World Socialism or World Violence? (1976)

From the March 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

A little over a year ago the television programme A Man Called Ironside, presented an episode entitled “The Armageddon Gang”, which depicted a mad scientist who came within seconds of firing H-bomb rockets and starting World War III. This was presented as entertainment and it was accepted as such. The conditioning that has taken place to make the prospect of total world annihilation acceptable, is surely the ultimate obscenity. There was no outcry from the Longford-Whitehouse camp. This scientist was “mad”. The capitalist system which produces H-bomb stockpiles, is “normal”.

A few days later a TV documentary on mugging was shown. This centred on Brixton in South London. They interviewed a police chief, Commander Marshall, who made the point that the police can never solve the problem alone; society as a whole has to realize it is a part of wider issues, housing, education and employment. This aspect of violence is still very much in the news, being endlessly debated, like other social problems, but with no end in sight.

In Brixton, some 79 per cent. of mugging is said to be carried out by black people; mainly youths. If you are black, live in a slum, failed by the “education” system and unemployed, you may become a mugger. If you are white and in similar circumstances you too may turn to mugging or other forms of crime. To say this is a product of poverty, is to say it is a product of capitalism. Because of its property relationships, capitalism has always failed to integrate human beings with society. The profit motive is a completely dehumanized driving force.

Some young black people who had been involved in mugging were interviewed during the programme. They said their motive was to get money, to buy clothes and to be like other people. They were asked if they felt anything for their victims and replied in the negative. Again, the hostility between the individual and society is socially generated. People are not naturally anti-social, as the police chief said; you have to look at housing, education and employment. You have to look at the system.

Capitalism sets no higher standard. It is a violent society preaching a phoney morality. While its pundits talk of “law and order” out of one side of their mouths, out of the other they urge young people to train as professional killers. Every newspaper carries recruitment advertisements for the army, navy or air-force which invite young people to learn a trade— and become professionals in the sophisticated refinements of modern mass-murder and destruction.

A generation has grown up knowing nothing but wars. Since the end of the second “war to end war” in 1945, there has been an endless succession of wars all over the world. Some of these wars may be in distant places but, with modern means of communication, they invade every living room and are part of the violent environment. The war in Korea slaughtered more than a million people. The war in Vietnam, which raged for nearly thirty years, was started by a Labour government, and a Labour government carried on conscription in so-called peace time.

Throughout its existence the Socialist Party of Great Britain has maintained the position re-stated in the 1950 edition of our pamphlet The Socialist Party and War:

  War can solve no working-class problem. It cuts across the fundamental identity of interest of the workers of the world, setting sections of this class at enmity with each other in the interest of sections of the capitalists. It elevates force into the position of arbiter in place of the common human desire for mutual peace and happiness. Its effect is wholly evil. It depraves all the participants by forcing them to concentrate upon the best methods of producing misery and annihilating each other. It elevates lying, cheating, disabling and murdering opponents into virtues, confers distinctions upon those who practise these means most successfully, and inaugurates training courses on a vast scale to produce efficiency. Young men and women, in their most impressionable years, have the vile methods of warfare impressed upon them so thoroughly that they lose a balanced outlook on life and are impregnated with the idea that force, with all its baseness, and not reason, is the final solution in all problems. Many of those who have been subjected to the atmosphere of war remain addicted to violence when war has come to a temporary end.

Around the world selling armaments is big business. America, Russia, China, France, Czechoslovakia and Britain are selling massive quantities of arms and military equipment. The morality of capitalism never gets in the way of profits or commercial, strategic and vested interests. When the icy fact is understood that these major capitalist powers have the means to wipe out all life on earth, the mugger becomes small beer in comparison. But then muggers are illegal and lack the “dignity and bearing” of statesmen.

Practically all organized violence is aimed at gain. The possession or retention of wealth, money, resources or territory. Violence therefore derives overwhelmingly from the class-property basis of existing society.Violence used in power-struggles for so-called national independence comes in this category. It means the replacement of one gang of thieves by another. Violence is the final sanction of all ruling classes. The modern state-machine is a virtual monopoly of violence. As much as violence maims or murders those on whom it is practised, it brutalizes and degrades those who advocate and practise it, whether society labels them as muggers or soldiers, terrorists or politicians.

It is important to realize that violence is not an exceptional thing practised by an anti-social few. It is accepted and frequently applauded by the vast majority of “ordinary” people. They accept the spurious justifications of the Stalins, Wilsons, Nixons, Heaths, Fords and Brezhnevs. “We” need H-bombs and militarism, because “they” have them.

Those organizations such as IS, WRP, IMG, the anarchists and the CP, which see the class struggle in terms of barricades, street fighting, confrontations and smashing the state, are all anti-Socialist and anti- working-class. Political power gained by desperate minorities through armed insurrection can only lead to state capitalism and dictatorship and reflect working-class unreadiness for Socialism. In condemning all this as Socialists always have, we also condemn the bombings, brutality and blood-letting of the self-styled guerillas, whether they be for Black Power, Palestine Liberation or the IRA. All such movements whether racists, nationalist or religious, are anti-working class. They all help to sustain an atmosphere of hatred and foster the notion that violence is a rational arbiter in settling disputes and influencing attitudes. The SPGB and its Companion Parties reject this. We reject the standards of capitalism. We promote UNDERSTANDING as the mainspring of social change.

All other political parties have a prior commitment to violence as part of the power-structure of the system they ALL seek to run. Every party seeking power to maintain capitalism (in whatever guise) has to build and preserve the coercive state apparatus. The SPGB and our Companion Parties have no prior commitment to violence. Neither do we have any record of support for war. Our commitment is to Socialist understanding and to the democratic process of majority decision.

In order to strip the capitalist class of their ownership of the means of production and distribution, and to usher in common ownership, a world-wide majority of the working class with Socialist ideas will use the vote to gain control of the state machine This will take the armed forces and police out of the hands of the political agents of capitalism, and so remove the coercive threat to the triumph of the politically-conscious working class. There is no way to gain possession of the means of production for the whole of society, without first capturing political power. Just as the armed forces and police function to protect private property institutions whilst the state is in the hands of the capitalists, so the capitalists are powerless to preserve their ownership once the state is taken from them.

Any violent minority seeking to get back to capitalism, will be seen to be acting against the will of the great majority and can only further isolate themselves. They could not reverse the irreversible process of history which has led to the decision to change society.

Socialism will end the long and terrible history of violence. Having been established democratically it will continue to be run democratically. When there are no longer any classes of owners and non-owners, there will be a common interest in the happiness and welfare of everybody. Humanity will have come of age.

Harry Baldwin

Who Likes Facing Labour's Future? (1976)

From the February 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party of Great Britain has never shared the euphoria of the Left for so-called welfare legislation. All the starry-eyed illusions that were let loose in those post-war years, about what a wonderful thing the Welfare State and the National Health Service would be, served the capitalist class well.

The reformists could not come up empty-handed after six years of war. The delusion was carefully fostered of making a start to build a bright and happy future. High hopes were encouraged that nationalization of basic industries would mean that things like coal-mines and transport ran as a public service, with profit considerations pushed aside.

The welfare state, with the National Health Service at the heart of it, was to be the show-piece and crowning glory of it all.

In the war days of the Beveridge Report, had not Quintin Hogg remarked:

  Some of my hon. Friends seem to overlook one or two ultimate facts about social reform. The first is that if you do not give the people social reform, they are going to give you social revolution.

Parliamentary Debates 

17th February 1943 Col. 1818

Had not all the war propaganda dangled the prospect of a better life when it was all over? The free provisions of free specs and dentures did not last long. Workers soon had to start paying half, on top of ever rising compulsory contributions. The economics of capitalism soon reminded the reform-mongers that things (under capitalism) have to be paid for. All along the line, in every nationalized industry, (and not least in the NHS) the chickens have come home to roost.

A generation of workers have placed their trust and wasted their lives on the pie-crust promises of ambitious politicians. More than thirty years have passed since the Labour Party issued its post-war election manifesto: Let us Face the Future. People like Barbara Castle, who were rising “stars” of the left, when Aneurin Bevan was chief demagogue, have lived to stand in the crumbling ruins of all the misguided hopes which they themselves helped to build. Once again the ludicrous spectacle is one where the reformers proposed and capitalism disposed. We are now living in their future.

