Editorial: Has Conscription Come To Stay? (1916)

Editorial from the October 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ever since honest, open, above-board, avowed, unblushing Conscription took the place of the filthy, taunting, “What will ye lack, Sonny?” “Go or be sacked! ” form of compulsion, the labour leaders whose treachery undermined the position of the workers and made organised resistance to the encroachments of militarism impossible, have been trying to cover up their renegade footsteps, in order that they may escape the accusing finger that sooner or later will mercilessly point out to the outraged working class who the real arch-fraticides of this stupendous shambles really are. One of their devices is to clamour for the immediate removal of that instrument of tyranny “so foreign to the traditions of our country” (to quote their flowery Pekoe), Conscription, when the war is finished.

It is easy to see that these same “leaders” are going to find themselves in a devilish awkward position upon the return of what is euphemistically termed “peace.” They had their hands full of trouble when the war broke out. Time after time they had divided the workers’ forces at the critical moment, and so doing had given victory into the masters’ hands. As a result they were becoming increasingly discredited. No longer could they rely upon the obedience of the rank and file of the organisations which they for so long had bossed; no longer was the orthodox bond of bondage, signed, sealed and given beneath their traitorous hands to the highest bidder (who must always be the masters), assuredly worth the price that was paid for it. Defiance, or even mutiny, was rife, and indeed, a very awkward situation was relieved by the outbreak of the war.

But if they found momentary relief in this world-convulsion, the bloody part they were compelled (as the consequence of the alliance they had long before made with the enemies of their class) to play in it can only result in a compound interest of trouble when “peace” brings their day of judgment and they are called upon to render account of the stewardship they have betrayed.

It is because they know this so well that they are now screaming against Conscription in principle. They know to what uses, other than military, the master class can put the instrument of Conscription which they, the so-called labour leaders, have had such a large share in imposing upon the working class of this country. They know, moreover, that in the terrible times of industrial strife which must follow the war, and at no very distant date, when the masters, writhing under the mountainous taxation that their deeds of butchery will have heaped up on their shoulders, will stretch every nerve to screw more out of their slaves, even to mobilising worker conscripts against themselves, Conscription will be anything but a bed of roses for labour leaders to lie upon. Hence they are anxious to dissociate themselves from the idea before it becomes impossibly unfashionable. For they are well aware that, in spite of the fact that they are the masters' hirelings’ and henchmen, it is upon the workers they depend in the final analysis—the masters will have no use for them when they present themselves alone and on their own feet; pelf and place are only their reward when they call for them mounted on the backs of mokes, bridled and saddled and blinkered, and warranted thoroughly broken to harness, and quiet to ride or drive.

But unless we are a long way out in our reckoning (a concession, this, to our reluctance to don the prophet’s mantle), Conscription has come to stay. The present war has placed that question beyond the pale of party politics, at least as far as the orthodox political parties are concerned. It is patent to all now that militarism is essential to the support of capitalism. The retreat from Mons, when so little stood between the German army and a decisive victory, vindicated Lord Roberts in all capitalist eyes, and the history of the first eighteen months of the war, when success was never a great way out of the reach of the German generals, will provide the argument that will confound the labour leaders at every turn. Once having subscribed to the necessity for Conscription they can have no logically firm ground on which to base any resistance to compulsory military service as a normal feature of life in Great Britain. All the arguments are against them.

If it was necessary to resort to Conscription in view of the situation which faced our rulers in the year of grace 1916—and the labour leaders in assenting to it confessed that it was— then those who held that view will be finally forced to admit that the necessity is a constant accompaniment of capitalism. So long as the working class are the instruments of enrichment for those who can exploit them, so long will there be wars to decide who shall control their labours and appropriate their surplus. Moreover, since the present conflict has emphasised the fact that the first shock of battle may very well be decisive, the capitalist must more than ever act upon the wise old saying from the Scriptures concerning the advisability of “getting your wack in fust."

The idea of any general disarmament is already abandoned. In the early stages of the war our statesmen regaled us regularly with the figures of the immense saving they were going , to effect in naval expenditure as the result of smashing the “German menace," but you never hear it mentioned now. No, Uncle Sam put the tin hat on that delicate dove from the realms of peace when be voted the dollars to make his the second navy in the world, and started his campaign of “preparedness” to fight for the world’s markets — in which, of course, Canada is included. This cute gentleman does not intend to rely upon angels should ever a “ Mons” come within the range of his experiences.

Conscription has come to stay. From the capitalist point of view everything calls for it. As the development of production results on the one hand in the vast increase of surplus products which cannot be consumed at home, and on the other hand in a relative contraction of the markets abroad, which constitute the only outlet for them, the capitalist need to struggle for those markets becomes more urgent, more vital, and more than ever a struggle of military forces. In addition to this, the development of new methods of attack, both submarine and aerial, having rendered a gigantic navy something less of a safeguard against invasion than it used to be, has given Conscription additional importance. The modern tendency of the larger nations to pool their interests and the smaller to follow the stronger, is another among several obvious arguments for compulsory service. But a greater reason than all is provided in the disintegration of the Trade Union position and the employment of women labour. Under the plea of shortage of labour an attempt will probably be made to retain the women in the fields of labour they are now engaged in, and to set the sexes against each other in the endeavour to prevent the workers regaining the labour conditions of pre-war days. In this struggle military control over the workers will help the masters by enabling them to keep male workers off the markets and in other obvious ways.

Socialism Still International. (1916)

From the November 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

In an editorial in the “Daily Chronicle” of' October 4th appeared the following:

Nothing in this war of revelations and revolutions has astonished the world more than the failure of all forms of internationalism to be international.—Christianity, Socialism, civilisation have all become as distinctively national as the several belligerent armies themselves, and in Germany they fight for the Zeppelins and in England against them. Nationalism appears to be the master virtue of the day to which all others have to conform.

This, of course, as regards Socialism, is a deliberate lie. The truth is that the very essence of Socialism is internationalism. Christianity never has been, never even bas pretended to be international— that is, based on the unity of interests of all nations ; it is not even, and never bas been, based on the unity of interests of all Christians. More than that, it is not based on so broad a base even as the unity of interests of all the Christiana of a given country. Far indeed from being a form of internationalism, it is too narrow, too mean, too wretched, and too sordid to be even truly national. Its pulse beats for no nation, but only for the capitalist element of the nation.

Socialism, on the other hand, has remained international, as it must ever do. That which passes with our masters' hireling Press for Socialism, and which they assert to have failed to be international, is not Socialism at all. We, years before the war broke out, denounced the so-called Socialist International for what it was, and events have simply proved us correct.

The very fact that the International Labour and Socialist movement, so-called, was split asunder by the first trumpet-call to defend national interests, reveals the fact it was built on the shifting sands of ignorance and compromise. Had it been reared on Socialist principles, grounded in science and unswerving in purpose, capitalist battle-cries, entreaties and arguments would have been met with derision and scorn.

J.

Press Clippings. (1916)

From the December 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following quotations and comments appeared in the “Manchester Guardian” of Oct. 25th last in a review of "Portraits of the Seventies”—a new book by the Right Hon. G. W. E. Russell.

Mr. Russell'a veneration for Gladstone is well known, and by reason of it perhaps his occasional indications of disapproval for his great leader's attitude derive additional emphasis. At any rate the incident with which Mr. Russell closes his portrait of Archbishop Thompson seems decidedly significant: — “On the evening of May 2nd, l882, I was at a party in Eaton Square, where Gladstone and Thompson were among my fellow-guests. As we entered the drawing-room the Archbishop turning to the Prime Minister with his most impressive air, said ‘I want you to tell me about the State of Ireland.' Feeling, like most other people who were not wilfully blind, a profound misgiving about the unchecked reign of murderous outrage, I listened intently to the reply. ‘The state of Ireland,’ said Gladstone with eager emphasis, 'is very greatly improved. Rent is being generally paid.'" "Not a word," remarks Mr. Russell, "about human life, which, after all, is a more important thing than rent." Four days later came the Saturday of the Phoenix Park murders, “and the Irish difficulty,” says Mr. Russell, "entered on the acutest phase it has ever known.

