Barebones (1984)

From the December 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

A couple of months ago the social historian, F. A. Ridley, gave a talk on "English Revolutionaries". On the publicity material he was advertised as one of the founders of the European socialist movement. Of course, members of the Socialist Party were present to find out how justified this reference to socialism would prove. Sadly, we found that this term had once again been used merely as window-dressing, its direct application being dismissed as unsuited to the current millennium.

The talk began with a survey of revolutionary activity in England over the past 440 years, starting with Cromwell and advancing through Chartism to the two world wars, in which millions of workers were slaughtered in the interests of one capitalist nation or another. Our trip through the tunnels of confusion and disillusion ended with the recent Labour administrations of the profit system, and the current "blue period" of monetarism.

Ridley regarded as most revolutionary those periods in which there had been an apparent upsurge in the cries for reform and mentioned as paramount among these Cromwell's Barebones Parliament. From the audience we pointed out, firstly, that the socialists of the present century are revolutionary in pointing out the futility of reform. Present social problems can only be removed by a conscious, majority desire to change the basis of society. The, we demonstrated how the Barebones Parliament was a vehicle for reform in the interests of the ascendant capitalist class. The vote was granted only to those possessing over £200 and the real revolutionaries of the period, the Diggers, were routed and even put to the sword by Cromwell's Roundheads.

At this point, Ridley compared the Diggers with the Socialist Party of Great Britain, and said that he would have full support for us if only we would retire from the field of active politics and become a merely educational body. To this the socialists present pointed out that for us, theory and practice cannot be separated in this way. The socialist movement has a function which is practical, political and educational. The Socialist Party enters the political field in order to expose and oppose every party whose policy works against the interests of the working class.

Another speaker from the floor began to defend the record of the Labour Party, referring to the building of "20 million" council houses during their periods of office. At this a cry of "slums" came simultaneously from various members of the audience, and Ridley pointed out quite appropriately how the Tory Party has in principle been equally prepared to endorse reform of this kind in order to ensure the smooth running of capitalism. Another question was raised about the existence of a "different form of society" in Russia, but Ridley again dealt with this pertinently by explaining that what has existed there for the past 67 years is state capitalism.

Clearly, Ridley has an understanding of how capitalism functions. He recognises the limitations of reformism and the inability of state control to serve the working-class interest. But what this meeting demonstrated was the urgent need for him, like the rest of the working class, to join the movement for world socialism without delay. Reformism has not brought us any closer to resolving the fundamental contradictions of capitalist society. Four hundred years of so-called revolutionary history demonstrated this.

AM/CS

Anthony Blunt: no sort of traitor (1980)

From the January 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

Did Anthony Blunt —that frail, effeminate, learned man — ever dream that we would be responsible for so much confusion?

Consider, first, the sorry plight of the left wing. Blunt might have been one of their heroes, for he turned his back on his past — the public school, one of the more exclusive Cambridge colleges — to become an agent for Russia, which has nourished so many left wing false hopes and delusions. Yet Blunt also enraged the left because the personified the cohesive protectiveness of their arch provocator — the Establishment. And worse, Labour ministers, including Wilson and Callaghan, connived in this apparent exercise of the Establishment looking after its own. No wonder Willie Hamilton fumed in the House of Commons: " . . . feelings of outrage . . . I have never felt so sick, angry and frustrated . . . squalid conspiracy in high places . . ."

Then there are the Tories, who work most comfortably on the assumption that the best of all possible property societies is one run by an indulgent elite from the best families, schools, clubs, regiments  . . . This elite pretend that they hold their privileges as an act of kindness to the rest of us; they don't really own those thousands of acres, stately homes, works of art, stocks and shares. They merely hold them in trust for the less fortunately born majority in society. If this theory is to be at all presentable, it is essential that no member of the elite should let the side down. When one of them does — and, in the case of Blunt, in the worst possible way, by spying — the Tories too are thrown into confusion, aggravated by the knowledge that their ministers also knew about, and protected, the spy.

Brilliant Young Men

And out of all the confusion emerges a picture of British capitalism which does not meet the demands of modern, thrusting, super-competitive capitalism. The Blunt affair, like its predecessors in the Great Whitehall Spy Drama, was taken by many people as evidence that Britain is run by a bunch of effete, disreputable upper class twits who all went to the same school, and who are too stupid, or too corrupt, to recognise a spy even if he was delivered to their In Tray in manacles. Well, there is nothing to be gained by discussing the accuracy of that caricature; it is more useful to point out some of the lessons to be learned from the infamous scandal of Anthony Blunt.

We have already said that Blunt is a very learned man — although it is another matter whether his talents would ever have seen the light of day had he been born into a working class family, who rely on selling their labour power to live. There is little demand among employers for experts in the works of Nicolas Poussin. But then the other spies Blunt was associated with — Philby, Maclean, Burgess — were also very clever. Burgess, said Blunt, was " . . . one of the most remarkable, brilliant, and one of the most intelligent people I've ever known". (He might also have used words like 'drunken' and 'abusive' except that such minor faults can be overlooked in one of such rare gifts.) Philby too was once highly thought of, the rising star in the Secret Service, described by Hugh Trevor Roper (The Philby Affair) as " favoured by society, liberally educated, regarded by all who knew him as intelligent, sensitive, transparently sincere".

Stalinist Murders

Now the working class are depressingly willing to pay their respects to people who are described as 'intellectuals' even when, like this bunch, they are blind to some obvious facts of reality. Blunt has told us their version of reality in the Thirties:

. . . in October 1934 I found that  . . . almost all the intelligent and bright undergraduates who had come up to Cambridge had suddenly become Marxist [sic] . . . and there was this very powerful group, very remarkable group of Communist intellectuals in Cambridge . . . 

(This provoked a doctor to write, irritably, to the Daily Telegraph from Moreton-in-theMarsh: "I was up at Cambridge in 1935 and many of my circle were bright. But had any of them expressed Marxist views he would have been debagged and thrown into the Cam")

But what was happening in Russia at that time to impress all those incredibly brainy undergraduates? In 1934 the 17th Party Congress was held, with perhaps many of the participants being as brainy as those bright young men in Cambridge. Unfortunately, their leader Stalin was not favourably impressed with them, and soon afterwards he had over half of them shot, along with nearly three-quarters of the Central Committee they had elected. This was a comparatively minor incident in the horrifying story of imprisonment, torture and murder which characterised Stalin's rule over Russia. One estimate of the total casualties during these years appeared in Robert Conquest's book The Great Terror. Conquest used a variety of sources — participants' accounts, official statistics and the 1959 Census — and he came to the conservative estimate of 20 million dead.

Forgetful Politicians

Much of the information about this was available at the time, but it did not impress those brilliant students at Cambridge. Some of them were even prepared to justify the August 1939 pact between Russia and Nazi Germany. "We argued", said Blunt, "that it was simply a tactical necessity . . . " In fact he carried his enthusiasm a bit too far, continuing to pass British secrets to Russia after the two staters were in the war on the same side. This illustrates not only his blind devotion to the blood-soaked dictatorship but also the actual fragility of the unity between capitalist powers, even when they call themselves the Allies.

