Socialism and the working class (1978)

From the December 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Modern society is split into two classes—the working class and the capitalist class. The working class is exploited by the capitalist class because it produces a surplus of wealth over and above what it gets back in wages. It is this unpaid surplus which creates the vast differences in the ownership of wealth between those who produce but do not own and those who own but do not produce. This simple fact provides the answer as to why seven per cent of the population owns eighty-four per cent of the personal wealth; why some people can spend more on race horses, sex, alcohol in an hour, a day, a week, than some (the vast majority) can earn in a year or a lifetime. It also explains why constant upheavals in industry take place, as men and women struggle over the fruits of production.

These glaring inequalities in the ownership of wealth, these profound economic struggles, can only be solved by the abolition of capitalism and its replacement by socialism, a classless society. Our opponents, however, whether from right or left, would disagree.

Nationalists, for example, would say that class is as irrelevant as it is outmoded, that it is much more realistic to talk of common national origins, such as Scots or Welsh, or whatever. By doing so, the nationalists hope to gloss over the obvious fact that in any nation state—independent or dependent—there exists deep conflicts between different sections of society and no amount of patriotism or flag-waving will overcome them: Scottish employers do not treat their workers any better than, say, Japanese employers would. Employers, no matter their national origins or colour, are only interested in getting as much from their workforce for as little as they can pay: profits come before patriotism.

In much the same vein, the television pundits, the employers, the politicians, both Labour and Conservative, and many trade unionists, often refer to industry in terms of teamwork. They deny the operation of the class struggle by insisting that there is a community of interests between the workers and management with both working towards a common end. (To a certain extent this is true, both are working for a common goal — the enrichment of the shareholders).

What these people fail to understand (or if they do they keep it quiet) is why the team continually falls into opposing parts over such things as wages and conditions. These apologists of capitalism put it down to either bad management or greedy workers led on by militant wreckers. This is not the case and never has been. Strikes and lock-outs happen because there is a struggle between the capitalists and the workers over the fruits of production and not because of the machinations of shady characters or the inherent greed of the workers. For this reason there can be no one team with agreed common goals in industry, but competing teams based on class membership.

Our opponents on the left would agree with us that there is a class struggle. If pressed they might even concede that this struggle is a two class affair, working and capitalist. However, given a few moments reflection, they would probably inform us that we are mistaken, there are actually three classes in society, the third being the 'middle class'. After another few moments our left-winger turned sociologist may come up with an even more complex array of classes; lower working class, upper working class, lower middle class, petty bourgeoisie, middle class, upper middle class, upper class (this is never sub-divided, the uppers is upper, OK), and so on, to the point where market research takes over from Marxism. But it doesn't stop here, the left winger will casually inform us, as if we didn't know, that there are also sub- or under-classes, that is, women, blacks, youth, catholics. This is where the socialist if he or she has not already choked on a handy volume of Capital, loses patience and makes a number of informative comments.

QUESTION AND ANSWER

1) What is class?

Class is not defined in terms of social status, that is, whether you attend the badminton club or the darts club, or by the colour of your collar, blue or white, or by the colour of your skin, your age, your sex. Class is determined by your relationship to the means of production, that is, if in order to live you are forced to sell your mental and physical energies for a wage or a salary then you are a member of the working class.

2) "But surely", asks the left winger, "the salaried worker and the wage earner have a different social standing?"

This may have been true in the nineteenth century in Britain, but it is certainly not the case to-day. In the nineteenth century, the clerk, for example, had a special place in the labour market. He lacked job mobility, he was associated with one employer and one business. Furthermore, the ties between him and his employer were close and personal. By loyal and faithful service, the clerk could look forward to becoming a partner in the firm, and many did. Again, there were no fixed or standard wages and conditions in clerking, just as each office had its own particular working arrangements each clerk had his own price.

Obviously under such widely varying conditions of work trade unionism developed very slowly. Although it is significant that in the larger offices successful attempts were made to organise the workers into trade unions, for instance, the Railway Clerks Association (later TASS) was founded in 1897.

The twentieth century dramatically altered the position of the clerk. The  introduction of the typewriter flooded the offices with cheap female labour, reducing the bargaining power of the clerks. The growth of bureaucracy blocked promotion chances and led to a clear cut division between 'managerial' and 'clerical'.

It also created standard conditions of employment, crowded people together in large offices, made the boss a distant figure, and increased the clerk's sense of powerlessness in his working environment. unions developed apace with the changing position of the clerk, and in its turn further uniform conditions in terms of wages, hours, and so on. It is changes such as these which have made the white collar section of the trade union movement the fastest growing. It is also a recognition by the clerks that their interest are not those of their employers.

Moving up the salary scale, the picture is the same. Groups of workers, teachers, nurses, doctors, have found their former position of relative privilege eroded and have been forced to take steps to intensify their opposition to their employers through strikes (previously unheard of) and other forms of industrial action.

This is unsurprising given the concentration of wealth in the hands of the few: ninety-three per cent of all adults in 1970 held not even one single share; five out of six families had no invested income.

3) But don't the brain workers look down on the manual workers?

What this really means is that the working class is not united  in its opposition to capitalism. This sad fact has to be admitted; there are divisions within the working class, and the divide is not simply a question of collar. The employed look down on the unemployed; white workers look down upon black workers; male workers attempt to block the hiring of female workers; region fights region, youth fights old. The policy of divide and rule is still profitably employed to split the working class into warring factions.

BLUE AND WHITE COLLAR

In the case of the blue and white collar divide, the office staff often enjoy certain benefits denied to their fellow workers on the shop floor, such as better pension and sick pay schemes, longer paid holidays, working in a cleaner and less dangerous environment. This can have the effect of maintaining the loyalty of the office staff in times of dispute, but since in many cases the wages of the office workers are lower that the manual workers, it is really a case of the merry-go-round and the swings.

In spite of this, such seemingly preferential treatment may encourage the white collared salariat to view themselves as superior to manual workers but it does not make them a separate class. There may be differences in wages and conditions but the uniting factor is working for a wage or a salary. It is the prostitution of one's labour which makes for the common bond between all members of the working class.

4) What then is the task facing socialists?

It is the task of socialists, firstly, to reject the terminology of class as handed down by the apologists of capitalism, the politicians, the media-men, the academics, and not pander to the illusions people may have about themselves; and, secondly, to encourage unbreakable unity of the working class to the extent that it can act as the agent of revolutionary change by making workers aware of their class position and common interests. In fact, to make the working class aware of itself as a class so that it might, paradoxically, end class society.