Every group of workers in the NHS has been (and will continue to be) ruthlessly exploited by their Labour government overlords. (Yes, we know and by the Tories.)

The nurses, whose devotion to their patients has been mercilessly used by successive governments, were forced to organize, demonstrate and threaten strike action. Then the ambulance crews were pushed into the same position. The ward orderlies and laundry workers caved in under the weight of increasing drudgery and near starvation wages. The extreme reluctance of any of these workers to add to the suffering of the sick and aged, has been cynically played on by the Tory and Labour governments.

The latest miserable episode is that of the junior doctors. Driven by being on duty or on stand-by for as much as one hundred hours per week and working for as many as eighty hours with virtually unpaid overtime, they banned overtime. This brought about the closing down of wards, casualty departments and even entire hospitals. If this reads like a nightmare, that is what capitalism does to the dreams of reformers.

It should be understood, that dental decay, bad eyesight and tuberculosis etc., among the working class are very costly to the capitalist class, particularly in war time. Absenteeism from work with avoidable sickness has an adverse affect upon profits. A patch-up and back-to-work service is a wise investment for capitalism. Capitalists and their political hirelings certainly look at welfare in this way. Speaking at the Manchester Rotary Club on February 18th 1943, the millionaire Samuel Courtauld said, in reference to the Beveridge Report:

  . . . social security of this nature will be about the most profitable long-term investment the country could make. It will not undermine the morale of the nation’s workers: it will ultimately lead to higher efficiency among them and a lowering of production costs.

The economics and priorities of capitalism remain supreme. The system has not been slowly eroded by the “gradualists” who thought they would whittle it away by reforms. They have been whittled away. They have nowhere to turn. Their political bankruptcy is exposed for all to see.

The rampant chaos and discontent in the hospital centres entirely upon money. Costing and inflation problems slowly strangle the postal “services”. The same considerations decree how much of the railways shall survive and whether steel mills and coal mines shall close down. They also dictate how much gas and electricity members of the working class may use. Nowhere have their plans worked. Nowhere has nationalization served working class interests. Perhaps the following has a familiar ring:

   No Tory Government could make this appeal, for the workers would suspect that the summons to hard work, discipline and abstinence would result only in fortunes for the few and the later wastage of unemployment. The new Government is in a different situation. It also must appeal for hard work, discipline and, for a short period, continued abstinence. All these are needed to increase the total wealth for distribution. But a Labour Government at the same time can give concrete proof of its resolve to use this wealth for the benefit of the whole community. By its social insurance and health and housing plans it can show its determination to secure a greater equality in the distribution of wealth. By its nationalization proposals it can show its resolve that the re-equipment of industry shall not merely bring greater profits to the few. By its financial measures it can prove that, when this period of shortage is over, no return will be allowed to wasteful unemployment.

Michael Foot, Daily Herald 7th August 1945

Aneurin Bevan, once said the Tories were “lower than vermin”. What does that make the Wilson, Castle and Foot mob? Regretfully, calling names however well deserved, does little to raise the level of class-consciousness. When the working class wake up, they will contemptuously brush aside these petty upstarts and, in fact, dismiss all leaders. Ultimately the responsibility rests with the workers. Their political maturity (or lack of it) is reflected in how they vote. The power to continue the agony of capitalism, derives from the votes of the workers. The power to end it, will come from the same source.

Harry Baldwin

The three quotations are to be found in the SPGB pamphlets: Beveridge Re-Organizes Poverty and Is Labour Government the Way to Socialism?

The Nature of Democracy (1977)

From the December 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism is essentially democratic. It means a society of true equality. All people will jointly own the means of production and distribution, and will control them and administer all the affairs of society from that classless basis. Because means must harmonize with ends, the organization for Socialism is also democratic. Socialists reject leadership and censorship; the realization of the interests of the working class lies in full, free and informed discussion.

The capitalist class does not willingly give such facilities for the development of socialist consciousness and organization. It has to provide them as legal “rights" for the maintenance of its own political system, and their extent varies from country to country. Socialists are aware of the need for scope, and — unlike many foolish people who call themselves “revolutionaries” — avoid jeopardizing the opportunities we have. At the same time, we do not bow down in gratitude to the ruling class and promise to fight on their side in return for what they have grudgingly given. We compare their “rights” with the freedom Socialism offers; when increasing numbers of socialists give us bigger muscles, we shall want more room to flex them.

The other half of the lie, that Russia and China are communist, is that the West is free and democratic. This falsehood provides a vital propaganda weapon which the ruling class use to goad workers into the acceptance of war preparations. It can never be officially admitted that the reason is economic and concerns markets, resources and profits, not ideological concern for freedom and democracy.

Strategic Alliances
Alliances between allegedly free countries and dictatorships have no ideological explanation, they can only be understood in terms of commercial and military strategy. For example, Portugal while a dictatorship was “Britain’s oldest ally” and Uganda under Amin, remains part of the so-called Commonwealth, America sponsors dictatorships like that in S. Korea and fought a ten years war to bolster the power of its puppet tyrants in Vietnam. Russia and China infiltrate much of the world with massive investments, trade and military power, even in places where their “communist” comrades are in prison. The British and American ruling classes embraced Russia as an ally from 1941 to 1945 and tailored their propaganda accordingly. Churchill found no difficulty working with Stalin, whose regime he had spent twenty-five years denouncing as a “cancerous growth”, to organize the mass slaughter of Germans and Italians, whose leaders Hitler and Mussolini he formerly admired.

Today the world is one huge nuclear arsenal for the major powers. The smaller states are drawn into one armed camp or the other or come under the strategy of the big bandit. Nuclear weapons have no respect for non-alignment. Just as the major powers are motivated by the economics of capitalism, so also are the smaller countries. The conditions leading to conflict are always present in competition for markets.

After two world wars and scores of “minor” wars supposedly to ensure freedom, outside the phrasemongering of politicians and the media how much freedom and democracy is there in the world today? What do these words really mean? To arrive at a clear understanding, it is necessary first to grasp the nature of class society, otherwise freedom and democracy, like ideas about rights and justice, remain vague concepts. In our Declaration of Principles, we refer to the enslavement of the working class being a consequence of the ownership of the means of living by the capitalist class. This is the number one fact of life of capitalist society. The only sense in which the working class are free is, as Marx explains in The Communist Manifesto, that they are not tied to land or any individual employers, but being divorced from the means of production are free to sell their working abilities on the labour market to any capitalist willing to hire them. Wage-labour is socially enslaved to the capitalist class as a whole.

Marx also makes the point that the working class is dragged into the political arena by the capitalist class. The Capitalists are not a single group with the same interest, but numerous groups with often conflicting interests. Although they all live on the backs of the workers, they dispute among themselves as to which should have the main burden of taxation for the costs of running their system. In the early days of capitalism when the sharpest division was between landed and industrial interests, the Tory party represented the former and the Whigs (Liberals) the latter. Both posed as champion of the workers to enlist the aid of the workers for their own advantage. This was the background to the passing of the early factory legislation and franchise reform. Instead of seeing their own interests as distinct from those of the capitalists, workers sought to play one against the other for the amelioration of immediate grievances. This led to dissatisfaction with existing parties and as the trade-union movement grew, to the formation of the Labour party. The workers then as now blamed their hardships on leaders and parties rather than the system. The fraud of reformism has become the status quo. The institutional forms taken by the national affairs of the capitalist class, which includes the health, education and welfare of the working class, are put over to the workers as freedom and democracy.

For the dubious privilege of having his children’s heads stuffed with nationalism and religion, while being trained for a life of wage-slavery, and the benefits bestowed by the Welfare/Warfare state to relieve the worst extremes of poverty, the worker is expected to rejoice that he is remembered at election times and invited to vote for the continuation of things as they are.

Just as capitalist politicians debated the dangers of teaching workers to read and had no choice but to do so, they also debated the wisdom of universal suffrage. The provision of facilities for lobbying opinion to decide how property interests and profitability can best be served is not the same thing as freedom. There is no provision made for expressing socialist views; these fall outside the province of profit promotion, and have to make their own way. The capitalist conception of freedom can never amount to more than the freedom of the capitalist class to trade, legislate and arm against their rivals. For them, the first freedom must always be the freedom to exploit wage labour. Even the contesting of elections is tightly circumscribed by money, resources and access to the media.