While the above provides only another illustration of what is a commonplace among Socialists—the Mammon-soaked psychology of the masters’ politicians—it may be enlightening to those numerous members of our class who still regard the hypocritical, Bible-hugging lick-spittle of the master clan as the "grand old man” and democracy-loving friend of the workers.

*  *  *

The “Manchester Guardian" of Oct. 10th remarked that 

“ . . . the Home Office and the Ministry of Munitions are taking every possible step to investigate and deal with the new source of danger from T.N.T. poisoning. During the quarter ending Sept. 30th twenty-one deaths were reported from that cause."

How well the war-workers are doing! In addition to the splendid exercise of tending machines and boilers working almost at bursting point, and enjoying the exhilarating excitement of making explosives in factories which blow up at the rate of one every few weeks, they even have chance of sampling the deadly stuff intended to send to a mythical paradise the Teuton fellow-slave who is also being fooled by his master.

*  *  *

At the first meeting of the British Manufacturers’ Association, comprised of 700 firms employing over a million workers, Mr. George Terrell, M.P., who presided, said of trade unions,. “No more remarkable change has occurred than our attitude to-day in connection with these unions. Many of us are saying ‘Well, these union leaden are not such bad chaps after all'; they have dropped a lot of their Socialistic nonsense.” (“Daily Mail,” 26.10.16.)

Mr. Terrell is herewith informed that there exists no such thing as “Socialistic nonsense." Socialism is based upon sound reasoning and sense in all its aspects. If he really believes that Socialism is nonsense then his own sense is of a very doubtful variety, but of course it is also doubtful if he really does believe that.. While resenting the implication that the “union leaders” he refers to have, or for the most part, ever have had, anything to do with Socialism, I am truly delighted to find that the love felt by the capitalist date for those who have so long worked vigorously in their interests is at hat. finding OPEN expression.

*  *  *

Example (Advertisement from “Manchester Evening News,” Nov. 9.16):—

EMPIRE, ARDWICK GREEN, MANCHESTER

16.40 GREAT ATTRACTIONS. 8.50.

MR. BEN TILLETT

in his thrilling oration,

"A Message from the Trenches."

How to Win the War. 

*  *  *

 In its issue for Oct. 31st the “Manchester Guardian" quoted the following from an article by Prof. Erich Jung, in the German paper “Alldeutsche Blatter":

    The Chancellor has chosen for his representative a banker by profession (Dr. Helfferich) and even his second representative, too, comes from a merchant family. Further, all such men as Delbruck and Sewald and others who hold influential positions, such as Rathenau, Ballin, Goldberger, and others, all come from business and commercial families.. Scarcely one of them belongs by origin or tradition to those quarters which have built the Prussian State in a labour of two hundred years. The Chancellor himself springs, both on his father’s and his mother’s side, from families which for many generations have carried on big banking businesses in Frankfort-on-Main and Paris.

What about the feudal Junker land aristocracy who are (we are told) the rulers of Germany?' As we have always maintained, it is Capital, which dominates in Germany, and throughout the rest of the planet also.

*  *  *

  The commercial struggle which would follow the war would be only second in magnitude to that of the war itself. They must make such preparation as would enable the English people to take the lead again among their competitors, and, as this was a matter of life and death to a great industrial people, they mast be ready to pay the premium that would ensure them success in the peaceful rivalry which was almost certain to come. He strongly advocated raising the age of compulsory education to fourteen and seventeen. (Lord Haldane at Leicester. "Manchester Evening News," Nov. 9.)

Capitalism is preparing for its last great struggle to install itself in even every waste place upon the earth, and is about to make us, its slaves, fit tools to carry out the work. We also have our scheme of education for a worldwide purpose. But the purpose is not the increase and spread of a robber system, but is the revolutionary one of annihilating that system. As capitalism enters upon its final phase—that of rampant Imperialism—in which to disgorge its surplusage of wealth into the remaining but gradually extinguishing markets of the world, let us also hurry on with our work of bringing enlightenment, through proletarian science, to our class in every land, so that ere capitalism in its death-rattle hurls us into the abyss of barbarism we may joyfully hail— 

                                                                                                          “THE DAY.”

 R.W Housley, 

Student Unrest (1969)

From the January 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

An LSE student comments on recent unrest there

In America, France, Czechoslovakia, Japan — practically wherever you care to look in the world you can find evidence of student unrest.

The universal nature of student complaint is not surprising in view of the increasingly rapid development of international capitalism which confronts students all over the world with basically the same problems.

But it is not only the student who recognises the situation. As Sir Eric Ashby has said:

The paradigm for a graduate 40 years ago was the conventional man, ready to take responsibility for preserving a set of values which he felt no need to question, deferring to his elders because they were older, not because they were wiser; obedient to principles, constitutions, traditions. That sort of young man cannot cope with the flux of the modem world. The contemporary paradigm is a man educated for insecurity, who can innovate, improvise, solve problems with no precedent. [1]     

This is the core of the student problem. The education system does not provide an adequate preparation for life in the late twentieth century. Students, having no power to change the situation, agitate for representation on various committee and boards to participate in the organisation of education.

Into this pool of unrest others delve, using the dissatisfaction within the colleges to promote causes other than internal re-organisation. The recent developments at the London School of Economics illustrate this point.

General dissatisfaction at the LSE led to the appointment of a Committee on the Machinery of Government of the School in March 1967. In July 1967 five students joined the Committee. No action resulted from the two reports which emanated and in consequence student unrest and agitation continued, to obtain greater student participation in the government of the LSE. Now any group within the school seeking support has only to tie its action with the fight for internal democracy to obtain considerable backing.

The occupation of the LSE over the week end of 24-27 October aimed to support the pro-NLF march and demonstration of 27 October by providing opportunity for discussion and as a first aid base. The student organisers were under some pressure to connect occupation with Vietnam. Their answer fully substantiates the argument above about how to win support.

  If the Director's position is accepted, free speech, free assembly, and staff-student control of their community go right out of the window. We cannot accept this.
 A few days ago the student left was accused of being unable to make the connection between Vietnam and the occupation. By now, it is clear to all that the Director has drawn the connection for us. [2]

In fact the conflict in Vietnam is between rival capitalist groups for control of an area which is strategically important and of potentially economic significance as a source of production and a market for commodities. Not one drop of working class blood should be shed for either side.

The conflict in the colleges and universities is a totally different situation. Forty years ago the graduate was largely recruited from the capitalist class and could easily accept the situation outlined by Sir Eric Ashby. To-day in Britain the majority of graduates are working class. For many students, of all shades of political opinion, education is totally unrelated to their needs. The student left, for example, complains of the limitation of discussion within the classroom and lecture hall of the major issues of the day. [3] It recognises that the governors of the colleges are people with industrial, commercial and political interest in maintaining society as it is. [2] It shouts for student and workers control. [4] The occupation is seen in the light of a factory take-over. It merely needs time to gain strength and such take-overs will cease to be temporary and become permanent.

History has shown us the fallacy of this argument and action. In the political sense the police are the muscles of the government, When workers heads are cracked by truncheons it is the echo of their vote for the continuation of capitalism. Any occupation of college or factory will be permitted grudgingly as long as it is not destructive or restrictive of other capitalist activities. If removal of the occupiers becomes necessary to the capitalist class, and dividing the workers by offers such as differential wage awards is not possible, then workers, including students, will be ejected by force. The muscle men, that is the police and if necessary the armed forces, will physically evict occupiers on government orders.