Bill Knox

How Victor fishes for the B.W.L. (1917)

From the September 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

The British Workers' League was originated by patriotic "Socialists" to encourage and assist the growth of the "right kind of Socialism." That it was "the right kind" was apparent from the moment they issued their first manifesto, which, being entirely in accord with capitalist ideas on the subject, received the hearty support of capitalist newspapers in general.

If we are to believe the glowing accounts of their successful propaganda, published in the "British Citizen and Empire Worker," it would seem that the organisation now needs but little support from the capitalist Press. Its numbers, according to the reports from its one hundred and more branches, are increasing so rapidly that, if the pace can only be maintained, the "right kind of Socialism" will cease to be a "dream of disordered imaginations," and will be shortly, if it is not already, quite sane and practical.

We need waste no time quoting extracts from the "B.C. and E.W." to illustrate what they designate "the right kind of Socialism." All that is necessary is to call to mind the various government experiments in the direction of nationalisation, and to remember how they have been boosted by the capitalist Press as Socialism and eulogised for their practical value to the capitalist State in a great crisis. Bearing this in mind, it is easy to see that capitalist newspapers could readily support the B.W.L., seeing that the B.W.L. first gave its support to the schemes they had themselves approved of. B.W.L. "Socialism" was "the right kind" because it met with the approval of capitalist authorities—who, being quite neutral and disinterested on the question, are in a position to give undisputed judgment.

Long before war made any "kind of Socialism" practicable there were men and parties advocating the B.W.L. kind. The peripatetic pimps and palliators of the I.L.P., the Clarion Scouts, the S.D.P., and the Fabian Society, mistook nationalisation for Socialism, and when a capitalist Government started nationalising, they shouted with glee. We had told them often enough that the ruling class, through its executive, would nationalise railways or anything else, if capitalist interests demanded it. But they had so accustomed themselves to think of State ownership or nationalisation as the millennium that its practical application by a capitalist government did not even arouse their suspicions. And although its application did not alter the status or condition of the workers, they shouted for more, many of them rushing straightway to the B.W.L. for membership cards that they might lend a hand in the establishment of Socialism (!) that was being precipitated so eagerly by the very class that looks upon it as poison to their system.

The only addition necessary to the stock-in-trade of the pre-war labour faker was a fervid patriotism—a quite simple matter for them, seeing that patriotism was supposed to be popular and the only thing in which labour leaders were consistent was in striving after popularity by advocating popular notions. This explains the much-boasted success of the B.W.L. They denounced everything German, from the Kaiser downwards. They boosted Empire—British, of course—for all it was worth—to the capitalist. Trade unionism is their special concern. " What would British trade-unionism be under the Hohenzollerns?" shrieked Victor Fisher to the chain-makers of Cradley Heath, who stood to lose nothing, not even the chains that were never theirs, or the chains that bound them in servitude.

"Do not imagine," he wailed, "that you can lose your national independence and maintain? your class organisation." As though "national independence" meant anything to these overwrought slaves, or class organisation were impossible under German capitalists.

If the assertions of capitalist agents, and prewar Press reports, were worth anything, the class war was waged quite as vigorously in Germany as it was here. The German trade-unionists had the same freedom to organise as English trade-unionists. In fact, labour leaders here often looked to Germany, with its twenty labour dailies, as the advance guard of labour the world over. But quite independent of these facts, the class war must be fought out by the-workers against the capitalist class of the world. If the purpose of class organisation is to wage the class war it does not matter a brass farthing whether we organise against English or German capitalists. On the other hand, if the working class of any country are too apathetic or spineless to stand erect against international capitalism, it does not matter a brass cartridge by whom they are enslaved and exploited.

The English working class, when it organises on class lines, can have but one object, to throw off the capitalist yoke. The German working class, opposed to a different group of the same capitalist class, can only prosecute the class war for the same object. For the working class, not only of these two countries, but of all countries, "national independence" is as dust in the balance compared with their great need for a real International.

National independence means nothing to the wage-slave because his poverty and degradation are the same in all the nations; his class organisation is everything to him because on its growth and perfection, and, above all, its international character, hangs the hope of working-class victory over sordid, tyrannical, and bloody-capitalism, and the establishment of the one-and only Socialism.

F. Foan

From Methodism to Marxism (1994)

From the May 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Socialism? Nice idea. But too much like hard work!"

I used to be a Christian, once upon a time. A Methodist, no less, and a preacher to boot.

This is not some kind of confession or personal testimony – we have all had to make some sort of intellectual journey to call ourselves socialists. It is just that I called myself a Methodist – and yet I enjoyed a drink then, as I still do, regularly indulging myself, sometimes to excess.

The time at which John and Charles Wesley, the founders of Methodism, were preaching – the mid-18th century – was one in which there was widespread disquiet among the chattering (and, more importantly, the employing) classes of the day about the effects of the "demon drink" on society. Thus, Methodists were, for many years, encouraged to sign the pledge, and constantly railed against alcohol and those who consumed it. It was a theme that other sects picked up on. including, in the 19th century, the Salvation Army.

But it did not worry me that abstinence was – or had been – one of the central planks of Methodism. Indeed, it did not seem to worry many Methodists of my generation. "Well, we understand that there used to be a point to it." they would say, "but alcohol's OK in moderation, the problem's not the same now!" – ignoring the fact that there are many more alcoholics, and alcohol-related deaths, now than there ever were in the Wesley s' day.

That kind of selectiveness with ideas or creeds is common enough in Methodism, but it is by no means exclusive to it.

Many die-hard cold warriors, and sundry other tinpot armchair militarists, still sit in churches, praying to their god, in spite of the fact that, according to the New Testament, their god had enjoined his followers to "love their enemies" and to "turn the other cheek" when wronged.

The Queen – the richest woman in the world, or thereabouts – apparently has her god to thank for her position. Yet Jesus told his disciples that it was "harder for a rich man to enter through the gates of heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle"; called the love of money the root of all evil; and instructed his disciples to give away all that they owned before they could follow him. (Anyone tempted to think, at this point, of Jesus as some sort of proto-communist would be well advised to remember his injunction to "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's").

Various apologists for the exploiters in our society have tried to soften the blow of Jesus' apparent rejection of the rich. I remember reading one "explanation" which argued that the Eye of the Needle was, in fact, a small gate in Jerusalem's city wall; and that while it was difficult for a camel to get through, it was not impossible. But the fact remains that Jesus apparently took the view that one could not serve two masters at once: to serve the interests of one's personal fortune detracted from one's service to, and contemplation of, God.

I spent a lot of time making that kind of point from the pulpit. But in truth I was just as guilty of ignoring inconvenient parts of the doctrine. The Bishop of Durham and I both questioned the literal truth of the biblical miracles, the Virgin Birth, and the Resurrection. In my case I rejected them completely. I even came to the conclusion that Jesus was not the Son of God – an idea which, while it may not be central to the Gospels, is certainly central to the Nicene Creed, the statement of faith adopted by all the Western Christian churches.

