America through Socialist eyes (1966)

Report from the September 27th 1966 issue of the Hackney Gazette

Hackney S.P.G.B. Lecture

An interested audience heard college lecturer Anne Young describe her impressions of an eight weeks tour of the United States in the course of her recent lecture on "My American Journey," at Hackney Trades Hall, to the Socialist Party of Great Britain's Hackney branch.

She had conversed on a diverse range of subjects with Americans of many different types, ranging from housewives to University professors, said Miss Young.

She was received with enthusiastic hospitality by members of the S.P.G.B.'s Companion Party, the World Socialist Party of the U.S.A., which this year celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. Extremely active, its membership is widespread and its views highly respected. It had recently acquired an influx of keen youthful members. Its official journal The Western Socialist was displayed in many public and University libraries and regular radio broadcasts by the Boston branch, brought the message of Scientic Socialism to several million people.

Negro integration problems, she continued, were becoming acute in the North. Riots arose from slum conditions, poverty, frustrations and hopelessness of the young Negroes, many of whom were well-trained, but could not obtain jobs. There was little integration in housing, although Rich Negroes, who looked down on their poorer brothers, were being accepted in the better-class "white" neighbourhoods. The Negro problem was more a class than a race problem. In the South liberal intellectuals, pained by charges of ill-treatment of Negroes claimed, with justification, that the economic plight of Negroes in the North was worse.

"Immature Workers"
American workers are industrially very militant and their unions efficient, but politically they are immature. The recent airline strike was settled favourably to the employees and now pay claims in a wide range of industries were being made and many strikes expected. Prices are high and rising. Many workers do two jobs to earn enough for better amenities and to educate their children. Much buying is done on credit. Job security is low, employment contracts are mostly yearly and many workers speculate on a small scale on the Wall-street Stock Exchange, imagining themselves as capitalists and hoping, like British workers with football pools, to gain fortune and security.

U.S.A, like Britain, is experiencing a balance of payments crisis. A television speech by President Johnson sounded, word for word, like a speech by Harold Wilson, with the accent on more production, harder work, more saving and wage restraint. There was however a considerable hard core of unemployment in some areas. Many school-leavers could not obtain work and children were encourage to remain longer at school.

The Vietnam War, she claimed, was really a conflict with China over control of the wealth of South-East Asia, and was causing much rebelliousness among youth. Many, who could afford it, sent their sons to college University thus avoiding conscription. Many Negroes and poor Southern "whites" had been drafted in Vietnam. Anti-war feeling was rising with the increase of casualties, but, despite the gravity of the situation and the opposition of Robert Kennedy, it was likely that President Johnson would retain the support of the electorate.

Quoting American journals. Miss Young reviewed aspects of education, medical care, crime and other subjects and concluded:

"The American workers face the same problems as workers wherever Capitalism holds sway. They strive for a lifetime to achieve security. The acquisition of money continually dominates their thinking. Blind to the basic realities of the Capitalist system, they have yet to learn that their problems are inherent in it and can only be abolished by ending the social system which breeds them, and replacing it by World Socialism, a moneyless, classless society."

The politics of joining (1998)

From the October 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Those who know us must have noticed that we don't go out of our way to recruit members. Some would say we do just the opposite. At first sight, we seem to have the oddest approach to recruitment of any political party in existence-we have a test for membership.

Applicants are only accepted if members of a branch, not excluding those who joined the week before, are satisfied by the answers to their questions about what we stand for, and the applicant's understanding of it. Now what we stand for isn't particularly hard. We often say that it's easier to learn than the rules of football. But hard or not, why do we insist on this test? Surely it must put some people off? Well, that may be, but we can't help it.

One can always dismiss this peculiar feature of our case-and the test of socialist understanding itself is part of the case-as mere sectarian elitism. Perhaps, like the People's Front of Judaea in the celebrated satire Life of Brian, we simply don't want people to join, and we don't want to grow, because that would spoil our little club, as it were. Our detractors will certainly say this, and worse.

But let us consider for a moment what happens when people join other groups which don't have this test. Actually, they face a test nonetheless, and one which takes a lot longer and is far harder to pass than ours. For a significant sub-text behind every statement and action that members make in these groups is the exchange of political credentials. In this subtle transaction, which may take any number of forms, the objective is always the same, that the individual is perceived as being "all right". The individual is therefore judged by the group according to a range of what might be called "credential indicators".

Why does this "judging" process take place? Simply because every group is afraid of internal divisions which might destroy it-one reason why debate may be actively avoided-and credential indicators can be viewed as a kind of defence mechanism against this. Power and influence is universally denied to new members, whether officially or unofficially, until judgment is reached, and judgment can take a long time when indicators are unvoiced, subtle, multifarious and hard to inspect. In addition, counter-indicators may be present, or arise accidentally, which will further delay conclusions and further marginalise the member.

So what are these indicators? Obviously the most appropriate of these are the "theoretical" ones. For example, saying that you hate capitalism is a powerful credential indicator to another anti-capitalist. But taken alone it is inconclusive. After all, some fascists claim to be anti-capitalist. Or you might just like the idea of feudalism. Similarly, being against the money system does not exclude the possibility that you favour a barter system-a retrograde step-and being anti-state is a sentiment shared by many rightwing freemarketeers. Animal rights might imply you care nothing for human rights while eco-politics might, or might not, ignore the concept of class struggle. What is needed of course is a coherent approach, but in groups where formal debate is not regularly practised this is very often lacking.

Unofficial indicators

In place of or supplementary to formal "theoretical" indicators one can often find other indicators which may be even more powerful for being unvoiced. Dress can be a strong credential indicator. In groups where young people predominate, the habitual styles of dress will tend to become familiar, and departures from these styles-say a three-piece suit-will stand out as incongruous, odd and perhaps suspect. Older people with differing dress styles therefore present the wrong indicators to such groups.

Language and dialect have been used, especially in Britain, where accent denotes cultural status to a great extent. If the group ethic leans heavily towards the stylised "working class" image, posh accents and Received Pronunciation (i.e. BBC English) are definitely out. This can give rise to speech changes among members.

These two powerful credential indicators work more at the unconscious than the conscious level. Nevertheless new members may be acutely aware of them, and, feeling that they are perpetually on trial, be disposed to change their behaviour, language and dress in order to fit in. This can then give rise to phoney displays intended to impress, and self-conscious reluctance to speak out or assert oneself.

An indicator which is, by contrast, highly articulated, is education, or rather erudition in theoretical matters relating to the group. If the way to be accepted by the group is perceived as being this kind of expertise, the group will not attract anyone but amateur academics who are constantly trying to prove how clever they are.

There are any number of other indicators that may be applied. Even musical taste can be used, or social mannerisms, or background, or income. But very rarely do they spring from deliberate and dishonest policy on the part of the group. People don't mean to keep checking each other out, but it is inevitable that they do so, because the process of social bonding requires a measure of trust and mutual compatibility that makes effective organisation possible.

One indicator is quite deliberate, however. Heavily in use by the leftwing is the indicator of commitment. According to this indicator, hard work and obedience by new members is the main criterion of trustworthiness in the organisation. In these hierarchical, "top-down" groups the leaders wish at all costs to remain the leaders, and reward only those with proven commitment to the "party line" with preferential treatment, more responsibility and more say. New members who present the wrong indicators remain peripheral to the party structure, and finding themselves unable to influence decision-making at any level, eventually give up and leave, often embittered by the hard work they put in and the hollowness of the party's claims of equality and democracy.