The majority of students fail to recognise that the class division of society is reflected in the class organisation of education. It cannot be otherwise in capitalist society. No society educates for its own destruction. Capitalist education can only aim to promote its own development—to produce managers, scientists, technologists, skilled and unskilled workers who are complacent and pliable. Capitalist education cannot be critical of the wage-labour and capital relationship. It must concern itself with the preservation of private property and the promotion of commodity production, the basis of capitalist society.

If students want full and free participation in education it can only be obtained in one way: by removing the class basis of society and establishing Socialism. But they must recognise that Socialism cannot be established piecemeal by isolated attacks, which never succeed, on aspects of capitalism; or by occupying colleges and factories. Demonstrations against war or for lower rents or the occupation of buildings, do not advance the spread of socialist knowledge one iota. In fact they confuse the issue by suggesting that there are solutions within capitalism to its own endemic diseases. War, Want, and Insecurity in all their facets.

Ken Knight

 

Notes

[1] L.S.E. Magazine No. 35, June 1968, quoting The Illustrated London News 16.3.68.

[2] L.S.E. Ad-Hoc Occupation Committee leaflet: OCCUPATION: THE BROADER ISSUES 25.10.68.

[3] L.S.E. Ad-Hoc Committee for Occupation leaflet: THE OCCUPATION - WHY? about 23 or 24.10.68.

[4] L.S.E. Socialist Society leaflet: WHERE NOW FOR THE STUDENT MOVEMENT? about 28 or 29.10.68.

False Distinctions (1969)

Book Review from the February 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Left or Right: The Bogus Dilemma by Samuel Brittan (Secker and Warburg, 25s.)

For quite different reasons, Samuel Brittan, Economic Editor of the Financial Times, argues two points we have been making for years. First, that the left/right distinction is virtually useless for analysing political views. Second, that the Labour/Tory struggle is, in his own words, 'shadow boxing' and a ‘sham party war' in which differences are exaggerated or manufactured while what they agree on is obscured. Labour and Tory are Tweedledum and Tweedledee and ought, says Brittan, to recognise this.

The terms ‘left' and ‘right' go back to the meetings of the States-General in France in 1789. The nobles sat on the king’s right while the commoners sat on his left. The two sides were divided on the issue of the powers of the king. Throughout the nineteenth century in France and some other European states the left/right distinction was that between republicans and monarchists. Only later did it acquire its present vague meaning as a distinction between the opponents and supporters of capitalism, and it is only since the 1920’s that the terms have been used with reference to politics in Britain.

Confusion has arisen because most of those who claimed to be socialists in fact stood either for reformed capitalism or for state capitalism. The Socialist Party of Great Britain has always refused to be tagged “leftwing” because of the term’s links with reformism and state capitalist Russia. We are socialists and opposed to those who call themselves the Left. Now others too are realising that the view of the British political scene as the forward line of a soccer team—with the Communists on the Left Wing, Labour at Inside Left, the Liberals at Centre Forward, the Tories at Inside Right, and the fascists on the Right Wing—is irrelevant and silly.

Brittan is concerned that this confusion helps obscure the real issues facing British capitalism. He lists a number of trivial matters like devaluation, the Common Market, East of Suez and planning on which, in his opinion, party shadow boxing delayed the necessary action. He reveals himself as a floating voter unable to choose between Labour and the Tories (though he has probably always voted Labour). We are concerned that this confusion helps obscure the real issue facing the workers: capitalism or Socialism?

Adam Buick

Editorial: Ireland: A Question of Theory (1969)

Editorial from the March 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correct theory is necessary for consistently correct action as the attitude of various groups towards the current situation in Northern Ireland well shows. In this case the incorrect theory is Lenin’s Imperialism, accepted uncritically by the student Left.

Lenin argued that the world could be divided into imperialist countries and their colonies. The former exploited the latter and used part of the plunder to bribe their own workers into backing them. Thus was created an aristocracy of labour which was the social basis for reformism. Lenin argued from this that one good way to disrupt the social peace in the imperialist countries and win their workers over to the policy of the Communists was to encourage their colonies to revolt. Deprived of the “super-profits” of imperialist exploitation the finance capitalists would no longer be able to bribe their workers to reject revolution. Losing its colonies, Lenin argued, would create a “revolutionary situation” in an imperialist country.

It was thus very important for Communists how a particular country was classified: imperialist or colony? The Communist Third International from the start said Ireland was a colony. This is why the Communist Party of Great Britain set up on 1920 has always had responsibility for Britain alone. (The claim of some Scottish Communists at the time that Scotland was also a “colony” was somewhat illogically never accepted, but today it is being revived by the Maoists).

In a colony the parties the Communists were urged to support, or oppose if the Party line changed, were the “national-reformists”, in Ireland republicans like De Valera. Thus Communists there gave critical support to the republicans, including their demand for an end to partition while in Britain they called for a United Ireland and the withdrawal of British troops from North-East Ulster.

Journals like Black Dwarf and Socialist Worker, which have influence in some student circles, regard themselves as the standard bearers of a tradition which the Communist Party has betrayed. So as soon as the Northern Ireland situation blew up they revived hoary old slogans like “an Irish Workers’ and Peasants’ Republic” and “Self-Determination for the People of Ireland”.

As Socialist Worker (18 January) put it :

International Socialism gives unconditional, though not uncritical, support to the civil rights movement and to the Irish national movement generally. At the same time we are firmly convinced of the need for Irish socialists to fight for a socialist workers’ republic of Ireland. Far from repudiating this slogan, we believe that it offers the only perspective for uniting Irish workers North and South. We believe British socialists must emphasise the need to free Ireland from British imperialism.

Thus Lenin’s theory (even though this group is supposed to regard it as outdated!) leads them to support Irish nationalism and so deny that the workers have no country. “Self-Determination” is a delusion, a slogan used by privileged groups to get those they exploit to fight their battles for them, and to talk in terms of “the people” of Ireland is to abandon the class struggle by suggesting that capitalists and workers (“the people”) should unite to set up an independent Republic.

Irish nationalism was the ideology under which the petty capitalists of the south of Ireland sought to win the freedom to gather profits with their own government (“the Irish Republic”) to protect them from the competition of the stronger British capitalists. The bigger Irish capitalists in the North who opposed breaking with Britain stirred up religious sectarianism in order to get workers to oppose the republicans.

In this situation, the task of socialists could only be to raise the banner of World Socialism denouncing both British and Irish nationalism, both Unionism and Republicanism, both Protestantism and Catholicism. This has always been the policy of the World Socialist Party of Ireland and the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

The “tactic” of supporting “the Irish national movement” derives from the theory of Imperialism. However, in time what is originally supported as a tactic (and may still be defended as such) tends to become an end in itself. In other words, the tacticians really become Irish nationalists relegating Socialism to the distant future.

Lenin's theory was, and is, wrong. Its irrelevance in the present situation can be grasped by asking two simple questions. Do workers in Britain support capitalism because they share in the proceeds of the "imperialist exploitation" of Northern Ireland? /Would the separation of Northern Ireland from Britain spark off an armed uprising here? The answers are obvious but the tactic of supporting Irish nationalism is supposed to be based on the absurd assumption that the answer to both is “yes". We find it hard to accept that anyone believes this and so prefer the alternative explanation that those who support Irish nationalism are really what they appear to be: confused supporters of Irish nationalism.

The Review Column: War Against the Unions (1969)

The Review Column from the April 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

War Against the Unions

The war between the Labour government and the unions is now being fought on three fronts.