And yet, for quite a time, I still continued to consider myself a Christian.

Most, if not all, Christians down the ages have tended to ignore bits of the creed that did not suit them. To a great extent this is because whole chunks of the Christian bible, at any rate, are contradictory, so a Christian has to decide what kind of Christian he or she is going to be. But also it is, in part, because many people's religious beliefs are inherited, rather than considered. As they get older, if they retain any religious faith at all, it is likely to be in a bastardized, even unorthodox, form.

Socialists, on the other hand, one might expect to be rather clearer about what principles they hold dear. People calling themselves socialists, or Marxists, should have no difficulty in thinking through logically what their credo is.

And yet, ostensibly socialist/Marxist groupings and political parties seem to have real problems with identifying their principles and sticking to them.

The Labour Party, taken as a whole, has never really had any principles, at least none that it was not prepared to sell in exchange for public office. It has long been what it calls a "broad church" of reformists, opportunists, and sundry ideologically-challenged bleeding hearts. As such, it has never really known where it wants to go, or how to get there. For a while, a majority of the party thought that nationalization was the way forward. But it was never clear where that way was supposed to go, whether public ownership was a means to an end or an end in itself. And now in practice, even Clause 4 has been abandoned in a bid to make the policy-less party attractive to voters.

But one thing that the Labour Party has always maintained is that it is a socialist party, albeit that the word has stuck in the throat of some of those party leaders using it. Socialism, in the Labour Party dictionary, is a vague, woolly catch-all word: anyone can be a socialist in the Labour Party. There are no central ideas there to embarrass voters or activists, be they never so egotistical, opportunistic, or venal. Or indeed as rich as Croesus. This non-definition of "socialism" is deliberate. The main objective of the Labour Party is to get elected, not to change society. So the fact that nothing substantive ever gets done to justify the use of the word "socialism" – that the Labour Party has not advanced the cause of the working class one jot, despite several terms of parliamentary office – is viewed as unimportant.

Marx existed

It is, perhaps, possible to view the word "socialism" as a nebulous term that can mean a variety of things. But not the word "Marxism". After all, unlike with Jesus, we can be sure that Marx existed. We know much of what he did and said. And, again unlike Jesus, we have books, letters and articles that we know he wrote himself. So there should be no problem with deciding what may legitimately be termed Marxism, and what may not.

And yet, astoundingly, there are groups, inside and outside the Labour Party, who call themselves Marxist and Trotskyist simultaneously, despite the fact that the two words are a complete contradiction in terms. These include Militant, Socialist Organizer and the SWP, to name but a few.

It does not take a genius to work out that, however Trotsky himself defined his political views, his ideas were fundamentally at odds with those of Marx.

For instance, Marx took the view that the liberation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself. The implication of which is that the transition from capitalism to socialism will be, and must be, a democratic process. A good Trotskyist, on the other hand, will say that the revolution will be brought about by a dedicated (for which read "small") band of professional revolutionaries, who will educate the working class to want socialism after it has supposedly been established. Trying to persuade the majority of workers to understand and want and work for socialism, in order that it may – as it must – be established democratically, is impossible in the eyes of the Trotskyist.

Far too difficult, too much like hard work. So the Trotskyist falls into the trap of the "revolutionary vanguard" concept, an apparently easier route to socialism which is, in fact, a cul-de-sac, a route only to dictatorship.

All Trotskyist sects thus fall at the first fence of the route to a Marxian socialist/communist society (and Trotsky distinguished between socialism and communism in a way that Marx never did).

But they also seem to have problems with what it is exactly that they are striving for.

Marx defined socialism as a society wherein wages and money, private property and profit had all been abolished. But I remember talking to a member of Socialist Organizer who scoffed at the Socialist Party's vision of society as pie-in-the-sky idealism, at best only to be seen centuries from now.

The Socialist Party does not, of course, believe that Marx was a god, or a Pope, there to be infallible. He was a man, whose thought developed over the years, and who quite often was wrong. But with others, drawing on earlier ideas and on observation, he came to an understanding of capitalism and its alternative, which is clear and logical – and which, as a whole, the Socialist Party believes to be correct. The Socialist Party, like Marx, holds that a moneyless, propertyless society is feasible and desirable. It also holds that the only way to achieve such a society is democratically, by persuasion. There is no substitute for hard work, for "making socialists".

Marx said that we have a world to win. He never said it would be easy.

Paul Burroughs

Down With Leaders. (1918)

From the April 1918 issue of the Socialist Standard

Labour leaders, to say the least, are useless to the workers in their conflict with the capitalist class. An organisation whose members have no desire to control affairs for themselves, and therefore hands over the management to certain individuals, by so doing gives them the opportunity to use that organisation to obtain any object they may have in view. And judging by the past actions of these leaders their purpose seems to be always the same, that is, to earn a reward from the capitalist by betraying the workers whose interest they are supposed to safeguard.

The amount of evidence accumulated against these traitors is enormous. On both the industrial field and the political they have played the traitorous part. A further exposure comes from Mr. Lloyd George, who is reported by the "Daily Telegraph" (2.1.17) to have stated in the House of Commons that "I am not unmindful of the fact that he" (the reference was to Mr. Arthur Henderson) "has helped us and the late Government very largely owing to his official position in the great struggle on the question of organising the man-power of this country and carrying through the Military Service Acts. He took a leading part in securing the support of organised labour for these measures."

We have there a clear and definite statement which leaves no reasonable doubt as to why Henderson was given a position in the Cabinet. He was useful in persuading the workers to quietly accept measures that would tighten the chains about them and make more secure the power of the capitalists to throw millions of men and boys into the horrors of war.

The quotation given is of value, not only as an exposure of Henderson, but also as an example of the conditions under which labour leaders in general are patronised by the capitalist class. That they retain their position only so long as they comply with these conditions is convincingly demonstrated by the same honourable gentleman who, in explaining why he gave Henderson the sack gave us yet another peep behind the scenes.

"Well," runs the "Daily Chronicle" report (14.8.17) of the Prime Minister's pronouncement, "all he could say was that he had seen every member who was present at the Cabinet on the day of the discussion, and had asked them the impression left on their minds. The impression, they stated, which had been left was that Mr. Henderson intended to use all his influence to turn down the Stockholm Conference at Friday's meeting."

This time Henderson failed to do what was expected of him, and consequently was forced to "resign." The length of time he remained in the Cabinet gives us some slight idea of the amount of work he performed in the interest of the capitalist class, and considering the number of these political scavengers they employ, it is not in the least surprising that our work of working-class enlightenment should prove so hard.