But it was not only Blunt and his fellow geniuses who have been confused, because several prominent politicians said they had quite forgotten being told that a senior member of the royal household was a Russian spy. One of these politicians is Lord Brooke, who could never be accused of being an intellectual and who 'forgot' quite a few things during his time as Home Secretary. So how much more do the leaders of capitalism 'forget'? Do they 'forget' the realities of capitalism — its power cliques, its privileges for the few, its international conflicts, its cynicism and deceit? Do they 'forget' that the whole rotten mess is kept in being by the very people who suffer under it — the working class — the people who get excited about the Blunt Affair because they have been induced into a trance of patriotism? And who will help them 'remember'?

One thing to remember is that international conflict is ineradicable under capitalism. Those conflicts are fought out by all appropriate means and not just in the military sense; all sides have an elaborate machinery of espionage. Those who operate that machinery develop an especially cynical devotion to the interests of the master class they serve. The schemes they hatch often have an arithmetic a lot more intricate than that of a simple double cross.

Concepts in Privilege

If one side uncovers another's spies they usually give vent to a great blast of innocent indignation, which is designed to obscure the fact they they have their own agents busily at work. Thus Burgess, Maclean and the rest had their counterparts — Volkov, Petrov, Dolynytsin and, arguably the significant of them all, Penkovsky, who passed to the Western powers thousands of items of secret information, including some on Russian rocketry, notably at the time of the Cuban crisis.

Nobody needed Anthony Blunt to tell us that capitalism is a society in which a small minority are privileged a long way above the rest of us. But he throws an interesting light on the extent of that privilege. His job in the royal household, for example, consisted of looking after the Queen's pictures, rehanging them and redecorating the rooms where they hang (or at any rate ordering other people to do the actual hanging and decorating). As a flunkey to a super-parasite, he lived in a different world to the rest of us, with concepts and expectations quite foreign to those of the majority. He described his interrogations between 1951 and 1964 as 'mainly comfortable conversations'. This is in stark contrast to the treatment habitually handed out to workers who 'help the police with their inquiries' over some offence against capitalism's laws. On the very day of Blunt's press conference, a fatal 'accident' inquiry in Glasgow was told by a former policeman of how sickened he had been at the violence meted out by the police there to a man who later died from his injuries.There are few 'comfortable conversations; between the police and the workers they arrest in places like Glasgow.

A great deal of indignation has been spilled out over Anthony Blunt, but outraged workers would do better to direct their feelings against this social system itself. Capitalism is a society in which one class, although numerically insignificant, owns the means whereby the rest of us live. That fact is central to all privilege — the aristocrats, the clubs, the old boy network, the cover-ups in high places. It is also a society in which a lot of effort goes into persuading us that we should devote ourselves to the work of keeping capitalism going on the orders if some super-intellectual beings. Anthony Blunt has provided the latest piece of evidence to show what a myth that is. Workers should not trust leaders, no matter how allegedly brainy or evidently stupid they are; they should organise their own confidence to run society on a different basis, in their own interests.

The sordid story of Blunt and his clever friends is but a minor episode in the horrendous, cynical passage of a society which can operate in no other way. Blunt betrayed his own ruling class, but to capitalism itself he was no sort of traitor; he was, and remains, its most devoted, if devious, servant.

Ivan

Obituary: Sandy Easton (2014)

Obituary from the August 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are sorry to have to report the death (aged 60) of our comrade Sandy Easton, for many years a member of the old Islington Branch and before that of the old Croydon branch, then latterly of North London Branch. Raised in Edinburgh where he also attended university, Sandy joined the Party there in 1974 after hearing Socialist Party orators at the Mound. He was very active throughout most of his membership, serving many times on the Party’s Executive Committee and being a former long-standing member of the Media Committee and its predecessors.

Sandy was a dedicated socialist, always interested in the historical detail of theory and diligently committed to the principles of fair process. He was open-minded, much influenced by his huge interests in folk-music (and its meanings) and in radio drama. He was a fine actor in his own right; some members once saw him in a superb performance of Wesker’s ‘Roots’ in which all the parts were played by blind actors. He was also a very accomplished keyboard player and singer too – indeed many attendees at Conference socials over the years will remember his particular penchant for mining disaster songs! We will also remember his incredible ability, as someone who was blind, to navigate his way around London streets and the underground system with minimal help or assistance from others. And there are many who will swear even now that Sandy could tell who’d entered the room by the distinctive sound of their footsteps or other, barely detectable means that indicated their presence.

In a great many ways he embodied the principles for which he stood. It is impossible to think of Sandy without hearing a calm, reflective, knowledgeable socialist voice. For many years he was a telephonist for a bank though in the Party his vocal abilities were often put to even better use as a Party speaker and debater. He was a lovely, gentle and incredibly insightful human being who will be greatly missed.

SC/DAP

Putin Rehabilitates World War One (2014)

From the September 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

The embalmed corpse of Lenin must have turned over after hearing Putin's speech in August at the unveiling of a monument to Russian First World War 'heroes'.

Putin's speech (eng.kremlin.ru/news/22756) sought to rehabilitate the First World War and use it to bolster Russian nationalism and capitalism. Putin is busily rewriting Russian history; 'Russia did everything it could to convince Europe to find a peaceful and bloodless solution' but Russia as a world power was as culpable as all the western capitalist states. He spoke of 'our people's spiritual and moral upsurge at that moment' which is bunkum considering Russia was a semi-feudal, autocratic Tsarist Empire with no democracy and the peasantry just a couple of generations away from serfdom. Maybe he was talking about the priest Rasputin 'lathering up' the Russian Empress.

According to him, ‘our country had no choice but to rise to the challenge, defend a brotherly Slavic people and protect our own country and people from the foreign threat.’ He even glorifies the 1916 Brusilov offensive which cost the Russians a million casualties. ‘Victory’, he claims, ‘was stolen from our country. It was stolen by those who called for the defeat of their homeland and army, who sowed division inside Russia and sought only power for themselves, betraying the national interests' when in fact it was the Russian peasant and proletarian soldiers in the army who walked away from the front and demanded land, bread and an end to the slaughter. We hold no brief for Lenin and the Bolsheviks but we can recognise that the one good thing they did, in response to Russian soldiers voting against the war with their feet, was to take Russia out of the First World War. Putin would have sent millions more to the slaughter.

Steve Clayton

The Call. (1918)

From the December 1918 issue of the Socialist Standard

Come from the slum and the hovel,
From the depth of your dumb despair;
From the hell where you writhe and grovel
Crushed by the woes you bear;
There are joys that are yours for the taking,
There are hopes of a height unknown,
A harvest of life in the making
From the sorrows the past has sown. 

Come from the dust of the battle,
Where your blood, like a river, runs,
Where helpless as driven cattle
You feed the insatiable guns.
You fight when your masters bid you,
Now fight that yourselves be free,
In the last great fight that shall rid you
Of your age-long slavery. 

