.

No doubt the well-meaning organisers of such appeals are frequently hard put to it to carry out even a fraction of their good intentions, for they compete not only with everyday demands on our purses, but also with innumerable other appeals for aid to Tibetan refugees, limbless ex-servicemen, incurable cripples, cancer research, homes for children and the aged, distressed gentlefolk, and residential clubs for sailors (to mention only those that appeared alongside the Freedom from Hunger trio).

They may therefore have been very pleased to hear of the notable effort to relieve hunger and thirst among some 2,000 refugees and unemployed from Britain and the Continent which was made on the night of Monday, April 22, at a large, old but sturdy, building some twenty miles west of Marble Arch. It seems that no actual Koreans, Congolese or Algerians were present—but one must begin somewhere, after all. None of those present is reported to have had a swollen stomach (not, at any rate, swollen by hunger) or to have been actually starving—but the drive out along the Thames Valley may well have stimulated some appetites, and who knows, some of the busier people may have had to skip lunch that day.

What is undeniably true is that a good many of the guests at that ball at Windsor Castle had been out of a job for many years, despite their willingness and availability for the duties of occupying a throne and making themselves generally useful, as advertisements for jobs phrase it, in the ceremonial service of the callous and ungrateful countries who have rejected them. Moreover, a large proportion of the rest have never been employed, and have had to rely on public generosity all their lives.

The scale of this generosity on that Monday night was most impressive. According to William Hickey in the Daily Express, the means by which the 2,000 attained freedom from hunger (and thirst) for at least one evening included: 80 lb. smoked salmon and 300 lb. fresh salmon, 500 oz. caviar, 36 turkeys, 50 ducks, 200 chickens, two barons of beef, 14 large legs of pork, 24 hams, 500 lettuces, 80 lb. tomatoes, 36 cucumbers, 360 eggs, 28 lb. beetroot, 20 lb. Belgian endive, 48 bundles of spring onions, 48 bunches of radishes, 500 lb. fresh fruit, 200 pints fresh cream, 1,600 bottles of champagne, 1,080 bottles of whisky, 720 bottles of gin, 216 bottles of vodka, 2,000 bottles of lager and 20,000 cigarettes. In case they all became hungry again by morning, a further 4,000 eggs and 6,000 rashers of bacon were provided for breakfast; otherwise, of course, there might have been no eggs for 2 out of 3 people in the ballroom. To aid them in the fight for food, 145 servants were on hand, and there were even “half a dozen volunteers from the Royal Mews at Buckingham Palace” to assist in the struggle to open car doors.

Expressing the “hope that everyone will relax and enjoy themselves,” Hickey gave the total cost as between £15,000 and £20,000. This works out at not far short of £10 per head, and presumably includes Joe Loss’s fee for providing a 30-man band to play for dancing. Whether it includes the pay of the 15-man strong band supplied by the Brigade of Guards and the 40 Metropolitan policemen working a double shift within the castle precincts, or the costs of erecting 40 special traffic signs, providing “thousands of freshly cut flowers" from the royal conservatories, and illuminating the exterior of the castle with 52 arc-lamps, is more doubtful. To say that £14 or £15 was spent on each guest would probably not be a wild exaggeration.

Judging by the Press reports the following day, the benevolent hopes of William Hickey were fulfilled. At any rate there is no indication that those who danced the twist so well that midnight were unduly disturbed by the thought that what had been spent on this one “vast and glittering party” would have housed more than 10,000 destitute Algerians or provided 4,000 starving children with daily meals for well over a year, or paid the fuel bills of the 10,000 old people estimated to have died this winter as a result of inadequate heating. Why should they worry? They themselves receive, just like their ancestors or precursors, the benevolence of the greatest charitable body the world has ever known: the working class.

There were no advertisements or radio appeals, of course, for contributions to the expenses of the splendid celebration at Windsor and of the subsequent display of wealth and privilege surrounding the marriage of an actual, real live cousin of the Queen. None of the British and foreign royals and ex-royals and their favoured friends was observed standing on a street corner with a tin and a poster or a collection of little paper crowns to pin on the lapels of generous passers-by. No, this particular charity is much better organised: they save you the trouble of taking money out of your pay-packet to put it into a tin, or of writing out a cheque. In a way, you pay for it all because it comes out of the surplus value which is extracted from every moment of your working day.

No doubt a good many of those who provide this surplus value would pay for things like this even if they were asked—like the man who wrote to the Daily Express saying: “If we really want our royals—and I can’t imagine ourselves without —for goodness' sake let us foot the bill cheerfully and generously." The same poverty of imagination is presumably suffered by the thousands who waited for hours outside Westminster Abbey to catch a precious glimpse of the great occasion. But there are thousands, probably millions, more who would if pressed admit to at least an occasional hankering after a bit more of the wealth which they, and only they (together with their fellow-members of the working class all over the world) produce. After all, if you are starving or homeless it would be nice to have some food or a roof over your head, wouldn't it? Even if your food or your accommodation is not inadequate in quantity but merely inferior in quality, it would be nice have something better, wouldn't it?