Such is the worth of the Labour Party to the workers. "It has," said Mr. Philip Snowden, "betrayed working class interests in every direction, and the labour problems which have to be solved have been in the main created by the incompetence and conduct of the Labour Party. The Labour Party have been more capitalist than the employers and more militarist than the Government." -"Labour Leader," 12.7.17.

Mr. Philip Snowden, who made this discovery many months ago, should now try and explain his position as a member of that capitalist and militarist "Labour" Party which he so roundly condemns. Is the £400 a year which binds him to it a stronger shackle than he can break ? 

The shameful way in which the workers have been betrayed should surely force them to consider a method by which their organisation can be made proof against the undermining operations of such traitors. The first essential is that they must thoroughly understand their position as wage slaves. They must realise they live only by the sale of their labour power to the capitalist class, who, owning the means of wealth production, are able to claim the wealth produced, returning to the producing class in the form of wages just sufficient for them to exist upon on the average, and to produce a generation of future wage slaves—in other words, just enough to enable them to reproduce their efficiency in the widest sense of the term.

The sale of the workers' labour-power taking place under the same conditions that regulate the sale of any other commodity, it follows that with the continued improvement in machinery, "dilution" of labour still further applied, the rapid development of science, and the general speeding-up, their labour-power must tend more and more to exceed the demand for it, with the result that the effect on wages, or the price of labour power, is the same as that on any other commodity when the supply exceeds the demand its price falls. Thus we have the producers of the world s wealth forced to accept wages that barely supply the physical necessities of life.

Living under a set of social conditions that condemns him to a life of sordid poverty, the worker, to obtain relief, must change those conditions from top to bottom. That is to say, the means of wealth production, and distribution being the private property of the capitalist class, the latter are enabled to use them to exploit the workers. Since, therefore, the whole of the evil conditions of working-class existence spring from this property condition, the workers must make those things needed for the production and distribution of wealth the common property of Society.

The defenders of private property having, through their political power, control of the armed forces, use them to support their position. The first step, therefore, towards their overthrow, is to secure political power. The need, then, is for a working-class political party the members of which, united by a common understanding of their class interest, would have no need for leaders.

On the other hand, knowing the direction in which they must fight, the action of every member would be controlled to that one end, and any treachery on the part of any member, would be promptly dealt with. Such a party would be proof against leaders and therefore against betrayal by leaders.

Such is the character of the S.P.G.B. To those workers who understand and accept our Declaration of Principles we extend an earnest invitation to join us for co-operation in the fight for Socialism.

E. L. Wake.

The Commune of Paris: A Lesson for Today. (1916)

From the April 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

On March. 18th, 1871, after the capitulation of Paris to the Germans in the Franco-German War, Thiers, the new head of the French Government, foreseeing danger to the exploiting class in the retention of arms by the workers, who chiefly formed the National Guard, endeavoured to disarm them. The attempt to steal the guns these workers' pence had paid for precipitated a revolt. On the 28th of March the Commune of Paris was declared. Containing at first mainly, and later almost exclusively, working-class elements, the Commune endeavoured to express, according to its understanding, and within the limits of its power, the proletarian interests that lay behind it. This was its great merit. This it was that called down upon it the ruthless hostility of the capitalist government. For three months the working-class revolt struggled on, succumbing at last under a deluge of blood to the armed forces of capitalism. The German Government aided the French ruling class in this bloody work. With the defeat of the Commune, after an eight days' struggle,

“the murder of defenceless men, women, and children, which had raged the whole week through in ever-increasing proportions, reached its highest point. The breech-loader no longer killed fast enough; the conquered were slaughtered in hundreds with the mitrailleuses ; the "wall of the Federals" in the Père la Chaise Cemetery, where the last massacre took place, remains to-day a dumb but eloquent witness of what frenzy of crime the governing classes are capable as soon as the proletariat ventures to stand up for its rights.”

Thus spoke Engels of the final act of the tragedy; and this brief note of that defeat of the workers cannot more fitly end than in the words of Marx, written in May, 1871, which are eloquent of his view of the relative importance of the national and the class struggles.

“That after the most tremendous war of modern times the conquering and the conquered hosts should fraternise for the common massacre of the proletariat—this unparalleled event does indicate, not as Bismarck thinks, the final repression of a new society upheaving, but the crumbling into dust of bourgeois society. The highest heroic effort of which old society is still capable is national war ; and this is now proved to be mere governmental humbug, intended to defer the struggle of the classes, and to be thrown aside as soon as that class struggle bursts out in civil war. Class rule is no longer able to disguise itself in a national uniform ; the national governments are ONE as against the proletariat!”

After Twelve Years. (1916)

From the June 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

June 12th is the anniversary of the formation of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. On Saturday the 24th of June, 1916, a Reunion of Party members and friends is being held at Devonshire Hall, Devonshire Street, Mare Street, Hackney.

June 12th ends the twelfth year of the Party's existence. Twelve years, though but a span in the history of the working class movement, is a large slice of the individual man's "alloted span," and for that space of time the Party membership, in face many obstacles, have succeeded in their struggle to clear a space from which to prosecute effectively the vital work of Socialist education.

The way has been hard through those years. At first, faced not only with the opposition of our avowed enemies and the enmity of the "friends of labour," but also with the smallness of our numbers, internal difficulties, and with our means of subsistence barely visible, our fight seemed a hopeless one. But good progress has been made. Fighting with a determination born of the logic of the Socialist position, the little band clung to their task and consolidated the ground that they had won for Socialist propaganda and working-class politics. Forced to notice the "insignificant" party of "impossiblists" (as we used to be called), our opponents at home and abroad tried in turn to crush us and to cajole us ; but our case was too strong to fall before their whirl of windy words, and our principles too precious to pawn for the loan of their flattery or favour.

At the present moment, however, our Party has to face greater difficulties than it has yet been called upon to surmount, and the result of twelve years strenuous and unremitting labour is threatened with destruction.

The bulk of our most active members, always too few, are threatened with the chains of military prisons, or, what is to them perhaps even more objectionable, the degradation of khaki. It therefore behoves those who are left to redouble their efforts to keep the organisation together, to keep its policy as clean and its principles as clear as its record of past years.

Since we raised the "STANDARD" of the Socialist Party twelve years ago it has floated free to the breeze ; now that the winds of adversity freshen into a gale, see to it, comrades, that it is kept flying. 

Twel.

Death of Moses Baritz (1938)

Obituary from the May 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the early age of 54, Comrade Moses Baritz has passed on. The majority of those years have been spent in the Socialist movement. He was a personality in the real sense, turbulent, impatient, yet a diligent student and great scholar. A good friend and comrade but a bitter and relentless political opponent, and many political ornaments on both sides of the Atlantic have wilted under the last of his invective, which was supported by a comprehensive knowledge of Socialism.