The Socialist Party does not need these indicators, because we choose to get the whole business done with and out of the way first, upon application to join. As far as we are concerned, our test of socialist understanding settles the matter once and for all, and in an honest and friendly way. Even applicants who are rejected are strongly encouraged to continue the dialogue, and very often are accepted at a later date when the disagreements are resolved. Once a member, you have the same rights as the oldest member to sit on any committee, vote, speak, and have access to all information. Thanks to the test all members are conscious socialists and there is genuine internal democracy, and of that we are fiercely proud.

One other result of our test is that, whereas many groups are identifiably linked to social niches, it's quite hard to find two Socialist Party members who are alike in any respect apart from their political viewpoint. The first Party Conference any new member attends is invariably a revelation, as they gaze out at a motley assortment of tradespeople, pensioners, hippies, housewives, cockneys, academics, salesmen, musicians, unemployed, ethnic minorities, dockers and doctors. The "typical Socialist" doesn't exist, except in popular myth. This is as it should be, for all the above are members of the working class.

Paddy Shannon

No, it can't (2014)

Book Review from the January 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Can Income Redistribution Rescue Capitalism? By Andrew Kliman, Marxist-Humanist Initiative, 2013, $8 plus postage from mhi@marxisthumanistinititiative.org

Subtitled ‘Monthly Review’s Factual & Theoretical Myths’ most of this pamphlet deals with the theoretical and statistical errors used by the USA's dominant left-wing journal in explaining the latest capitalist economic crisis. The Monthly Review attributes the crisis to rising income inequality, with the clear implication that income redistribution can rescue capitalism, though it is doubtful that Monthly Review would admit to that implication. Underpinning Monthly Review’s explanation is an underconsumptionist theory of capitalist economic crisis, and this is Kliman's main target. Underconsumption theory argues, basically, that crises are caused by a lack of effective demand.

Kliman shows that in Marx’s crisis theory crises result from the normal functioning of capitalism and are inevitable under it. Underconsumption theory, on the other hand, typically implies that something has gone wrong and can be remedied. Kliman also challenges the popular notion of the alleged success of the ‘neoliberal’ assault on the working class, the supposed decline in workers’ share of output, and their allegedly stagnating wages. He provides evidence that this notion ignores the substantial growth in the incomes of older, female, and more highly-educated working people. The evidence Kliman cites is mainly drawn from the USA but the point generally still stands. The history of capitalism shows that it is not inconsistent with rising living standards for the working class, and the 100 years prior to the 1970s saw consistently rising real wages in the USA and elsewhere but still with regular crises.

Kliman maintains that undue concern over inequality can divert attention from major economic problems like mass unemployment, people losing their homes, and poverty. And what about the fact, he says, which dominates most people’s lives, that they are forced to do what bosses tell them to do, day after day, year after year––or else starve? 'Why is there so little outrage about this', writes Kliman, 'or even concern about it?' The criticism here is mainly directed at the 2011 Occupy movement which generally focused less on these concrete problems and more on the abstraction 'rising inequality'. Some may find this line of argument controversial, while for others it will be a breath of fresh air. It should be noted that, contrary to popular belief, Marx did not condemn capitalism for its inequality (rising or not), nor did he frame his arguments for socialism in terms of material equality. For revolutionary socialists, claims Kliman, the interests of the working class and the interests of the system are fundamentally opposed and 'this is the primary reason why they maintain that revolutionary transformation of society is needed' (Kliman's emphasis).

Included in this pamphlet are selections from Kliman's book The Failure of Capitalist Production (2011) where underconsumptionist theory is examined in detail. It is sometimes suggested that Marx held to an underconsumptionist position with this statement: 'The ultimate reason for all real crises always remains the poverty and restricted consumption of the masses'. However, capitalist production is production for the market with a view to sale and profit, not directly for human needs. It is profitability, or the lack of it, which creates the possibility of an economic crisis. And this possibility, argues Marx, is 'no more than the possibility. For the development of this possibility into a reality a whole series of conditions is required' (emphasis added). As Kliman points out, there is no suggestion here that crises are the result of persistently inadequate demand. Kliman is worried about the political implications of underconsumptionist theory because 'underconsumptionism implies that a more equitable distribution of income will make capitalism work better'. This is a fallacy all socialists oppose.

Lew Higgins

Lenin and the Russian Revolution (1966)

Report from the September 6th 1966 issue of the Hackney Gazette

Hackney S.P.G.B. lecture

"Lenin towered, intellectually, high above the capitalist mediocrities of his time, but, nevertheless, like other outstanding historical figures, was driven by circumstances often beyond his control," said Mr. J. Crump, lecturing recently at Hackney Trades Hall to the Socialist Party of Great Britain's Hackney Branch.

Although couched in Socialist terminology, Lenin's ideas, he continued, were typical of a 19th-century bourgeois revolutionary and were geared to the needs of Russian capitalism in its conflict with Tsarist feudal privilege at the beginning of the 20th-century. Long before the October Revolution of 1917, Lenin had developed ideas at variance with those of Marx and Engels, whom he professed to follow. Time after time he harked back to the French Revolution of 1789 as an example, saying that "all the old must be swept away with 'Jacobin' ruthlessness. Russia must be rejuvenated, regenerated economically."

Quoting extensively from his pre-revolution writings, the lecturer examined Lenin's views on various subjects in relation to Socialism.

On religion Lenin was prepared to compromise and to accept religious members into the Bolshevik Party, his most far-reaching demand, reminiscent of 1789, being the separation of Church and State.

To his credit he opposed World War I and exposed its imperialist nature, but his attitude to war was dubious. In 1918, however, he did stop the slaughter on the Eastern Front and secured peace for war-weary Russia.

Lenin believed that a resolute revolutionary elite could lead the non-Socialist masses to Socialism and proclaimed the Bolshevik Party as the self-appointed "vanguard" of the working class, thus departing from Marx in holding that supporters of private-property society could play a part in constructing a classless society. He saw no contradiction between democracy and the exercise of dictatorial powers by individuals, a principle later fully exploited by Stalin with dire effects.

MISTAKEN BELIEF

That all he could envisage in the foreseeable future was Capitalism in Russia dressed up in pseudo-Socialist terminology, is demonstrated by his definition of Socialism as "State Capitalist monopoly made to benefit the whole people," which, said the lecturer, would have afforded considerable amusement to Marx and Engels.

Shortly before the October Revolution, Lenin stated his aims which comprised the ending of the war, division of land among the peasants and a number of reforms, including profit-sharing and nationalisation, particularly of the banks, which he thought would make for efficiency, enhance military prowess and permit better credit facilities for small industrialists and peasants, although he admitted, that this reform would have no  significance for workers.

Out of touch with events outside Russia, he mistakenly believed that Europe was on the verge of revolution.

"Lenin," concluded Mr. Crump, "failed to learn the lessons taught by the founders of Scientific Socialism; that Socialism could not be imposed upon an economically backward country with a non-Socialist population; that it could only be achieved after a period of industrial development by a consciously Socialist majority. The Bolsheviks were not morally wrong to institute State Capitalism in Russia, since under the conditions prevailing it was all that was possible, but in claiming State Capitalism to be Socialism they had for half a century misled the working-class movement.

"It is a tribute to the soundness of the S.P.G.B.'s Marxist position that it has consistently upheld the view that the Bolshevik Revolution could not be a Socialist Revolution and could result only in the establishment of Capitalism in Russia, a fact only now becoming generally recognised."

Labour Government's failure (1966)

Report from the 8th November 1966 issue of the Hackney Gazette

S.P.G.B's condemnation at Hackney

"The Labour Party formerly claimed to be Socialist, but events have finally exposed this notion. The differences between Labour and Tory Governments are superficial; both aim at running Capitalism," declared Mr. H. Baldwin recently, answering "Any Questions on the Labour Government" at Hackney Trades Hall, at a meeting of the Socialist Party of Great Britain's Hackney Branch.

