The Passing of a Labour Leader (1960)

Editorial from the August 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is not our purpose here to attempt an analysis of the career of Aneurin Bevan, but only to put one or two aspects of his progress from being a working class rebel against the tyranny and sordidness of capitalism to his occupancy of high office in the post-war Labour Government.

In particular we take an observation made by Bevan in an article of appreciation of Winston Churchill, published, after Bevan’s death, in the Daily Mirror (7/7/60). Bevan described Churchill as essentially a romantic, who “in his assessment of realities . . . is without the discipline that comes from personal knowledge of industry and of economic affairs.” He maintained that Churchill, because of the rank to which he was born, had been sheltered “from intimate insight into the concessions ideas have to make when they come to be transformed into the facts of a highly industrialised society.”

Bevan’s view of Churchill’s limitations is probably well founded, but the thought invariably comes to mind that Bevan was here not only measuring Churchill, but also explaining and defending much that happened in his own activities: throughout the years after he had begun to make a name in the Labour Party he was torn between the desire to be a rebel espousing certain ideals and the necessity of working out concessions to meet the needs of practical politics. Nobody can suppose that Bevan was happy about finding himself supporting war, supporting re-armament and making his belated decision to press for the retention of the H-bomb as a bargaining counter in the Labour Party’s plan to work for all-round disarmament.

But was he ever clear about what was happening and why it happened? Did he ever realise that his dilemma is one that necessarily faces all who take on the task of governing a capitalist country in a capitalist world? With or without seeing it clearly he, like the other leaders of the Labour Government, had come down on the side of the belief that as a present practical policy a Labour Government must face the workers as an administration trying to keep the British economy functioning and must face the world as guardian of British interests which necessarily meant in both spheres of action accepting and working within the framework of the capitalist social system. That he did so with some reluctance and occasional rebellious withdrawals show his resentment of the dilemma, but he never succeeded in resolving the problem. He would have argued, no doubt, that there was no alternative, and here we as Socialists insist that there was, and is, the alternative of leaving the running of capitalism to those who believe in it and of devoting efforts to building up an international Socialist working class with the consciously-held aim of putting Socialism in the place of capitalist society.

Branch News (1961)

Party News from the August 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bloomsbury

Bloomsbury Branch will not be holding meetings during August as Conway Hall closes for that month. Meetings recommence on Thursday, September 7th at 8 p.m.

Ealing

There have been several successful outdoor meetings at Earls Court. More support from members would be welcome as this is an excellent outdoor station, and experience proves that with such regular support these meetings will prove most valuable. Literature sales in particular have been most encouraging.

All members are asked to note that the Branch will close down for its summer break this month. There will be no Branch meetings on 18th and 25th August and 1st September. The outdoor meetings will be maintained during this period.

Glasgow

Kelvingrove Branch has been working very hard and taking advantage of the good weather. Nine outdoor meetings were held during June—four in Edinburgh. Average audience 125 with literature sales of £1 11s. 0d. and over £2 in collections. In Glasgow, five meetings were held—average audience 50, literature sales and collections over £2.

Wembley

Wembley Branch will not be holding a meeting on August 7th but will resume their meetings on August 14th. A Branch lecture is being held on Monday, August 2lst.

Literature Sales

The new Literature Sales Committee has gone into orbit with great success. One of the first assignments was to have a group of comrades outside the Russian Exhibition at Earls Court. Comrades have been there all day, each day, armed with Party literature, in particular the pamphlet Russia Since 1917. On one day alone 120 pamphlets were sold—90 of the Russian pamphlet—and on Tuesday evening, July 11th, an urgent call was received at Head Office that they had sold out and urgently needed fresh supplies. A comrade was hastily despatched on his motor cycle with fresh supplies and a call was made for branches to return any spare copies they may have had of the pamphlet. The archives at Head Office were also raided so that all available pamphlets could he sent to Earls Court.

The Literature Sales Committee are now regularly attending political meetings with literature, and comrades are urged to contact them at Head Office giving details of when they are able to sell literature at such meetings. The hackneyed phrase ‘Nothing succeeds like success' certainly applies to this aspect of Party activity. As the written word is our major form of propagating Socialism, all comrades can participate in distributing Socialist literature and so help the Party and themselves to bring about a greater understanding of our case by our  fellow workers.

Phyllis Howard

50 Years Ago: Australian Labourism (1961)

The 50 Years Ago column from the August 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Labour Prime Ministers and Labour leaders of Australia have been prominent in Great Britain of late owing to the Imperial Conference and the Coronation. . . .  All the enemies of Labour have gathered together to do honour to 'these men who have risen from the plough'. Amidst the eulogies of Asquith, Balfour and the rest of the holy capitalist family, they have toured the country urging the propertyless wage slaves to emigrate to the scene of 'Labour's triumphs', and so escape from the sufferings they encounter here.

#    #    #    #

The State ownership of such services as are already nationalised has been a mixed blessing to the toilers. New South Wales is the State of Labourism's greatest advance, yet the capital (Sydney), will be remembered as the centre of the great strike of State employed tramwaymen for ‘a living wage'. State ownership is the refuge of the business man being crushed by the trusts.

#    #    #    #

The taxation of Land Values is a prominent feature of the Labour programme. Its existence in the Commonwealth has led to it being boomed here, and in view of Australia being the pet example of the 'good' effect of land taxes, it would be well to show their real character and influence.

The great merit of land taxes is said to be the releasing of the land and bringing it within the means of the poor man. But the Labour Premier, Mr. Andrew Fisher, told a deputation from the London Chamber of Commerce that 'land sold at prices quite as high as, if not higher than, those realised before the tax was passed.' and the report (Manchester Guardian 14/6/11) goes on to say that 'he asserted that since the tax was passed Australian credit had been higher than for many years before.’

From the Socialist Standard, August 1911.

Obituary: Jack Law (1962)

Obituary from the August 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many members of the party will be shocked and grieved to hear of the sudden death, at the age of 67, of Thomas (Jack) Law, who was a member of Paddington Branch. During the First World War, Jack was with the Canadian Infantry in France. The shell-shock he suffered, and what he saw there, gave him some bitter food for thought. Jack became a Socialist and joined the party in 1934. He was a familiar figure thereafter at Hyde Park and elsewhere selling our literature and putting the Socialist case to everyone who came to hand. He was one of the stalwarts who built up the Paddington Branch. Many members remember with gratitude the encouragement he gave them when they first joined the Party, and with his help became able propagandists for Socialism.

He was deeply disgusted at the mass working class support for the Second World War; his experiences in the trenches had made him somewhat impatient of such ignorant acceptance of capitalism's bloodbaths. Jack dropped out of party activity after the war, although to the end he was a Socialist and made no bones about it.

He leaves a widow and two sons, one of whom is a member of Wembley Branch. To them we offer our sympathy.

Russo-Chinese Conundrum (1963)

From the August 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

The newspapers are full of articles on the row between Russia and China, all “explaining" with greater or less obscurity the motives of the contestants. Apart from W. N. Ewer, who wrote in the Daily Herald that neither Khrushchev nor Mao really cares a comma what Marx said, because the row is not about Marxist doctrine but power politics, almost all the writers have treated it as if the two Governments really are concerned with the “holy writ" of Marx. Lenin, etc.

They are all trying to solve the wrong puzzle, yet the real one is far more fascinating.

It was Marx who wrote that in considering revolutionary changes and conflicts you have to distinguish between the real causes and developments on the one hand, and the “ideological forms" in which the people concerned saw and expressed the conflicts on the other. So looking back at the French revolution you don’t have to believe that it was about “liberty, equality and fraternity": or that the Reformation was about Henry VIII’s divorces, the corruption in monasteries and points of theology.