By profession a musician he was compelled while still in his 'teens to relinquish his position as clarinet player in an orchestra on account of serious myopia.

For some years he knocked about without any settled plan. During this period he heard a Socialist holding forth in Stevenson Square, Manchester. As a Tory, he resented the speaker attacking capitalism. An argument ensued and Moses lost both the discussion and his Toryism. His temperament was such that to be beaten fairly in discussion could only have one result. He became a convert to Socialism.

Moses Baritz made more than one journey to America, where he made a reputation as a convincing speaker and a brilliant exponent of scientific Socialism. His last trip to the U.S.A. became a world tour—largely involuntary. In 1918 he was arrested and confined in the Immigration Station at Seattle, Wash. It is interesting to note in passing that the American interpretation of democracy at this period did not provide for the formulation of any charges, arrest, detention and ultimate release depending largely on the whim of a few officials.

The writer was arrested and confined in the same building. A political and personal friendship had commenced which has overcome many obstacles and has been terminated only by death.

About September, 1918, Moses was given permission to leave the U.S.A. and he sailed for the Antipodes. His reception there was marked by hostility verging on persecution, and before long he was on the move again. He discovered on his arrival in South Africa that his reputation as a Socialist propagandist had preceded him. The quantity of malicious venom levelled at him proved insurmountable and he landed in England again during the latter half of 1920.

A few years of poverty followed, during his sole income depended on the proceeds of musical lectures illustrated with gramophone records. These lectures were delivered mainly to proletarian audiences and he introduced a class of music that has survived the competition of musical shoddy.

A well-known recording company, appreciating his musical knowledge and recognising his analytical faculties, engaged his services. In the early days of broadcasting he was on the air regularly lecturing on music. Good English and a clear pronunciation were insufficient to survive the demand for an Oxford accent, and Moses bade adieu to the microphone.

His health began to deteriorate about three years ago and he passed through several severe illnesses in the meantime. Nevertheless, no call on his services were ignored and only a few months ago he made his last bow to a Socialist audience at a Bloomsbury meeting, when he concluded his lecture in a state of collapse.

The announcement of his death occasions no surprise to his friends, but it is a painful shock and a great loss. The Socialist Party and the Manchester branch in particular has lost one of its most able and sincere advocates.

T. Rimmer

Editorial: Devolution or revolution? (1979)

Editorial from the February 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

On March 1 voters in Scotland and Wales will be called upon to decide for or against the proposal to set up elected assemblies, with limited powers, in these areas. Some see this as a step towards independence for Scotland and Wales and are calling for a "yes" or "no" vote depending on how they view this prospect. Others (more realistically) see it as an attempt by the Labour government to buy off the nationalist sentiments which have increasingly manifested themselves in recent years. We in the Socialist Party say that both the proposal and the referendum are quite irrelevant from a working-class point of view.

The social problems which face wage and salary earners in such fields as housing, schooling and transport, and the constant struggle to make ends meet from month to month, arise from the fact that the means of wealth production are monopolised by a minority class. They are caused by capitalism and cannot be solved by any amount of tinkering with its political superstructure.

As a mere political or constitutional change the setting up of elected assemblies in Scotland and Wales will contribute nothing towards helping to solve the problems facing wage and salary earners, either there or elsewhere. Since these problems arise from the way in which society is at present organised they can only be solved by a change in the social system: by the social revolution involved in replacing class monopoly and production for profit by the common ownership and production solely for use of socialism. Revolution not devolution, is what is required.

Even if the elected assemblies were to be other than glorified county councils completely dependent, like all other local authorities in Britain, on the central government for funds, or embryo parliaments of an independent Scotland or an Independent Wales, we would still say that whether or not they are to be established is an irrelevant issue.

The basic argument put forward by the SNP and Plaid Cymru is that the problems of wage and salary earners living in Scotland and Wales arise from the fact they they are governed from London rather than from Edinburgh or Cardiff. The absurdity of this claim is matched only by that of the Tory and Labour Parties which attribute these problems to the fact that the rival party is or has been in power.

It makes no difference where the governments which enforce class monopoly have their headquarters—London, Edinburgh, Cardiff, Brussels or Timbuctoo. An independent Scotland or Wales would inevitably be a capitalist Scotland or a capitalist Wales where the means of production would continue to be governed by the laws of capitalism. And where the problems facing wage and salary earners would therefore continue to exist, as the eloquent example of Ireland where unemployment and emigration have continued despite nearly sixty years of political independence, clearly shows.

Because we regard Scottish or Welsh independence as an irrelevancy does not mean that we are therefore to be counted among the partisans of the maintenance of the United Kingdom as a single political unit. What we are saying is that, since the problems facing wage and salary earners are not caused by the way in which the political superstructure is arranged, changes in this superstructure—such as separation or union—are irrelevant. Hence our conclusion that workers should avoid taking sides in arguments over such issues.

What we do stand for is neither an independent Scotland or Wales nor a united Britain but a world without frontiers. Socialism cannot be established in a single country for a simple but sufficient reason: capitalism, the system it will replace, is already a world system. It exists in state capitalist Russia and China as well as in the West, and quite clearly dominates all so-called "national economies" through the operation of the world market.

Even the politicians recognise this in a vague, roundabout way. Are they not always telling us that "our" problems arise from the fact that "our" goods are not competitive enough on the world market? When you realise that politicians in America, France, Germany, Japan and all other countries are telling the same story then it becomes clear that there are no national solutions to today's social problems. They cannot be solved within the borders of particular States but only on a world scale, in a world without frontiers based on common ownership and democratic control with production solely for use not sale or profit. Only on this basis can the highly-developed, world-wide productive apparatus turn out the abundance of wealth that it is capable of, so permitting society to implement the long-standing socialist principle of "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs".

Recognising the potential class weapon that is the vote socialists in Scotland and Wales will be going to the polling booths and writing "SOCIALISM—SPGB" across their ballot papers. we urge all others who realise that world socialism is the only solution to their problems to do likewise.

Putting down rebellion. (1913)

From the August 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Liberal Government are in power. This, of course, is equal to saying that cowardly bullying will reach its zenith during the period of the present administration. We have had many noisesome examples up to date, and now we are treated to another, in which humble people in Ireland are arrested and charged with conspiring to publish and circulate seditious libels concerning the Government and their armed forces. The offenders are alleged to have posted in the thoroughfares of Belfast placards stating that the "soldiers and police are used by the Government to crush the working man when he stands up for his rights."