There's a murmur of many voices
That shall roll like thunder at last;
The shout of a world that rejoices
In a harvest ripening fast.
For the slaves their shackles are breaking
With wonder and ecstasy;
There is life, new life, in the making
In a new-won world made free.

F.J. Webb

The Movement In Manchester. (1908)

From the January 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

The hard work put in by "The Two Revolutionaries" last winter in Cottonopolis and the visit paid by Comrades Kent and Humphrey in August bore fruit in the shape of the Manchester branch of the S.P.G.B., which branch, although only formed in October, has already made itself felt, and will prove a very prickly thorn in the side of the "reformers" and political job-hunters of the S.D.F. and I.L.P. brand as soon as the open-air propaganda season commences.

On October 20th Mr. J. T. McPherson, Labour member for Preston, who, with Messers. Seddon and G. D. Kelley, recently had his expenses paid to Switzerland and back by those friends of Labour, the National Service League, spoke at a meeting of a local Ethical Society and eulogised the Labour Party, singling out Mr. Crooks, M.P., for special mention. In the course of the discussion our comrade Jim Brough pointed out that Crooks had broken the Constitution of the L.R.C. by sending a letter in support of Mr. Hamar Greenwood, then Liberal candidate (now M.P.) for York, Mr. G. H. Stuart being the L.R.C. candidate for the Division.

Mr. McPherson replied that Crooks had not proved false to the Labour Party's Constitution since signing it. Following upon this correspondence took place and the member for Preston promised on October 24th to obtain information which would enable him to justify his assertion. Up to the time of writing he has not done so. In connection with the same matter Comrade Brough wrote to Mr. Hamar Greenwood drawing his attention to the issue of the Postmen's Gazette of February 17th, 1906, stating that extracts from Mr. Crook's letter in support of Mr. Greenwood were posted and issued as a handbill during the contest. Mr. Greenwood, who may of course be out of town, has not yet replied. Comrade W. L. Brown also wrote to Mr. G. H. Stuart, M.P. for information and this gentleman informed our comrade that Mr. Crooks did not deny writing the letter referred to, but he did deny that the construction placed upon it was the correct one!

On November 20th, Comrade J. W. Marsh represented the Party at a debate at the Co-operative Hall, Ashton Old Road, his opponent being Mr. Tom Swann, I.L.P. The subject was "Does the I.L.P. deserve the support of the Working Class?" and Dr. Garrett of the S.D.F. presided. In his opening remarks the chairman said there was nothing to lose but much to gain by discussing this and similar matters in public. They had differences and these should be fought out before the public. Comrade Marsh opened the debate. He pointed out that the development of Society from feudal times had resulted in the political power being secured by the owners of the machinery of wealth production, which ownership enabled them to practically own the worker. The antagonism of interest between the possessing class and the wage earners demanded the formation of a working-class party based upon a clear recognition of the class position, and he showed how all other parties were useless to achieve any real good to the workers. By a Socialist party he meant one whose aim was the capture of the political power, for until that was done class domination could not be ended. A party not preaching Socialism all the time, not openly and avowedly organising for Socialism, was not doing the work of a Socialist Party. He gave many instances of confusing and pro-capitalist tactics of I.L.P. members, and having dealt with the futility of reform, closed by declaring that the answer to the question was in the negative. Mr. Swann, in his opening speech, denied that they had anything to do with the action taken by I.L.P. leaders, even if they had violated the constitution of the Party. For every backslider that Marsh could name, 99 could be mentioned who had been true to the Cause. He became irrelevant by referring to the fact that certain prominent members of the S.P.G.B. were expelled from the S.D.F., and tried to make out a case for the I.L.P. by comparing the number of its weekly meetings to those held by the S.P.G.B. The I.L.P., he said, had more branches than the S.P.G.B. had individual members. It had spent £250,000 in propaganda since it was founded. Alluding to Marsh's attack on the advocacy of reforms, Mr. Swann quoted from a pamphlet on Free Maintenance to the effect that in times of strike the men would be encouraged by the knowledge that their children were being fed. He admitted that capitalism not only produced but demanded a reserve army of unemployed, but said the capitalist class must be compelled to find work for the unemployed. He described the policy of the S.P.G.B. as a dog in-the-manger one. Not only was it trying to prevent the I.L.P. doing good work but it was also trying to undo that already done. The S.P.G.B. were dreamers trying to disunite and leg down the workers. He claimed that the I.L.P. contributed more to that unity which was essential on the part of the workers than any other party and therefore deserved their support.

In his reply Comrade Marsh pointed out that the I.L.P. leaders who had violated the principles preached by the Party still had the support of the rank and file. and the I.L.P., like any other party, must be judged by the actions of its representatives. He pointed out that the master class could take away Free Maintenance as well "concede" it, and the strike argument therefore fell through. Moreover, so long as they controlled, through Parliament, the Army and Navy, they could and would use these against workers on strike. He denied that Mr. Swann had dealt with the points, which was evidence of his inability to do so. Mr. Swann concluded by declaring that his view of the S.P.G.B. had been confirmed. He had always thought they were "a set of fanatical, skyscraping, moonraking, rainbow chasers," and having delivered himself of much more to the same effect he sat down. The hall was crowded and a good sale of literature was effected.

The Manchester branch is thus fairly on its legs and the "political job hunters" had better look out for squalls. We have now enrolled a vigorous fighter in the person of Moses Baritz, late of the S.D.F., well known throughout Lancashire and the Potteries, and we have no doubt the branch will from time to time, be enabled to report favourably of  its doings.

A B.

Since the above was written a further report has been received, from which we gather that for the first three weeks in December the branch disposed of 300 copies of THE SOCIALIST STANDARD and the S.P.G.B. Manifesto. Good propaganda meetings have been held. On Sunday, December 8th, Baritz spoke at Stevenson Square in the afternoon, and at Tab Street in the evening. Here Councillor Sam Hague, of the I.L.P., opposed, and after Baritz had dealt with his opposition the audience bought 10 pamphlets in a few moments. At the meeting at Stevenson Square on the afternoon of December 15th two members of the S.D.F. opposed. They claimed to be revolutionists but believed in reforms. After the S.P.G.B. speaker had quoted the words of Mr. H. M. Hyndman concerning palliatives obscuring the issue and reform being impossible, these opponents repudiated Mr. Hyndman. One admitted that "there are a few fakirs and shakers in the S.D.F." The branch has challenged the local branches of the S.D.F. and I.L.P. to set debates and is awaiting replies. —Ed.

The Twilight of Bolshevism (1937)

Book Review from the September 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

From "Lenin to Stalin," by Victor Serge. (Pioneer Publishers, New York.)

The above volume, of one hundred pages or so, presents in brief the views given in greater detail in the author's larger work, "The Fate of the Revolution," $2.00.