This autumn the Prices and Incomes Act comes up for review in Parliament and there will be a battle over whether it should be left as it is, or altered, or scrapped altogether. Going on past experience, there will be the usual dismal clutch of Labour MPs threatening to do something desperate like abstain from the Commons vote, and the unions supplicating for modifications and concessions.

Both groups will probably come to terms with what they call their conscience and the government will get the legislation it wants.

Then there is the battle over future legislation, sketched out in the White Paper In Place of Strife. This will try to restrict the unions and to regulate the class struggle into a nice, cosy, disciplined affair.

Whatever the government manages to push through on this, if the experience of other countries with similar laws is anything to go by, it will have little effect in the long run.

Finally there is the battle — in places like Ford’s, the docks, the schools—over wage rises and improvements in working conditions which go against government policy.

Of course the Labour government expected to have to fight the workers on these fronts. On the other hand the unions, and those workers who go on strike outside unions' agreements, should also have been able to forecast what has happened.

The Labour Party were quite clear, for years before they came to power, about their intention of trying to tame the workers. This is normal, in a party whose policy is to try to run capitalism.

The workers should have realised this, when they were voting Labour in their millions. And they should remember it, when they next have a chance to choose which party shall run British capitalism. Then they should ask themselves what is the real alternative to strife.

 

Concorde

The Concorde, taking off amid its own thunder into clouds of doubt and confusion is, we are told; a triumph of modem technology.

We should, apparently, all be grateful to the designers and scientists who have made it possible for a handful of business men and wealthy travellers to get across the Atlantic a few hours faster than before — even if this is at the cost of a multitude of damages to our homes and our nerves.

But of course Concorde was not built to benefit human beings — if it were it would be unique in capitalism. The development of military aircraft during the war opened up supersonic travel and this was sure to be applied to civilian airliners.

The British and French aircraft industries have rushed into this venture, unsure of its ultimate effects, its feasibility, even its economics, in the hope of recapturing some of the advantages lost to the Americans in the market for the big jets.

As it happened the Russians beat everyone to the draw and their supersonic airliner was the first to fly. It may yet make an effective bid for the world market in these monstrous aircraft

It may turn out that it was all a colossal waste of time. The sonic boom may do so much damage to property on the ground, and to the working efficiency of people, that its economic disadvantages outweigh the aircraft’s profitability.

If this happens, some people may think supersonic planes were defeated by a concern for human well-being. But as usual this has hardly come into the matter.

The truth is that the whole business— the Concorde programme, the withdrawal of the Americans, the bid from Russia, the possible collapse of Concorde — has been motivated by capitalism’s quest for profit. With that as a priority, humane factors come a long way behind.

Russia versus China

The powers of capitalism can never be frank about the reasons for their international conflicts. That is why the official propaganda machines always represent wars as clashes of ideology — clashes between cruelty and mercy, belligerence and amity, or simply between right and wrong.

This applies as much to those states which claim to be socialist as to the rest. The dispute between Russia and China, for example, is represented by both sides as an ideological clash; the Russians say the Chinese are warmongers, the Chinese accuse Russia of betraying a socialist revolution.

During the fighting last month at Damansky Island, in the Ussuri River, both Russia and China accused the other of “armed provocation”. The Russian protest complained of “adventuristic policy . . . reckless provocative actions . . .” The Chinese loudspeakers blared out abuse about the “renegade, revisionist clique” in Moscow.

In fact the fighting started for anything but ideological reasons. The Russian territory around Vladivostok was annexed under the Tsars in the 19th century. The Bolsheviks swore to return the land but that was one of those vows which were quietly forgotten in the rise of capitalism in Russia.

Since then Russia has poured an immense amount of capital into developing the area’s industries and communications. Vladivostok is an important naval base, and Russia’s only commercial outlet to the Pacific. And just like any other capitalist class, the rulers of Russia are anxious to protect their investments.

China, however, as a newly rising capitalist power is pressing to re-negotiate the treaties which lay down her frontiers (the reason, also, for the clashes with India in 1962), one of which is marked by the Ussuri. All of this combined to make a delicate and dangerous situation, which is not in any way lessened by the supposed ideological comradeship between the two states.

It is, in fact, a classical dispute between two capitalist powers. Very often these disputes start over something trivial, like a spit of sand in the Ussuri River. But the background is anything but trivial.

Demanding the Impossible (2017)

Book Review from the August 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

'Utopia for Realists'. By Rutger Bregman. (Bloomsbury, 2017. £16.99)

Bregman is a Dutch philosopher and he has produced a book that many are claiming is up there with Piketty in terms of recent works that have achieved real kudos and wide resonance among critics of the market economy.

In fairness, it is well-written and thought-provoking—definitely a cut above the many philosophical pot-boilers that wordily say little and invite being left on the ‘New Titles’ shelves at Waterstones. Bregman is good at sensing where the problems in modern day society are and how they have morphed over recent decades—the proliferation of ‘bullshit jobs’ from PR to the law, from public sector pen-pushers to private sector money-shufflers; the disconnection between the property-owning ideals of the free market nirvana, and the inability of people to secure their place within it; the massive rise in automation which counter-intuitively has led to people working longer and harder, and often with less purpose.

Where Bregman is less convincing is his prospectus for change. Most of the ideas he advances here are familiar ones—a basic income scheme, a move towards a 15 hour work week, open borders, increased taxes on wealth . . . in other words, a reversal of the dominant trends within capitalism over the last three or four decades that were promoted by Friedman, Hayek and their latter-day neo-liberal evangelists.

Bregman sees these as being radical and seemingly utopian demands that are capable of realisation in the way that other supposedly outlandish reforms were previously (he cites votes for women and same-sex marriage among others). But many—in fact, almost all—of the examples he gives of this nature were cultural changes that occurred within the market economy as it swept away the last vestiges of the attitudes that went alongside the feudal master/servant relationship. In other words, they were entirely compatible with the development of capitalism itself. Capitalism’s economic laws are rather different and do not bend so easily to the political will of those who would seek to curb their seeming excesses—the tendency towards an increasing work week in recent decades being a case in point.

That’s why Bregman’s book title is misplaced—his prospectus for change isn’t really Utopia for Realists but Utopia for Utopians. This is because the reason capitalism hasn’t delivered what many radicals have expected over the years is that in many ways it can’t. For instance, a basic income scheme is capable of realisation within capitalism only within certain parameters but these are circumscribed by the profit system and the need for the driving force of capitalism to operate —businesses competing to accumulate capital without the state interfering to prevent this. At a higher level of technological advancement this applies to basic income schemes today just as it did the original Speenhamland system and the Poor Law in nineteenth century Britain. Within the market economy, these schemes are unable to abolish poverty—in capitalism, the rich are rich because the poor are poor, and wealth accumulates to those that have it and only expands on this basis. In anything other than the very short-term, capitalism is incapable of behaving any other way.

The fact that until comparatively recent times the working class of wage and salary earners were often able to increase their absolute levels of income (and sometimes their relative share of income for a time) was the product of organised trade union action, but there were always limits to this. That the average skilled US worker hasn’t seen an increase in their real wages for around 30 years and that most workers in the UK and many other European countries have had real pays cuts for over a decade now illustrates this point well enough.

Capitalism has economic laws that are not easily transcended within the system (as has been illustrated by reformist governments of the Labour variety and also by more radical interventions such as the creation of centralised state-run capitalism in Russia and its satellites in the twentieth century). So what is needed is the sort of movement that Bregman identifies—radical, democratic, confident in its ideas—but one genuinely focused on challenging capitalism at source and creating a society capable of realising the potential that the market economy has unleashed. As Bregman himself rightly says:

‘A worldview is not a Lego set where a block is added here, removed there. It’s a fortress that is defended tooth and nail, with all possible reinforcements, until the pressure becomes so overpowering the walls cave in’(p.240).