We are perfectly well aware that a statement does not necessarily have to be untrue to be a libel. We know that a famous lawyer has laid it down that "the greater the truth the greater the libel," and it will be very interesting, in view of the use that was made of troops in Belfast a year or two back, in view of the part the military played in the great railway strike of August 1911, in view of the police activities in Manchester, Liverpool, and London during the last two years, in view of the menace of the gun-boats at Grimsby and Hull, and within the last fortnight, at Leith ; it will be interesting, we repeat, in view of all this, to observe whether the Government intend to rely upon the truth of the libel to magnify the enormity of the "crime."

However, we do not blame the Government for repressing every attack upon the security of the ruling class. Men holding the view that it is true that "the soldiers and police are used by the Government to crush the working man when he stands up for his rights" will by the force of logic expect those forces to be set in motion directly a blow is aimed at those who control them. To let light in upon the purpose of the armed forces was therefore bound to be "regarded by the law officers of the Crown as of the highest importance." Only what might be expected, therefore, has happened.

This latest piece of bullying, however, shows up the Liberals as what they are—the most cowardly of all political parties. For "King" Carson can openly incite to rebellion, and even go the length of enrolling and swearing thousands for the adventure, yet the Government dare not lay hands upon the powerful rebel. But when it comes to a couple of shop-assistants, then— why then it looks like a dodge of Lloyd-Georgian cunning to convert Ulster to Home Rule by the simple course of sickening it of "Saxon" tyranny.

Irish Notes. (1917)

From the June 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

As the Sinn Fein movement appears to be gaining prominence in Ireland and enlisting the sympathies of large numbers of Irish working men, it becomes necessary for Socialists to state clearly and definitely their attitude toward this movement. With this idea in view the following lines have been penned.

The pamphlet entitled The Sinn Fein Policy, published by the national council of the Sinn Fein movement, lays down their position.

This pamphlet shows clearly that Sinn Fein is the revolt of the Irish commercial class against landlords and the Government that supports the landlords to the detriment of the industrial capitalists. This movement gains its catch-cry and working class support on account of Ireland’s peculiar national position. The landlords having been for years mainly English and the governmental powers administered from London, the landlords naturally turned to the Government for support and got it. The position was further complicated by the development of the English capitalists, who were not so foolish as to permit commercial rivalry at their very doors, especially from a country where the standard of living was comparatively low, food being fairly abundant and cheap. Consequently steps were taken to throttle the anticipated rivalry. In the same way when the early English merchants were struggling for control of the carrying trade of the world, all available methods were pressed into use to crush their principal competitors, the Dutch, and the latter eventually went down.

We are not concerned here as to whether those who support the Sinn Fein movement are sincere or not. We are endeavouring to show Irish working men the plain, bald facts of the position, regardless of whether these facts are palatable or not. People’s views are, in the main, the product of their particular social environment—they see the world from the point of view of the class into which they are born and with which their interests are bound up. Consequently the members of the small commercial firm (the germ of the large industrial concern) burn with injustice and struggle to break the bonds that interfere with the expansion of their business. They bawl at the tops of their voices for freedom, like their brothers of the 18^th century in France, but bye and bye we shall see that the freedom they desire (also like that of their French brethren) is commercial freedom—the liberty to exploit nature and the worker to the fullest extent possible.

We, who are working men, however, should concern ourselves with the bonds that bind us to the wheel of capital—that doom us forever to the toil and sweat of slavery.

In the Tracts for Irishmen there is a booklet entitled Ireland Looks into the Mirror which describes with some detail Hungary’s so-called march to freedom under Louis Kossuth and Francis Deak, and a parallel is drawn between Ireland and Hungary, Irishmen being invited to emulate the Hungarians in their struggle, which has resulted in the “resurrection of Hungary”. But what is really the position in Hungary? Free Hungary and Free Italy have meant nothing to the working class of the respective countries. A short time before the Mutual Murdering Association commenced the sanguinary operations in Europe the condition of affairs in Hungary was appalling. The wages were at starvation rate and thousands were actually starving. In Buda-Pesth alone there were 30,000 unemployed; the wages were 6d to 8d for a day of 10 to 12 hours, and hundreds were employed at 2d a day. Truly Free Hungary had brought its workers to a glorious pass! In the issue of our paper that was published at the time were given full details of the position. Now the workers of Hungary, in common with the workers of other countries, are murdering each other for the great god Capital. Evidently one of the benefits conferred upon the working class of Hungary and Italy by their resurrection from oppression has been the opportunity to pour out their blood on behalf of their masters in the struggle for international trade routes and the markets of the world—a truly remarkable privilege!

In case of any doubts arising as to whether we have stated the case correctly in contending that the mainspring of the Sinn Fein movement is the desire for power and expansion on the part of Irish Industrial Capitalists we will give a few quotations from authoritative sources. In the first place we will quote from the pamphlet The Sinn Fein Policy, to which we have already referred.

“With the development of her manufacturing arm will proceed the rise of a national middle class in Ireland and a trained national democracy.” (p. 15.)
“That the General Council of the Councils should have the country surveyed with a view to the profitable development of its natural resources, and having had the cost and return estimated as accurately as possible, should then invite the Irish-American millionaires to do what, at the St. Patrick’s banquet in New York, several professed themselves anxious to do—develop the country industrially. We can offer them 174,000,000 tons of coal, the finest stone in Europe, and an inexhaustible supply of peat to operate on, and we can offer them all the facilities possessed by the County Councils and Rural Councils of Ireland, and the assistance and goodwill of the Irish people in turning our coal, our stone, and our turf into gold. They can offer us in return profitable employment for our people, and an enormous increase of strength, socially, politically, and industrially.” (p. 17.)
“A necessary organisation is an agricultural and manufacturing union—a union of manufacturers and farmers, classes who at the present time, through an extraordinary delusion, are unfriendly to each other, and fail to realise their interdependence. The farmer is indifferent about the industrial revival, failing to realise the increased market an Ireland with a manufacturing arm means to the agriculturist: the manufacturer is indifferent to the agricultural interest, failing to realise that the extension of agriculture—the extension of tillage—means the extension of the market for his products.” (p. 10.)
“Through the lack of a mercantile marine we are debarred from our best markets, deprived of our share in the world’s carrying trade, and are lost to Europe’s interest. We lost sixty years ago one of the greatest opportunities—a share in the China trade, because we had no mercantile navy, and as a consequence the China market knows nothing of our linens, and we procure our tea through England. We lose for the same reason to-day our share in the Indian trade, which would be gladly given us if we only had a marine to work it, and we are losing yearly our share in the European and American trade for the same reason.” (p. 18.)
“In an excellent letter addressed to the Board of Guardians the Cork Chemical and Drug Co., Ltd., put the issue clearly. It wrote: ‘It is a comparatively simple matter for English capitalists to crush out their Irish competitors, and we know that this has been too often the fate of Irishmen striving to promote the manufactures of the country, but once the obstacle is removed it is easy enough for them to advance prices, and thus obtain compensation for preliminary losses. It is to this system that we, as Irish manufacturers and large employers of labour, object, but we are always ready to meet the ordinary competition of business, so long as this is conducted on fair lines.’ Many of the Irish Boards of Guardians have responded to this letter, but, unfortunately, the bulk of the unions have fallen into the net spread by the English ring, and in consequence a very large sum of Irish money, not a penny of which need have passed out of the country, finds its way this year into England’s pocket. Under the Sinn Fein policy such a deplorable error could not occur. The action of the Boards would, of course, be a united one, and no possibility would be left as far as they were concerned for a syndicate of unscrupulous English capitalists to crush out the home manufacturer and the home trader.”