Those who take the propaganda of the system at its face value tell us at our meetings, that in Britain at least we have “free speech and freedom of the press”. But where a minority owns the means of living and also owns and controls the press, obviously the press is not free. Useful though Hyde Park is, it is a drop in the ocean compared to the world day- and-night output of television, radio and press. Free access to the channels of radio and television does not exist. If “free” speech consists of standing on a platform by the roadside, shouting above the traffic, while the system’s propaganda invades every worker’s living-room, clearly the word “freedom” has a double standard.

Unfettered Discussion

The press, radio and television are not even free for the capitalists as individuals. There are programme controllers, D Notices, censorship, “editing”, regulations laid down in broadcasting charters, the Official Secrets Acts and other “democratic” devices. The national interests of the capitalists as a class need secrecy, and the slanting of information. This is the antithesis of democracy Democracy involves the free availability of all information and unfettered discussion— but this implies no class with privileged interests to maintain.

In the Preface to The Critique of Political Economy, Marx enunciated the principle of the materialist conception of history: that the legal and political superstructure can only be explained by the social relations that men enter into in production and the level of development of the productive forces at a given time. The legal machinery and political power of capitalism are built upon the ownership of the means of production and distribution by the capitalist class. The prevailing ideology and morality reflect the interests of private property. The non-owning class are fed false information and miseducated to produce attitudes in conformity with the dominance of private property and profits. Attitudes towards money, wages, leadership, housing, inflation, trade and war, are manipulated by the schools, press, radio and t.v. on the basis of the prior assumptions of the capitalist interest. The skilful use of spurious information and a pretence of a debate excludes views which reject those prior assumptions.

There is no freedom to put the case for Socialism on level pegging with the parties of capitalism. They have the mass media at their constant disposal, the Socialist Party of Great Britain does not. If Marx’s view of society is correct Socialist ideas do not spread among the workers because they are given permission to do so, by rights or concepts of freedom. It is the contradictions inherent in capitalist society which promote the growth of class-consciousness. Ideas can neither be legislated into nor out of existence. There is a conflict between the material forces of production and the existing social relations of production and the existing social relations of production. This is the essential prerequisite, the soil from which consciousness grows. It is a paradox for workers to accept the prerogative of capitalist politicians to grant them “rights”. The other side of the coin is acceptance of their prerogative to curtail them.

Rights

Just as with other reforms in welfare or education, there is the assumption that what is good for capitalism, is good for the workers; in times of crises when reforms are cut back this too is sold as good for everyone. In time of war or emergency, the “rights” and “freedoms” for which workers are told to sacrifice themselves, become all but non-existent. Since the end of the second World War, the frequent recurrence of wars and emergencies have provided the grounds for repeated tightening of the reins. There has been a vast expansion of surveillance and “security” operations throughout the world and a tremendous extension of the screening of individuals, publications and organizations, despite the “inalienable” rights guaranteed by the American Constitution, and such documents as the United Nations Charter.

What sustains their continued acceptance of capitalism, is the fact that workers everywhere, are side tracked into struggling for a host of other issues. In The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Frederick Engels makes a brilliant summary of the situation: “The possessing class rules directly through universal suffrage. For as long as the oppressed class, in this case the proletariat, is not ripe for its economic emancipation, just so long will its majority regard the existing order of society as the only one possible, and form the tail, the extreme left wing of the capitalist class. But the more the proletariat matures towards its self emancipation, the more does it constitute itself as a separate class and elect its own representatives in place of the capitalists. Universal suffrage is the gauge of the maturity of the working class”. (Pages 210, 211, Kerr Edition.)

No minority could hold back the tidal wave of a majority wanting Socialism. It is the task of socialists to expand Socialism and nothing else. Socialism will be democratic because, the interest of everybody in a classless world will be harmonious. At the end of our Declaration of Principles, we urge workers to join us to end “the system which deprives them of the fruits of their labour, and that poverty may give place to comfort, privilege to equality, and slavery to freedom". For socialists, the attainment of freedom means the abolition of classes and democracy is inseparable from Socialism.

Harry Baldwin

Socialism and Human Nature. (1922)

From the April 1922 issue of the Socialist Standard

Among the many objections that have been levelled against Socialism, the one concerning human nature strikes the writer as providing not only a lop-sided view of human nature, but at the same time an indictment of capitalist society unconsciously made by our opponents.

We are informed that "human nature being what it is, Socialism is quite impossible," or, as it is sometimes put, "you will have to change human nature."

This remarkable point of view was formulated in another way only a few days: ago by the Rt. Hon. Winston Churchill, who, in a speech delivered in Loughborough Town Hall, stated :—

  "A great mistake the Socialists make is that they follow a lot of logical and symmetrical theory, and forget all about human nature."—Sunday Express, 12/3/22.

Far be it from us to suggest that Mr. Churchill follows any theory that could be called either symmetrical or logical, or, when commenting upon his famous "gamble" at Gallipoli with the lives of thousands of our fellow-workers, that he had forgotten about human nature.

However, we are not so much concerned here with Churchill as we are with those of the working class who seriously entertain the objection stated above. Before proceeding to deal with this objection, we will state what the Socialists have to say of existing society, and how their theory corresponds to reality.

We assert that present-day society is based upon the private ownership of the means of living by the capitalist class, with the consequent enslavement of the working class, by means of whose labour wealth is produced. It follows, then, that, as the capitalist class do not work, they must obtain their wealth from the workers; in other words, they steal it from the working class. Of course, the means, employed are not the same as those of the common thief or burglar, which are quite illegal, but by virtue of their "legal" ownership of the means of life, which is secured to them by their being in control of the political machinery, including the armed forces of the nation. To illustrate this point.

Let us assume that a small body of workers decided to "take and hold" some of the machinery of production for their own benefit, we should at once witness the operation of the power that is in the hands of the capitalist class. The police force, in all probability, would be the first to appear on the scene, and, if this was not sufficient, the Army and Navy would be brought to bear upon the takers and holders, to teach them that "Britons never will be slaves," and in every large industrial dispute this armed force is ready at hand to teach the workers the lesson taught the school-child, "You must not touch; it isn't yours."

The armed forces are controlled through Parliament, for, though they act in the immediate upon the instructions from the Government Departments, such as the War Office and the Admiralty, they are ultimately under the control of the majority in the House of Commons, as this majority is responsible for the conduct of the various Departments. But the capitalists have not voted themselves into Parliament. The workers outnumber them by millions at the ballot-box. The tragic irony is, that the workers have handed over to the ruling class the very power by which they art kept in subjection. What follows as a consequence of the working class, being a subject class is that the workers must operate upon the various tools of production to obtain a living. But the wealth, when produced, does not belong to them, but to the capitalists, who hand back a fraction of this wealth in the form of wages to the workers, to enable the latter to renew their energy, and thus repeat the performance of producing wealth. In modern society, on account of man's triumph over the forces of Nature, there is produced all over the civilised world an abundance of wealth sufficient to ensure a comfortable existence for all. But, as every worker is painfully aware, poverty and insecurity of existence is the lot of his class. We have to record the fact that, in spite of the productive power of to-day, we witness the anomaly of starvation in the midst of plenty. The Socialist, after analysing society and viewing all this, proposes to the workers that they should organise into a political party for the purpose of obtaining political power in order to change society from Capitalist to Socialist; that is, alter the basis of society from one of private ownership into one of the common ownership of the means of life, to be democratically owned and controlled by the whole community.

This being the proposition of the Socialist, we ask, What is there about it that in any way conflicts with what we know of human nature ? The objection of our opponents merely begs the following question : What is human nature ? The answer, that, in the opinion of the present writer, covers the ground fairly well, is the one met somewhere in his reading as "the manifold activities of man in general." This definition should meet with the approval of our opponents, for when they use the phrase "Human Nature," they generally refer to the actions of certain persons as a proof of their position.