Questioned on the difference between . the S.P.G.B. and the Labour Party, Mr. Baldwin said that the S.P.G.B.. formed in 1904. has always been independent and opposed to all other political parties in this country. Whether obviously pro-capitalist, like the Conservative and Liberal Parties or pseudo-socialist like the Labour and "Communist" Parties, these aim to achieve power by reformist election promises, but when returned can only attempt to cope with the numerous problems which Capitalism produces, inevitably clashing with working-class interests.

The S.P.G.B., while exposing the Labour Party's non-socialist character, since its inception, is the only party that aims solely to change completely the basis of society by replacing Capitalism by World Socialism, he said.

The speaker described Capitalism as a social system in which a minority capitalist class own almost all the means of production and distribution by money invested in private or Government concerns, whilst the overwhelming majority, the working class, have only their labour-power which they must sell for wages to the capitalist class. The capitalists employ workers solely to create wealth over and above the total wages paid. The commodities produced by the working class are sold to realise profit for the capitalist class. Competition for markets, trade routes and raw materials leads to international conflict and war, hence armed forces and H-bombs, while the conflict over the price of labour-power shows itself as industrial! strife.

WEAPON OF UNEMPLOYMENT

This system, he continued, answering further questions, the Labour Government claimed to be able to plan. The Labour Party, formed in 1906 to protect Trade Unionists' interests, which claimed the workers' votes recently with slogans like "Higher Wages and Productivity" and "Planned: Growth — An End to Stop and Go" now deliberately creates unemployment as a weapon of economic policy. Again wages are frozen by a Labour Government, while prices rise, many of them by Government action. They pressed through legislation giving , them the power to fine or imprison Trade Unionists, which no Tory Government had dared to do. 

Asked about previous Labour Governments, Mr. Baldwin said it today's event are reminiscent of the past. Unemployment rose under every Labour Government since 1924. The 1945 Labour Government, the first with a working majority, also introduced a wage-freeze. As prices steadily rose steadily, helped by devaluation, real wages declined. Troops were used to break strikes and dockers prosecuted for striking. Today’s Labour Government supports America’s private Vietnam war and sends arms salesmen round the world, while the 1945 Labour Government introduced peacetime conscription, started the A-bomb and helped in the Korean War— a strange record for a one-time "Party of Peace."

Mr. Baldwin concluded: "Labour Governments, like other Governments fail to solve working-class problems, not through insincerity, but because they attempt the impossible. These problems just cannot be solved within Capitalism. The Labour Party's so-called solutions merely perpetuate the myth that Capitalism can be made to work in the workers' interests. Enmeshed in Capitalism's sordid conflict of class interests and economic chaos, the Labour Government, itself, applies the Tory policy which it formerly ridiculed, but with greater ruthlessness. The real solution is the replacement of Capitalism by World Socialism, a society of cooperation and freedom where men will really be able- to plan, their affairs and in which man, not profit, will matter most."

Spain and Democracy (1966)

Report from the 6th December 1966 issue of the Hackney Gazette

Lecture at Hackney

"Spain’s industrial backwardness was the main factor in her delay in developing political democracy. Nevertheless, Franco's new constitution, though still authoritarian, reflects real changes in economic and social relations resulting from Spain's increased industrial development," said Mr. E. Grant, lecturing recently at Hackney Trades Hall to the Socialist Party of Great Britain's Hackney Branch. 

Spain's former control of South America's gold and silver, he declared, enabled her to buy manufactured goods from other countries with developing industries. Her own industries were therefore neglected and she remained primarily agricultural. Her purchasing power suddenly ending with the breakaway of her American colonies in the early 19th century, she was left with little else. Subsequently, Spain's political history was marked by civil wars and struggles for a republic. By 1900, however, industry had begun in Catalonia and Basque Provinces. Modern towns sprang up and industry advanced during the 20th century. Out of this economic development arose conflict between the Royal Government in Madrid and the industrialists of Barcelona and Bilbao. The Government, to keep prices down, favoured an "open door" policy. The industrialists demanded protection for their new industries. Discontented, they supported militant Catalonian and Basque separatist movements. 

In 1921, nationalist revolts increased in Spanish Morocco. Inefficiently - armed, badly - paid conscripts were poured in. Their sufferings had repercussions at home. In 1931, municipal elections expressed the desire for a republic. The King left Spain and a Republican Government established formal democracy. The Government, however, was slow in encouraging industrial development. Mainly anti-clerical, it antagonised large sections of Church opinion which were amenable to change, thereby losing support of the most influential force in village communities for its programme of agrarian reform. During the Civil War, which left Spain technically crippled, continued the lecturer, the contestants on both sides included opponents of democracy. Franco was wholly supported by monarchist factions and Falangists and the Republican Government by "communists" and anarchists.

MORE SCOPE FOR WORKERS

Spain has been strengthened, since 1950, as a bulwark for American power in Europe. Together with the tremendous influx of money spent by tourists, this has had a tremendous influence on economic progress, producing new industries and extensive electrification. Paradoxically, economic advance in a Fascist setting has provided the potential for development of a working class movement greater than in the past. Movements are appearing among students and workers for free trade unions, political parties and parliamentary elections. The fascist Falange fears that the fruits of the Civil War victory are being filched from them and that a form of capitalism which they did not favour will emerge. 

Mr. Grant said that Franco's demand for Gibraltar is an astute move to unify ail Spanish factions by appealing to nationalist sentiment, and concluded:

"Political democracy, according to Capitalism's needs, exists in greater or lesser measure. The term is now applied even to forms of government far from democratic. For the Socialist movement, the greater the extent to which freedom of speech, organisation and Press is allowed, the better. But democracy itself cannot solve working class problems. This requires the replacement of Capitalism by World Socialism,; for which purpose political democracy used with Socialist understanding is invaluable. Real and : lasting democracy, however, can result only from the establishment of Socialist society."

War, Waste and Want (1966)

Report from the 26th October 1966 issue of the Hackney Gazette

S.P.G.B lecture at Hackney

"We live today in a world of potential abundance. Yet, while millions are in want and many starve, part of the world's resources are consumed in producing weapons of war and in training millions of men and women to use them. How can this terrible paradox be explained?" asked Mr. F. C. Manning, lecturing on "Waste amidst Want," recently, at Hackney Trades Hall to the Socialist Party of Great Britain's Hackney branch.

Modern society's technical basis, he said, is large-scale mass production, which by its nature can be operated only by the labour of millions of people all over the world. These millions do not work alone. They work together. No man makes anything by himself but only plays some part in the co-operative labour by which things are today produced. Factories and farms, mines, mills and docks, though spread throughout the world, technically depend upon each other like links in a chain. They are but parts of one world-wide productive unit. 

Commonsense would, therefore, suggest that to derive full benefit for all from this worldwide productive unit, it should be owned and controlled by all humanity; that it should belong in common to all mankind and be controlled by them to satisfy their own needs. In Capitalism, however, the means of production belong to a small section of the population: the capitalist class, and they are used by the working class to make things, not primarily to satisfy needs, but to be sold to realise a profit on the world market.

POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC COMPETITION

Those who own the world and its implements of production, continued Mr. Manning, compete against each other to buy raw materials and in selling finished products. But competition is not only economic; political means are also used. The competing capitalist groups have at their disposal massive armed forces which exist to protect and further their interests. Capitalist economic conditions make them necessary. Any owning group which controlled no armed forces would be in dire peril and would go under. Not only would it be unable to protect its own wealth, it would also be unable to take and hold sources of raw materials, keep others out of a market, and to control ports and trade routes around the world. The owners, therefore, compete politically and economically for raw materials, markets and trade routes. When other political means fail, all that is left is brute force—organised, scientific killing and destruction— War.