Some of the more daring of us may go so far as to wish that we, too, could sometimes visit the many beautiful places in the world, see more of the sublime achievements of the great painters and sculptors, have more time to appreciate literature and poetry or study languages or history or science —or simply wish that we had more chances to use our talents, our skills and abilities, our intelligence and creative ability, to the full, instead of being condemned to the grinding monotony of boring, meaningless and often futile work, day after day. Most of us assume such wishes to be unrealistic and pointless day-dreams, inevitably doomed to frustration. To have to go to work each day and devote most of your waking hours to tasks with little or no connection with your interests is as inescapable a necessity as denying some of your wants in order that more urgent ones shall be met.

Yet there is no necessity whatever for the frustrations, the deprivations and the disappointments that are our accustomed lot to continue a moment longer than we allow. It is our own willingness, as a class of workers, to go on permitting the capitalist class—the owners of the means of production, the buyers of our energies—to take all that we produce and return to us a pittance, that enables wealth to be blatantly flaunted and wasted in a world of poverty and want and threatening mass-destruction. It is because we “can’t imagine ourselves without’’ our royals, our landowners, our shareholders, our financiers, our soldiers and sailors and airmen and police, our masters and our State apparatus, that they continue to dissipate the abundant riches we produce, in the display of luxury and the machines of death.

Two or three generations ago poverty, unemployment, war, and the myriad daily frustrations and miseries of life under capitalism ceased to be necessary at all. Since that time the capacity of man to satisfy all his wants has increased many times. When the workers of the world at last see that this is so, and organise to appropriate the wealth they have created, when they do away at last with the entire system of buying and selling and paying of wages, and prices, and all that goes with it then every man, woman and child on the planet will have enough to eat, there will be ample clothing and housing for all. No barriers, political or economic, will frustrate travel anywhere over the face of the globe for all who will, and the creative potential of every human being will be used to the full.

P. R. Collins

Socialist Opposition (1950)

From the December 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

Advocates of Socialism meet with curious opposition when outlining the claims of Socialism as a solution for the world’s problems. The word curious is used advisedly, for most of the opposition appears to be simply prejudice. Opposition to Socialism may be appreciated by those who understand its implications; the capitalists and the defenders, press, pulpit and politician, because it would abolish the privileged position which Capitalism assures them. The Socialist can understand this. It is difficult, however, to understand the prejudice of the man in the street, we repeat we think it curious. It is this curiosity of ours which prompts the attempt to find out what it is. Remember the Socialist comes forward with a specific claim that the only cure for the world’s social, political, and economic maladjustments is Socialism, i.e., common ownership and democratic control of the means of life. We think it reasonable to expect from those who are adversely affected by the present social system, at least a patient hearing: an eagerness to hear the socialist solution.

Remember again that within the lifetime of most adults there have been two major devastating world wars; the more than usual lean times in between the wars; the untold suffering of countless thousands directly and indirectly affected thereby. The causes of these disasters to human well being! Is it not worth while discussing?

Socialism does not pose as a “divine” saviour of humanity—it offers a solution—far more important. What an opportunity the socialist offers. He is striving like all forms of life to adapt himself more favourably to his every-day environment.

To those then who are eager to share in this effort, we are at least deserving a sympathetic hearing. But we don’t get it, otherwise our numbers would be tens of thousands strong.

So what are the difficulties? The socialist has to deal in abstractions. We refer to a social system “divided into two classes”: “the working class who produce and distribute the world’s wealth"; “the capitalist class” owners of the product and the means of wealth production.

The socialist becomes unpopular with his audiences when he describes the motives which cause the working class to support Capitalism. The worker has been “through the mill,” moiled and bludgeoned and alternately fussed and petted by the class who rule. Nevertheless, he cannot believe “he hasn’t a dog’s chance that Capitalism has got him, hook, line and sinker! No. He’ll never admit to this. The existence of the British Legion, the political working men’s club, and a host of other organisations all engaged on pouring oil on the social wounds of the masses, notwithstanding. The titled gentry make this work their life’s mission also. So our parting words are give our speakers a fair deal. The magnitude of our task is a gigantic one. Nevertheless the socialist comes forward, cheerfully, hopefully—in short philosophically, to tell you the facts as they appear. If you imagine you “will get there,” “make good,” we must agree with you because we know that when you seriously begin to study Socialism you “will get there”—with us. The emancipation of the world’s working class will not be accomplished ^ without effort—sacrifice of time and money.

This Socialism asks—nay, demands. This way alone Socialism will grow and we wish you joy in the task and welcome when you join our ranks.