A glance at history will show that the activities of man have changed with every alteration in the form of society, for, just as there has been change within the domain of the biological world, so there has been changes in the forms of society. At a very early period of man's history cannibalism was very often resorted to as a means of food supply., and was thought no more objectionable than eating the flesh of an ox or a sheep. The sex relationship of primitive man, although being quite in conformity with the current morality of the age, would shock the civilised person, and if anybody proposed their revival in modern society, either a prison cell or a lunatic asylum would greet their efforts. But, while there is a vast difference between the primitive savage and civilised man, the distinction lies in the fact that, while the former had but crude implements at his disposal to obtain the means of sustenance, the latter has inherited the results of the accumulated experiences of man's long and painful journey from savagery through barbarism to civilisation.

But, while the outlook and surroundings of modern man are different from those of his primitive ancestor, nevertheless, as far as the qualities that make up human nature are concerned, there is a similarity between both. For instance, we eat when we are hungry, and roar when we are angry. We seek the greatest amount of pleasure, and avoid pain and discomfort as much as possible, and the same qualities characterise the savage. The difference lies in the means employed to procure the food and the kind of pleasure sought; consequently, viewing human nature from this angle, we say that there is a sense in which human nature changes and a sense in which it is always the same. The change of conditions, whether it be a change in the form of society or a change in the conditions of existing society, does not change the man , they only direct his natural qualities of adaptation into a different path. To illustrate this, we may take the recent war. Here we find the "peaceful citizen," who, while he shudders at the mention of a social revolution, because to him it means bloodshed, was converted from a man of peace into a man of war, and the greater the amount of blood of his opponents he shed, the more his conduct was commended.

The worker may notice how, when one of his mates has fallen upon more evil times, the helping hand of the shop-mates has been extended towards the victim. In the most poverty-stricken slum the same factor of mutual aid can be observed in various directions. The daily Press reports frequently the news of some gallant act performed without hope of reward. It is a fact, as Kropotkin says in his book, "Mutual Aid," page 292 :—

"Neither the crushing powers of the centralised state, nor the teachings of mutual hatred and pitiless struggle which came adorned with the attributes of science, from obliging philosophers and sociologists could weed out the feeling of human solidarity, deeply lodged in men's understanding and heart, because it has been nurtured by all our preceding evolution."

As we have already indicated, human nature is a complexity of qualities that can either be expressed harmfully or beneficially ; it depends upon the conditions of its existence; and, as we have shown, that, with the change of conditions, there takes place a corresponding change in man's activities, we assert that with the change from Capitalism to Socialism, those various qualities which go to make up human nature, will be directed into different paths, and the workers, free from capitalist bondage, will thus enjoy the fruits of their labour and live a life of security and happiness.

Robert Reynolds

"The Japs in Siberia." (1922)

From the April 1922 issue of the Socialist Standard

The above is the title of a leaflet published by the "National 'Hands off Russia' Committee."

It contains an introductory foreword over the signatures of Robert Williams, Ben Tillett, M.P., John Bromley, Neil Maclean, M.P., J. E. Mills, M.P., and Robert Smillie. The leaflet points out how the Ruling Class of Japan are endeavouring to obtain a foothold in Siberia by means of their armies and navies for the purpose of furthering their imperialistic ambitions. The leaflet describes that in the process, however, atrocities are being perpetrated by Japanese, which bring to mind the mediaeval torture chambers.

We think there is nothing particularly unusual about these methods; they are merely typical of the long line of atrocities which have been inflicted by one capitalist power after another in their respective endeavours to monopolise markets and extend their fields of exploitation and plunder over the backward countries. Needless to say, in these adventures it has been the working class who have done the fighting ; it is working-class lives which have been thus offered up as sacrifices in the interests of International Capitalism. Organisations like the "Hands off Russia" Committee may continue to publish leaflets like the above to the extent of millions of tons, but it does not touch the root of the matter ; it is merely trifling with the effects of a particular system of society known as Capitalism. The mission of the Socialist Party, however, is to lay bare the general trend of Capitalist development; to point out unceasingly that, so long as the system lasts, atrocities will be repeated; that they are effects which spring from the very roots of the Capitalist system, because they are grounded in the soil of competitive rivalry for world's markets, trade routes, etc. The only remedy is to remove the cause, capitalism, and replace it by the International Co-operative Commonwealth.

Therefore, when the above-mentioned well-known Labour leaders write as follows in their introductory note to the leaflet—

  "As Internationalist, we would urge the workers of Europe, America, the British Colonies, and the world generally, to do all that is possible to apply a boycott of all things Japanese until the Japanese troops are completely withdrawn from Siberia."

they are only confusing the issue by suggesting impossible things as remedies for a rotten system. Fancy the workers, of the countries referred to boycotting Japanese articles ! The workers will always endeavour to obtain the best value for their money. It is one of the guiding principles of the Capitalist system to strive for the best value obtainable in the ordinary course of exchange—i.e., buying and selling. If applies equally to the workers as it does to the capitalist. The worker receives wages and expends them to the very best advantage—i.e., in the purchase of the best value in the shape of the necessaries of life. It matters not to him whether the goods he buys are Japanese, German, or Chinese— he seeks the best value for his money. He is bound to do this, or his power to work will deteriorate, and with it his chance of a job.

The capitalist seeks the highest degree of labour power which the labour market can produce; he wants the best value also.

Pious suggestions like the above melt in the air when they come into contact with the force of the facts mentioned.

But here is the cream of absurdity in the introductory note above referred to :—

"The workers of the West should spend tens of thousands of pounds in an active and well-directed propaganda amongst their fellow workers in the East, in order that the necessary and salutory pressure should be brought against the Eastern over lords of land and industrial capital."

We wonder what the millions of unemployed wage slaves of the Western world will have to say to this. Faced as they are with conditions which mean a scanty, meagre, semi-starved existence, to collect "tens of thousands of pounds" from the workers is a suggestion grotesque and impossible under the circumstances. These Labour leaders are either fools or liars.

Once again, therefore, we tell the workers that they must overthrow the system which makes possible such misery and suffering to their class, which causes wars and the horrors arising therefrom, famines, atrocities, starvation in the midst of plenty, and all the countless evils which beset the worker to-day.

Further, we claim to have found the remedy. We say it consists in ceaselessly striving to acquire an understanding of the forces at work, and the economic laws which govern the capitalist system.

Fellow-workers, as a counter-blast to the above-quoted confusion, get down to the solid work of understanding your class position, which Socialist knowledge alone makes clear.

W. I.

Editorial: The Engineers Lock Out. (1922)

Editorial from the April 1922 issue of the Socialist Standard

For nearly two years there has been a rapid and persistent worsening of the conditions of life of the working class. In every industry there have been large reductions of wages, often accompanied by the extension of working hours. So enormous has this fall become that Dr. Macnamara stated (Daily News, 17/2/1922) that wages had fallen in 1921 by £6,000,000 per week. That is over £300,000,000 per year ! Geddes looks small beer alongside this, for while his Committee were trying to reduce Government expenditure by £100,000,000, the employers succeeded in "saving" more than three times that amount from wages.

Naturally the employers are feeling jubilant. The only serious attempt to stop this landslide in wages and conditions was the threat of the Triple Alliance last April in connection with the Miners' lock-out. The foul treachery of J. H. Thomas, Robert Williams, Frank Hodges, and the rest of the official crowd, who study so strenuously the interests of the masters when any dispute occurs, saved the situation for the employers, and prepared the way for further drastic reductions in wages on every hand.

Finding the workers in retreat on all fronts, the masters have now decided to try a "big offensive" in certain selected industries, with the deliberate intention of continuing this "offensive" in every industry till the standard of the workers as a whole has been forced far below the 1914 level.

For this purpose they have chosen to attack the Engineers directly, and allied industry of shipbuilders indirectly. The point of attack on the Engineers is on the matter of overtime that had been the subject of agreement in September, 1920. To talk of the need for "overtime" when millions are vainly seeking work is not Gilbertian, it is drivelling idiocy. Even the employers seem to recognise this, for they are stating that the issue is : —

  "We are going; to know where we are. We are going to manage the shops, or the shops are not going to be run. We are going to make it an absolute condition of employment for all hands" (Employers' statement, Daily News, March 20th, 1922.)