Capitalism, with its interconnected production across the globe, its robots, 3-D printing and digital media, has brought about a real potential abundance of wealth that is now held back by the artificial scarcity associated with the market, money and production for profit. A genuine society of abundance will have no time for basic income schemes and attempts to institute part-time wage-slavery, and will instead mean a conscious move towards full unemployment and zero money income instead—only achievable on the basis of common ownership, the abolition of the market and free access to wealth.

Dave Perrin

Elitism still haunts disenchanted Bolsheviks (1969)

Party News from the May 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists are active wherever workers are developing their ideas through discussion. So a few of us turned up at the weekend conference of ‘Libertarian Marxists’ in Manchester. This was organised mainly by people who had become disenchanted with Bolshevism in the shape of the so-called ‘International Socialism’ group.

It was encouraging to find a number of workers, formerly committed to the extreme centralism of the Vanguard Party, who have seen through that fraud and come out against leadership. Unfortunately it soon became clear that élitist ideas were not dead.

The conference was dominated by three speakers (R. Sumner, S. James, M. Orr), who together took up 90 per cent of the time. The air was thick with talk of ‘the intellectuals’ and their relationship to ‘the workers’, and the notion that workers learnt only from personal experience whilst abstract ideas were beyond them—the usual leftist claptrap.

Among the gems were S. James’s announcement that she was a black nationalist, after she had denounced racism(!), and her revelation that “workers can’t read big books.” R. Sumner wanted ‘all Socialists’ to unite in bringing out a newspaper, without any ‘contentious arguments’ about what Socialism was. And M. Orr, an advocate of ‘self-management,’ when pushed, said that he was in favour of abolishing wages, but not in favour of abolishing money!

They looked to incidents like the 1956 Hungarian uprising, and the May events in France, to bring ‘Socialism.’ We should not, therefore, take them too seriously, particularly as Mrs. James’s model of a revolution without leaders was Castro’s takeover in Cuba, and Mr. Orr insisted that the socialist revolution would be carried out by a minority, while the majority of the population was passive.

When socialists joined the discussion, it took 20 minutes before this trio realised they had no answer to our arguments, and referred to the socialists present as disrupters. This was rich considering we had sat through two three-hour sessions (of what was supposed to be an open conference) without a peep.

Earlier we had been informed that a ‘new personality’ had come into the world, shown by the fact that the meeting needed no chairman. However, in order to exclude us from the discussion, a chairman materialised in the wink of an eye—self-appointed, not elected. This indicates what socialists have always said: formless, loose organisation does not remove the danger of leadership but increases it.

Whether the other workers involved will continue to let the ‘intellectuals’ do their thinking for them remains to be seen. At least one walked out in disgust at the reception given to the socialist case.

Labour's Irish Stew (1969)

From the June 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

While in Britain the Labour Party is now thoroughly discredited, in Ireland the Labour Party has high hopes for the coming general election on June 18. 

The Irish press are forecasting a defeat for the Fianna Fail government at the forthcoming general election. Loom-large in the running is the Labour Party.

The government lost the referendum last Autumn when the electorate decided to retain the proportional representation system of voting. The Labour Party played a large part in influencing this vote against the government. A constitutional change to the less democratic single-member constituency system, as in Britain, would have increased Fianna Fail’s chances of success in the election since the majority of Labour members of parliament acquired their seats on second preference votes. It now seems likely that Labour will hold the balance of power after the votes have been cast. The second major party, Fine Gael, were also opposed to the amendment to the constitution and hope that, should the situation arise. Labour will agree to form a coalition with them and end the eleven years of continuous Fianna Fail rule.

The Labour Party has put much effort into the scramble for power. It is the oldest political party in Eire but its prospects have never been so bright. It has, however, been the minority party in two previous but disastrous coalitions. Among its recent claims has been the promise that if it gets control of parliament "Ireland will be socialist in the 70s”. It has, so it says, committed itself to the ideas of James Connolly, but there is no party in Ireland claiming allegiance to socialist principles which adheres so little to the politics of Connolly as the Labour Party.

Recently, it published in its official journal Liberty a study of Connolly entitled *Orthodoxy and Unorthodoxy’. The author attempted to show that the remedy proposed by Marx and his adherents was worse than the evil it proposed to remedy, and copious extracts from papal encyclicals were used to illustrate the point. But if you refer to supporters of the Russian capitalist regime as adherents of Marx then you have the impossible task of substantiating the argument by showing where, in Marx's writings, state capitalism is proposed as a remedy to a ’private or mixed economy’. These articles, which were given editorial praise, illustrate Labour's misunderstanding of Socialism.

The economic answer put forward by Labour as a remedy for 'underpopulated' Ireland is a programme of nationalisation and control of capital investment. Farmlands will be handed over to those who are willing to exploit them fully by modern farming techniques. Labour has quite rightly pointed out that private enterprise has failed to answer the problems of underpopulation and mass unemployment.

The party has also expressed its abhorrence at the petty foreign industries which have sprung up all over the country and have been encouraged by the government. These firms, mostly German and American, find it economic to set up such petty industries because fixed costs are remarkably low and the excess labour supply keeps real wages permanently depressed. Also, the nature of these industries is such that cheap girl labour suffices; in one small western town several such firms employ mostly girls between sixteen and 21 with flat wages from £2 10s to £7.

Labour sees the solution to this exploitation in a State-controlled system and call this Socialism. There is little need to elaborate on the stupidity of this assertion.

Even if Labour could achieve these reforms of private enterprise, the lot of the Irish worker would not be much better. There were promises of a better Ireland, employment for all, and riddance of British imperialism earlier this century. Now, 48 years after the 26 counties were given autonomous powers, and with the British gone, not only is Ireland still economically backward but its population has since declined because of emigration. The Labour Party has at least tried to make people aware of these problems but it points to state capitalism, under the misnomer 'Socialism', as the solution.

How will Labour act if they come into power? Will they too fill their bank-accounts as the so-called revolutionaries of the 1916 to 1921 rebellion have done? Labour claim that they are, in political jargon, a party of the Left. This concept, however, evades all attempts to understand it.

Labour can offer only empty promises like their opponents. They have resolved not to enter a coalition with a capitalist party — implying Fine Gael — if neither of the two major parties acquires an overall majority. But there is a strong possibility that Labour will hold the balance of power after the votes have been cast. Should this situation arise, it will be interesting to see how they will react.

Fine Gael are determined to enter into a coalition with them and may make far-reaching concessions. If Labour find themselves in this dilemma the probability is that they will start bargaining with Fine Gael. The only other alternative is to let Fianna Fail continue its long rule, with Fine Gael’s support. It is extremely unlikely that Labour will allow this to happen — when they have an alternative. But whatever happens one thing is certain: capitalism will not be threatened.

Patrick Garvey

The Stars and Stripes . . . Forever? (1969)

From the July 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

The American flag, in the general form it takes today, was born during the American Revolution and represents a clean break in design from the English-type standards that were in use in the colonies until 1777. Even General Washington, in his earlier battles, used a flag with English and Scottish crosses rather than the stars. Paintings such as the one showing him crossing the Delaware with the Stars and Stripes were inaccurate. So is the story that the first flag was made in 1776 by Betsy Ross of Philadelphia from a design furnished her by General Washington. The Continental Congress accepted the original stars and stripes (thirteen of each) design on June 14 1777.

The school texts, encyclopedias, and information almanacs supply the type of data concerning the flag, its growth to the present 50 stars, its dimensions, and its rules of display. Such information is of concern to patriots but more to the point is a discussion of the purposes which the Stars and Stripes serves, the interests which it supports, the very reasons for its existence.