All the Russian and Chinese leaders must presumably have read Marx, or at least Lenin, on the gulf between the slogans and ideologies and the economic realities, yet here they all are posturing and manoeuvring about the sacred texts like medieval theologians. The intriguing question is have they all got their tongues in their checks while they work on the credulity of their faithful flocks, or are they just a living example of the truth of what Marx wrote about past history?

Edgar Hardcastle

Letters to the Editors: Sex Roles (1982)

Letters to the Editors from the February 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sex Roles

Dear Editors

I would like to comment on “Who Will Do the Dirty Work?” (Socialist Standard, July 1981). To support your theory that people will do “dirty work" happily under socialism, you use the example that women "sweep and scrub the floors, dust and polish, do the washing and the washing up, change the nappies and worse . . .  for nothing" and that they do it better because it’s motivated by social need and not money. What rubbish! Women don’t do housework “most” of their time as the majority go out to work in low-paid, unskilled and unorganised jobs and then come home and do all these things while men put their feet up.

Your failure to question the sexual division of labour (in any of your few articles on women) is a result of textbook Marxism both Marx and Engels failed to question “women’s role". Housework is boring, degrading, tiring, isolating and unpaid, considered to be only “women's work". The fact that those who can employ domestics (usually women) and that “wages for housework” is an increasingly popular demand, shows that women don’t do housework because they’re motivated by “social need” but because they have no choice in the matter.

There will still be work in socialism, and unless the sexual division of labour is questioned now women will be relegated to the mothreing/servicing roles in society, which plays a large part in their inferior status (even Marx and Engels recognised that). I was very surprised that a woman wrote this article (perhaps she doesn’t mind making the tea, washing up and typing at your meetings). Using unpaid housework as an example to back up your argument makes your case for socialism less than convincing, especially to women who otherwise are probably sympathetic to socialist ideas.

Ms. Y. Howard

London NW4

Reply:
The article referred to by Ms Howard was not about the problems of women in capitalism but about the nature of work and people’s attitudes towards it. It implied neither approval nor disapproval of housework in itself. The point it made was that in socialism the conditions that make work of any kind a chore rather than a source of satisfaction would disappear.

The reason why housework was mentioned was that it seemed an appropriate example of something that most people regard as “dirty work” but that isn’t done for money. This showed that money was not the only motivation that will get people to do “dirty work" and that people will do it for “social need". Ms Howard disagrees and says that “women have no choice” about doing housework. We find this an overstatement. There is certainly a good deal of social pressure on women to engage in housework, but there is no absolute compulsion — any more than there is an absolute compulsion to be a conformist politically. It may be easier or more comfortable to conform, but this does not amount to there being no choice in the matter.

We feel too that Ms Howard seriously underestimates the number of women who actually choose to spend time and energy making their house look as attractive as possible, either because — rightly or wrongly — they feel it to be necessary for their family’s sake (“social need") or simply because they get satisfaction from it. Whether one approves of or looks down on this kind of satisfaction is beside the point. The fact is that they are willingly doing what most people consider to be “dirty work" without getting a wage for it.

The answer to Ms Howard’s view that “the sexual division of labour must be questioned now” is that it already is being questioned — by capitalism. Evidence of this is the increasing access women now have to occupations traditionally reserved for men. This is because capitalism needs to make the most profitable use of the human energies available. To push for something like "equality of job opportunity for women" within capitalism might indeed make women less bound to “mothering- servicing roles”, but only to the extent to which it suited the profit-making capacity of the system. And it would do nothing, absolutely nothing, to make people question why they have to hire themselves out for wages in the first place. It is only when people no longer have to work for a wage that they will truly be able to do the work they want to do. Nobody will be relegated to a particular kind of activity, because everyone will be free to choose. Nor will any kind of work bear any kind of stigma, so that — who knows? — the “mothering-servicing roles” might well become very popular among both men and women!

Editors

Passing Points

Dear Editors,

I subscribe monthly to your Socialist Standard. Frankly, I am very impressed by the honest “grass-roots” approach which you take towards such subjects as world nuclear disarmament, for example. However, there are a few passing points which I would like to be answered:

(a) In the light of your stance on War in general (Socialist Standard, February 1981 — "Refuse to be Sitting Targets”), how are pacifists wishing the foundation of a true socialist society going to overthrow hundreds of powerful capitalists in the world (who will definitely use the force of arms to protect their privileges) without the use of weaponry?

(b) How will unarmed socialists persuade “militia workers” — soldiers world-wide, and a potent force in themselves — to disarm and thus surrender their “livelihood”?

(c) Could you please in your reply put forward the SPGB’s argument against administration: i.e, without a representative administration, how will society be run smoothly and efficiently?

(d) How will socialists persuade workers brought up under the monetary system to accept the transition from the gold standard to a “new system of social organisation in which the means of production and distribution of wealth . . .  are commonly owned and democratically controlled . . ."  by all members of society?

Having said all this however, I thoroughly enjoy and approve of your journal: so, fellow socialists. carry on the campaign — there are not many of us in evidence.

Iain Campbell, 

Wester-Ross, 

Scotland. 

Reply:
(a) and (b) The Socialist Party of Great Britain is not a pacifist organisation. The reason we are opposed to violence as a means of establishing socialism is that we see no necessity for it. When the majority of workers want it, they will be able to use the already existing — machinery the vote — to bring it into being. And when that happens, what will "hundreds of powerful capitalists" be able to do against the conscious, collective action of millions of workers? The power of the capitalists comes from their political control and will exist no more once this control is taken over by a democratic majority of informed, convinced socialists. Nor is it easy to imagine members of the armed forces — who are also workers and would also be socialists — turning their arms against friends, relatives and fellow workers to defend a system the majority no longer wanted. Would they not rather surrender a futile, negative livelihood like soldiering for a life of voluntary cooperative work that will give them personal satisfaction and a sense of social purpose?

(c) The SPGB has no opposition to administration as such. We wonder what gave you this impression. Socialism will certainly need many and efficient administrators. Perhaps you are thinking of our opposition to political administrations, to governments. These are expressions of class division in society and will disappear in socialism. Government over people will be replaced by administration of things. Regarding “representative administration”, a socialist society will obviously have to delegate certain important organisational tasks to administrators; but they will have no special power or prestige over the rest of the community. They will just be carrying out socially necessary work and there is no reason to suppose that, if they have chosen this kind of work (all work will be voluntary), they will not carry it out smoothly and efficiently.

(d) We cannot hope that our efforts alone will be enough to make socialists of the millions of workers who have been conditioned by capitalism into thinking that the buying and selling system is necessary and eternal. Our argument is that from within capitalism itself come the forces (the SPGB is one of them) to convince workers that the present system, despite its immense productive power and continued raising of expectations, cannot solve the problems it produces and cannot operate in the interests of the working class. There is of course no absolute guarantee that this will happen but certain long-term trends make it increasingly likely. Capitalism, for its own needs, has already had to provide the premises for socialism — a large, organised, highly trained working class driven by its conditions to constantly look for alternatives; rapid worldwide communications and spreading of ideas; the possibility of a vast abundance of goods sufficient to satisfy all human needs; recurrent social problems which even under capitalism can often only be approached on a world scale (pollution, nuclear threat, terrorism, for example) and which thereby spread among workers a consciousness of the need for global solutions.