Owning groups are always under pressure to equip their armed forces with ever more destructive weapons. In this "arms race" enormous resources are now devoted to research into nuclear physics, biochemistry and space travel. In addition, millions throughout the world are conscripted or enticed into the armed forces and trained to kill, wound and destroy.

"This," declared the lecturer, "is what is behind the paradox of waste amidst want. The problem of war. militarism and armaments is one of the many which arise from Capitalism, from class ownership and production for profit."

" Militarism." he concluded. " is the inevitable outcome of commerce, of the buying and selling that goes with the private ownership of the world's resources. To abolish militarism we must abolish commerce. To abolish commerce we must replace private property by common property; that is, we must establish Socialism. This means a worldwide change which will harmonise social production with social needs. Only then will the resources of the world be able to provide the plenty they are capable of. instead of being wasted on such things as arms.”

Letter: Marxist ethic? (1983)

Letter to the Editors from the September 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

If ethics is taken to be, on the one hand, the negation of bourgeois ideology and morality and, on the other, as the intellectual and practical anticipation of the humanist values which are to govern relations among individuals in a world community freed from today’s dominant alienating institutions (economic, political, ideological, etc.), then the work of Karl Marx may consequently be understood as an ethical act. As such, this work is one of the most important contributions to a radical transformation of mankind’s destiny: to humanity’s passage from the pre-human to the human stage, from human prehistory to history made by man.

As an ethical act, Marx’s work is based on scientific proof of the opportunity offered to mankind to choose between collective suicide, made possible by technical achievements which escape man’s rational control, and human self-realisation thanks to the reasonable use of the world’s resources and the technical advances of modern science.

As an ethical act, Marx’s teaching and practice was inspired by his view of the rapid cyclical development and expansion of the capitalist mode of production on a world scale, and thus of an increasing proletarianisation of the labouring masses, despite the immense progress in science and technics, and, finally, of mankind’s opportunity for material and intellectual emancipation. It is through a growing consciousness of this opportunity that the proletariat of the industrially developed countries was to constitute itself into political parties and “win the battle of democracy,” either legally, by universal suffrage, or by a revolutionary struggle, i.e. a general strike and the workers’ takeover of the means of production in view of self-management.

As an ethical act, Marx’s theory was offered to the most numerous and poorest class not as a definitive revelation of proletarian slavery and human emancipation but as an instrument for revolutionary self-education in the tradition of the teaching and practice of those great social reformers whose disciple Marx acknowledged to be. Marx, an insatiable reader and scholar, himself provided a definition of his intellectual and literary vocation, while admitting the limits of his theoretical originality, in this following confession to his daughter Laura: “You'll certainly fancy, my dear child, that I am very fond of books, because I trouble you with them at so unseasonable a time. But you would be quite mistaken. I am a machine condemned to devour them and then, throw them, in a changed form, on the dunghill of history” (Laura had just married Paul Lafargue and the two were spending their honeymoon in Paris; letter dated 11 April 1868, shortly after the publication of the first volume of Capital).

Marx, who was a disciple of Epicurus, Spinoza and Leibniz as well as of the French and English materialists, succeeded in constructing a world-view which he in no way considered as a new system of thought, nor as a new philosophy or a new science. He never asked that workers study Hegel’s Logic before attacking Capital. Although his master-work remained unfinished, it is perfectly understandable as a set of scientific and critical theses whose aim is to disclose “the economic law of motion of modern society” (Preface to Capital), and as a series of ethical norms and postulates derived from empirical observation of the self-emancipatory efforts and struggles of the modern slaves, the victims not of capitalists but of capital. The object of scientific analysis is the “reign of necessity”; the object of ethical vision is the “reign of liberty” (Capital. Book III, chapter 48 of the edition established by Engels).

In adhering not to any socialist or communist ideology, but to the cause of the working class and of human emancipation, Marx immediately formulated his ethical creed by affirming a “categorical imperative” that was fundamentally different from the one proposed by Kant : “The criticism of religion ends with the teaching that man is the highest being for man, hence with the categorical imperative to overthrow all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved, forsaken, despicable being ...” (Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, 1844). After he had become a member of the Communist League and was entrusted with drawing up its charter and articles of association, Marx thought best to express the meaning of this imperative in the form of an appeal for union, similar to that which, before him, the leaders of the Chartist movement had addressed to the British workers. Marx added to it a world-wide dimension : “Workers of all land, unite!” 

This appeal of 1848 was, nearly twenty years later, to constitute the implicit conclusion to Capital as formulated in the three pages of the chapter entitled: “The Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation.” This chapter ends with two passages taken from the Communist Manifesto in which Marx draws a parallel between, on the one hand, the growth of poverty, oppression, slavery and degradation and, on the other, the revolt of the ever-growing working class, educated, united and organised by the very mechanism of the capitalist process of production. Here we find a typical example of the double-sided reasoning, the empirical judgment of the lucid observer paired with the ethical conception of the revolutionary behaviour and emancipatory will of slaves who consciously realise their enslavement.

Marx refused to “prescribe recipes (in the style of Auguste Comte?) for the cook-shops of the future” (Afterward to the second edition of Capital, 1873), just as he never claimed to have invented any new morality intended for the slaves of capital. While we may justly affirm, in Engels’s words, that Marx’s “real mission in life was to contribute, in one way or another, to the overthrow of capitalist society and of the state institutions which it brought into being, to contribute to the liberation of the modern proletariat,” it is wrong to claim that “he was the first to make [this proletariat] conscious of its own position and its needs, conscious of the conditions of its emancipation.” Through this dubious eulogy delivered at Marx’s graveside, Engels became the first bearer of Marxist ideology and thus of a new political superstition, whose principal representatives were to be Lenin and Kautsky. The British proletariat was the first to have gained consciousness of its enslavement and of the conditions for its emancipation. Marx had chosen to cooperate in the movement for the emancipation of the modern proletariat, not as a teacher, but as a disciple of the British proletariat, putting at its service not only the fruits of his studies, but also his energy as a militant. As an ethical act, this choice reduced Marx’s life to that of an intellectual pariah, with a career on the margin of official society, to that of a perpetual beggar, who depended above all on the hand-outs from his friend Engels. It was not as a teacher and founder but as a disciple and pariah that, in 1856, Marx addressed an audience of English workers, referring to the “symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire” in order to remind them that “they will then, certainly, not be the last in aiding the social revolution produced by that industry, a revolution which means the emancipation of their own class all over the world which is as universal as capital-rule and wages-slavery.”

Over 125 years after this appeal, in fact a veritable declaration of faith, the “symptoms of decay” have changed into the certainty of a world in decline without there appearing on the horizon the gravediggers of capital and the State. 

Can this phenomenon of decline, which seems to contradict the theses formulated by Marx in the conclusion of Capital (“The Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation”), be explained with the help of his materialist conception of history, in other words using the scientific method which Marx claimed to have adopted in the course of a radical critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right? If this is the case, can we consider that “the economic law of motion of modern society” which Marx claimed to have revealed the Preface to Capital) to be precisely one of the “truths” resulting from the application of the materialist method? If the answer to both these questions is yes, are we not then obliged to admit that Marx’ s thought is opposed to any kind of ethics and that the famous “categorical imperative” was only a sally, a parody of Kantian morality? 

Does the “economic law” not demonstrate the frightening thesis according to which 

“even when a society has got upon the right track for the discovery of the natural law of its movement ... it can neither clear by bold leaps, nor remove by legal enactments, the obstacles offered by the successive phases of its normal development” (Preface, Capital).

Here is a thesis which seems to justify certain critics of Marx who take him to task for his “historicism,” for his mania for identifying social science (or the so-called human sciences) and natural science, for his ambition to observe and study human societies with the mind of a natural scientist (physicist, astronomer), for his quasi-Spinozian way of exculpating the individual and blaming the “social conditions” of which the individual remains a product, “however much he may subjectively raise himself above them” (Preface, Capital). 