All previous revolution, as Marx and Engels put it in The Communist Manifesto, were revolutions by a minority in the interests of a minority. Even though it did not exemplify the classic pattern of bourgeois revolution, in that it was directed against a colonial power rather than a landed aristocracy and church within the nation, the American Revolution was no exception. There were no serfs in the American Colonies, not even peasants in the ‘free' sense of some European peasants who worked the lands of (frequently absentee) landlords. But there was a great majority of impoverished small farmers, business people, artisans, and fishermen, not to mention chattel slaves and a tiny minority of privileged landowners, commercial-type capitalists, and financiers. The privileged minority was, nevertheless, dominated by the mother country and had something definitely to gain by a break in relations. It raised the cry of ‘freedom' (meaning freedom of commerce) and went about the task of convincing the majority of underprivileged that revolution against England would also be in their interests. Such a task was not easy, especially in a land like America which was largely populated by expatriate British, and desertions from the army and outright refusals to fight were rampant.

The new American ruling class, then, like all ruling classes, had urgent need for initiating ideas and attitudes and gadgets that would aid in preventing a new revolution from developing. Historians record that such a fear was uppermost in the founding fathers and a number of steps were taken to circumvent the possibility. The Stars and Stripes has served admirably, since 1777, as a symbol of a common interest among all Americans. As with the bourgeoisie of all nations, the American capitalist class has never hesitated to use the flag to stir base emotions in workers in order to fight workers of other countries and one another as well. This is the primary purpose of the Stars and Stripes, as it is of the Union Jack, the Hammer and Sickle, the Tricolor, and every other national emblem on earth.

Indoctrination

But no flag, in itself, can be expected to raise emotions in the desired manner. Americans, generally, are not stirred by the Union Jack, nor does the Stars and Stripes bring a tingle to the spine of the average Briton. A system of indoctrination is needed. In America we have the Pledge of Allegiance, written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy of Boston and recited by schoolchildren all over the country to this date. [1] And there is The Star Spangled Banner, a national anthem (fortunately unsingable by most voice ranges) about the flag, written in 1814 by Francis Scott Key during the war with Britain. Although it is virtually impossible to enforce laws and codes of custom concerning these patriotic exercises on a universal basis, there are laws, penalties, and prescribed codes of custom in many areas of endeavour in the various states and on a national level.

For example, Section 69 of the General Laws Relating to Education in The Commonwealth of Massachusetts (1966) goes into the subject of proper display of the flag in the schools and continues:

Failure to display flag as above required for a period of five consecutive days by principal or teacher in charge of a school, or failure of teacher to salute the flag and recite pledge of allegiance or to cause pupils under his charge to do so . . . (provides for a penalty of a $5 fine for every such period).

And failure by a school committee subjects each member to the same penalty.

In its zeal to enforce respect for the national anthem, Chapter 264, Section 9 of these Massachusetts laws reads:

National Anthem: Whoever plays, sings or renders the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ in any public place, theatre, motion picture hall, restaurant or cafe, or at any public entertainment other than as a whole and separate composition or number without embellishment or addition in the way of national or other melodies, or whoever plays, sings or renders the 'Star Spangled Banner', or any part thereof, as dance music, as an exit march or as a part of a medley of any kind, shall be punished by a fine of not more than one hundred dollars.

And Section 9 of the same chapter provides a penalty for misuse of the flag of a fine ranging from $10 to $100, one year in jail, or both.

Outraged

On the federal level, a joint resolution by both Houses resulted in Public Law 829: a codification of existing rules and customs on flag etiquette. The Law was approved on December 22, 1942. But there was, apparently, no desecration problem since there were no provisions for penalties.

The most agonised reaction to desecration and defilement of the Stars and Stripes was that of the Congress of 1967-8. The straw that broke the camel’s back was the burning of the American flag by an opponent of the Vietnam war in Central Park, New York, in May 1967. By a vote of 385 to 16 the House of Representatives passed a Bill that provided penalties of one year imprisonment, $1,000 fine, or both. The Congressmen were outraged and vied one with another in the vitriol of their language. Mendel Rivers of South Carolina demanded: “Let’s deal with these buzbards," and James Haley of Florida emoted:

Load a boat full of them and take them 500 miles out in the ocean and handcuff them, chain the anchor around their necks and throw them overboard. (Time Magazine, June 30, 1967)

So enraged were the Representatives, in fact, that they completely forgot to refer in their Bill to burning. The language deals with “publicly mutilating, defacing, defiling or trampling upon," omitting reference to the act that motivated the Bill.

But the Senators, in their version, saved the day and inserted the flammatory word. So Public Law 90-381, which became law on July 5 1968, provides for the following penalties:

(a) Whoever knowingly casts contempt upon any flag of the United States by publicly mutilating, defiling, burning, or trampling upon it shall be fined not more than $1000.00 or imprisonment for not more than one year, or both.

And section (b) carefully defines what is meant by ‘flag’ in order to avoid the possibility of a legal technicality that the object mutilated, defiled, burned, or trampled upon was but a replica or picture of the flag or some other official emblem other than the Stars and Stripes. The term is all-encompassing. It took 191 years. But there is now a Federal law to avenge maltreatment of “Old Glory’ and it specifically applies to desecration by Americans abroad of America’s flag as well.

Socialists do not include flag desecration in any list of revolutionary activity —not because we respect a nation’s flag but because revolutionary socialist activity must be dominated by consciousness and understanding, not upon unreasoning passion. Nor are we flag wavers.

Harry Morrison 

(World Socialist Party of the United States)

Footnote:

[1] The Republicans, in 1954, had the words "under God" inserted after “one nation indivisible." But the Supreme Court decisions on religion in the schools (1962 and 1963) now makes the use of this phrase questionable in the classrooms.

What is Fascism? (1969)

From the August 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fascism is a political re-organisation of capitalism which occurs in special economic and historic circumstances. The fascists take over the functions of the state and run the country by strong, centralised government. When this happens the working class are usually suffering extreme hardship and insecurity, and it is this factor more than any other which enables political figures like Hitler and Mussolini to point to the failure of democracy within capitalism to solve workers’ problems. This possibility is increased when the population does not have a strong background of democracy as was the case in Germany and Italy. Thus the demagogues are able to insist in the ‘national (capitalist) interest’ that no political or economic opposition can be allowed to rock the boat.

Most certainly fascism is not a new social system distinct from capitalism. In both Germany and Italy the profit motive remained the basis of production while the relationship between capital and labour did not change. What did change was that the state intervened in this to a much greater degree.

Basically, this can be taken as typical of fascist dictatorships. Of course different countries throw up different types since each has its own historical starting point. The Italian brand differed from the German in many ways — for example anti-semitism played no part in Mussolini’s march to power and he openly scoffed at Hitler’s racial theories. So racialism is not a necessary part of fascist propaganda as many believe.

A widely accepted view of fascism is that it represents the last stage of capitalism. The system reaches such a state of crisis that the only way it can continue to produce profit is by invoking fascism to smash the trade union movement and democratic parties in order to keep down working-class demands.

This theory was very popular before the war and was advanced by John Strachey in 1938:

  They [the capitalists] counter-attack because the state of capitalism has become so bad that it . . . can tolerate indefinitely neither the.standards of life . . .  which particular sections of the British workers have won, nor the workers’ liberty to organise politically, industrially and co-operatively for the further improvement of that standard. [1]

In 1968 Chris Harman, a prominent member of ‘International Socialism', wrote:

   First, the ruling class has to decide that it can no longer afford liberal democracy. It begins to see even the marginal reforms that reformist Labour parties and trade unions win for workers as a threat to its profits and to its very existence. It is prepared to utilise any means . . . to destroy these organisations. [2]

Even with the advantage of 30 years’ hindsight, Harman’s view is remarkably similar to Strachey’s and both see fascism just like a spook at a seance, hovering, unseen, only waiting for the summons from the capitalist medium.