Editors

Ground Level

Dear Editors,

After reading your journals. I do not understand why you don’t “get stuck in" on the ground level, rather than stay aloof and say "it’s all because of capitalism". A point of view I cannot sec the "man in the street" understanding. I also think that due to this viewpoint you will lose votes to the Communist Party who will cash in by going out to the people, producing changes in the capitalist system and gradually working towards their goal. As I see your party, you are not gradualists, but expect people to take a complete change to socialism straight from capitalism. Rather than working for the people at ground level, leading to election and then the change. That’s my view anyway; but I’m only a dumb schoolboy!

R. Pullan 

Reading

Reply:

You are correct in seeing that we want a complete change of society. However we can’t agree that we aren’t getting "stuck in on the ground level". All our activity is “ground-level" stuff—organising and addressing meetings, producing literature for people to read, distributing our leaflets, pamphlets and journals (often in the streets and pubs), putting our point of view to friends and workmates whenever possible. But perhaps by "ground-level" work you mean campaigning for immediate reforms and, if so, we must confess to non-involvement in this kind of activity. Unlike the Communist Party which you mention, and other left-wing organisations, we don’t try to get people on our side by dangling reforms in front of them. We’ve seen from experience that reforms never help workers as much as may at first seem likely and we’ve seen above all that the changes reforms produce in the system don’t point towards socialism. They don’t help people to work, gradually or otherwise, towards the goal of a society of common ownership and democratic control. What they tend to do rather is to divert people from this goal by consuming all available energies and to push socialism further into the future. It’s probably true that if we promised reforms we’d get more immediate support, but we’d be getting it on false pretences and defeating the object for which our organisation exists.

You seem to think that this object is too difficult for the "man in the street" to understand. Yet we, the members of the SPGB, are perfectly ordinary men and women and we’ve understood, and you, a "dumb schoolboy” as you describe yourself, seem to have got the message loud and clear. The fact of the matter is that you’re not “dumb”. Neither is the “man in the street". We’re just all part of a system whose effect is to give people the idea from an early age that they’re incapable of organising the world themselves and of understanding how things work and that they need superior beings called leaders to do their organising and thinking for them. Don’t be conned. The working class is perfectly capable of organising society (it does it already from top to bottom but not in its own interests) and of understanding the socialist case against capitalism. When it shakes itself out of the torpor and feeling of powerlessness that capitalism visits on it, it won’t be interested in “gradual reforms" or “changes in the capitalist system”. It will want the whole loaf—socialism. And it will take it. If you understand our case and agree with it, you should join us and help hasten the day.

Editors.

Automation

Dear Editors.

I subscribe to the Socialist Standard and like you, consider that Marx’s labour theory of value provides the explanation for the origin of surplus value in general and profit in particular. However, I should be grateful if you were to clarify how automated production is accounted for by the labour theory of value. Do you think that the share of surplus value would be determined by the capital invested, notwithstanding the absence of humans from the productive process?

P. S. Maloney

London N13

Reply:

Humans can never be absent from the productive process. They must always come in somewhere. If we take as an example the making of a car, even if this object can be built by robots from top to bottom, the robots themselves have to be conceived, built and maintained by humans. And even if these robots can be built and maintained by other robots, somewhere back at the end of this kind of chain human energies are necessary to think out the production process and to fashion the raw materials needed to build the original robots. As it is the socially necessary labour time spent in doing this that determines the value of the finished car, the labour theory of value still holds good.

It is tempting to think that automation necessarily means the use of less labour power overall. But what it really means is a shift from the need for unskilled manual energies to an increased demand for more skilled workers to design and think out the increasingly sophisticated methods of production that capitalists have to develop to be able to produce cheaply in competition with their rivals. This is the pattern we have seen and are continuing to see in all the advanced industrial countries.

Editors.

Election

Dear Editors,

In article 6 of your Declaration of Principles you declare that the working class must organise for the conquest of the powers of national and local government. Would you please elucidate as to the nature of the programme that you would embark upon if a member of your party were to be elected. As you have put up a candidate for Islington South and Finsbury, I can only assume that as a contingency you have defined a programme of aims.

I believe that the wording of article 8 is too ambitious. 1 refer to one specific word really: banner. As I understand, it, your party refutes any suggestion that it should have a banner as such, so surely the presence of this word in article 8 causes confusion and invites unnecessary criticism.

Stephen Shields, 

Glasgow

Reply:

The need to gain democratic control of the state machine is based on the realisation that if the governmental powers are not conquered by the socialist majority they will likely be used against us. When a majority of socialist delegates are elected by class-conscious workers to the assemblies of local and national government throughout the world they will have only one act to perform: the abolition of all property rights and the transfer of the means of wealth production and distribution into the hands of the whole community. Socialist candidates stand in election for that revolutionary purpose and none other.

If an individual socialist councillor or MP is elected on the basis of socially conscious working class votes, he or she will do everything possible to further the interests of the working class as a whole. The state forum will be used to expound clear socialist ideas and all legislative proposals will be responded to from the angle of the working class interest. Socialist delegates will be accountable to the Party membership. 

As for the reference to mustering under our banner, we doubt very much that this is a significant reason why workers arc not joining the SPGB. The term is clearly metaphorical, as are many other phrases in the Declaration of Principles. If Stephen Shields attends any of the meetings of his local branch he will meet with political clarification, but no banners.

Editors.

Disarmament

Dear Editors,

You rightly said on page 154 of your August issue that "We insist that the mess that is human society today can be changed if we all decide to change it”. This attitude should be applied by yourselves to the question of disarmament. Your journal has criticised the peace movement, saying that disarmament and peace are impossible whilst we have capitalism and that such movements divert workers from the task of fighting capitalism. The mental revolution in the way men and women see the world, which you mention as a prerequisite of political change is unlikely to happen overnight; socialist education is necessary and this may take time. Meanwhile disarmament must not be ignored. The world may be destroyed if we allow the arms race to continue. Socialists should not take an attitude of "the beginning of the world is nigh" and sit back waiting for socialism. The world will not change for the better unless people decide to change it. Neither should we, whilst attempting to create and mobilise support for change, ignore such a pressing concern as nuclear annihilation. Just as socialism can replace capitalism if people decide to act, so can peace replace the arms race if enough people actively support it. The peace movement is trying to build up this support.

Sharon McDermott,

 Sheffield

Reply:

The SPGB does not anticipate an overnight revolution because socialist consciousness, unlike reformist moralising, is not best developed in the dark. We agree with you that “socialist education is necessary", but we do not think that it is best to educate workers about the alternative to capitalism by feeding them with illusions about how it can be made safe and peaceful. We agree that the revolution in consciousness "may take time", but we do not imagine that it will take any less time if workers who agree with us refuse to join with us because they think that the rest of the working class cannot understand our case.

The SPGB has never urged workers to "sit back and wait for socialism”. Those who merely wait for socialism, and occupy themselves in the meantime with illusory and futile “short-term measures", are the ones who are perpetuating the cause of a potential nuclear holocaust.

We would like Ms McDermott to explain to us precisely how politically uneducated, non-socialist workers are going to be able to stop the threat of nuclear annihilation within capitalism. Until she does, she will find it difficult to convince us that we are the ones who are wasting our time.

Editors

Letters from M. Brown and G. Nesbitt will be published next month.

Greasy Pole: So that's it then (1997)

The Greasy Pole Column from the May 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

After the long campaign, the speeches, the manifestos and the voting we are under a new government. All over the country millions of people emerged from the polling stations on 1 May convinced that they had done something significant-like exercising their democratic rights, like deciding on how Britain will be run for the next few years, like choosing between two different policies about the best way of making us happier, freer, more prosperous . . .