In the House of Commons Mr. A. Henderson quoted from a document the following instruction :—

  "Men will have to resume work on conditions that we will lay down" (Daily News, March 21st, 1922).

The employers trot out these statements pompously and endeavour to convey the impression that it is a brand-new discovery they have made. In their bone-headed ignorance they have no idea that their argument is as old as the institution of private property in the means of life. In the antique civilisations and, centuries after, in the cotton fields of South America, the slave-owners claimed the right to do "as they liked with their own"—in these cases the chattel slaves. The Feudal barons bewailed the few manorial and guild restrictions as interfering with their liberty to do "as they liked" with the serf. And the early capitalists, Christian and Atheist alike, fiercely denounced any interference with the "liberty of the subject" when they dragged children of three years of age and upwards into the hell of mill and mine.

The employers certainly have logic on their side so far. All the wailing about the "cruelty" of the employers, in choosing a time suitable to themselves to enforce such conditions, is waste of breath and ink. Grant the right of private ownership of the means of life or of persons, then one cannot deny the "right" of the owner to "do as he likes with his own." But let us carry the argument a step further.

Upon examination it will be found that the employers only rely upon this "right" so long as the workers accept it meekly. If, under the stress of want, the workers were to attempt to use the means of production for their own benefit, the masters would drop talking of "right" and would openly use the might they control. They would at once call in the forces, of the State, and machine guns, aerial bombs, tanks and troops—à la the Rand—would be launched against the unarmed workers. Like so many other things to-day, "right" will be used by the employers as far as it suits their interests. When it fails to do this, then, like "humanity," "brotherly feeling," "mutuality of interests," and numerous other catchwords and phrases, it will be kicked aside with contempt.

Yet with all the present and past facts around them in overwhelming quantities to prove the truth of this point, the fakirs like Brownlie, Thomas, Clynes & Co. chatter about conciliation and the "duty" of the Government to intervene. Neither they, nor Sir Allan Smith, need turn a hair on this point. If the capitalists fancy their property is in any danger, then the Government will intervene with the speed of greased lightning.

Is the situation then entirely hopeless ? To answer this question it is necessary to grasp clearly what the situation is. Despite the empty-headed rant of the Communist Party and of J. C. Gould and Sir Allan Smith, there is no disposition on the part of the mass of the workers to-day to "control production." The most demanded by the workers is that they shall have some say as to the details of the conditions under which they are to work. The situation then is one of conditions of employment. Once this is understood it becomes a matter of discussion as to what hope exists. On the one hand there are some firms outside the Masters' Federation. Sir Allan Smith and J. C. Gould may be taken as extremists of the latter organisation, but if the workers make a real attempt to put a brake upon the landslide that is taking place in the worsening of their conditions, there may be sufficient members of the Federation who would rather call a halt than face a real fight.

For one thing stands out clearly : Even if the masters win all along the line, if unlimited overtime is allowed and wages are reduced further, these things of themselves would not bring a single order into the shops. In reference to the Shipbuilders' case, the Daily News, 9/2/1922, says :—

  "It is not contended that the proposed reduction in wages will restore that part of the demand which has disappeared, because of the abnormal rate of world building since the Armistice, the operation of the reparation clauses requiring the handing-over of German ships, and the general slump in world trade."

How can the situation be tested ? There is only one way. The organised workers must take united action to hold up industry. It is not a sectional question. The whole of the workers are involved, and if they remain divided, they will be attacked, and beaten, in detail by the employers. If the workers are prepared to stop the wheels of industry for the purpose of putting a check on this attack they must grasp the facts before them.

First, the stoppage must not be allowed to drag on indefinitely. If it does not effect its purpose in a short, sharp action, then it will have failed and the men must accept the inevitable for the present.

Second, it must be carried out peaceably. Any attempt at riot or destruction must be sternly repressed, as it would at once give the signal for the use of the armed forces against defenceless men. All nonsense about "taking possession of works, etc.," must be repudiated or ignored, as that way leads to disaster.

Third, the decisions to come out and to go back must be in the hands of the rank and file. No power should be given to leaders—revolutionary or otherwise—to decide these points.

Such action would cause practically no increase in the misery that already exists, and it would be a real test of the situation. And the hope of success within the limits laid down is at least such as to make the effort worthwhile.

But should this effort be successful, even then the workers would still have to realise that they are only fighting effects, while the cause of their troubles remains unaltered. That cause lies in the private ownership of the means of life—the land, mills, mines, factories, railways, canals, etc.—and the resulting enslavement of the non-owners, the property-less workers. This enslavement is maintained owing to the masters' control of political power whereby they can use the armed forces to protect their property. But this political power is placed in the masters' hands by the workers when at each election—whether general or bye-election—they vote the supporters of capitalism into Parliament. It does not matter in the least whether that supporter be Sir Allan Smith or J. H. Thomas, Lord Devonport or Ben Tillett, the result is the same.

Not until the workers understand the above facts and organise to gain control of political power for the purpose of establishing the common ownership of the means of life, will the days of strikes and lock-outs be over.

An Old Man in a Tub. (1922)

From the April 1922 issue of the Socialist Standard

  "Mankind must either look for salvation from within or without. Hellenism and Christianity bid him look within. The Marxian Creed bids him look without and expect regeneration from the agency of material conditions." From Editorial, Daily Telegraph, January 7th, 1922.

Once upon a time there was an old man who lived in a tub. According to the most reliable reports got from almost totally unreliable historians, that strange old man didn't want much of the stuff of the earth. In the middle of a market he would some times stand still, look blandly upon the good things of Greece, and melodramatically exclaim, "Good Lord ! how many things are there in the world of which Diogenes hath no need." Then he went again to his simple old home.

That is all I know of Diogenes, and all I care to know. He has always struck me as being a rather silly gentleman. Others seem to think him to have been a wise boy, and say (as Viscount Milner did in his address to the Classical Association, as the "Telegraph" did in its editorial comments on Milner's address) that it we were wise as he, Old Tubby, we wouldn't rush about on the earth for lamb chops and green peas and wines to wash 'em down, and clothes to keep ourselves warm, nor yet for houses . . . but instead we would get hold of a damned good book, soak our minds in sentimentality, forget almost we have bellies, and thereafter be content with plain living and high thinking.

That way of thinking won't do for us. Philosophy can help us a fair amount when we are in the thick of the natural and inevitable tragedies of life. Ordinarily, the human needs, physical needs, must be satisfied first. You may be idealistic; you may start life on oatmeal and water, and keep your pockets full of books; you may feed on an abundance of moonlight and music and a minimum of boiled rice; you may sit out the nights over Plato, Socrates, and the rest of the old crowd of chatterers; you may be Godly, Philosophic, Poetic; you may do all that and be all that—for only a short time. At the end of 12 months your anatomy will be distinct as a tree in winter. You will probably get the sack for being slow, and perhaps in the end you will have to look out for an old tub. And I think I should laugh to see the wind whistle through you as it does through a bare tree.

Far as I can see, the old man in the tub was wrong. And Milner is wrong, and even the "Telegraph" is wrong. We can't successfully ignore the facts of our place in the scheme of the universe, nor the character of our particular make-up. Before we can enjoy anything—the fresh air, the colours in skies or in fields, human companionship or any sort of books done by wise or passionate men—we must have a certain amount of flesh on our bones.

Nowadays thousands of people are far too thin. They are too thin to think. They are hungry, ragged, haggard, and full of bitterness ; but they are too thin to think. I will not now go into the sickening history of the workers. Those who suffer ought to know all about it. The awful curse of Capitalism was upon them from the first.

They have sweated in the pits and at the furnaces, and been heroic upon the seas. They have done weaving and made engines and ships. They have put numberless big buildings all over the country, and they have made some pretty good guns. But the people who have done all this are poor. And the monocled sensualist who would do anything to recover his youth, "except get up early in the morning, take exercise, or become a useful member of society," represents the class which, by its agents in Parliament, controls the guns which control you.

I haven't much more to say now.

Rub out all you have heard about politics. Try to get your second wind. If you don't, then the years will pass on as before —the shadow of Capitalism will be upon us all—the hate and sin and sorrow of this social system will go on, and millions of workers, will be needlessly crushed and treated worse than the beasts of the field. If you want to laugh then you will have to get blind drunk.