What neither realised is what part democracy plays in a modern industrial nation like Britain. The capitalist class well recognise the need for opposing viewpoints in the complicated world of today. To say that two heads are better than one may be a cliche, but it makes the possibility of costly and far-reaching mistakes in the economy less likely. Also, the emergent capitalist class, the world over, fought a whole series of revolutions for the right to control their system themselves. They know that once in control of the state machine a dictatorship is extremely difficult to get rid of.

Nor will the other lesson of the German experience be lost on them: that once installed the fascist gang set about enriching themselves at the expense of the whole owning class. One final point on this: in some of those countries which have fascism today, such as Spain and Portugal, the demand for democratic rights and freedom of expression is coming mainly from those who, according to the left, have most to fear from it.

Is it true that fascism triumphant means the working class can be treated any old way: that once trade unions have been destroyed then wages can be cut down to bare subsistence? Of course it is — if the working class allow it! The facts are that in both Germany and Italy the fascists came to power only through working class support. In the March 1933 elections the Nazis polled 44 per cent of the votes: their allies, the Nationalists, got 8 per cent, giving them a clear majority. The Communists, with 12 per cent, were as much in favour of a dictatorship as the Nazis and both sides swopped tens of thousands of votes in that and preceding elections. Obviously there was no great difference in the level of ideas of German workers and there was no outcry from them when the Nazis abolished the trade unions.

Right through the 30s support for Hitler grew because he appeared to be producing what German workers wanted most of all — work. From six million unemployed in January 1933, the figures fell to 70,000 by May 1939. True, wage rates remained at depression level even in boom conditions but the German workers’ attitude was that this was better than ‘starving in freedom’.

Nor does stamping out trade unions mean that workers cannot make demands if they are determined enough although the task is obviously made more difficult. Despite terrible penalties for violating Nazi Labour Laws some German workers did rebel when the screw was turned too much. Munitions workers in the Rheinland in 1936 threatened to strike over a wage decrease and were speedily compensated by a ‘local allowance’. Significantly, those workers who did not threaten strike action had their wages cut. [3] The story was the same in Italy. When, during the war, the fascists lost their popularity many strikes occurred in the north and concessions had to be made. [4]

Support needed

Another factor in determining working-class conditions under fascism is that, unlike trade unions, capitalism’s economic laws cannot be legislated out of exitsence. As labour grew scarce in Germany employers, although forbidden to do so, had to compete for it. If an employer wants workers when none are available then the only way he can get them is from another employer by offering more money, and this sort of thing went on in Nazi Germany. [5]

But wouldn’t a Nazi occupation of Britain during the last war have produced all sorts of outrageous acts against a helpless population? In one country which the Nazis did occupy, Norway, they attempted to coerce the population and destroy the labour movement. But the people there, with a long history of democracy in their social arrangements, resisted to such an extent that the Nazis had to back down on many occasions. Hostages were taken and sometimes shot, but this only increased hostility and a dead working class is of no use to any ruling group. [6] In the long run, the actions of fascist regimes are largely determined by the level of acceptance of the population.

So fascism is not something which can simply be imposed from above. It must have massive working-class support such as it enjoyed in Germany and Italy. Were the Nazis recruited from the capitalists? Did Mussolini’s Blackshirts have a non-working-class membership? And who comprised the pre-war Mosleyites in Britain? The majority of all these organisations came from the ranks of those who have to sell their physical and mental energies for a wage or salary in order to live. This applies even though many European fascists came from the peasantry and other fast-vanishing social groups. Without ignorance to batten onto, fascism is a dead duck. It is these which opportunist politicians utilise for their own ends: for example it is doubtful whether Enoch Powell is really a racialist.

Having said all this, workers should of course avoid fascism like the plague. Undoubtedly it has caused the greatest suffering and horror and another dose could put back the growth of socialist ideas for decades. How best then to fight it? The extreme left say there is only one way: by emulating the fascists themselves and using physical force to win control of the streets. But this is precisely what the fascists want since it turns working-class attention to strong men with law-and-order solutions. And since most workers probably have some colour prejudice and know little about politics then it is to the side with the simplest-sounding and most backward programme that they will turn. The recent student upheavals have produced a serious working-class backlash in America, West Germany, and Britain. In France the aftermath of May 1968 has seen existing democratic rights threatened at the insistence of the workers themselves. A majority of French workers are now in favour of banning all political discussion from universities.

This is not to say that the streets cannot be used by socialists at all. They can, but in the way the Socialist Party of Great Britain uses them today—to oppose fascism and all other anti-working-class ideas by propagating the case for one world, one people. This may not sound so glamorous as street fighting and breaking up fascist meetings, which despite leftist hysteria remain few and far between, but it is the only effective way. Tactics like those used by the Yellow Star movement during the political punch-ups of 1962 cause a resurgence, not a diminishing, of fascist numbers and activity. [8]

Will fascism come to Britain? At present this seems very unlikely but it is not impossible. Historically, the end of Empire has provided a factor not there before—a wave of coloured immigrants as scapegoats for workers’ social and economic grievances. This, plus the growing disillusion with the democratic process caused by the dismal failure of the major political parties, could lead many to see a fascist political solution as the only answer.

The fascist threat will last as long as capitalism itself. The answer lies not in futile struggling against effects but to establish a society based on production for use and universal brotherhood which is only possible when the world's workers understand and desire it. As this will require knowledge rather than physical strength we emphasise that the battleground is the minds of men and not the streets.

Vic Vanni

REFERENCES

[1] What Are We To Do? Left Book Club edition P146 

[2] Socialist Worker No. 84, June 1968 

[3] Big Business in the Third Reich. A. Schweitzer P386 

[4] Italian Labour Movement. D. L Horowitz P182

[5] Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. W. L Shirer P263

[6] Unarmed Against Fascism. A. K. Jameson (Peace News pamphlet)

[7] The Guardian, October 2, 1968

[8] Tribune (letter from Councillor W. G. Russell). Also, see Action, October 1, 1962

Obituary: Tom Garfield Davies (1969)

Obituary from the September 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

With regret we report the death of Tom Garfield Davies of Swansea Branch. Garfield, as he was affectionately known to Party members, joined the Party just after the last war; finding as he put it the “political party he had been looking for all his life”.

Although never very active in the Party he was nevertheless a keen and able advocate of the socialist idea, once succeeding in getting the socialist case clearly expounded in the radio programme ‘Any Answers’. His work as a male nurse brought him into direct contact with human suffering. Qualities of kindness and understanding coupled with a keen sense of humour equipped him well for this task; it also convinced him of the rightness of the socialist case.

We extend our deepest sympathy to his relatives and friends. He will be sadly missed.

Swansea Branch

The Capital Levy again (1969)

From the October 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Labour Party National Executive, with an eye to the next General Election, is issuing a series of discussion documents to form the basis of policy to be recommended to the Party’s Annual Conference this month. The first of these, Labour’s Economic Strategy, covers a wide field, much of it already familiar in Labour Party propaganda, including government direction of investment in industry; limitations of dividends and top salaries; regulation of conditions of employment.

It proposes a “Workers Charter” giving the individual worker a legal right to training and retraining and assistance in moving jobs, transferability of pension rights on change of jobs and a new redundancy payments scheme. Special arrangements are proposed to raise productivity and wages in industries with particularly low wage levels.