Then it was back to business—business as usual, which was not surprising because all those eager, self-satisfied voters were actually taking part in a political charade, contributing to their own repression and exploitation. After the election nothing, except in the most trivial and insignificant way. will change. The problems which the big parties claimed to have solutions for, set out in their election programmes, will go on and on. If they are pressed, the politicians will explain their failure to keep their promises by reference to events outside their control—the perfidy of foreign governments, the obstinate greed of British workers, even perhaps some natural disaster.

Consider, for example, John Major's startling discovery that there are people in Britain who are underprivileged and who don't seem to be getting their share of all that wonderful prosperity which the Tory government swamped us in. This was a rerun of his "Brixton boy" theme—the honest lad from a simple background who understands, and agonises over, the plight of the more impoverished in society. It was all very well Major showing his sympathy in this way but this does not answer the point about what the Conservative Party has been doing since they came in in 1979, on the assurance that they could pretty well wipe out such problems. It doesn't tell us anything about what happened to Major’s talk, when he became Prime Minister over six years ago, about managing a kinder society, a country at ease with itself.

Dinosaurs
In 1979 the Tories told us that it only needed a few adjustments to society—like making the unions impotent, like privatising the railways, the mines and the rest, like denying state subsidies to ailing industries—to establish the kind of briskly efficient capitalism which would benefit us all. They had no reservations about this then: why should they have them now? And how much longer should we wait for them to get things right?

These questions can be answered partly by considering how the Labour Party have also made some discoveries. Not so long ago life for a Labour supporter was a lot simpler. On the one hand there was the Tory Party and the damage being done to the working class while they were in power. On the other hand there was the Labour Party; obviously their job was to undo the damage by following policies different from those of the Tories.

It was, as we say, simple except the Labour Party too made some discoveries and foremost among them was that the safest way to bid for power was to become as much like the Conservatives as possible. Of course this might upset a few stubborn dinosaurs in the party but they must either understand the necessity for the discoveries or join some other mob like Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party. If the dinosaurs got too restless and could not be extinguished there was always the option of the party making what is politely called a fudge.

One who once seemed to be a dinosaur is David Blunkett who, in the days when he roamed in Labour's primeval swamps, became famous as the leader of Sheffield City council who cut the local bus fares. In those days he was a hero of Labour's left—a man who was staunch in his principles—so there was rejoicing in the City of Steel when he got into parliament and moved steadily upwards through the ranks of shadow ministers.

Declarations
He seemed to be ideally suited, in left-wing Labour terms, for the part of Shadow Education Secretary because he left school without so much as an ‘O’ level and worked as a clerk at the Gas Board until, he took evening and day release classes and then went to university to study politics. So when he declared, to Labour's 1995 conference, his stolid faith in non-selective schooling he brought the house down:

   ". . .  watch my lips. No selection either by examination or interview under a Labour government."

But alas poor Blunkett, who had to discover that such dramatic declarations might not go down so well with voters in some key constituencies as with a bunch of disconnected Labour activists. Labour's manifesto put a different, more seductive line, saying they “ . . . will never force the abolition of good schools" (even if "good" means selective?) and that any changes in the admission policies of grammar schools (which are selective) will be decided by local parents.

If Labour—and Conservative—activists were embarrassed by this sort of thing how did they survive, with the knowledge that their parties were so close in their policies that at times the wording was almost identical like:

• We will raise spending on the NHS in real terms every year (Labour).
• We will, year by year, increase the real resources committed to the NHS (Tory).
• We must crack down on dishonesty in the benefit system (Labour).
• We will crack down on benefit cheats (Tory).

Labour suggested "parental responsibility orders" for the parents of young offenders: the Tories promised a "parental control order" to do roughly the same thing. Labour's "long-term objective” is "high and stable levels of employment": the Tories’ "priority is to create jobs”. Finally, Labour thinks "the British people are a great people” and the Tories say "Britain is admired the world over”.

Well they would say that wouldn’t they? They are hardly likely to conclude, looking at the sickness, the alienation, the homeless, the crime which characterises capitalism in this country, that the British people are anything but great and universally admired.They wouldn't say that because they rely on those same people to vote for them, ignoring all the evidence about their impotence covered by their cynical chicanery and ask again and again for the same again.

And that's what we have got.

Business as usual.

Ivan

Lyndoe on Marx (1959)

From the June 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

A reader asks us to comment on an article from the pen of one Edward Lyndoe who is by profession an "astrologist."

In the November 1958 number of Prediction this writer has turned his attention to the "Chart of—Karl Marx." His article tells us nothing about Marx personally, and less than nothing about his ideas—which are what have made him so notorious, but concentrates entirely on trying to show that Marx's actions, in his practical everyday life, were the results of his "chart" or horoscope. In doing this, Mr. Lyndoe shows his utter ignorance of Marxism, but reveals unintentionally, quite a lot about the methods of fortune-tellers, crystal gazers and palm-readers who profess to reveal the future, for a suitable fee.

As Karl Marx died in 1883 the only thing Mr. Lyndoe can do in his case, is to try to show that Marx's astrological chart, that is the relative positions of the planets on his birth day, would confirm what Mr. Lyndoe puts forward as Marx's biography and "explain" his actions. His main contention is that Marx was a hypocritical old fraud who, in fact, had no "sympathy with humanitarian ideals," whose "poverty" in London was "largely a sham," and that when Marx became a revolutionary he was only "acting on the stage."

To make his otherwise very dull and boring article a bit more tasty, Mr. Lyndoe has thrown in, as a titbit, a further allegation, culled from the pages of the Vienna gutter press, that Herr Raab the Austrian Chancellor took with him to Moscow last year a recently discovered letter from the files of the Secret Police, purporting to have been sent to Frankfort Political Police by Karl Marx reporting on Austrian and German political exiles in London. He further alleges that Marx was actually living in London on £5 monthly paid to him by the secret police. During his life-time, on more than one occasion, Marx showed himself well able to deal with this sort of pin-prick when resorted to by those he crushed in controversy.

Regarding the alleged letter in the Vienna files, we should require more proof than the statement of Mr. Lyndoe. So far as the established facts of Marx's London exile are concerned, they are on record in the numerous biographies and biographical sketches. Let any reader in doubt consult Mehring's Karl Marx or the sketches by Liebknecht and Lafargue.

That Marx lived in the direst poverty, prior to Engels retirement, is so well known that we apologise to readers for repeating it. As a typical example, here is an extract from the Diary of Frau Marx, showing the suffering and hardship the Marx family underwent in London.

   "At Easter 1852 our poor little Franziska fell ill with severe bronchitis. For three days the poor child struggled against death and suffered much. Her small lifeless body rested in our little back room whilst we all went together into the front room and when night came we made up beds on the floor. The three surviving children lay with us and we cried for the poor little angel who now rested so cold and lifeless in the next room. The poor child's death took place in a period of bitterest poverty."
(Karl Marx by F. Mehring. Allen and Unwin page 217.)

In actual fact, he lost three children through infant starvation. At one period the body of his baby son lay on the table in a wooden box while his father strove frantically to find the small sum necessary for his burial. In fact, tragic though they were at the time, episodes such as the occasion when Marx found himself at Bow Street for trying to pawn his wife's valuable silver are now regarded humourously.

This, as Socialists, is not our main concern. What Mr. Lyndoe is completely ignorant of, and what he must do, to write about Marx for intelligent people is get some idea of what it was that Marx was advocating. Significant for the ideas of Marx is not that he was born in the conjunction of Uranus— Neptune, but in the early stages of a new kind of social order—Capitalism.