The Irishman of May 12^th last refers to the Cork Industrial Development Association under the heading of “A Live Association”, and two of the items quoted as evidence of its usefulness are the following:

“The Information Bureau of Irish Industries attached to the Association, has been, and still continues to be, availed of by correspondents drawn from all parts of Ireland and Great Britain, and, also, from Continental and American countries, and has, admittedly, resulted in securing for Irish firms orders running into many hundreds of thousands of pounds sterling.”
“The promotion of Industrial harmony between employers and workers in Ireland has long been a plank in the Association’s platform, and its successful endeavours to effect a satisfactory settlement of the recent disputes in the building trades in Cork City were greatly appreciated by the Cork public.”

When an association like the above has the support of the official Sinn Fein organ it shows plainly what the attitude of the principal people concerned in this movement is toward the Irish working class. The whole of the above quotations prove the truth of our contention. The continuance of the private property system is the central idea in the movement, and so long as private property remains the miseries that necessarily flow therefrom will remain also and continue to afflict the workers under the Irish Republic.

In the pamphlet from which we have quoted Germany is instanced as the country par excellence to be emulated by Ireland. But to what has industrial development brought Germany? To the dawn of the Social Revolution, some will truly reply. But then this is not the point of view of the publishers of the pamphlet. They are glorifying the pre-war state of Germany. The German peasant, who used to enjoy the fresh air working in the fields with nothing over him but the sky, while his wife spun at the cottage door, is now cooped up in a factory for the greater part of his waking hours, with the grim spectre of unemployment to haunt him for ever and make his life wretched. The once open country is now studded thickly with great factories, ugly industrial towns, and depressing mining districts. As a result of developing her industrial resources Germany has become one of the greatest industrial countries in the world. The German capitalist can put his feet under the mahogany with the capitalists of any nation, whilst the German workers, who toiled in tragic weariness to make these capitalists what they are, can hold their own with the workers of any nation for poverty, misery, and destitution.

The pamphlet in question also dilates largely on the increase of unemployment in Ireland, and the development of its resources through the investment of capital by the American millionaires. Are the Sinn Fein party anxious to see Ireland smothered with the ugly, stifling, sweating factories and mills that already encumber part of the North of Ireland, and smother England, Germany, America, and other countries? Is it employment Irish workers want, or is it the opportunity to work for themselves instead of working for others who live on the products of their toil? What the Sinn Feiners would have us believe, apparently, is that we want more employers in Ireland.

To sum it all up, the plea of this pamphlet is simply the echo of the plea of the English capitalists in their early struggle for markets. “The more markets we can get the more employment we can give,” cried they, and went merrily on their way murdering children from six years of age in their factories and destroying the lives of women and girls in their mines in the benevolent endeavour to give as much employment as possible, and of course, just by the way, rake in as much profit as possible.

The Irish Republic the Sinn Feiners are after is but the counterpart of France and America, where year by year the capitalist sweats dividends out of his helpless workers.

What part can the Irish workers, devoid of capital, take in the Industrial Revival except the toiling part? All these revivals are useless to the worker until he owns the product of his toil, then he will be able to enjoy to the full all the advantages to be obtained. So long as private property is the order of the day it matters little to the propertyless Irish worker (the vast majority of the population) who rules Ireland.

“Agin the British Government”, Separation with a King, Lords, and Commons for Ireland (Constitution of 1683), and full liberty to exploit Irish workers, are about the sum total of Sinn Fein. Some are ultra-revolutionary, and will have “no bloom’ king but a republic”—It is tantamount to the bosses saying they’ll exploit you with caps on instead of swanking in with top hats on. Republic or Constitutional Monarchy, it works out the same—the workers are always the bottom dogs.

The writers of these notes are Irish workers who have long since turned a deaf ear to the empty phrases of Nationalism, and they look forward with hopeful eyes to the day when Ireland shall be a land of peace and prosperity—its wealth owned and controlled by its workers—and a harmonious member of the great international Socialist Republic. This object, we claim, is far more worthy of the attention and support of Irish workers than the empty phrases and chimeras of Sinn Fein.

Mick and Mack

The dispossessed (1994)

Book Review from the May 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Dispossessed by Ursula LeGuin is a tale of future worlds. One is Anarres and clearly labelled "anarchist". The other, Urras, is less clearly described as "propertarian" and "archist". The plot is briefly but dramatically outlined in the blurb.

"Shevek, a brilliant physicist. . . single-handedly attempts to re-unite two planets cut off from each other by centuries of distrust. Anarres, Shevek's homeland, is a bleak moon settled by an anarchic Utopian civilization; Urras, the mother planet, is a world very similar to Earth, with its warring nations, great poverty, and immense wealth. Shevek risks everything in a courageous visit to Urras  to learn, to teach, to share. But his gift becomes a threat. . . and in the profound conflict which ensues, Shevek must re-examine his philosophy of life."

The book's thirteen chapters alternate between Anarres and Urras.

Invited to dislike

LeGuin tells us much that we seem to be invited to dislike about Urras, and just a few things that we are invited to approve (although, depending on your point of view, you may have a different ratio of approval to disapproval).

Urras is an "incredibly complex society with all its nations, classes, castes, cults, customs and its magnificent, appalling and interminable history". It is organized "hierarchically, from the top down". In education there is an examination system that involves "cramming in information and disgorging it at demand". "The state recognizes no coinage but power: and it issues the coins itself." So there are secret police. And the state uses force, with police helicopters and machine guns, to put down demonstrations that threaten the status quo.

Life on Urras closely resembles, and somewhat exaggerates, life in the USA in the 1970s, when the author was writing (in two decades the general picture has changed little). They burn dirty clothes because new cheap ones cost less than cleaning. There are private cars, "splendid machines of bizarre elegance". Everything is "either useless to begin with or ornamented so as to disguise its use."