Our way is the best way. We want all people to be free and happy. Our Object and our Principles are printed plainly as possible on the back page of the "S.S." If you won't trouble to read them and thoroughly consider them, I may as well dry up, for you won't be bothered with anything I say here. If you think the "Telegraph," Milner, and the Old Man in the Tub to be right, if the affairs of the world are nothing to you, then you will let the capitalists still own and control all the wealth and all the sources of wealth.

If you think Tubby's philosophy to be wrong,

P.T.O.

TO

BACK PAGE.

H. M. M.

That aforementioned back page from April 1922.

The Mantle of the Prophet. (1922)

From the April 1922 issue of the Socialist Standard

''Yes! but shall we ever see Socialism in our time?" This is the finish of many a long discussion, when difficulty after difficulty has been met, when conviction is in escapable, the other chap wraps the diminished shreds of his prejudices about him, and says, sceptically : "Do you think we shall live to see it ?" A simple, laconic "Yes" will obviously fail to carry conviction. He wants some details. He wants some reasons for the faith that is in us, and prosaically, perhaps, he wants to know if he will be there when the prizes are distributed. We beg to say, therefore, that unless Fate has marked us down for an early call, in our belief, Socialism is within measurable distance. These are our reasons.

First, let us have some definitions. The system of society with which we are familiar is called Capitalism. Its essential feature is the social tool, or machine, with which great numbers of human beings co-operate to produce that which humanity needs. These tools, or machines, are the property of a comparatively small number of individuals, who, by virtue of such ownership, take the whole of the product, returning to the labourers, on the average, just sufficient of the proceeds to enable them to support life and continue to work. The wealth produced to-day is produced for the market. When the home markets are filled up, the capitalist looks abroad for markets for the surplus.

It becomes, therefore, the anxious concern of those who own the social machinery —the capitalists—to obtain markets, for this surplus. This is done by the partial interchange of products between capitalist countries in varying stages of development, by conquest and colonisation, and by the encouragement, often forcible, of non-capitalist nations to become customers for their goods.

Now, obviously, the continuity of a capitalist concern depends upon its ability to obtain and hold markets. Without markets it dwindles and dies. And, like a highly developed living organism, there is no standing still. It is either going for ward of back. If it goes forward, it carries its own Nemesis with it; for among the products it must export are the very machines that will in turn make the market first self-supporting, and later into a competitor. If it go back, it automatically condemns to idleness, starvation, and possible insurrection the source of its own riches, the workers, without whom the whole of its machinery is so much scrap-iron.

It remains, then, but to consider how far Capitalism has travelled along that fatal road when its effective markets (not necessarily its possible markets) are saturated, and it stagnates for very surfeit. Here is where our questioner comes in, not too bored, let us hope, to follow but a little further, and not too exacting to ask us the precise date. One can only give indications and make rough approximations. Consider these facts. During the last ten years probably a hundred millions of people have died as a result of war, famine, and pestilence (influenza). Add to these the millions of unemployed in every capitalistic country. Think of the loss in productive capacity of those millions. Think of the loss as consumers. And yet, according to Chiozza Money, "our exports in January, commonly alleged to be desperately low, were as great in quantity as in 1900, a record year of boom trade thought remarkable not long before the war." ("New Statesman," February 25th.) He also mentions that in the two years 1919-1920 new capital issues amounted to £691,000,000.

We are told this is a period of bad trade, of depression, of decreased productivity, of poverty-stricken markets. What will it mean when Capitalism gets going again; when trade revives; when France is "restored" and Germany gets on her feet; when India, China, Japan, and possibly Egypt come into the ring ? C. E. Turner pointed out recently that one industry at least that is doing phenomenally well is that engaged in manufacturing textile machinery. Not for Lancashire. It is being shipped to France (for restoration), India, China, and Japan as fast as it can be produced. This is but an indication. What is the only possible inference from all these considerations? What other than that the present slump will be succeeded by a brief period of feverish bustle of prodigious production, of tremendous effort, and then— and then, what ? Markets choked, production stopped, unemployment colossal, and slump abysmal.

These things will gradually awake the worker to a knowledge of his position. As the water wears the stone away, so the disappointments and sufferings will eventually wear away the workers' support of capitalism. In our opinion, human society is ripe for Socialisation now, immediately. It wants but a working class ready, willing, and, above all, organised, to take the means of human life out of the hands of those who now use them for individual gain and convert them into instruments for the common well-being. The opportunity arises at each General Election ; for, as the capitalists conserve their power by their hold on the machinery of government, so, with the accession to power of a majority of workers' delegates, backed by an organised working class, can the people achieve that social ownership of its own means of life, which we call Socialism. This can be achieved in our time. This is within the compass of the present year. There is no need to await the brutal bludgeoning of the next slump, or the one after that. The first requisite is understanding; the next organisation; and then a realisation that they are best combined by joining the Socialist Party—now.

W. T. Hopley

Alas! Those Prophets. (1922)

From the April 1922 issue of the Socialist Standard

  “If the left wing analysis is sound, the clash between the capitalist powers in August, 1914, marked the opening phase of the world revolution, The events in Russia during 1917-1918 were characteristic of a revolutionary crisis. None of us can tell how soon the forward march of the revolution will be resumed; but for the present we are marking time, and the capitalist system is making awkward efforts to reconsolidate itself. Russia, too, is no longer ‘in the rapids of revolution.’ Despite the dictatorship of the proletariat, her policy is in a large measure dictated by the peasantry—a reactionary class constituting four-fifths of the population.” (Italics ours.)—E. and C. Paul “Communist Review,” March, 1922 (page 390).

How "Ability" Directs. (1922)

From the April 1922 issue of the Socialist Standard

How often are we working men told that we have not the intelligence to "direct" industry ; and that society would crumble to pieces were it not for the individuals who possess a wonderful faculty called by our masters Directive Ability? We are also assured that those possessing this marvellous—and very mysterious !—gift are only found within the ranks of the capitalist class.

Now and again ugly and awkward (for the capitalist) facts come out in connection with the running of particular concerns. At such times the capitalist directors (the alleged possessors of "directive ability") hasten to disown responsibility for any of the irregularities charged against the company, and plead ignorance of its internal mechanism. On such occasions officials of the company (wage-slaves) are saddled with the whole of the responsibility.

A case in point was provided during the inquiry into the celebrated Putymayo Rubber atrocities, some years ago, in which Sir Roger Casement gave evidence. On the board of directors of the company, whose treatment of the natives formed the subject of the investigation, there were four English directors. When interrogated as to the company's doings these brainy gentlemen denied all knowledge of its operations and asserted that they did not even know the language in which the business at the meeting of directors was carried on !

However, even this direct information is not necessary to anyone who will give a few moments' thought to one side of the question—and a glance now and again at the company reports and prospectuses regularly printed in the papers. From the latter it will be noticed that the same individual's name appears on the boards of numerous companies. It will further be discovered that some of the companies are gigantic concerns with tentacles stretching out all over the world, and producing varieties of articles a knowledge of which requires training and specialisation to a very high degree. This being so, it should be obvious that an individual who was connected with such concerns could take a very minute part (assuming for the sake of argument that he does take a part) in the work of these companies.

The writer of this article has before him a cutting from the "Daily News" (14/2/22) relating to the case of the City Equitable group of companies whose affairs are creating a financial stir at the present moment. From this cutting we learn that Mr. Gerard Lee Bevan, who was the chairman of the City Equitable Fire and the City Equitable Associated Companies, was also on the boards of the following companies :

Agricultural Industries, Ltd. ; Burton Son and Sanders, Ltd. ; Chilian Stores (Gath .and Chaves), Ltd. ; Clarke, Chapman & Co., Ltd. ; H. and C. Grayson, Ltd. ; Harrods (Buenos Aires), Ltd. ; Leyland Motors, Ltd. ; South American Stores (Gath and Chaves), Ltd.; Southern Brazil Electric Co., Ltd

The capital of two of the above companies (Agricultural Industries, Ltd., and South American Stores) total round about ￡5,000,000. It will be observed that one of the above companies is connected with Agriculture, another with Petrol Motors, another with Electricity, and so forth. A man would need to be indeed a many-sided genius to handle such vast concerns ! No wonder the poor fellow has made a mess of things and cleared out !