Incidentally Mr. Lyndoe cannot have it both ways. If the actions of individuals are not their own, but predestined by their "charts" or "stars," what is Mr. Lyndoe complaining about —fraud, hypocrite, spy or not, Marx was merely fulfilling his destiny—he couldn't have been anything else. But the critic makes these actions the grounds for moral strictures and homilies. He complains that "Marxian Communism is the religion which not only glorifies the ends regardless of the means, but glorifies the means themselves. We should not be too sanctimonious about some of the methods used in our part of the globe—but, at least we do not feel disposed to trumpet them abroad as a new morality." What all this has to do with Marx and his stars nobody will ever know!

Here, dear Mr. Lyndoe, are the important facts. A German philosopher, turned journalist, found himself unable to answer some of the questions his readers were asking about social conditions in the Rhineland in 1843. He resigned and resolved to study to try to clarify the position. This job of studying the social position eventually became a life-work, and led him through many strange unexpected paths making him many enemies, and not a few friends.

Now unlike Mr. Lyndoe, we would not hold that Marx or anyone else is a pawn in the hands (or beams) of Uranus. Within "well defined limits a certain amount of choice was his. He could either publicly renounce the inevitable logical conclusions of his researches and findings, or boldly proclaim his adherence to them. Marx unravelled the law of social development, he explained the rise of the new ruling class and saw within Capitalism the seeds of yet another form, Socialism.

In the Communist Manifesto he wrote explicitly of various class spokesmen and representatives and the fact that some individuals, though not born in the ranks of the oppressed and exploited, take their place among them.

  "Just as in former days part of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie—so now part of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariate. Especially does this happen in the case of some of the bourgeois ideologists, who have achieved a theoretical understanding of the historical movement as a whole." (Communist Manifesto. Page 38. Ryazanov edition.)

This "understanding of the historical movement as a whole" is a closed book to Lyndoe. So far as workers are concerned it is vital— it is their destiny as a class which is at stake. The action to deal with their problems will be taken by themselves, with the help of Marx's ideas.

So far as Marx's personal character and actions come into it at all, it only remains to add that Socialism was probably particularly fortunate to stumble across a man of Marx's mental and personal integrity. Whatever the consequences—whatever the outcome of his conclusions—he stood by them. They could not have been more unpopular with capitalists, those of wealth and power, who saw to it that if they couldn't physically maltreat and victimise him—at least they could take it out of his wife and children—which they did. Once he had signed the Communist Manifesto the author of the slogan "Workers of all lands! Unite" could not get a job as a Railway Clerk, degree or not!

Karl Marx, of course, is not the only instance of someone of genius whose explosive ideas have incurred the wrath of the powers that be—Bruno burnt at the stake, Galileo tortured on the rack, Hypatia cut to death with sharp shells.

Others like Lyell and Darwin have also been the target for vituperation though not physical outrage. In our own day there are those to whom Professor Pauling and Bertrand Russell are anathema because they do not support some suicidal war policy.

Even the Archbishop of Canterbury can admit that the Earth is millions, not thousands of years old—that life has evolved and was not "created." But no capitalist can tolerate the idea that capitalism is obsolete and superfluous— that it thrives on exploitation—that its days (and his days) are doomed, that a superior and inevitable alternative, Socialism, is on the way.

All these things Marx proved. The best estimate of his personal character, was that of the man best qualified to make it—Frederick Engels, who at his graveside said "Marx was, above all, a revolutionary. The battle was his element."

Horatio

Before you vote — what we ask you to consider (1997)

From the April 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Of all the concessions from capitalism that workers have fought for and won over the years the right to vote is potentially the most important. But simply being able to vote isn’t enough, it’s what we do with it that really counts.

We are told that we live in a democracy. In 1914 and 1939 we were told that that democracy was threatened and that it was necessary for working class people from this country to take up arms against workers from other countries to preserve our freedom and our democratic way of life. In between, of course, there have been numerous other lesser occasions when the people who run the country told us it was in our interests to go out and kill workers from some other place. So we are free people enjoying a democratic way of life that ensures freedom for all?

Does this mean that the parent(s) of the nearly four million children enduring life on Income Support are simply exercising their democratic right to see their children forced to live mean, pinched lives?

Are the unemployed just not interested in availing of their democratic right to take up the available jobs that will offer them the financial ability to lead meaningful and fulfilling lives? Are the homeless and the slum dwellers not interested in their democratic right, their freedom, to live in decent homes?

Are the 60% of the population of Britain reflected in recent opinion polls who think the world their children will have to live in will be even worse than at present, intent on using their freedom and their democratic right to fabricate such a world for their children?

These are really silly questions. Obviously the impoverished, the unemployed, the homeless, and the millions of workers performing degrading and low-paid work along with the millions of elderly people and the sick and infirm, in fact all whose lives are demeaned because of denial or the frustration of their reasonable expectations would prefer things to be different.

If our vaunted democracy is an effective instrument for the solution of our problems then those we cited, the people whose lives are blighted by one or more aspects of poverty, can rejoice that following the 1st of May of this year, at latest, their problems are over! Surely no one who has the the right and the democratic means to abolish the conditions which restrict and degrade them, which distracts in every possible way from their full enjoyment of life, will deliberately vote for the continuation of their misery!

Unfortunately, what is called freedom and democracy in the present form of society does not empower the overwhelming majority of people to resolve their poverty problems. The freedom and democracy that men and women killed and died for has always been an illusion conjured up by the political agents of capitalism and the hired hacks of the media. The fact is that our democratic rights’ are largely limited to our right to vote in elections.

Potentially this is an invaluable right and one that is denied to people is some countries. However, while we have this most important democratic right we are at present just as impotent when it comes to resolving our social problems as are workers in countries that do not enjoy our 'democratic rights’.

The freedom to vote of itself is not democracy; real democracy includes the right of every human being to the material basis of a full and happy life. What we currently have is only part of the democratic equation but it is vital insofar as we can use it to complete that equation.

What you are being offered

Let us put the question directly to you, the reader: assuming that like most people your life is restricted by one or more social problems — which are essentially poverty problems originating in your position as a member of the working class — do you really believe that you can change your condition by voting for any of the three parties that, realistically, have any chance of wielding political influence in the next parliament?

If you think so then you have not been listening to the politicians. Tories, New Labour and Liberal Democrats are in agreement with regard to what is needed to tackle the grim social problems facing Britain today: more investment in the public services. This, of course, is an oversimplification but it is true that in capitalist society money is the essential mechanism for movement. The source of public funding is, of course, taxation which, however it is presented, is ultimately a charge on capital and in today’s world of multi-national capitalism high taxation can result in job losses and the need for even more money to be paid out to increased numbers of unemployed.

With the exception of the Lib-Dems, whose poor electoral fortunes can allow them to be extravagant to the tune of an extra penny in the pound on income tax, specifically designed to improve the educational quality of ‘British’ wage-slaves, both New Labour and the Tories claim that it is not their intention to impose tax increases on a loot-satiated British capitalism. The intention of the three main political parties is to encourage investment in jobs primarily as the means of lowering public costs by reducing the bill for unemployment benefit and increasing workers’ national insurance contributions to the Exchequer.

The down-side of such a policy is that it is being universally pursued throughout all the nations of world capitalism, indeed, the viciously competitive ‘job creation’ market now requires the expenditure of vast sums of public money (which off-sets economies elsewhere in the system). More relevant to the working class is the fact that wage labour is a commodity and, like any other component of the profit system, is most attractive when it is cheap!

World conditions

Government ministers, like Major and his cabinet colleagues today, are quick to accept credit for perceived economic improvements. The implications of this claim, which is never questioned by the media ‘experts’, is that governments can exercise control over economic affairs — which, of course is the basis of a political party’s claim on the voter.