In a note about Serge, we are told that his parents were émigrés in Tsarist days, one member of the family having been hanged after the assassination of Alexander II. Serge appears to have moved in anarchistic circles until 1917 in France and Spain, but joined the Bolsheviks in Russia in 1919.

"He became a member of the Russian Communist Party and a colleague of Zinoviev on the E.C. of the Communist International during the Civil War. He then became a gunner in a special battalion, a member of the military defence staff, and a commissar of the archives in the secret police under Krassin in 1919  . . . He spent considerable time in Germany (during the preparation of the 1923 uprising) and in Austria. Since then he has been a member of the Opposition. Expelled from the party and imprisoned in 1928 . . . deported to Orenburg in 1933, he was banished from the U.S.S.R. . . . in 1936."

The author's theme is the change, real or supposed, which has come over the Soviet Government since Lenin's time. He might have entitled it, "From Heroism to Cowardice." The careful reader who has studied the progress of events will fail to be convinced by such an over-simple presentation of the case. For example, compare the recent slaughter of Russian military leader with an incident in the Civil War, quoted by Serge on page 30:—

"The first Red troops retreat on every occasion. Kazan, the key to the Volga, is lost. Trotsky, Ivan Smirnov, and a group of militants arrive by special train in the midst of this débâcle . . . The  morale of the troops recovered. Trotsky signed this order:— 

'The soldiers of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army are not a cowardly rabble. They want to fight for the liberty and happiness of the working people. If they retreat or fight badly it is the fault of the commanders and commissars.
  

'I serve notice that if a unit gives ground, the political commissar will first be shot. Then the commander . . . For this I assume responsibility before the Red Army.'

"Many Revolutionists disapproved this speech and action, but Lenin approved it heartily."

This typically anarchist view of the responsibilities and powers of  individuals appears to have infected Bolshevism at an early date. The full fruits of the superstition are only now being reaped. When Serge deals with the confessions of people like Kamenev and Zinoviev the same semi-mystical streak appears. On page 81 he says: "Such confessions are made out of utter devotion and there is also an element of calculation about them. Smilga, an Oppositionist 'capitulator,' who has been in prison since 1933, once said: 'We must retreat, surrender for the present, and when the masses awaken, we shall put ourselves at their head.'"

Serge adopts a similar attitude to the defeat of Stalin's policy on the international field. Whether it be China or Germany, Serge evidently fails to realise the fantastic character of the proposition that a different "leadership" would have led to substantially different results. Like Trotskyists generally, he appears to imagine that the workers and peasants of the entire world are only waiting for genuine revolutionary messiahs to effect their deliverance. The tame slogan of "Socialism in one country" only expresses the belated recognition by the ruling clique of the Russian Communist Party of their limited influence outside Russia.

Lenin was by no means exempt from the pressure of external forces, as Serge's own pages bear witness. For instance, on page 29, we read: "Lenin and his co-workers did not contemplate the total nationalisation of heavy industry, but rather an effective workers' control and the growing participation of the Socialist state in mixed trusts in which the capitalists would retain some place."

Dealing with the civil war, on page 32, however, he says: "To an ever-increasing extent the economy must be directed with a view to war and stringent measures of nationalisation are extended to the whole of production. Factory-owners ask to be nationalised, as they cannot live otherwise."

Finally, when the civil war over: "The Poles are driven from Kiev. Lenin at once conceives the project of an offensive against Warsaw to make Poland a Soviet State . . . The workers and peasants of Poland fail to rise, and this, once again, proves that the revolution cannot be brought into a foreign country at the point of a gun."

The peasant risings in Russia itself (Serge instances the region of Tambov, where the peasant force reached 80,000 men), coupled with what he describes as the "useless massacre" of the Kronstadt sailors (rebelling against a Central Government, which had suppressed democracy), forced Lenin to put forward a new economic policy. "War communism" went by the board. Requisitions of grain were abandoned, peasants and others were allowed to trade, and all the feature of small-scale capitalism reasserted themselves. Even the ties between the State and its industrial trusts were slackened, and these began to participate in buying and selling in the ordinary market.

If we are to regard Lenin's régime as one of heroism, we are also compelled to recognise the magnitude of the illusions from the results of which many of his followers have had to suffer.

Serge's account of the war on the Opposition makes dismal reading: "The purge of the population of Leningrad (by imprisonment and deportation) includes between 80,000 and 100,000 victims. And that is in 1935, a year of economic recovery." (Page 77.)

Lenin changed the name of his party from "Social-Democrat" to "Communist." In Spain, Stalin's followers become "Socialists" in order to hound down expelled members of the Communist International. More treacherous than the Fascists, Serge shows that they denounce the P.O.U.M. militia as "the agents of Franco-Hitler-Mussolini," in a word of those who bid fair to reverse Lenin's famous slogan and turn a civil war into an imperial one.

Eric Boden

Realistic portrayal (2014)

Book Review from the August 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Charley’s War: Volumes 1 to 10,  Pat Mills and Joe Colquhoun, Titan Books

Charley’s War has been described as the best British comic strip ever produced and it is difficult to disagree. It can be heartily recommended for younger people as an easy introduction to the First World War and for adults as a gripping read in itself.

The strip originally ran in Battle from 6 January 1979 to 26 January 1985 and follows the teenage Charley Bourne from his enlistment in early 1916, through the bloody battles at Somme and Passchendaele to the end of the war and beyond. It is a dramatic but realistic portrayal of life in the trenches, and through flashbacks and other devices deals with other less well known aspects of the war – the war in the air, at sea and on the home front, the experience of the French at Verdun, the Etaples Mutiny, and the intervention in Russia. It even features a conchy, though not a socialist – they were, alas, rare birds indeed.

Naturally various narrative devices of the genre are used in order to maintain attention and pace but the strip is never a standard boy’s own tale of daring do. Charley is treated as a real person, with a past, as a worker on the buses in London, a future, on the dole in the ‘30s, and a family life, father, mother and sister, and later a wife and children. It is easy to pick holes, e.g. its all too free adoption of the ’Lions led by Donkeys’ approach, which neglects the physical constraints of the fighting environment (could all the Generals on all the sides really have been such idiots?), and the occasional dubious historical details (although there were some horrific evil weapons in use, the acid sprayer used to melt soldiers depicted in the final book almost certainly never existed). However, the shock and power of the story lines overcome all niggling objections.

Charley’s War has been reproduced over a period of years by Titan in high quality hardback editions, which does the highly detailed art of Joe Colquhoun proud. The books have restrained but stylish black covers, which will not embarrass the non-genre purchaser. The reprints come complete with lots of finely crafted background information and excellent introductions. The full set is now available and is heartily recommended.