The truth of the matter, however, is that all the direction of  industry performed  by these self-styled directors concerns the direction of  the profits into the appropriators pockets.

The whole of industry, in all its ramifications, occupies in the actual production and distribution of wealth only those whose title gives the key to their social position―the working class. How are they rewarded ? Perhaps the following; quotation will form a fitting conclusion to these few remarks (taken from the "Daily News," 10/2/22) :

  "A case which has been resumed at intervals for the last 30 years has been brought once more before the First Paris Court of Appeal.
  M. Eugene Turpin, the inventor of melinite, and of many other contrivances, is endeavouring to recover damages from all persons who have used his invention. M. Turpin is still a relatively poor man, although since 1881 he has brought out at least 40 inventions."

The above inventor can take his place with the galaxy of inventors (including General Shrapnel, who died in poverty in the early stages of the war) who have made possible the rapid expansion of wealth which has brought with it intrigue and wire-pulling (misnamed "directive ability") of the wealthy financiers.

Gilmac.

Knowledge is Power: — If. (1922)

From the April 1922 issue of the Socialist Standard

We often hear the above remark indiscriminately used by people claiming to be teachers in certain branches of knowledge. To the Socialist, however, accustomed as he is to viewing things according to their relative value to his class, the above phrase taken alone would not be likely to arouse much enthusiasm; for the first question he would probably ask would be, What kind of knowledge? One has to watch the roadway of a great bridge rise and fall, to stand beneath a mammoth ocean liner slowly creeping away from the quay, to see the wheels of production and distribution in motion in any large manufactory, to realise that the worker, who alone operates and makes possible this fabulous wealth, MUST POSSESS KNOWLEDGE, and of many distinctive and technical kinds, too, and yet he is a slave—cap in hand, often begging permission to be allowed to bring into being these very things. Obviously, there is some other knowledge he requires, for to what purpose is his knowledge if it but fetters him with chains of slavery? As William Morris wrote :—

"Faster and faster our iron master, 

The thing we make for ever drives, 

Bids us grind treasure and fashion pleasure, 

For other hopes and other lives."

The knowledge necessary to set in motion or harness Nature's most terrible forces, merely obtains for the worker, upon the average, subsistence for wife and children, and not always that. The power such knowledge confers upon him is the power to produce and distribute the wherewithal upon which society has its being; luxury and affluence for a set of parasitic idlers; want, anxiety, and premature death for millions of his own class. NO ! there is yet one part of his mental equipment that is lacking, and that is the knowledge that he is a slave. The fact that he is no longer a bonded, but a wage or salaried one, does not make his servitude any the less real and complete, and honest introspection would compel admittance of this fact. It may or may not be true that "a little learning is a dangerous thing"—certainly as far as the Socialist is concerned, if that knowledge be CORRECT, he sees anything but danger to the working class, especially when it is consciously directed towards their ultimate goal—Socialism.

Every member of the Party commenced with a relatively small amount of knowledge, usually dearly bought in the hard school of working-class experience; but he knows that such a step inevitably leads to the desire to study and enlarge that knowledge. Unfortunately, the convert to Socialism is often inclined to enthuse over anything that is supposed to call for working-class activity and support; he is fired with zeal and interest in matters which, a later and clearer perception will teach, are about as much to do with the Socialist objective as the programme of the Labour Party or the constitution of the I.L.P. is. It by no means follows that he should not endeavour to understand each and every phase of political activity, but a clear understanding of his Socialist position IS FIRST NECESSARY to enable him to analyse and explain the uselessness of such and such a movement to his class. No member of the Labour Party could show that even the realisation of the whole of their programme would confer the slightest permanent benefit upon the workers; they can only impress and delude the politically ignorant. Mere eagerness to do something without an objective, which is the result of scientific deduction, may even be in a direct line to perpetuate decadent capitalism. All reforms are a standing example of such waste of effort as far as Socialism is concerned. The writer well remembers his association with the working-class movement before coming in contact with the principles of the S.P.G.B., and his support then of the Suffragette movement and certain reformist parties. He remembers wasting much time, and with great patience atttempting to assimilate the spurious economics of Marshall, Jevons, Shaw, etc., with other voluminous works not of first importance to student of Socialism, without, at the time, being fortunate enough to have had put in his way pamphlets and writings of Marx and Marxian Socialists.

It is often easier to instruct and help members of the working class in obtaining real Socialist knowledge who have NOT imbibed some half-baked unscientific notions of the so-called "Communist" and other organisations, seeking the support of the workers, than it is with those who, though professing Socialists, are confused, and, in reality, unconsciously enemies of the working class. Before one can lay any claim to the name of Socialist, it is essential that an understanding be based upon a scientifically drawn-up foundation; only then can the worker discard false conceptions and avoid the errors so common to the pseudo and the sentimental reformer.

That foundation is to be found in the principles of the Socialist Party. There, in simple, working-class language, is the guide to action. Once understood, no matter how brilliant the oratory or rhetoric, or how touching the appeal may be that is. made by people who claim that their heart bleeds for the worker—he will know that there is one way, and ONE WAY ONLY, to working-class emancipation, and that is. the way of class-conscious concerted action by the workers themselves. That is the knowledge that will enable the workers to obtain the power to wrest, by their political supremacy, the means to the glorious heritage that awaits them. Without that knowledge, however much skill and dexterity they may possess as workers, they remain slaves, by reason of the ignorance of their position in society. Once a majority obtain that knowledge, the advent of ibe Socialist Commonwealth is at hand. Fellow-workers, join with us; the smallest effort helps to speed the day.

W. E. MacHaffie

Imperialism Part 2: Super-profits and the labour aristocracy (2020)

From the September 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

We continue our series debunking the view that workers in the First World live off the backs of those in the Third World by examining in further detail Lenin’s mistaken theory.

Link to Part 1

Lenin’s theory of the ‘weakest link’ led him to believe a ‘socialist proletarian revolution’ would most likely occur first in parts of the world still transitioning towards full capitalism, not the advanced capitalist countries themselves. Partly, this arose from his belief that a stratum of workers in the latter – the ‘labour aristocracy’ – had been ‘bribed’ into supporting capitalism out of imperialist ‘super-profits’ produced by a super-exploited colonial workforce.

In Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917), Lenin quotes the arch-imperialist, Cecil Rhodes, reminiscing about a meeting of the unemployed he once attended. The discontent he encountered there convinced Rhodes that Britain should expand its empire, thereby improving the economic prospects of British workers, in order to avert a civil war.

Yet, incongruously, Lenin states elsewhere in his book (Ch. 4) that if capitalism could ‘raise the living standards of the masses, who in spite of the amazing technical progress are everywhere still half-starved and poverty-stricken … it would not be capitalism’. This prompts the question – why then would the capitalists go to such lengths to raise the living standards of some workers by ‘bribing’ them?

Lenin’s definitive statement on the subject appears in the 1920 Preface of Imperialism:

 ‘Obviously out of such enormous super-profits (since they are obtained over and above the profits which capitalists squeeze out of the workers of their “own” country) it is possible to bribe the labour aristocracy. And the capitalists of the “advanced” countries are bribing them, they bribe them in a thousand different ways, direct and indirect. This stratum of workers-turned-bourgeois, or the labour aristocracy, who are quite philistine in their mode of life, in the size of their earnings and in their entire outlook, is the principal prop of the Second International, and in our days, the principal social (not military) prop of the bourgeoisie. For they are the real agents of the bourgeoisie in the working-class movement, the labour lieutenants of the capitalist class, real vehicles of reformism and chauvinism’.

Prior to the First World War, as Eric Hobsbawn notes, Lenin did not really make a connection between the ‘labour aristocracy’ and imperialist ‘super-profits’ as an explanation for the reformist outlook of workers. Rather, he seems to have attributed this to the influence of certain ‘petty bourgeois’ tendencies becoming more prominent due to a changing occupational structure and the development of a purely ‘economist trade union movement fragmenting the working class into ‘selfish’ (“petty bourgeois”) segments each pursuing its interest at the expense of others’ (Monthly Review, December 2012).