It follows that neither the capitalist nor the worker is individually responsible for their destiny, since they are only “the personifications of economic categories, embodiments of particular class-relations and class interests.” So, in the end, what remains of the “categorical imperative” to overthrow the social conditions which make the workers slaves and reduce them to beasts of burden?

Marx envisages this overthrow as a long historical stage in a process of evolution which undoubtedly changes the conditions but which also changes men. Hence the “reformism” in Marx’s political theory, a consequence of his determinism which rules out the possibility of a society “skipping” over the phases of its development or “removing” their obstacles by legal enactments. This “reformism” is clearly expressed in the Communist Manifesto and in the canon of the IWMA; echoes of it can be found in Capital and in other texts where Marx envisages trade union struggles, demands concerning the shortening of the working day and factory legislation to protect the workers’ health and to promote the coercive education of “factory children,” while imposing on the capitalist mode of production, “by a coercive law in virtue of the State” (Capital, XV, 9) “the simplest appliances for maintaining cleanliness and health.” 

As a revolutionary thinker, Marx had to struggle throughout his whole career for “bourgeois” reforms since liberal democracy means the triumph of the freedom of conscience, association and organisation which alone can allow the proletariat to educate itself and to prepare itself for revolution and so for the abolition of capitalism. It is only then that they will be in a position to act in the spirit of the “categorical imperative,” in other words of the ethic which following other reformers Marx placed at the centre of his work. Until the “historic” moment of the revolution, the slaves are only able to “short and lessen the birth-pangs” .

Maximilien Rubel

Paris

(Author of "Marx Without Myth" with M. Manale)

Reply:

If all Rubel means by the words ethics and ethical is that the establishment of socialism ("a classless, stateless and moneyless society" as Rubel puts it in the Introduction to his Marx Without Myth) is not something that will come about automatically as a result of some economic or historical forces operating independently of human will, but rather can only be a deliberate choice, or act of will, on the part of the "most numerous and poorest class" in capitalist society, then we would not quarrel with him. We, too, do not regard socialism as being mechanically inevitable but as something that can only  come about as a result of a conscious dcision by the wage and salary earning majority.

But we would not use the word ethical to make this point. In fact we would have a strong objection to doing so as this word, at least in English, is so closely associated with parsons and other moral preachers that it inevitably gives rise to the impression that those who use it are appealing to some abstract, eternal morality. But socialism is not a moral issue in this sense; it s a class issue. It is first and foremost the solution to the very material problems of the majority class in society, not the realisation of some abstract moral or ethical principles. In this connection it is interesting to note that Marx himself never described his "teaching and practice" as an "ethical act" and even less as an "ethical creed".

We agree that Engels went too far in the passage from his speech at Marx's graveside in which he said that Marx was the first to make the working class conscious of the conditions for their emancipation. Of course he wasn't. No one was, as this is something that workers learn as a result of their experiences as an exploited class under capitalism and, as Rubel correctly points out, it was from the working class movement (Chartists, trade unionists) that Marx himself first learned about the class struggle and socialism. But then speeches made at funerals are not meant to be taken too literally. To blow this statement up so as to make Engels "the first bearer of Marxist ideology and thus of a new political superstition" is to be extremely unfair to Engels. No more than Marx did he use the word "Marxism". In fact it was Engels who recorded for posterity Marx's famous statement, "One thing is certain, that I am no Marxist" (Engels letter to Bernstein, 2-3 November 1882).

It is true that we ourselves do use the word Marxism but this is not in the sense of a "new systems of thought", a "new philosophy" or a "new science" invented by a genius called Karl Marx, but simply to indicate that we acknowledge that Marx was a socialist in the same sense that we are and that we accept in general his method of analysing society, history and economics. We of course fully agree that the "Marxism" of Russia, China and the like (and also that of the various Leninist groups and grouplets) is a political superstition, an ideology designed to disguise the fact that these countries, far from being socialist, are also capitalist and class-divided.

We take it that the last paragraph is intended as a direct criticism of our opposition to a socialist party advocating reforms. Marx advocated reforms, says Rubel, implying (we suppose) that we ought to as well. This is a rather curious position for someone who has spent a lifetime denouncing the making of Marx's views into a dogma to take up! Logically he might have been expected to hold that socialists should base their policy today on an examination of today's circumstances and not on what one particular nineteenth century socialist may or may not have said or done. In any event this is the position we take up.

It is true that, as Rubel states, Marx did support trade union action over wages and hours of work, factory laws to protect the health and safety of workers, and political democracy. Let us take these subjects one by one and see exactly what our position on them is.

Trade Unionism: Our members are, as individuals, members of existing trade unions and work within them alongside their fellow workers to resist downward pressures on wages and working conditions and, when circumstances permit, to improve them. Like Marx we urge workers not to exaggerate these defensive actions but to strive for the abolition of the wages system.

Factory legislation: This is the one type of reform which a minority of socialist MPs could consider voting for. For we are not opposed to social reforms under capitalism as such: if they really do protect the safety and health of workers or promote their education they ought to be accepted, What we are opposed to is a socialist party seeking support on the basis of promises to achieve such reforms. This is why we do not advocate reforms, desirable as some of them might be. We freely recognise that our position here differs from that of Marx, but then Marx did not experience what happens when a party tries to combine advocating socialism and advocating reforms: it attracts support mainly for its reform programme and eventually ends up being a mere party of capitalist reform. The evolution of the German Social Democratic Party before the first world war is a case in point.

Political democracy: Here we fully agree with Rubel (and Marx) that this "means the triumph of the freedom of conscience, association and organisation which alone can allow the proletariat to educate itself and to prepare itself for the revolution, and so for the abolition of capitalism". The working class in the nineteenth century were right to fight for this in Britain and elsewhere and Marx was right to encourage and join in the workers' struggle for an effective universal suffrage. Similarly today the workers in state-capitalist dictatorships like Poland and Russia are justified in making the same demands. The existence of political democracy is very important for socialists and for the working class generally, as it provides a means for propagating socialist ideas and for establishing socialism peaceably.

We know that Rubel only speaks of Marx's "reformism" in inverted commas but there is still an ambiguity in his position. For he talks of the overthrow of capitalism being "a long historical stage" and seems to imply that social reforms are necessary and desirable as a way of "shortening and lessening the birth-pangs" of this stage. It is true that there is "a long historical stage" involved in the overthrow of capitalism but this is going on now: it is more or less gradual evolution of the majority socialist understanding necessary before socialism can be established.

Reforms don't come into this, or rather don't any more since for Marx the reforms he supported were merely necessary to create the preconditions (a reasonably healthy and educated working class, freedom of speech and association, universal suffrage) for this evolution, preconditions which have long existed in most of the developed capitalist countries. Today in fact reforms are necessary for the smooth running of capitalism and so are advocated by all political parties, even those which openly support capitalism.

If all Rubel means is that as long as there is no majority in favour of socialism all workers can do is to seek the best they can out of capitalism then we would agree. We however would see this as essentially involving only trade union and trade union type activity. We suspect that Rubel might see this as also involving voting for reformist parties and candidates, to which we would be very much opposed.

Editors.

Cooking the Books: Co-ops Again (2014)

The Cooking the Books column from the January 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Despite the capture of the Co-operative Bank by hedge funds and the exposure as hypocrisy of its claim to be more ‘ethical’ than other banks, there are still those who stubbornly argue think that co-operative enterprises could be a viable alternative to capitalism. Supporters of capitalism, however, have a more realistic view of co-operatives and what they can and cannot do within capitalism.