KAZ

Romantic rebels (1988)

Editorial from the May 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Twenty years ago this month the French took an unscheduled holiday together. For three romantic weeks a minority of revellers bathed in a glorious self-deception, erecting barricades, occupying their places of work, popularising a critique of consumer culture and sending wish-you-were-here cards to the workers, who responded with a General Strike for better wages and conditions but refused to "take power and overthrow capitalism". Here and there legal authority was replaced by self-catering communes, which actually managed nothing more productive than festivals, traffic and 24-hour talking shops. General de Gaulle's five-minute television broadcast of 30 May called a halt to the entertainment and within a few days the radicals - like naughty pupils caught misbehaving - were back in class with their heads down. Tedious normality returned, leaving a handful of Redcoats without audiences and British and American sociologists to ponder whether we had witnessed a "revolutionary situation" or an extended lunch break.

The student revolt which triggered worker unrest had its roots in the strict subordination of universities to the Ministry of Education, a factor which served to create a uniformly militant state of mind amongst the young elite. The libertarian spirit of the time had also fostered a New Left rebellion against Communist orthodoxy and liberalism, but the practical result of its propaganda was limited to a number of wildcat strikes in the aftermath of the Communist-led General Strike of 13 May. Cold reality was that the majority of wage and salary earners wanted nothing more than improvements and reforms -  a fact confirmed by the overwhelming ratification of representative democracy in the June general election, when the Gaullists were returned with an increased majority.

The events of May'68 are of concern to socialists because they probably represent most people's ideas of what a revolution would entail - blood and barricades, factory occupations and the violent overthrow of legal authority. The leading actors in the drama may have represented different strands of left-wing ideology but they all shared a belief in the primacy of industrial action and force as the means to effect social change, the central arguments of syndicalists and anarchists being repeated by Bolsheviks of all varieties. The backbone of their theory was and remains the General Strike, which begins in a small way, spreads in sympathy strikes and occupations and develops into the overthrow of the entire system. A fundamentally elitist approach, it assumes the working class to be a simple giant that needs taking by the hand and leading into the class struggle. Revolution is viewed as the culmination of hundreds of industrial struggles in which workers gain experience and an ever-stronger sense of solidarity, and rests on their ability to take and hold the means of production in face of the combined forces of the state. Its advocates dismiss the possibility that workers can ever reach their exalted level of consciousness without such vigorous exercise.

It is impossible to deny that ideas are conditioned by people's material experience, but this is a long way from suggesting that industrial struggle will, in itself, automatically produce socialist consciousness. Activists who took to the streets of France in 1968 were not preoccupied with the abolition of the wage labour and capital relationship and its replacement with free access, and no amount of struggle could have conjured these concepts out of the air and into the majority of heads. Had the French left been able to turn their dreams into reality (let's assume for argument's sake that the armed forces all happened to be on holiday) they would have had no choice but to administer capitalism since their followers would have gained as little knowledge as they had of its alternative.

Spontaneity may be an asset for the stand-up comic but it is of no use when attempting to dispose of capitalism. The ownership of the means of life  cannot be settled at the factory gate or the barricade because such methods leave the coercive state in the hands of the owning class. When workers are sufficiently class conscious to capture the political machinery for socialism, they will have already used their knowledge to bring their workplace organisations to a similar state of development. They will talk not of mines for the miners or factories for the factory workers, but of the democratic control of the world's resources by the whole community.

The only movement in the interest of the great majority that can ever be successful is one they understand, desire and vote for. Industrial action for political ends can produce conditions of chaos. But chaos is not socialism, and so long as the great majority do not want socialism, socialism cannot be the outcome.

A Tale of the Submerged. (1912)

From the January 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bertram Williams, a homeless labourer of 21, fell, it is reported, into the Thames. In a moment of aberration of mind he got out again. An idea smote him, perhaps because it was a raw December night. He thought he would try and find somewhere to dry his clothes. He went to two police stations, where he was referred to the casual ward. There they would not admit him because he had no "order".

There was one other place he could apply at in Christian England, overflowing with the traditional "peace and goodwill" of Christmastide. To the Salvation Army Shelter! Ah! yes, a good idea. "Knock and it shall be opened." "Do unto others --." "For He e e doth mark th' spa a-rrow's fall." Excellent! B. Williams would go unto the Good Samaritan.

He found the G.S. on duty even at that early hour (4 o'c in the morning), which is not surprising, for thee Salvationist watch as well as bray. It is a habit they acquire through watching the financial aspect of their "prayer skirmishes." When Williams preferred his request to be allowed to dry his clothes, he was told to call again at 5, because their rules did not allow them to admit anyone before that hour. You see, though it is true that the bridegroom cometh, the S.A. are so firmly convinced of his respectability that they make no provision for his reception before 5 o'c in the morning.

Of course, the wisest course for B. Williams to have followed at least, from the moral point of view, would have been to get back into the river for an hour or two. Such Christian meekness would probably have met with its promised reward. He would have inherited the earth, or at least, six feet by two of it.

But there, we can all be wise after the event. Williams smashed the S.A. shelter window.

Oh dear! That's a crime against private property, you know. So they hauled him off to the police-station, where he was received with open arms. They didn't refer him to the casual ward now - he had smashed a window.

In the fulness of time Bertram appeared before the magistrate, to whom it was explained by the Good Samaritan that the Commissioner of the S.A. took a very serious view of the offence. That is only to be  expected. It is a much more serious affair, smashing a window, than sowing the seeds consumption in a homeless young labourer. But what a wonderfully convenient thing the prison is to those who preach the gospel of turning the other cheek to the smiter.

A. E. Jacomb.

Piecemeal (1983)

Book Review from the June 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

The CND Story, ed. John Minnion and Philip Bolsover, Allison and Busby (1983).

In the preface to this book the editors point out that it is a collection of individual views and that it is 'in no sense an "official history"' (p.7). This has always been the stance adopted by CND, which claims to be a movement not an organisation as such. Its aims are simple but vague enough to bear many interpretations. It is a broad church which embraces christians, pacifists and left-wingers. There are a multitude of peace groups now in existence: Scientists Against Nuclear Arms, the Medical Campaign Against Nuclear Weapons, Journalists Against Nuclear Extermination, Teachers for Peace, Families Against the Bomb, Women Oppose the Nuclear Threat, Tories Against Cruise and Trident, Babies Against the Bomb, Women for Life on Earth, etc. They represent an outcry against the horrific consequences of technological advance in weaponry. Such protests have always existed. There were protests against waging war on civilians, the bombardment of towns, chemical weapons, submarines, napalm and atomic weapons. Socialists also oppose the slaughter of human beings, but in any form of war whether conventional or nuclear. CND in the 1970s developed its campaign to "increase its opposition to chemical and biological weapons" (p.32) yet it still wishes to see the retention of capitalism. For this reason CND's programme of action is futile. Restricting the type of weaponry available does not reduce the chances of war nor the horrific consequences of war.

Janet and Norman Buchan in the section 'The Campaign in Scotland: singing into protest' say:

From a very early stage we had won full support from the Labour Party, Trades Council and the STUC  . . . And it was they who were largely responsible for securing the biggest post-war demonstration in Glasgow till then, at the start of the 1960's. Incidentally, that was the demonstration that produced the sectarian slogan to end all sectarian slogans. Just as we were turning round the corner of Sauchiehall Street two grim stalwarts of the Socialist Party of Great Britain were standing heralding the march with a huge banner and slogan which read: "This demonstration is useless—You must first destroy capitalism" (p. 53).