But if governments can control the economy, if they can effect improvement, then, conversely, they must be accountable for the endless economic problems that bedevil capitalism! But when capitalism is in crisis, when poverty is aggravated by mass unemployment and its chain reaction throughout the economy, governments of all political hues are quick to disclaim responsibility and argue that the problems arise from ‘world conditions’!

Effectively, then, when you vote for a political party that accepts capitalism you are placing your trust in capitalism which, in turn, means that your hopes for the future are dependent on the vicissitudes of a system of economic anarchy that is patently outside the control even of the capitalist class.

The bad news is that, with the exception of the Socialist Party who are running candidates only in five constituencies, every other party contesting the forthcoming elections stand for capitalism. The almost identical policies of New Labour and the Tories is a reflection of the fact that, while New Labour ar favourites, either may have to face up to the reality of government within the restraints of capitalism. Among the others are a selection of ‘socialists’, from the various Trotskyist factions to Scargill’s re-incarnation of the Labour Party. None of these latter parties or organisations will offer a real alternative to capitalism ; what they will present are various re-hashes of the old, failed reformist policies which take no account whatsoever of the realities of the present economic system.

For the present, our role in the elections is that of making more people aware that there is an alternative to capitalism; aware that they can use the limited democracy available to bring about a democratic revolution that will sweep away capitalism and introduce a system in which the resources of society will be owned in common and used solely to provide the goods and services that people require.

That is what we mean by Socialism: the institution of a society that will not be inhibited by the stupendous waste associated with the extraction of profit for a few from the productive and distributive process. The concept of cost will be a thing of the past and the idea that people should endure poverty in any shape or form simply to ensure that a relatively small minority of parasites can amass wealth far beyond what they could consume in a hundred lifetimes, will become an incredulous legend.

Socialism requires thinking about; it is a pre-eminently logical approach to the organisation of our affairs. But from within the madhouse of capitalism, where it is reasonable for people to starve to death while food is destroyed to preserve prices and profits, the idea of the world's resources being used in the service of humanity as a whole may, initially, be hard to comprehend.

The impending election does offer us real choice we can, by voting for any of the parties that favour capitalism, continue to endorse the lunacy of a system that demeans and degrades most people or we can consider if Socialism offers a credible alternative. If you have had enough of capitalism, if you want a change to real democracy, then you must join us to ensure that next time you have a democratic choice.

Richard Montague

The Acid Test of History (1930)

From the January 1930 issue of The Socialist

The old adage, “The course of true love ne’er runs smooth," may be well applied to the course of the “History of the Communist Movement in America." We are prompted to this conclusion after attending a lecture on the above subject, given by the National Secretary of the Proletarian Party on. Nov. 30, 1929. We heard a lengthy discourse dealing with the formation of the Communist Party of America, and the various intrigues on the part of different groups in their efforts to gain control of that organination. Of small interest to us is the claim made by the Proletarian Party to being the "real communist movement" in America. Seeing that they receive no recognition from the Third International, we cannot see how they substantiate this. Of more importance to us is their claim to being a Marxian organization equipped with an almost complete monopoly of Marxism. It is on this point that we base our criticism.

We have endeavored to obtain a definite program or declaration of principles by them but have failed to find anything of the sort in their official organ, “The Proletarian.” We are therefore compelled to look mainly to the verbal utterances of their speakers. The nearest we can arrive at anything resembling a program is a series of statements made by their National Secretary at the afore' mentioned lecture. He pointed out that the Proletarian Party stands for “Dictatorship of the Proletariat," the setting up by armed insurrection of some sort of “Workers’ Government;" also that they “realize the limitations of Parliamentary action." Being anxious to know, we questioned their speaker as to what these limitations consisted of. In reply, he premised an imaginary condition that a substantial majority of the working class having become conscious of the need for taking over the means of wealth production, and establishing Socialism, express their desires by the vote, and are met with resistance by the capitalist class in the form of military force. Therefore the workers will be compelled to organize a counter military force to enforce their desires. For proof of this their speaker asserted that the Army and Navy are officered by bourgeois and therefore would be used by the capitalist class against the working class.

Had our ultra-Marxists of the Proletarian Party an understanding of the basic principle of Socialism, the Materialistic Conception of History, as they claim to have, they would realize that, the economic conditions of capitalism having evolved to a point at which a substantial majority of the working class have reached an understanding of Socialism, the Army and Navy forces would also be imbued with the same ideology as the civil population, since the immense majority of those forces including the officers are members of the working class. They would be poor material for the capitalists to rely upon to prevent the intelligent working class from asserting its will. However, the working class has not as yet voted for Socialism; until it does we cannot formulate any utopian detailed plans for dealing with an imaginary condition in the future.

We were further told that the Communist Party in Russia is carrying toward completion, and in the same spirit, the movement begun by the Paris Commune in 1871. Both the Communist Party of America and the Proletarian Party in making this claim are either ignorant of the conditions obtaining in Paris during the few short months of the Commune, or they are deliberately distorting the facts concerning conditions existing in Soviet Russia which is a resort to the old time method of all political forces of reaction.

As far back as 1920 we find this quotation in an article, “The Dictatorship of the Proletariat," by N. Bucharin, published in the “Workers Dreadnought" (April 12, 1920).

   “Nevertheless we do not for a moment deny that our apparatus is rigidly centralized; that our policy towards the bourgeoisie and towards the parties of the compromising Socialists is repressive in character; that the organization of our own party, as a ruling party which exercises a dictatorship through the Soviets, is of a 'Militarist type.’ “

This is a direct negation of the claim made by the official and unofficial communists of America, that the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat" in Russia represents control by the masses. It is the position maintained by the Blanquists prior to the Paris Commune, and which they were compelled to abandon and act directly contrary to, during the tenure of the Commune. In the introduction to the “The Civil War in France,” (S. L. P. ed.) Engels points out that:

   “The members of the Commune were divided into a majority of Blanquists, who had also predominated in the central committee of the National Guard, and a minority, which consisted for the most part of members of the International Working Men‘s Association, who were adherents of the Proudhonian school of Socialism."

Engels then goes on to show how both the Blanquists and Proudhonists did the very reverse of which their schools advocated, thus:

  "The Blanquists fared no better. Brought up in the school of conspiracy, held together by the rigid discipline essential to it, they started from the conception that a comparatively small number of resolute, well organized men would be able not only to grasp the helm of State at a favorable moment, but also, through the display of great energy, and reckless daring, to hold it as long as required, that is, until they had succeeded in carrying the masses of the people into the revolutionary current and ranging them around the small leading band. To accomplish this, what was necessary, above all else, was the most stringent, dictatorial centralization of all powers in the hands of the new revolutionary government. And what did the Commune do, which in the majority consisted of these very Blanquists? In all its proclamations to the French people in the provinces, it called upon them for a free federation of all French communes with Paris for a national organization, which for the first time was to be the real creation of the nation. The army, the political police, the bureaucracy, all those agencies of oppression in a centralized government, which Napoleon had created in 1798, and which since then every new government had gladly used and kept up as ready weapons against its enemies, were to be abolished everywhere, as they had been abolished in Paris.”

To compare the above condition existing during the Paris Commune, to that existing in Russia, one would have to be a wish thinker like the members of the official Communist Party of America and the unofficial “real" communists of the Proletarian Party. The Red Army has not been abolished, neither has the bureaucracy nor the political police. Witness the rise of the Opposition groups and the wholesale expulsion and exile of many of those prominent early in the Russian Revolution. Is this analogous to the Paris Commune?