One of the arguments put forward in favour of co-operatives is their democratic management structure. They certainly are more democratic than any normal capitalist enterprise which are anything but this. The moment an employee enters the doors of the office or the gates of the factory where they work they cease to be ‘free citizens’ with a right to vote and become subjects who have to carry out the orders of the unelected managers who are running the business on behalf of its owners.

Under capitalism, however, not being undemocratic is a handicap for an enterprise. Even a nominally democratic structure hinders the emergence of the type of ruthless top executive needed to engage in the struggle with rivals with any chance of success.

This was spelled out clearly in an editorial in the business section of the  Daily Telegraph (20 November) commenting on the Co-operative Bank and the Co-operative Group generally:

‘Its democratic structure, with a Byzantine relationship between area committees, regional boards and the group board, was held up as a paragon of virtue. It was, as has been proved, a recipe for disaster … It is difficult to imagine any corporation of this magnitude being governed by archaic governance standards more suited to a village charity than an organisation with its sites on major expansion.’

Like it or not, it’s true. The sort of decisions that the top executives of an enterprise engaged in the competitive struggle for profits have to take are impeded if they are subject to any degree of democratic control. A democratically-run enterprise just wouldn’t survive in the capitalist jungle. If you want to compete with the other beasts in the jungle you’ve got to behave like one of them.

This has been candidly recognised by the president of the much-touted Mondragón co-operative group (one of whose flagship enterprises has since gone under), Txemia Gisasola, when he told Miles Johnson the Financial Times (21 March):

‘We receive visitors from many companies and many countries, and some come here with a magical idea of what Mondragón is. This is not magic. We are in this market, competing in the capitalist world, and the only difference is how we do things and why we do things. We have to be competitive, we have to be efficient, we have to have quality in our products and give satisfaction to our clients, and we have to be profitable. In that sense we are no different from anyone else.’

This does mean that there is no place at all for co-operatives within capitalism. There are some niches for a few of them, but they can never spread to take over the whole economy as their more romantic supporters envisage. As the Times put it (18 June), ‘co-operatives are a model for a few companies, but not for an entire economy.’ Co-operatives are in fact not at all an alternative to capitalism, just one form of capitalist enterprise and a not very efficient one at that.

Rocard versus Rocard (1988)

From the July 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Who once wrote:

How can we imagine a possible socialist revolution in France? What do we know? We know that a mere electoral victory, limited to the exercise of universal suffrage, is useless to bring it about. We know that we are not in a situation, where it is possible to imagine, even in the long term, an armed insurrection, and this is true of England too. The whole idea is stupid. Therefore, we know that the main battleground is the strike, the social struggle, the class struggle.

Answer: Michel Rocard, the current Prime Minister of France. The passage is from an interview he gave in 1971 when leader of a small leftwing breakaway party that aimed "to free the workers from capitalist exploitation" and denounced the Communist Party for being too moderate.

The interview in question, incidentally, was given to The Spokesman, organ of the Institute for Workers Control in Britain, who republished it in 1974 as a pamphlet under the title Michel Rocard Speaks, thus illustrating that he was once the darling of the left in Britain as well as in France. Nor can Rocard dismiss the views he then expressed as an error of youth since, being born in 1930, he was in his forties at the time. 

Rocard had been a founder member of the Parti Socialist Unifié (PSU) in 1960 and from 1967 to 1974 was its National Secretary. In the 1969 presidential elections he stood as a self-styled "revolutionary" candidate obtaining 3.6 per cent of the vote, but he did win a famous by-election the same year to become the PSU's lone MP. In fact, to many, the PSU—the rough equivalent in British terms of the ILP in the 1930s—was Rocard and Rocard was the PSU.

Needless to say his views have changed somewhat since he left the PSU to join Mitterand's PS in 1975, where he soon emerged as the leader of its openly pro-capitalist wing. In 1971 he had proclaimed that the class struggle was the way forward. In 1985 he was complaining:

The final project of socialism still remains for too many socialists a vision limited to the class struggle. It is a question of destroying the bourgeoisie, i.e. the class that holds capital. The idea of a compromise made with the holders of capital remains considered a class betrayal (Libération, 22 May, 1985).

He had changed his views too about the limitations of universal suffrage under capitalism. Whereas in 1971 he had declared:

In the electoral field, the bourgeoisie always has the cards stacked in its favour.  

and

Democracy . . . will only become possible when we have got rid of the power of capital

in 1985 he was declaring:

You don't seek to destroy the bourgeoisie in a pluralist society with universal suffrage. Since, fortunately, the machine gun is not the instrument for settling conflicts in civil society and for this reason there is no longer the physical destruction of the other side, the perspective should no longer be economic destruction either. 

Rocard - 1971 proclaimed:

We must aim at self-management, that is, the management of factories by the workers themselves . . . Workers' control can only be imposed in strikes where the balance of forces is overwhelming, that is to say, where the unity of the workers is strongest.

 For Rocard - 1985, however, 

An economy only functions well if it is competitive. The enterprise must be recognised as a productive unit and not simply a battlefield.

Having repudiated his past in this way, Rocard became a suitable candidate for top political office and there us even talk of him becoming Mitterand's successor as President. Now that he is Prime Minister—under the last Mitterand PS government he was only given the post of Minister of Agriculture—he will be able to exercise to the full his desire "to make compromises with the holders of capital" since this is precisely what governing within the framework of capitalism means, and has to mean. The last thing the workers in France can expect him to do is to free them from capitalist exploitation, as he promised them when he was in the PSU, and the only class struggle he'll be waging will be for the bourgeoisie against the workers.

Although the PSU employed language of revolution—talking about ending capitalist exploitation, overthrowing the rule of the bourgeoisie, waging the class struggle—Rocard never showed any understanding of what socialism is. His vision of "socialism" was always limited to an idealised version of the sort of workers-managed market economy that Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia under Dubček were supposed to be moving towards.

In fact, in a book written in 1972, Questions à l'Etat socialists, he went out of his way to repudiate the idea that money should or even could be abolished, writing of "two tenacious myths" circulating on the subject. The first, he wrote, was that money should be replaced by labour-time vouchers (a silly idea we agree) while "the other tenacious myth concerning money aims at its total disappearance in the framework of a fully distributive economy".

His attempt to demonstrate the impossibility of replacing buying and selling as a means of distributing consumer goods—a reference to some experiment in Cuba when Che Guevera was still around—was pathetic, but it is interesting to note that a Prime Minister of a leading capitalist country has had to confront this idea. A lot more are going to have to in the future.

Adam Buick

The Criminal Justice Act: The Icing on the Cake (1995)

From the January 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Few issues in recent years have caused as much confusion as the Criminal Justice Bill (now the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994). The deranged hangers and floggers of the Tory right believe it will curb crime. The reformers of the left claim that it destroys "democratic rights" to picket, to assemble and to demonstrate. This is fantasy, no such legal rights existed in the first place.

Just look at some of the powers the police already had.

Police powers

In 1978 the Labour government's Criminal Law Act introduced the statuary offence of conspiracy, defined as an agreement between two or more persons to commit a crime. No crime need actually be committed for a conspiracy to have taken place, only an agreement to commit a crime. The Act does not define what constitutes an "agreement" and in practice evidence that the accused had a common aim is sufficient to imply that an agreement has been made. There need only be one accused, incidentally, as a single person can be charged with "conspiracy with persons unknown". Effectively, then, anyone can be arrested at any time if they are suspected of having agreed to commit a crime, even if the person(s) with whom the agreement is alleged to have been made are unidentified and the crime itself has not even been committed.