Although the Report says that the Labour Party's attitude to “public ownership” has not changed and that “more and more of Britain's industries must move inevitably into public hands” the specific proposals relate only to the aviation industry, drug manufacture, North Sea Gas and a State Building Corporation and most this is for government shareholding, or the setting up of a government body competing with private companies, not the creation of new government monopolies. The Times (21 August 1969) reads into it “further evidence of a swing away from Nationalisation policies in favour of greater intervention by the State in the control and shareholding of British industries”.

The item in the Report which drew most attention in the Press is however a proposal for an annual Wealth Tax, a tax levied not on income but on accumulated wealth. Fortunes of less than £50,000 would be exempt and the scheme would start with an additional annual tax of £500 on £50,000 rising to £20,000 on a fortune of £400,000. The rate above £400,000 would be 5 per cent. It would raise an additional £250 million a year.

This is not the first time the Labour Party has advocated a tax on wealth. Under the name Capital Levy the Labour Party's election address in 1918 proposed a levy starting on ownership of £1,000 and with steeply graduated rates “so as to take only a small contribution from the little people and a very much larger percentage from the millionaires.” They later raised the proposed exemption limit to £5,000 but the whole scheme came to nothing as the Labour Party lost the election and it was not seriously revived when the first Labour government took office in 1923.

The outstanding difference between the 1918 proposal and the present one is that in 1918 it was intended to use the money raised by the levy to pay off the National Debt,, thus reducing the government’s annual payments of interest to investors holding Government securities. This time the wealth tax is to provide additional government revenue without reducing taxation.

Quite unintentionally, but with devastating effect, this new Labour Party proposal vindicates the Socialist Party of Great Britain's argument that trying to reform capitalism by gradual inroads into the wealth of the propertied class (not that Labour are trying to do this anyway) is utterly futile. In the 1918 Labour Party election address it was stated that “one tenth of the population owns nine-tenth’s of the riches of the United Kingdom”, and at that and every subsequent election the Labour Party has declared its intention to get rid of this inequality. Now, half a century later, it is frankly admitted that all of the measures supposed to bring about equality—death duties, steeply rising income tax and sur-tax, social services and nationalisation among them — have left: a condition of “extreme concentration of wealth”.

On the official figures quoted in the new Labour Party report, the degree of concentration appears to have changed to that now the top ten per cent own only 74 per cent of wealth, but the Report itself challenges the accuracy of the figures. Being based on death duties these figures “under-estimate the degree of concentration” because they ignore wealth which evades death duties by gifts made during the individual's life time, or by the setting up of trusts and family settlements and the like.

The Labour Party suggests new measure to stop the leaks and evasions but it is well-nigh certain that new devices for tax avoidance will be discovered and the inequality will go on. An example of what does happen as capital accumulates and income from rent and profit increases is the Ellerman family fortune. In the nineteen thirties it was cut from £40 million to £18 million by death duties but within four years it was back to £40 million. (Evening Standard 8 & 9 September 1937), and an article in the Sunday Telegraph (17 August 1969) estimated that it is now £150 million.

Many workers will no doubt be persuaded that new measures to tax the rich will weaken capitalism and benefit wage earners.

The Labour Party Report provides an answer to this too, for in the desire to prove the practicability of a tax on wealth, it states that a wealth tax of this kind is already operating in a large number of countries, including the whole of Scandinavia as well as Luxembourg, Holland, Germany and Switzerland and capitalism is not “weak” in any of these countries.

Proposals of this kind have nothing to do with Socialism, nor do they help to raise working class living standards. As in the countries named, the introduction of a wealth tax in Britain would be just one of a number of alternative methods of meeting government expenditure in the interests of capitalism.

The broad aim of the Labour Party is admitted to be that of raising productivity and efficiency, increasing capital investment and in general to maintain the competitive position of British industry. If they had the opposite intention, that of improving the financial position of the workers at the expense of the property owners, they could quite simply take off wage restraint and encourage wage claims.

Socialism is not a better way of running capitalism but a world wide system of society in which the private ownership of the means of production and distribution would be replaced by social ownership. Not some promised encroachment on private ownership but its abolition.

Edgar Hardcastle

The Pot and the Kettle (1969)

Book Review from the November 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

How the Soviet Revisionists Carry out All-Round Restoration of Capitalism in the USSR (Foreign Languages Press. Peking. 1968.)

The Chinese Communist Party's current line on Russia is that soon after the death of Stalin in 19S3 there was a “bourgeois coup d’etat" in which political power was seized by a group led by Khrushchev who were pledged to “restore capitalism” in Russia. Since then, in their view, the policy of the Russian government has been aimed at consolidating the rule of the “bourgeois privileged stratum” that has arisen. What is needed now, the CCP goes on, is a “second revolution” to overthrow the government and bring Russia “back again on the road to socialism”.

Accusations of “capitalism” between jCommunist Party governments when they fall out are not new. In 1950 Yugoslavia called Russia “state capitalism” but dropped . this when friendly relations were restored. Such accusations have been a criticism of the particular policies of a government rather than of the economic system within which it works. To go too deeply into economics could be dangerous since there is not much difference between the economic systems in Russia, China and Yugoslavia (it seems that already there is a group in China applying the CCP analysis of Russia to China). As we know, all of them are capitalist.

The CCP accusation of “restoration of capitalism” in Russia rests on two aspects of Russian economic policy. First the “new system” of gearing industrial production more directly to profit and, second, the encouragement of private enterprise in agriculture.

Russian industry has always produced for profit but in the past there was rigid central control. The new policy involves giving more independence to factory managers and allowing them to adjust output to profit and market demands. The CCP allege that this has led to the top managers abusing their new powers to line their own pockets so that the state enterprises “have been turned into capitalist undertakings owned by a bourgeois privileged stratum”. The managers pay themselves large salaries, award themselves huge bonuses, sell machinery, set up underground factories as a side-line, embezzle funds and so on:

   The heads of many industrial enterprises, 'state farms’ and commercial establishments have become new bourgeois elements who draw high pay, receive high bonuses, indulge in unlawful practices, grossly abuse their power, and exploit and oppress the working people. Managers of many industrial enterprises even sell for profit such means of production as machine-tools, hoists, generators, locomotives and seamless tubes which, of course, are all state property”. “Under the stipulations of the 'new system’, a big share of the profit gained by enterprises is directly pocketed by a small handful of persons of the privileged stratum, such as directors and engineers, or used indirectly for their benefit”.

But there is nothing new about this. It went on too under the old system of centralised control (which the CCP mistakenly say was socialist) and has long been one of the ways in which one section of the Russian capitalist class has got its share of the unpaid labour of the working class.

This has happened in the countryside too, according to the CCP, where new “experts” have been put in charge of collective and state farms:

It is these persons who wield all the power in the rural basic-level economic organizations and by both 'legal' and illegal devices are expropriating a great part of the fruits of the peasants' labour.

Russian agricultural policy encourages private enterprise with the following results:

According to Soviet press reports, agricultural products from all the private plots of land in the USSR account for approximately half to two-thirds of the total products of the whole country. From the private sector potatoes, for instance, account for 63 per cent, fruits 54 per cent, meat 40 per cent and eggs 67 per cent.

We would add that while much of this trade will be in the hands of of ordinary peasants there must also be a growing number of private capitalists (merchants, market gardeners, hauliers, etc.) with money invested in this.

This kind of criticism is rich coming from China where, until recently at least, capitalists were still legally entitled to a fixed share in the profits of their old businesses.

Talk about the restoration of capitalism in Russia is nonsense since capitalism has never been abolished there. Ever since their rule was finally consolidated in 1921 the Russian government has tried to develop capitalism in Russia, both by using the state and by encouraging private enterprise. At different times the emphasis has changed, as it seems to be again. Lenin at least had the honesty to admit that this policy was state capitalism.

Adam Buick