Again let us look at Paris during the Commune, to see the attitude of the Communards towards parliamentary action and the value of the vote. According to Engels the Commune "filled all positions of administration, justice, and instruction, through election by universal suffrage, the elected being at all times subject to recall by their constituents" (op. cit.), a system which our “communist" friends would mistake for bourgeois democracy. Engels' concept of the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” is also expressed in the conclusion to the same work, page 20, “ . . . look at the Paris Commune. That was the dictatorship of the proletariat.” The conditions existing in Russia bear little resemblance to those obtaining in Paris during the Commune. Neither, for that matter, do they resemble the conditions in America, England or any other developed capitalist countries. In Russia, where primitive peasant agriculture prevails, the institution of Socialism is at present an impossibility, because there is lacking the highly developed productive forces and the enlightened proletarian majority, both of which axe necessary for that purpose. Where matured capitalism exists and where the workers are therefore the majority of the population, they can achieve their emancipation as soon as they understand what Socialism is and desire it, and they will effect this by the simplest, and in fact, the only means available—the democratic conquest of the political forces of society—at present used for their subjection.

“He who tells the people revolutionary legends, he who amuses them with sensational stories, is as criminal as the geographer who would draw up false charts for navigators.” (Lissagaray, preface to History of the Commune.) 

Alf.

Socialist Educational Society

50 Years Ago: The Impossibility of Social Harmony under Capitalism (1965)

The 50 Years Ago column from the August 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Nothing can prevent a war throughout Western civilisation between the possessors and the dispossessed—nothing except the dominance in the mass of individuals, or at least in the leaders of both classes, of intelligence and of the ideals of peace and brotherhood . . .  If the governing class will keep in touch with all classes; if those in authority in law, in industry, in education, in religion will seek for the public good: if all classes will seek to keep open the means of understanding and sympathy with all other classes, there will be no more need of revolution as n means of social progress than there is of children’s diseases in individual development”.

(From The Social Problem by C. A. Ellwood.)

Neither in the working class nor in the ruling class can the soulful humanitarian ideals upon which he relies become dominant. Our social circumstances destroy them. Present economic conditions sow hate, not love. Figs cannot grow on thistles. If it were necessary to wait for a complete moral regeneration of the working class; if the mass had first to overflow with love and charity for our oppressors, our case as well as the Professor's would be utterly hopeless. Fortunately, it is not so. Economic development is with us. On it our essential case rests. The propaganda of revolutionary Socialism is a direct effect of present social conditions. Capitalist conditions indelibly stamp the ruling class with the selfish, cruel and hypercritical qualities of the exploiter: and we know what a little part sentiment plays in the struggle.

(From a review of Professor Ellwood's book in the Socialist Standard, August. 1915.)

Old myths refurbished (1966)

Book Review from the August 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Incomes Policy, Legislation and Shop Stewards by T. Cliff and C. Barker (introduction by Reg. Birch). 136 pages. 2s. 6d. Published by London Shop Stewards Defence Committee.

The authors' purpose in this book is to explain why an incomes policy exists, why the workers should oppose it and why the shop stewards are the key to the achievement of "Socialism". But, as will be shown, they are not really aiming at Socialism and their belief in the Shop Steward Movement is built on faulty observation of the conditions of capitalism and on failure to distinguish between "militancy" and Socialist understanding. Above all they do not face up to the fact that the act of revolutionising the social system requires control of the machinery of government by a Socialist working-class. They attack the political and industrial leaders of the workers but not the idea of leadership: what they want is different leaders. They are not consistent in this and in some places they appear to be arguing for self-reliant action by the workers and not "leave it to their leaders", but elsewhere we are told that the shop stewards are the "natural leaders".

The particular target of their attack is full-time trade union officials because these officials do not support the shop stewards and unofficial strikes—"the majority of the union bureaucrats cannot be depended on any more".

There are some trade unions in which the full-time officials vote on the Executive Committee and others in which the full-time officials have no votes, but there is no evidence in this book that makes any practical difference to the policies of the unions.

The authors argue that the shop stewards and factory committees are the militants, held in check by the national executives but they have overlooked the reasons why unions have full-time officials and the conditions in which factory floor militancy vanishes.

In the early days unions had to fight to secure that the union officials could get recognition to negotiate with the employers, who much preferred to deal direct with the workers in their employ. It was to prevent sacking and victimisation of workers on the factory floor that unions demanded the recognition of the union official who could not be directly intimidated.

Cliff and Barker argue from post-war British history that it is the shop stewards and factory committees which are most active; but they have failed to draw the right conclusions from the almost complete destruction of the shop steward movement after the first World War, although they report it:

  By about 1920, with a rise in unemployment and an enormous offensive against the working class from the employers, the shop steward movement that had been born during the war was as good as wiped out.

When unemployment is heavy the shop stewards and factory committees are most vulnerable: faced with the sack they have no choice but to become passive, or, as has happened, become the instruments of the employers. Guillebaud, in his The Works Council (Cambridge University Press 1929) showed how, in Germany, although the works councils were set up by law and flourished when unemployment was low, they collapsed when unemployment became heavy in 1923. Then it was the National unions which alone could offer some protection of the workers and of the works councils themselves.

Extravagant claims are made for the shop steward movement in this book. They are given the credit for the big increase in the number of strikes in the years 1959 to 1965 and they are said to give us "the possibility of the rebirth of a revolutionary working class movement".

It is true that the number of strikes, except in mining, has increased (but why leave out the strikes in the mining industry which have fallen heavily?). But the authors should look further before drawing conclusions. If they took account of the numbers of trade unionists they might have to conclude that, measured by the numbers of strikes, the workers were more "militant" at the end of the 19th Century. But it is in any event a shallow view. Many factors influence the number of strikes—a sharp rise in prices for example and prices have been rising faster since 1960, after which most of the increase in the number of strikes has taken place. Attempts by employers to introduce new working conditions (shifts for example) may also be a factor.

And the authors should also take a look at the results of the strikes. After taking into account the effect of rising, prices, average hourly earnings have been rising by a smaller percentage as the number of strikes has increased.

And they forget that in favourable conditions unions can sometimes gel results by threatening to strike but not needing to do so.

It is when they write about "revolutionary aims" and socialism that Cliff and Barker are most confused and obscure. They claim to want socialism but tell us that the greatest problems facing the workers at the present time are incomes policy and trade union legislation. Why isn't the achievement of Socialism the greatest problem?

They talk of the "rebirth of a revolutionary working class movement", but why "rebirth"? When was the British working-class organised in a revolutionary movement for Socialism?

And why should the shop stewards' movement have any such consequence? They admit the obvious fact that the factory floor struggles are "essentially private fights, particular to workers in one shop or one factory".

They mention that one activity which strengthens the hands of the shop stewards is that they maintain control over the distribution of overtime!

How do these narrow struggles give birth to Socialist understanding?

Even the authors' opposition to the Government's incomes policy betrays that they do not aim at Socialism with its necessary feature of the abolition of the wages system for they talk in terms of opposition to "an Incomes Policy under capitalism". Is there then to be an incomes policy under their "Socialism"?

They attack George Brown's plan because it envisages a relative decline in nationalised industry and ask "What about good old Clause Four?"

Clause Four is the clause in the Labour Party constitution which commits them to mass nationalisation or state capitalism. So what, from the Socialist standpoint, is there "good" about Clause Four.?

Cliff and Barker also note that the government is "by no means the best employer", so why do they want more nationalisation?

The authors are very coy about the Socialist movement they want to see. It is to be the "the mightiest socialist movement yet in the history of Britain". It is to come out of the Shop Stewards' Movement and is to be "a new socialist movement". May we ask what is the name of this new party and what is its object?

Reg Birch, who writes the Preface, likes the rest of the book but not the talk about the increase in the number of shop stewards automatically leading "the development of a Socialist movement"; but he is equally coy about the name and object of the political party of his choice.