In addition to this, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act of 1984 gives police officers power to stop and search persons or vehicles if they have reasonable grounds for suspecting that they will find stolen or prohibited articles. The same Act bestows upon JPs the authority to grant a warrant to enter and search premises if they are satisfied that the officer who made the application has reasonable grounds for believing that a serious arrestable offence  has been committed and that there are materials relevant to the investigation and prosecution inside. What exactly constitute "reasonable grounds" is left unclear. "Serious arrestable offence", a central concept in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, is defined as one which has led, its intended to lead or is likely to lead to any of the following consequences: serious harm to the security of the State, public disorder, serious interference with the administration of justice, death, serious injury, or substantial financial loss/gain. Just as under the Criminal Law Act it is the police who can decide what constitutes an agreement to commit a crime, so under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act it is the police who decide the intention and likely consequences. These "discretionary powers" made police powers of arrest and entry virtually unlimited even where no crime has been committed, and this was before the Criminal Justice Act became law.

The Public Order Act of 1986 requires that written notice be given to the police of any proposed marches and demonstrations. If the senior police officer reasonably believes that a march or demonstration may result in serious public disorder, damage to property, disruption to the community, or that it has been organised for the purpose of intimidation, he may "give directions imposing on the persons organising or taking part in the procession such conditions as appear to him necessary to prevent such disorder, damage, disruption or intimidation" (S. 12. 1b); the wording of the Act suggests that conditions may be imposed even after the march as begun.

If the senior police officer reasonably believes that powers under section 12 are insufficient for the prevention of any of the above he apply to the district council, for an order banning the march which may be granted with the consent of the Secretary of State.

Section 14 grants similar powers to the senior police officer in relation to public assemblies (e.g. picket lines, rallies and outdoor meetings, etc), though not to the extent of outright bans. The "senior police officer", incidentally, is defined as "the most senior in rank present at the scene" (S. 14. 2a), the implication being that even a single police constable present at a public assembly (defined as 20 or more people in a public place), and who reasonably believes it to be causing a disruption, may impose on those taking part in it such conditions as appear to him or her necessary to prevent further disruption. In other words the police already had the power to break up a public meeting. It should be clear that even before the advent of the Criminal Justice Act the "democratic rights" the reformists speak of existed no more in law than they did in reality. Strikers at Orgreave and Wapping, travellers at the Beanfield and protesters at the anti-poll tax march in London, all found their "democratic rights" to picket, assemble and demonstrate instantly terminated on the arbitrary whim of police and bureaucracy without the Criminal Justice Act.

While it might be pointed out that the Act extends the power to impose banning orders on processions to cover public assemblies and introduces a new power to impose a five-mile exclusion zone on any place subject to a banning order, it is no less true that police and local authorities have already used bans and exclusion zones to prevent public gatherings on numerous occasions, even without the explicit statutory power to do so—at Summer Solstice gatherings at Stonehenge, for example—and exclusion zones have been used to prevent travellers reaching the Glastonbury festival.

Law and Order

It is with regard to travellers and their (alleged) freedoms that much of the concern about the Criminal Justice Act has arisen, but again existing legislation already makes these freedoms illusory. Under the Caravan Sites Act of 1968 designated local authorities have the power to order trespassers to leave land, while under section 39 of the 1986 Public Order Act the police may order those who trespass or damage property with vehicles to move on and arrest them if they fail to comply. The Criminal Justice Act extends the Public Order Act's reference to "damage" to include "damage to land", defined as widely as to include walking across a field, and extends the powers of the 1968 Caravan Sites Act to all local authorities but no longer requires that those concerned actually be trespassers in that there need not be any request from the landowner to leave; absence of consent is enough. Should the "trespassers" be there with the landowner's permission then the landowner can be charged with offences relating to unlicensed caravan sites under an earlier (1960) Caravan Sites Act.

The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act is an attempt by a weak and unpopular government to mobilise its supporters against what appears to be a resurgent Labour Party. We need hardly point out that much of the Tories' support comes from bigots whose tolerance level is akin to that of the Tonton Macoutes and who would more than welcome the restoration of public floggings and executions for the most trivial offences. They are, as ever, complaining that "crime"—basically anything they don't approve of—is on the increase, and so are demanding a good dose of "law and order" (i.e. state-managed persecution), which the Labour Party have promised to give them.

The Criminal Justice Act is intended to counter this by reasserting the Tories' traditional role as the "Party of Law and Order". It consists of a lot of tough talk but introduces little if anything that is new, merely tightening up existing legislation and legalising policing actions that were previously of a somewhat dubious legality. Nevertheless, the bait has been swallowed by all concerned; the right have rallied to the Act as the new symbol of law and order while the left have mobilised to oppose it, providing the right with an instant enemy to unite. Thus the Labour Party are outmanoeuvred; unable to oppose the Act for fear of being portrayed as "soft on crime", they are unable to support it either for fear of alienating their left camp-followers.

What democracy?

Just as the reactionaries of the right claim to be guardians of "law and order", so the reformists of the left pose as the defenders of "liberty and democracy". Despite all the left's radical rhetoric and militant posturing the campaign to prevent the Criminal Justice Bill becoming law was a pathetic failure and, in the extremely unlikely event that the second round of this crusade succeeds in getting the Criminal Justice Act repealed, then the same powers conferred by it can quite easily be brought back onto the statute book by a series of quiet backdoor amendments to the various Acts referred to above. And even if this doesn't happen it won't prevent such powers being used because, as noted, they were already being used anyway.

The reformists seem oblivious to the fact that for democracy to be defended it must exist in the first place. Democracy means literally "the people rule" (demoskratos). Unless qualified (and democracy qualified is no democracy at all) "the people" must be taken to mean every single living human being without distinction of age, sex, "race", etc; and what they rule is everything—every single aspect of their community existence. That no such state of affairs prevails within capitalism need hardly be emphasised. The political reality of capitalism is class conflict between those who work but do not own and those who own but do not work. For the most part it is the owning class who have the upper hand in this conflict by virtue of their control of the state apparatus, via their representatives in Parliament, by which they can physically force the working class to submit to their rule.

Actual physical force, however, is generally unnecessary; the owning class's representatives issue directives in the appropriate form and make known the punishments that await those who fail to comply (this is what is meant by "law and order"). As part of this process they present these directives as being in the interests of the whole of society, an illusion reinforced by the fact that the representatives if the owning class are elected to Parliament by universal suffrage. This is the extent of capitalism's claim to be democratic: that we may give our endorsement to one party of capitalism's hirelings over another and in so doing give our consent to whatever these people do while in office.

This is not real democracy. This can only exist where is no ruling class and no repressive state apparatus, where the whole community, rather than a parasitic clique, have control over society's productive and distributive resources enabling each individual to have free access to the goods and services they need to live. It will never be achieved by engaging in futile campaigns to repeal pieces of legislation that are nothing more than the legal expression of the state's already existing arbitrary powers, powers derived from the support given to corrupt capitalist politicians in elections, which, ironically, the reformists persistently urge us to do.

Ian Simpson

News and views about Russia. (1919)

Book Review from the July 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Six Weeks in Russia in 1919" by Arthur Ransome. (Paper, 2s. 6d. I.L.P., S.L.P., and George Allen & Unwin, Ltd.)

This interesting work by an observer who has recently returned from Russia consists of a series of short sketches descriptive of the situation there during February and part of March this year.

The position of our Party in relation to the Russian insurrection receives in this book a good of justification. Much of the work consists of interesting though brief accounts of the personalities of prominent characters in the revolt, and their opinions upon various phases of the situation confronting them.

The industrial difficulties which face the Bolsheviks are dealt with, but so also are the valiant efforts being made to overcome them. Railways and roads are under construction; the Baltic-Volga canal system has been improved to admit the movement of large ships; power-stations on a peat fuel basis are in process of building, and improvements in textile production have been made enabling the utilisation of the abundant supply of flax which is available. There is a great shortage of transport, fuel, and food, but the last two items have become more plentiful since the acquisition of the Ukrainian supplies.