The Buchans have clearly not grasped the profound nature of this criticism of CND. They may wax lyrical about the support from different reformist groups but this has in no way reduced nuclear weapon proliferation. War is endemic to capitalism. Nuclear weapons represent only one aspect of the arsenal of modern capitalism and these weapons will be used if the capitalist powers (whether NATO, Warsaw Pact, China or any other) feel the need to. In 1925, 114 countries signed the Geneva Protocol banning the use of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases but countries still reserved the right of retaliatory usage. This is the recurrent hypocrisy of the arms race but it does not mask the willingness to develop, produce and ultimately use any weapons. Supposed peaceful intentions do not hide the reality of weapons retention. CND's problem is how they can effect a change in government policy in order to bring about unilateral disarmament. 

Andrew Papworth says that CND must avoid "the dangers of creating illusions about the extent to which Britain is a responsive democracy" (p. 126). He talks about the failure of political parties to carry through into government disarmament policies and about their failure to respond to disarmament demands. What he should recognise is that this is the inevitable outcome for political parties who are committed to capitalism. Dan Smith argues that the strength of CND is in its non-political nature and that its "basic role is to close the door against certain options in defence policy — nuclear options" (p. 107). What Smith's argument does emphasise is that CND is not concerned about the eradication of war; he talks of guerrila style territorial defence and non-nuclear armed forces. Nuclear weapons are an unpleasant aspect of war but death in the wastes of the Falklands is not glorious and is no less final than nuclear obliteration. John Fremlin argues that to call for a rejection of all weapons would turn away those who "genuinely afraid of giving up our conventional territorial and naval defence" (p. 104).

It is little wonder that The CND Story presents a confused image of what CND is about for the various attitudes adopted within CND are essentially confused. For Joan Ruddock the task of CND is to "make work within the Labour movement a priority" (p. 98). Such faith in the Labour Party suggests that CND have learnt little since the reversal of the Labour Party's unilateralist vote between 1960 and 1961. Ruddock also talks of extending political activity through the newly formed Parliamentary and Election Committee. It will be interesting to see if CND secure any more votes than the 1,000 or so gained by Michael Croft when he stood for an Independent Nuclear Disarmament Election Committee in 1964. What most CND supporters claim is that there  is a need to swing the policies of one of the established political parties and for David Griffiths the "Labour Party is, for the present, the only serious candidate" (p. 133).

CND have always claimed that their strength is in being a broad church. This is in fact one of their weaknesses. Not only do disagreements occur as to how to get rid of nuclear weapons within CND but there are now a host of different peace groups. They may ostensibly share a single aim but profound disagreements occur as to how to achieve that aim and what exactly that aim is. The CND Story emphasises the frustration and anger felt by people in response to the threat of nuclear annihilation. What CND and the other peace groups have failed to grasp is that wars do not occur as a result of having weapons but because of the conflicting economic interests of capitalist states. CND have helped to bring into public debate the horrific consequences of nuclear war. What is needed is to go beyond a moral outcry and to attack the system which creates war. Good intentions will not solve the problem of war but there is a revolutionary alternative: "You must first destroy capitalism".

Philip Bentley

Gorbymania (1989)

Book Review from the June 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Revolution From Above by Tariq Ali, Hutchinson, £3.95

Trotsky argued that Russia was basically socialist because industry was nationalised but that political power had been usurped by a privileged bureaucratic caste led by Stalin; all that was required to put it back on the road to socialism again was a political revolution to remove this caste from power. The argument was flawed in two main respects. First, nationalisation is not socialism but state capitalism and, second, the ruling group in Russia is not a mere  privileged caste but a class monopolising the means of production. So what Trotsky really wanted was a less authoritarian regime for state capitalist Russia.

As Gorbachev and the reform group which currently has the upper hand in the single party that rules Russia want to move in the same direction, it was inevitable that sooner or later someone on the Trotskyist movement should argue that Gorbachev was carrying out "the political revolution" Trotsky called for. Former sixties student leader and editor of a series of Trotskyist papers (Red Mole, Socialist Challenge, etc), Tariq Ali has emerged as that someone. According to him, Gorbachev's "revolution from above" is in the process of putting Russia back on the road to "socialism". His only regret is that the Russian reformers see themselves as being inspired by Bukharin rather than Trotsky.

Ali is particularly impressed by some of the more radical supporters of Perestroika within the Russian Party, in particular Boris Yeltsin (to whom the book is dedicated), former Moscow Party chief sacked in November 1987 for going too far in trying to stamp out corruption in the local Party and city administration but elected triumphally to the Supreme Soviet in the elections last March, and Professor Yuri Afanasiev, Rector of the Moscow State Institute of Historical Archives, who wrote in a letter published in Pravda on 25 June 1988 (the full text is reproduced in an appendix):

I don't consider the society created in our country socialist, however 'deformed'. 'Deformation' touches its vital foundations, political system, relations of production and decidedly everything else.

This is indeed an amazing statement to have appeared in Pravda (which, for once, lived up to its name), even if it was spoilt by an earlier passage where he wrote "we haven't achieved socialism in the form envisaged by Lenin and the Leninist guard in the twenties". Still, it must have set some people thinking and is more radical than the orthodox Trotskyist position which sees Russia, precisely, as a "deformed Workers State". 

Yeltsin has indeed attacked some of the privileges of the nomenklatura (of which he is a member of course) and this is no doubt the cause of his popularity amongst ordinary people in Russia who clearly have no illusions about Russia having established a society without classes, but what he has called for is not the abolition of the nomenklatura but merely that some, or maybe all, of its privileges in kind (special shops, hospitals, etc) should be ended. He has no objection to them being paid high salaries. As he told the 19th Party Conference in June 1988 (also reproduced as an appendix):

My opinion is that this is what should happen: if something is in insufficient supply here, in a socialist society, then the shortage should be felt evenly by all without exception. But different contributions of work to society should be regulated by different wages. we should, at last, abolish the food 'rations' for the, so to say, 'starving nomenklatura', eradicate elitism in society . . . (our emphasis).

In other words, what Yeltsin wants is the Russian ruling class to be in the same position as the ruling class in the West: to be privileged by having more money to spend rather than by having special shops, etc. reserved for them exclusively. This is confirmed by his declarations during his election campaign: "The rouble must be the same for everyone" (Independent, 20 March) and "Everyone, from the ordinary worker to the head of state, must have equal access to food, goods and services" (Independent, 22 March). 

In any event, even if the members of the nomenklatura, as the corporate group that collectively owns and controls the main means of production in Russia, were to lead ascetic lives (as Lenin wanted) they would still remain a capitalist class as they would still be the group, in a society based on a capital and wage-labour, that carried out the function of pumping surplus value from the working class to be accumulated as profit-seeking capital.