Billy Iles

The Election Farce in America (2000)

Editorial from the December 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Who won a majority in the US elections? Actually, neither Bush nor Gore. The non-voters did—by far. More people chose that option than voted for both Bush and Gore put together. Not that it made any difference who won since everyone knows that the Republican and Democrat parties—whose champions were both millionaire members of the ruling class—stand for the same thing: the maintenance of capitalism at home and abroad.

The farce in Florida did, however, raise an important point that will still be relevant in socialism: the need to have clear agreed-on standing rules for deciding how to count votes and settle any disputes before the vote takes place.

For socialism will of course be a democratic society with elections and referendums.

It is also a basic tenet of the Socialist Party that the establishment of socialism involves the capture of political power via the ballot-box. For this to happen presupposes the existence of a "bourgeois democracy". But while such an arrangement is undeniably preferable to political dictatorship we don't entertain any illusions about the nature of this "bourgeois democracy". It is a very limited kind of democracy indeed.

Under this kind of democracy, the population is permitted to choose between representatives of different political parties to supposedly "represent" them in parliament. This is more or less the extent of popular participation—once every other year in America—in the "democratic process"; thereafter control is surrendered to the politicians. But the politicians themselves are constrained to operate within parameters set by the economic system for which they stand. Based upon minority ownership of the means of living, capitalism can only ever operate in the interests of the capitalist minority, not the electorate as a whole.

There are other aspects of bourgeois democracy, such as free speech, which are similarly compromised by the nature of the system. In this case by the disproportionate power it bestows on those who own and control the media. And even where workers are able to exercise some measure of democratic control over their own organisations, such as trade unions, their capacity to influence events is limited by the essentially defensive nature of such organisations and their inability to circumvent the dictates of the profit system.

Socialism, by bringing to an end minority ownership, will remove these fundamental structural impediments to genuine democracy. Along with this, it can be assumed, it will bring about a marked change in the form of decision-making—from representative democracy (a weak form of democratic control) towards stronger manifestations of democratic control, notably the use of mandated delegates and direct democracy—aimed at encouraging popular participation and preventing the emergence of a new ruling class in the form of a decision-making elite.

Cooking the Books: Abolish Money – But Not Now (2017)

The Cooking the Books column from the February 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists want to see money disappear, because of the rationing it means for most people, but only as a consequence of the establishment of the common ownership of the means of wealth production. This, in enabling production to be carried on to directly meet human needs, would render money redundant. With the end of production for the market and of buying and selling, there would be no need for money.

We do not envisage the ‘abolition of money’ with nothing else changing, i.e. its abolition while the rest of the economy remains capitalist. That would lead to chaos and hardship, as was seen when at the beginning of November the Indian government suddenly announced that all 500 and 1000 rupee notes (worth £6 and £12 respectively) still in circulation at the end of the year would be cancelled. Since these were used to carry out some 85 percent of cash transactions in India this was tantamount to abolishing 85 per cent of money. So as not to lose out, Indians had to exchange any such notes at a bank by that date.

Marx once remarked that, while no kind of bank legislation could eliminate a money crisis, ‘ignorant and mistaken bank legislation’ could intensify one (Capital, Vol. III, ch.30).  What happened in India has proved his point.  According to Ed Conway, Sky News’s economics editor writing in the Times (23 December), as less than half of Indians have bank accounts, this measure, aimed at catching tax dodgers and money launderers, hit the poorest half of Indians the most:

‘The real victims of demonetarisation are not wealthy ne’er-do-wells, who long ago shifted their money out of cash and into other currencies and assets: gold, Treasury bonds, apartments in London and New York. No, the real victims are, as so often, the poor.’

So, no, we are not envisaging the abolition of money within capitalism.

Meanwhile, in a more advanced part of the capitalist world, in Seattle on the West Coast of the USA:

‘Amazon has unveiled its first bricks and mortar grocery store, which does away with tills and queues and lets shoppers grab what they want and stroll out’ (Times, 6 December).

That’s more like what we envisage happening in socialism, except that, under capitalism, it is not as simple as that – the shoppers still have to pay in the end:

‘Shoppers will be billed using an array of cameras and sensors tracking their every move … Customers will need to download an Amazon Go app and tap in with their phone at special barriers when they enter, then they can take what they want from the shelves and walk out. When a customer leaves the shop the app adds up their purchases and charges their Amazon account.’

No doubt, in socialism, in some stores in some parts of the world, electronic devices will help stock control by automatically noting what has been taken, but there will be no need to record what each particular individual has taken, only what has been taken in total over a given period.

Conway, whose article is headed ‘Cash belongs in the past so let’s abolish it’, favours a cashless society because this would be ‘a hammer blow to the black market and the corrupt criminals and cronies who benefit from the anonymity of paper money.’ But the price would be an increase in the surveillance state in which the authorities would be able to know how all of us spent our money. Besides, some geniuses have invented an anonymous electronic money – bitcoins -- another waste and misapplication, alongside Amazon’s app, of human ingenuity and IT brought about by capitalism.