After all, the three of them agree in holding up the Shop Steward's Movement as the movement of revolutionary promise. So why can't they tell us about the new society they seek? Is it really Socialism or only Clause Four capitalism that they are after?

And as the authors urge the workers not to take a "deep interest in parliament" what is their political party going to do?

It would be interesting to know what the three of them were doing at the last General Election. Were they urging the workers to vote only for Socialism? Or were they supporting one or other of the parties of capitalism, the Labour Party and Communist Party for example?

Edgar Hardcastle

Past Migrations (1967)

From the August 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

The first thing to remember about emigration in the modern World, is that only workers emigrate. The wealthy “take up residence”, “pay a prolonged visit” or “retire abroad”. When King Edward VIII abdicated and left the country, nobody said that he had emigrated; he had gone into voluntary exile.

This is not a mere play on words. There is a world of difference between the two, the difference in fact between Capitalist and Worker. The wealthy do not need assisted passages, or National Assistance, and if they do not like a place when they get there, they can always move on. They are in no way economic rivals to the workers of the area they visit, so nobody worries about their accents or skin colour. No race-conscious worker would complain if the Aga Khan moved in next door; he would be too busy boasting about his distinguished neighbour for that. It’s the Aga Khan who would do the complaining, and not on account of race, but from an understandable reluctance to share the joys of working class life. The problems of emigration spring from the one thing that both immigrants and native workers share; their poverty.

Migrations are as old as humanity. From the beginning of their existence men have migrated. Sometimes peacefully, sometimes violently, they have moved in search of better and more fertile land, or to escape a stronger enemy, or because of over-population in their homelands. The last of the great migrations came in the centuries following the Discoveries. The whole of America and Australasia, together with large areas of Africa and northern Asia, were peopled by Europeans. Many went freely to seek their fortunes or to escape poverty and oppression at home, but millions were forcibly transported. Indentured servants, negro slaves and convicts all went to provide the cheap labour the new, expanding nations needed.

This was as cruel and bloody a chapter as any in the history of man. By the 19th century European type States had been established in these new lands, while the work of dispossessing the aboriginal inhabitants went steadily on. From then on an immigrant came into an established community as an outsider. There were still however vast unexplored areas into which pioneers could push. By the 20th century these had largely been occupied, except for something like a gold rush that could still send the adventurers on the move.

Emigrants flocked from Europe and Asia to all the new lands, but the one that gripped the imagination, then as now, was the United States. Most of the other new lands were either colonies of the very powers the emigrants were escaping from or, like South America, known dictatorships. America became the symbol of liberty and a myth amongst downtrodden peoples

Give me your tired, your poor
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free
Th wretched refuse of your teeming shores
Send these the homeless tempest tossed to me
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

runs the inscription on the Statue of Liberty, with more sentiment than accuracy, and into America in about hundred years went vast numbers of immigrants. It is estimated that by 1921, when the Quota Act was passed, over 35,000,000 people had entered the United States. To us in Europe today, emigration to the United States has an importance that no other emigrations have, because America is the foremost Capitalist power and its ideas spill over into the rest of the world. These include attitudes to race and colour that are grafted on to existing attitudes, like the unpleasant idiots over here who burn crosses of paraffin soaked rags in weak imitation of the Ku Klux Klan.

From the very beginning, the more capital or influence that a settler possessed the better it was for him, and the greater his chance of success. This applied equally to the later immigrants who, if they had money, could push on from the ports of dis-embarkation into the new areas. Many Swedes, Germans and Dutch had some capital and struck out into the Middle West to start farms. Land in the frontier areas was usually available to all, but money to buy tools and equipment made life easier. Many settlers had special skills and abilities, for which there was a growing demand in an expanding economy, and in this they resemble the people who leave Britain today for Canada and Australia and for Africa and New Zealand. But a vast number were poor with only their passage money and some not even that, in Britain private and public assistance boards grew up to pay the passage of poor people. In Ireland the famines of the 1840’s drove a vast number overseas, while the city of Hamburg found it cheaper to ship paupers to the United States than to provide relief for them or to jail them. The abortive revolutions of 1848 also swelled the numbers. The conditions endured on the journey in these cases are too well known to repeat.

A pattern emerged that is a familiar one today. Poor immigrants tend to settle at their points of dis-embarkation, which are usually industrial centres as well. This is found in Britain today; areas near large airports and main-line railway termini often have large immigrant populations. It is no accident that the Southall area has a large coloured population. Nearness to a point of arrival, plus industry and cheap housing, continue to produce this effect. The areas around Euston Station, the main point of arrival from Ireland, have a large Irish population. Once such a pattern becomes established, friends and relations come to join the pioneers. This happened in America, where New York, the main point of arrival, became a great immigrant centre, with vast populations of foreign origin. When an immigrant prospered, as many did, they soon moved on to pleasanter areas, but the less-fortunate stayed to swell the slum population.

In the early part of the 19th century the main stream of immigrants into America came from Western Europe—from Great Britain and Ireland, Holland, Scandinavia and Germany. Of these the main prejudice was directed against the Irish. They were anti-British, Catholic and, coming from a poor agricultural economy, tended to undercut on wages when they first arrived. The notice “No Irish" was a common sight outside factories. By the 1880’s immigrants from Western Europe were falling off and Eastern Europeans, Mediterranean and Oriental people began to flock in. These were poor, illiterate and were referred to as New Immigrants. The older immigrants, who had begun to be absorbed, treated the new arrivals with hostility and contempt. In 1877 during a slump in San Francisco an unemployed meeting ended in a two-day riot against the Chinese. A party was formed called the Working Men’s Party of California commonly known as the Sand Lot Movement. Its main plank was to get rid of cheap Chinese labour. The irony of the situation was that the party was led by Irish immigrants.

Racial prejudice is essentially irrational, and the prejudices that grew up around American immigration bore little relation to common sense. The thirteen colonies that became the nucleus of the United States were British, consequently the laws, customs and language of the new State were British. At a later stage French and Spanish areas became incorporated and much of their culture was absorbed. Nevertheless, these were subordinate to the existing pattern. At the time of the American War of Independence Americans regarded themselves as the only true Britons, and thought that the ones left behind in Britain had deteriorated and become decadent In this they resemble the Rhodesians of today.

The most desirable thing to be in 19th century America was Anglo-Saxon. The use of this name to describe anything as racially mixed up as the average Briton, is itself typical of the arrogant nonsense talked by the racial theorists of the day. The following masterpiece of idiocy was written in 1885 by Josiah Strong, a Congregational minister and secretary of the American Home Missionary Society in Ohio. In his book Our Country he claimed that Anglo-Saxons above all other races were champions of “a pure spiritual Christianity" and were being schooled for the “final completion of the races"

  Is there room for reasonable doubt that this race unless devitalised by alcohol and tobacco, is destined to dispossess many weaker races, assimilate others and mould the remainder, until in a very true and important sense it has Anglo-Saxonised mankind. (Age of Excess—Ray Ginger).

In its cool arrogance, it makes the puny efforts of our home grown racialists very tame indeed.

Scaling down from the “Anglo-Saxon" came other West Europeans, Mediterranean peoples, East Europeans, Mexicans down to Orientals, who had the additional disadvantage of being considered coloured. American official policy strove to make all immigrants into Americans, and discourage the formation of minorities. In this they had a great deal of success but real antagonisms still lay under the surface.

Until workers learn to recognise the real cause of their poverty, Capitalism, they will continue to find scapegoats, and who better for this purpose than a stranger from across the world?

Les Dale