If Gorbachev's reforms really do lead to more political democracy and less blatant privileges for the nomenklatura, welcome as this would be as giving the working class more elbow room to prosecute the class struggle it would not make Russia socialist, but a form of capitalism more similar to what we have to put up with in the West.

Adam Buick

1918 – Winners And Losers (2014)

From the August 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

A few years after the Armistice some comfortably charitable ladies in Scotland had the idea of setting up a factory to provide paid employment suitable for disabled ex-soldiers – to make imitation poppies. One of them was Dorothy Maude Vivian, second daughter of the third Lord Vivian and maid of honour to Queen Alexandria, recently ennobled into the Countess Haig, wife of Field Marshall Douglas Haig who, as commander of the British Army in France, had planned so many of the disastrous battlefield episodes which had left so many dead or needing charity through being physically wrecked. Throughout the year the poppies flowed out, each bearing in its black centre spot the initials HF standing for the charity's name of the Haig Fund. Which may have done something to persuade the commander that, as far as his reputation went, it had all been worthwhile.

Somme

Haig achieved his ambition to replace Sir John French as commander of the BEF in France in 1916, after a long campaign of intrigue and character denigration. He installed himself in a château near Montreuil – a small, agreeable town where his officers could ease the stress of commanding the thousands of British soldiers in the trenches by visiting their club where a subscription of five francs ensured them three good meals and afternoon tea each day and access to vintage claret and burgundy at prices far lower than those in Paris or London. Haig's immediate concern was to implement the decisions of the joint conference at Chantilly, to launch a series of devastating Allied attacks across the trench line to drive the German army into subjection. This was to be tested in the Battle of the Somme, lasting from 1 July 1916 until November. Before the reality of the casualties emerged that battle was represented as a proud example of British valour and fortitude which would crucially re-arrange the shape of the Western Front and so the future of the war. It turned out to be a gruesome failure costing thousands of lives but bringing little significant change.

Enthusiasm

The conferring overlords at Chantilly were not, of course, distracted by any contributions from the people whose lives were for disposal – the Allied soldiers who would be ordered out of their trenches to face the storm of bullets and shells in order to kill as many of the enemy as possible before putting the rest to flight. All over Britain – as in Germany, France and the rest – there was a powerful surge in enthusiasm for the war and a restless ambition to get into military uniform and into the front line as soon as possible. An example of the war, and of Haig's reaction to the fate of the soldiers, was the 49th. Division of the West Yorkshire Regiment who on 3 September 1916 were ordered to attack a heavily fortified area which included the infamous Triangle and the Pope's Nose. Those troops were supposed to be resting before going over the top but in the event they had to spend their waking time dragging ammunition and reserve rations for miles up to the dumps near the front. Their condition was such that one of their sergeants said his platoon's normal strength of 33 was reduced to 'eighteen decrepit old men'. The result was, then, predictable. Of the 350 men who attacked in the first wave on that day 244 were killed or wounded. Haig's view of the incident was that those men '...did not really attack and some men did not follow their officers ... I had occasion a fortnight ago to call the attention of the Army and Corps Commanders ...to the lack of smartness, and slackness of one of its Battalions in the matter of saluting when I was motoring through the village where it was billeted. I expressed my opinion that such men were too sleepy to fight well, etc.'

Three Brothers

Deep within that murderous confusion were the Bright brothers, three proud Cockneys who had become hardened soldiers during the Boer War; this account of them is compiled from their own memories and that of their sister Maud, who was both proud and fearful of them. The eldest was Bill, a sergeant; there is a photograph of him in the splendour of his uniform with riding breeches, spurs and peaked cap with its regimental badge. He stands erect before the studio forest, wide-eyed at the camera. What they would have called A Fine Figure Of A Man. There are no known photographs of the other two, Jim and Fred, but they were also out there. On 16 September 1916 Bill was blown to bits, probably in a trench. His men said they knew it was him because among the other remains they found his identity tag. His name is on the Memorial at Thiepval – one of those 'Who Have No Known Grave'.

Trench Raid

When Jim was told about his brother's death his immediate, insistent reaction was that he had to take part in that night's trench raid which was planned to slip across No Mans' Land and bring back a couple of Germans for interrogation about the enemy's strength, origins, plans. With the rest of the men Jim went silently across and as he dropped into the opposite trench a young German soldier appeared – 'not much more than a kid' was how he described him – holding trembling hands aloft and whispering 'Kamerad'. It must have been obvious that this 'kid' would have been only too ready to answer any questions put to him later by a British officer but Jim did not let that divert him. 'I'll give you Kamerad you bastard' he snarled as he sank his knife into the young body again and again. It is not known whether Jim stayed in that enemy trench long enough to appreciate that conditions there were much better than those he had to endure. What is known is that he wrote to Maud 'I am up to my knees in mud and I am lousy. Please send me some clean socks and underwear'. During the later Battle of Paschendaele he was himself taken prisoner (but not knifed). He then spent the rest of the war being cruelly worked in a salt mine in Germany, which left him with permanent damage to his lungs so that in the next war he could only wheeze his life out in a small, dingy room in the East End while the Luftwaffe bombed as he lay dying.

Fred's story was different. A previous record of insubordination to an officer had led to him being thrown out of the Army – 'dishonourable discharge' he pointedly labelled it – which caused his application to join up again in 1914 to be rejected until the British Army's losses were such as to cause a lowering of standards. So he joined the other two in the trenches, until an exploding shell or a burst from a machine gun tore out the muscle in his left arm and sent him back to civilian life. However serious, the wound did not stop him starting a boxing club where the local lads could be taught by him in what he primly called 'the noble art'. It also did not stop him getting into a fight in the docks in which he lost the sight of an eye.

Chaotic

It was rather different in the higher levels. Late in August 1914, during the chaotic retreat from Mons, Chief of Staff General Sir Archibald Murray responded to the news that the BEF was in imminent danger of being overwhelmed by the advancing Germans by passing into a faint. Any private soldier who behaved in that way might well have been dragged before a Court Martial and perhaps executed for cowardice. However Murray, as a high ranking officer, had to be treated differently. His indisposition was remedied by feeding him a pint of champagne. Years after the war, one of Haig's generals remembered Major General Sir Henry Wilson as an 'Out-and-out crook. Never did a stroke of work. Sat in his office writing to his lady friends in high places'. In the same style, Haig himself was ready to contemptuously sneer at those who were supposed to be his staunch allies, writing to Dorothy Vivian as early as September 1914 that: ''The French are most unreliable. One cannot believe a word they say as a rule'. And later, on the same theme, 'They are truly a race of usurers!'