In the control of industrial establishments technical and managing experts are appointed by a central authority instead of being, as formerly, elected by workers in the concern—an important modification.

The most important problem in Russia, is, however, that of agriculture, and this is, unfortunately, all too briefly dealt with. One thing is made clear—the utter impossibility of land socialisation for a long period to come is now recognised by the Soviet Government. Let us quote Ransome:

In the afternoon I met Sereda, the Commissar of Agriculture. He insisted that their agrarian policy had been much misrepresented by their enemies for the purpose of agitation. They had no intention of any such idiocy as the attempt to force the peasants to give up private ownership. The establishment of communes was not to be compulsory in any way; it was to be an illustrative means of propaganda of the idea of communal work, not more. The main task before them was to raise the standard of Russian agriculture, which under the old system was extremely low. By working many of the old estates on a communal system with the best possible methods they hoped to do two things at once: to teach the peasant to realise the advantage of communal labour, and to show him that he could himself get a very great deal more out of his land than he does. "In other ways also we are doing everything we can to give direct help to the small agriculturists. We have mobilised all the agricultural experts of the country. We are issuing a mass of simply written pamphlets explaining better methods of farming." (Page 99-100. Italics mine.)

According to some of our critics the Russian moujik needs neither force nor persuasion to acquiesce in the socialisation of the land, but those in Russia know different. Philips Price, in his pamphlet "Capitalist Europe and Socialist Russia," tells us that: "the decree on land, issued by the Bolshevik Council of the People's Commissaries, instantly quieted the peasants. They knew that the land would indeed be theirs if the land committees, which they controlled, had the handling of it." But, we may add, "theirs" in a different sense from that the Bolsheviks intended, for on January 23rd, 1918, they passed the new land law which declared, according to Price, "All private property in land, minerals, water, forests, and the forces of Nature within the limits of the Republic are abolished for ever, and "the land without any compensation to the owners (open or hidden) becomes the property of the whole people to be used for objects of common utility." (Italics mine.)

How does this decree square with the statement of Sereda as to the non-interference with private peasant property? This is one instance of what Ransome in more than one place refers to, namely, that many of the fine sounding Soviet decrees exist largely or wholly on paper owing to the difficulty of enforcing them: "the spirit is willing" but the materials are damned rotten.

Does not the idea of model communes and propaganda pamphlets remind us of the work of Owen, Cabet, and the other Utopians who hoped to banish capitalism by "good examples"; by demonstrating the "superiority" of communism with "model factories" and co-operative colonies. Of course the conditions are vastly different, for the experiments in Russia are undertaken with the assistance of the State authority, but even so, to convince tens of millions of semi-barbarian, grossly superstitious, illiterate and intensely conservative peasants by such means is a colossal, an insuperable, task.

Ransome reports the continuation of his conversation:

I told Sereda I had heard that the peasants were refusing to sow more than they wanted for their own needs. He said that on the contrary the latest reports gave them the right to hope for a greater sown area this year than ever before, and that even more would have been sown if Denmark had not been prevented from letting them have the seed for which they had actually paid. I put the same question to him that I put to Nogin as to what they most needed; he replied "Tractors." (Page 100.) 

The first part of Sereda's statement looks like an exaggeration. It probably means more has been sown than during the past four years, which should be pretty obvious seeing that the millions of peasants drawn from production for the Imperial army completely disorganised agriculture and almost brought it to a standstill. But if Sereda means literally what he says: "more than ever before," this would not be surprising, for after centuries of impoverishment both in land and products, the poorer peasants would indeed be fools if they did not use to the full their present opportunity to raise their level of subsistence.

But really Sereda's evasive reply does not settle Ransome's pertinent query at all. The point is, can the Soviet Government assure a constant and automatic supply of agricultural products as food and raw material whilst retaining the system of peasant farming and, at the same time, socialising the industries of the towns?

Sereda's last point is significant—"Tractors." Without machinery, and the consequent abolition of the primitive, individually used tools of production true socialisation is impossible. The manufacture or importation of agricultural machinery in sufficient quantities and its practical use embodying the destruction of the traditional mode of production and social relations in Russian rural life is the only solution—and this will take years to accomplish.

In an account of a conversation with Lenin Ransome says:
We talked then of the antipathy of the peasants to compulsory Communism, and how that idea had also considerably whittled away. I asked him what were going to the the relations between the Communists of the towns and the property-loving peasants, and whether there was not great danger of antipathy between them, and said I regretted leaving too soon to see the elasticity of the Communist theories tested by the inevitable pressure of the peasantry.

Lenin said that in Russia there was a pretty sharp distinction between the rich peasants and the poor. "The only opposition we have here in Russia is directly or indirectly due to the rich peasants. The poor, as soon as they are liberated from the political domination of the rich, are on our side and are in an enormous majority." I said that would not be so in the Ukraine, where property among the peasants is much more evenly distributed. (Lenin) "No. And there, in the Ukraine, you will certainly see our policy modified. Civil War, whatever happens, is likely to be more bitter in the Ukraine than elsewhere, because there the instinct of property has been further developed in the peasantry, and the minority and majority will be more equal. (Pp. 150-151.)

Now, without pretending to any detailed knowledge of the situation, is not the support of the poor and the opposition of the rich peasantry due to the fact that the Bolsheviks support the aspirations of the poor peasants for larger allotments even at the expense of the richer peasants, and that the latter are prevented from employing wage labourers and thus cultivating and making a profit upon whatever surplus land was them, in addition to having to bear a heavy taxation? The support of the poor peasants does not mean they are in favour of land socialisation, but that they have received land from the Soviet regime which was hitherto denied them, as well as backing against their would-be exploiters.

It has been repeatedly stated in this journal that the Bolsheviks do not draw their power from a class-conscious working class. The above bears evidence of that, but Mr. Ransome's book contains even more definite information on the point. He states that the discontent engendered by hunger and cold was so great and widespread, though unorganised, that the non-Bolshevik parties could, were they not afraid of reactionary invasion, use it with such effect as to overthrow the Communist Party. Now were the workers conscious supporters of Communism it is obvious that they would easily recognise their impoverishment to be due to causes outside the control of any political party, and that neither the Social Democratic reformers nor the Socialist Revolutionary Anarchists can materially alleviate their hardship. The evidence, on the contrary, shows that the Bolsheviks have proved far better organisers politically and economically than any of their predecessors in power, and that whatever improvement has occured is, in a measure, due to them.

Most of the Bolshevik leaders seem to think that England is on the verge of a Socialist revolution, and Lenin in an amusing sentence quoted by Ransome declared that "Ramsay Macdonald will try to (stop it) at the last minute." We here, however, know only too painfully how mistaken the Russian revolutionaries are. Let those who think it possible for a minority of workers here to seize political power in the way the Bolsheviks successfully adopted in Russia, ponder over the words of Meshtcheriskov, quoted by Mr. Ransome on page 58 of his book. This old Siberian exile, who has recently visited England, says:

In the West, if there is revolution, they will use artillery at once, and wipe out whole districts. The governing classes in the West are determined and organised in a way our home-grown capitalists never were. The autocracy never allowed them to organise, so, when the autocracy itself fell, our task was comparatively easy. There was nothing in the way. It will not be like that in Germany. 

The suppression and massacre of the Spartacists in Berlin, Munich, and elsewhere in Germany proved this judgement correct.

Let the revolutionary workers of this country continue their urgent task of agitation, education, and organisation for the day when, having full control of the armed forces of society through the only source of that power—the State machinery—they will be enabled to handle in no uncertain fashion the pro-slavery revolt of the present ruling parasites and their allies, and proceed with the only method of proletarian emancipation, the ownership and control by the community of the means of life.

R. W. Housley.