It was the impact of the First World War and Lenin’s profound sense of shock induced by the various Social Democratic parties (comprising the Second International) abandoning all pretence of international solidarity and aligning themselves with their respective capitalist governments in the cause of an imperialist bloodbath, which jolted him into further developing his idea of the labour aristocracy. That War, he reasoned, was the quintessential expression of the capitalist rivalries inherent in imperialism. By supporting it, the parties of the Second International betrayed their own inadvertent support for the imperialist project.

Imperialism had been condoned on the grounds that, by imposing capitalist development on the newly colonised countries, this would hasten the advent of socialism. However, behind the superficial rationalisations portraying imperialism as some kind of objectively ‘civilising’ and progressive project there lurked ulterior motives.

Lenin argued that by materially benefitting from the imperialist project, by increasing their living standards at the expense of the colonial workforce, the labour aristocracy comprising the ‘principal prop of the Second International’, found their appetite for socialist revolution had been considerably dulled if not altogether extinguished. Thus did they succumb to the politics of ‘opportunism’ – or reformism – and, in their leadership role as representatives of the wider working class, they set about persuading the latter to adopt this course of action as well, in the process abandoning their earlier commitment to socialist revolution. Indeed, reformism itself could likewise be construed as a form of bribery insofar as it held out the prospect of workers improving their circumstances within the framework of capitalism itself, thereby shoring it up.

Earlier theories

The term ‘labour aristocracy’ was originally coined by the anarchist, Mikhail Bakunin, in 1872. Bakunin felt it was not the organised and more skilled workers within the proletariat that were its most radical elements but, rather, those lower down the labour hierarchy: ‘To me the flower of the proletariat is not, as it is to the Marxists, the upper layer, the aristocracy of labor, those who are the most cultured, who earn more and live more comfortably than all the other workers’ (On the International Workingmen’s Association and Karl Marx,1872).

This, in a way, anticipated Lenin’s view that revolution was more likely to break out first in the poorer countries of the world. In both instances, the underlying (and rather mechanistic) assumption seems to have been that the more intense the poverty experienced, the more likely are people to revolt.

However, this raises the question – what are the people supposedly revolting for? A violent uprising, however understandable, does not of itself constitute a social revolution if all it does is to replace one ruling class with another. Social revolution means a fundamental change in the basis of society irrespective of how it is achieved.

Bakunin’s basic argument has been endorsed by others – like Frantz Fanon, whose seminal work The Wretched of the Earth (1961), contended that it was the lumpenproletariat and Third World peasantry who, precisely because of their social distance from the capitalist mainstream and its dominant ideology, embodied the greatest revolutionary potential within modern capitalism. Similar sentiments have been expressed with regard to the newly-identified ‘precariat’ of more recent times.

Marx’s opinion of the ‘lumpenproletariat’ contrasted starkly with Bakunin’s. Living largely outside of the constraints of formal wage labour and subject to the vagaries of desperate poverty, the lumpenproletariat, by virtue of its very life situation, was more likely to become a ‘bribed tool of reactionary intrigue’ rather than a force for revolution. This was a reference to elements of the lumpenproletariat being employed by the French state within its armed forces for the purposes of maintaining order during the social upheavals of the mid-nineteenth century – the bribe in question being a soldier’s wage rather than something received in addition to this wage (The Class Struggles in France 1848-1850).

Marx’s reference to the lumpenproletariat being ‘bribed’ is ironic, given Lenin’s insistence that it was labour aristocracy, instead, that was the beneficiary of capitalist bribery.

However, this may be a case of over-theorising on both sides. One’s own circumstances – be one a lumpenproletarian or labour aristocrat – need not be particularly decisive as far as one’s receptivity to socialist ideas are concerned. Indeed, Marx and Engels themselves in the Communist Manifesto speculated on the possibility of even some capitalists (Engels himself, being a prime example), cutting themselves adrift from their class and seeking common cause with the workers.

Nevertheless, the weight of historical evidence suggests that the more militant elements within the working class (particularly those who have embraced revolutionary socialism) have, indeed, tended to be drawn from the ranks of semi-skilled and skilled workers.

There is a further irony in Lenin’s depiction of the labour aristocracy as a force for conservatism since it was precisely this segment of the Russian working class that formed the social base from which the Bolsheviks primarily drew their support – skilled machinists in the large factories whereas ‘Lower paid workers, such as the predominantly female textile workers, were generally either unorganized or apolitical (until the beginnings of the revolution) or supported the reformist Mensheviks’ (C Post, Solidarity Sept-Oct 2006).

Engels, before Lenin, had suggested a link between capitalist monopoly and the labour aristocracy, in a letter to Kautsky, concerning the political situation in England: ‘There is no workers party here, there are only Conservatives and Liberal-Radicals and the workers gaily share the feast of England’s Monopoly of the world market and the colonies’ (12 September 1882).

However, unlike Lenin, Engels held that the tendency for capital to penetrate everywhere would eventually break down England’s global monopoly (and, by extension, undermine the super-profits it derived from such a monopoly), thereby reversing the ‘embourgeoisement’ of the English proletariat.

Bribery but how?

For all Lenin’s talk of how the capitalists bribe the labour aristocracy in ‘a thousand different ways, direct and indirect’, it is difficult to envisage even a single way in which this might happen – not if we are to remain faithful to the meaning of the term ‘bribe’ as a premeditated act to materially induce the other party to the transaction to do your bidding. For Lenin’s concept of a bribe to make any sense, and to work on its own terms, it would need to imply something given in addition to the wages received – meaning one would need to transparently disaggregate the income of the labour aristocracy into a ‘legitimate’ wage and ‘illegitimate’ bribe component. This obviously did not happen; all workers received was a wage so any alleged bribe would be hidden within this wage.

This raises multiple problems. If the capitalists of the imperialist countries were so amenable to surreptitiously sharing the proceeds of their investments abroad with (some of) their workforce at home, one might surmise that they would be less resistant to pressure from the latter for better wages than was the case. As Tony Cliff noted: ‘No capitalist says to the workers: “I have made high profits this year, so I am ready to give you higher wages”’ Socialist Review, June 1957). Workers always have to struggle for higher wages. Indeed, Lenin rather contradicted himself by suggesting that super-profits are obtained over and above ‘the profits which capitalists squeeze out of the workers of their “own” country’ – implying a systemic need, arising out of market competition, for these capitalists to exert a constant downward pressure on wage levels.

If Lenin’s thesis was correct we would expect income differentials between the labour aristocracy and other workers to vary in proportion to a country’s level of colonial investment. However, the evidence suggests otherwise. According to Cliff, wage differentials between skilled and unskilled workers were higher in a country like Rumania which had very little foreign investment compared to, say, Britain – in Lenin’s time by far the world largest source of foreign capital.

Moreover, though wage differentials in Britain did widen significantly between, roughly, 1850 and 1890 because of the growth of craft unions (e.g. the Amalgamated Society of Engineers) dominated by ‘labour aristocrats’, these differentials narrowed towards the end of the nineteenth century with the appearance of the ‘new unionism’ which sought to reach out and organise unskilled and semi-skilled workers. The point is that it was precisely then when the age of imperialism commenced (as Lenin saw it) that these differentials started narrowing, thus contradicting what his theory predicts.

There are other grounds on which one might question the theory. For instance, it overlooks that what might theoretically be in the interests of the capitalist class as a whole to collude in bribing workers to achieve some nebulous political objective, may not be a sufficiently persuasive reason for individual capitalists (in competition with other capitalists) to become involved in this stratagem. Meaning it may never take off as a stratagem.

Likewise, workers succumbing to such bribery and seeing themselves as indebted to their employers would probably be less likely to militantly struggle for better wages and conditions. This would probably more than wipe out the value of any hypothetical bribe they might have received.

There are other problems with Lenin’s theory which we will consider later in the context of a ‘post-colonial’ world. While Lenin fondly imagined ‘national liberation struggles’ would serve to undermine imperialism and thereby strike a blow against ‘monopoly capitalism’ the outcome of such struggles, as we shall see, has been quite the opposite of what he hoped for.

Robin Cox

(To be continued)