Viscountcy

After the Armistice an immediate question for the British government was how Haig should be rewarded for his time in charge of the British forces on the Western Front. The first attempt at this was to arrange a great victory parade in London and to suggest that he shared the fifth carriage with Foch, Clemenceau and Orlando. Haig did not think much of this: 'I have no intention of taking part in any triumphal ride with Foch and a pack of foreigners, merely to add to L G's importance and help him in his election campaign'. He also rejected an offer of a viscountcy, on the grounds that the same title had previously been offered to Field Marshal Sir John French, the officer he had deposed and who had been sacked – to Haig's satisfaction – for being incompetent. Eventually, more to his taste, he was made Earl Haig of Bemersyde with a subsidiary viscountcy and barony, an estate in Scotland and a grant to allow him to live in the style these titles demanded. There was however another problem; Haig asked for £250,000 as appropriate to his achievements in arranging all that slaughter but Parliament disagreed and limited his reward to £100,000.

A different type of heroism, of endurance in the face of exposure and deprivation, was demanded of the men returning from Flanders. One of these was Wally Crosby, the boyfriend of Maud the long-suffering sister of the three Bright brothers. When the war began Walter, who had a well-paid, secure job in a sawmill tried to join up – how else would he have faced the Bright family? But he was rejected until 1917 when he was ordered to report to a boat train at Victoria Station which would take him to France. Before he went he and Maud married in a local Registry Office. This was not due to the anxious couple being bound by any deep affection but because they hoped that if Wally was Killed On Active Service Maud would qualify for a war widow's pension which would be significantly more that the sweatshop wage she was getting from her job in a Shoreditch dress factory.

Survival

But Wally survived; and when he was demobilised and went to the saw mill to ask for his old job back he was told that it had been taken by an eager young civilian soon after he had left for the boat train. Thus it was that Wally and Maud resigned themselves to a 'peacetime' life of relentless poverty, made sharper and deeper as they produced a batch of children. Wally, one of the survivors of that dread turmoil which is now being glorified by the ruling class, descended into an underpaid road-digging labourer; between the two World Wars he was unable to find a job lasting him more than a week or two. For him and his family there was no triumph but only bitter frustration and despair. Meanwhile their leaders gathered at Versailles in what was called a Peace Conference except that its primary task was to re-arrange the national borders to prepare for the next conflagration. In that process the people of Germany were subjected to such privation as to persuade them that their best hope was in a cruelly repressive state. And as the poppies, with their reminders of Haig and his works, flowed from the factories the children were being born who would grow into the warriors – the trained killers – of the next war.

Ivan

Cooking the Books: By Whose Labour Alone (2014)

The Cooking the Books Column from the September 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

When the economic statistics for the April-June quarter were announced in August, commentators noticed an apparent anomaly. While unemployment had fallen so had wages:

‘Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that the jobless total for the last quarter have fallen by 132,000 to 2.08 million. However wage growth suffered a collapse between April and June with average weekly earnings dropping by 0.2 per cent, the first fall in five years’ (Daily Telegraph, 13 August).

Normally the fewer the number of unemployed the stronger (or, rather, the less weak) is the workers’ bargaining position over the price of the ability to work they sell to an employer for a wage or a salary. So, you wouldn’t expect wages to fall if unemployment is falling; maybe to remain stagnant but not to actually fall. Various explanations for this were put forward. Some, including the Office for National Statistics itself, said it was a one-off due to special circumstances in this particular quarter. Others offered a different explanation, as did the Independent (5 August) commenting on an earlier report by the think-tank the National Institute for Economic and Social Research:

‘NIESR also stresses that the labour productivity performance, which measures output per hour worked, has been ‘abysmal’. It does not expect Britain’s pre-crisis productivity levels to be re-attained until 2017, reinforcing fears of a lost economic decade. Productivity is even more significant than GDP per capita because without growth employers can’t increase wages.’

It is not true that ‘without growth employers can’t increase wages’. They can, but it would mean a reduction in their current level of profits, which workers can sometimes impose in specially favourable circumstances. What is true is that growth brought about by an increase in productivity means that employers can (not the same as will) increase wages without this meaning reducing their current level of profits. They may not make as much as they would without the wage increase but they will still make more than they were.

There is a revealing hidden assumption behind the argument that without growth ‘employers can’t increase wages.’  It’s that profits as well as wages come out of what workers produce. Productivity, as output (measured by the price at which it is sold) per hour of work, is a measure of how much an average worker produces in an hour.

No matter how much the economic textbooks try to get away from it, and in spite of the ridiculous claim by self-styled ‘entrepreneurs’ to be ‘wealth creators’, it remains a fact that the only way that wealth can be created is by human beings applying their mental and physical energies to materials that originally came from nature. Labour productivity determines the size of the cake that profits are going to take a share of. Which is why it is such a key economic indicator for capitalism.

Adam Smith recognised long before Marx that profits come out of what those who work produce:

‘As soon as stock has accumulated in the hands of particular persons, some of them will naturally employ it in setting to work industrious people, whom they will supply with materials and subsistence, in order to make a profit by the sale of their work, or by what their labour adds to the value of their materials’ (The Wealth of Nations, chapter VI).

Adam Smith clearly had a better understanding of how capitalism works than the so-called Adam Smith Institute.

The Idealists! (1925)

From the November 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

All that is vile in politics is well represented in the Labour Party. The grasping after fat jobs; the petty bickering over positions of influence; and the changing of ideas and programmes to suit the political weather.

Those who in opposition foam and froth over disarmament, when in office pushed forward a programme of Naval and Air Force development. Those who proclaim the rights of small nationalities, when they had their chance to fulfil their promises met the claims of Indians, Egyptians and others with threats of force and cargoes of bombs.

Based mainly upon the single idea of personal advancement, what else can be expected of these "Leaders of Labour"?

Ramsay MacDonald, J. R. Clynes, J. H. Thomas, vie with one another at pleasant social functions as to which can talk in the most honied tone calculated not to disturb the wealthy host who provide the tempting repasts.

They preach little homilies to the workers on the merit of working hard for the employers and giving them a square deal; they boost Wembley and parade their sound adherence to all the capitalist doctrines of Empire, they ape the manners and conceits of the ruling class, who in private laugh at them for their folly.

Dinners and social functions take up a great part of the time and energy of the more prominent Labour members.

Mouthers of windy and empty phrases; accomplished diners-out; settlers of strikes—with honours to the employers; trimmers of sails to suit political winds—for the securing of pelf and place; such are the crew the votes of the working class and the permission of the employers have placed at the political helm.

And yet, what self-sacrifice on the part of the rank and file has taken place to push these self-seekers into affluence! What a desire for improvement has backed these efforts whose fruition is barrenness!

The workers allow high wages (or salaries!) to be paid to these industrial and political bigwigs and thus make the jobs attractive and an inducement to the unprincipled adventurers. Those who are on the look-out for a career in which they can climb see such a career in these movements; and a career, moreover, that is easier than in ordinary business—brass, wind, and unscrupulousness being the main qualifications required. The "intellectuals" find an easy opening and crawl in and up.

The history of the "labour" movement the world over is to a great extent the history of sacrifice by the workers and betrayal by the "intellectuals."

Finally, is it necessary to attend gorgeous functions and to be tricked out in knee breeches in order to help on the emancipation of the working class?

GILMAC.