Rats and asylums

There are three competing mail companies. Everything comes "inside layers and layers of wrappings". The basic function of the radio "was advertising things for sale". Other delights on Urras included rats, army barracks, insane asylums, poorhouses, pawnshops, executions, thieves, tenements, rent collectors, the unemployed, and "a dead baby in a ditch".

In the realm of thought and ideas there is also much to dislike about Urras. There is religious bigotry ("He's a strict-interpretation Epiphanist. Recites the Primes every night. A totally rigid mind.") There are "birdseed papers", "written by semiliterates for semiliterates" which manufacture news. Shevek observes that Urrasti people always look anxious: "Was it because, no matter how much money they had. they always had to worry about making more, lest they die poor?"

Now to Anarres. the "anarchist country". It, too, has a system and has people doing things and thinking thoughts. Anarres is "an experiment in nonauthoritarian communism. . . (the people) are not only socialists, they are anarchists".

No law, no police

There are no laws, no governments, no police, no money. Or, to add a bit of positive qualification, there is "no law but the single principle of mutual aid between individuals. . . no government but the single principle of free association". While "nominally there's no government on Anarres. . . obviously there's administration. . ." The network of administration and management is called PDC, Production and Distribution Coordination. "They are a coordinating system for all syndicates, federatives and individuals who do productive work. They do not govern persons; they administer production". Nobody is ever punished for anything, though sometimes "they make you go away by yourself for a while".

There is no distinction between men's work and women's work: "A person chooses work according to interest, talent, strength -what has sex to do with that?" The "dirty work" is done by everyone on one day out of ten on a basis of choice from "rotating lists" "People take the dangerous, hard jobs because they take pride in doing them".

Positive

Most of what we learn that is positive about Anarres is in terms of thoughts, ideas, even moral precepts. At a personal level, members of a community were not moved by mass feeling but "there were as many emotions as there were people". The status of religion on Anarres is ambiguous. There is no established religion in the sense of churches and creeds, but "you could not seriously believe that we had no religious capacity?" Takver "had always known that all lives are in common, rejoicing in her kinship to the fish in the tanks of her laboratories, seeking the experience of existences outside the human boundary". One character offers a moralistic judgment: "Having's wrong, Sharing's right." Shevek is described as having been brought up "in a culture that relied deliberately and constantly on human solidarity, mutual aid".

Anarres has a population of only 20 million compared with a 1,000 million on Urras. It was given to the Odonians (theoretical anarchists) as a means of "buying them off with a world, before they totally undermined the authority of law and national sovereignty on Urras". There was trade between the two worlds, but in practice Anarres was a mining colony of Urras. For an anarchist society, Anarres is remarkably centralized. Abbenay is the capital, "the mind and center of Anarres. . . There had to be a center. The computers that coordinated the administration of things, the division of labor and the distribution of goods, and the central federatives of most of the work syndicates were in Abbenay, right from the start".

Despite this the people of Anarres have to put up with many shortages and deprivations. Printing had to cover the whole page because paper was short. The economy would not support the building and upkeep of individual houses and apartments. People had to save up their daily allowances for a party. and had to fetch their letters from the mail depot because there were no postmen. However, the general picture is one of high morale despite the shortages and deprivations.

Clear aim

LeGuin had an aim in writing The Dispossessed. Fortunately, we have her own account of this. Responding to a question by Lynn McCaffery, she says:

"... The only trouble with an anarchist country is going to come from its neighbors. Anarchism is like Christianity – it's never really been practised – so you can 't say it's a practical proposal. Still, it's a necessary idea. We have followed the state far enough – too far, in fact. The state is leading us to World War III. The whole idea of the state has got to be rethought from the beginning and then dismantled. One way to do this is to propose the most extreme solution imaginable: you don 't proceed little by little; you go to the extreme and say, "Let's have no government, no state at all." Then you try to figure out what you have without it, which is essentially what I was trying to do in 'The Dispossessed'. This kind of thinking is not idealistic, it's a practical necessity these days. We must begin to think in different terms, because if we just continue to follow the state, we've had it. So, yes, 'The Dispossessed' is very much in earnest about trying to rethink our assumptions about the relationships between human beings." (Across the Wounded Galaxies)

Then McCaffery asked LeGuin why-she had set her anarchist Utopia in such a bleak environment:

"The way I created Anarres was probably an unconscious economy of means: these people are going to be leading a very barren life, so I gave them a barren landscape. Anarres is a metaphor for the austere life, but I wasn't trying to make a general proposal that a Utopia has to be that way."

For LeGuin what seems to be preventing people making a better fist of life on contemporary Earth is not so much capitalism as government and the state.

It follows that what she believes desirable is not so much socialism, a system to replace capitalism, as anarchism, a system to replace "archism". That last term isn't actually in the dictionary, not even in a large one. But so much of what LeGuin writes about Urras is also a fair description of capitalism that perhaps we shouldn't be too concerned about her choice of words for its alternative.

The important difference between LeGuin's view and the socialist view is surely about the means of changing from one type of society to the other. LeGuin is vague about these means. Like most anarchists, she doesn't think in terms of democratic political organization for the overthrow of capitalism and its replacement by socialism. She is right to "see the folly of reformism ('you don't proceed little by little')". But organization is important – indeed it is vital. By allowing the "archists" to be well-organized in a favourable environment, and the anarchists to be a minority shipped off to a barren planet, she is not only giving the devil the best tunes: she is allowing him to take over the whole music profession.

One serious criticism of The Dispossessed is that we aren't told enough about the Urras "working class", and what little we are told is derogatory and disillusioning. We know they read "birdseed" papers and get massacred when they revolt, but that's about all. LeGuin sketches them in as semiliterates, as a kind of ancient Roman "bread and circuses" mob. There is something deeply pessimistic about a scenario that envisages the intellectual, material and political degradation of over 90 percent of the population.

This remarkable book stimulates the imagination and paints a picture of a future world that has a good many socialist features even if it doesn't deal at all adequately with the politics of how we can get to that world.

Stan Parker

Editorial: Bebel's Incursion Into English Politics (1906)

Editorial from the April 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

In another column we publish the correspondence which has passed between the Executive Committee of The Socialist Party of Great Britain, our comrade Bebel, and Vorwaerts, the official organ of the German Socialist Party. There is no occasion to amplify that correspondence, and the only purpose of a reference to it here is to direct attention more particularly to it in justification of the attitude taken up by this Party. That attitude which is, of course, no more than a logical expression of the class struggle, and cannot be departed from by any Socialist except by the immolation of Principle on the altar of Expediency, coincides exactly with the pronouncement made by Bebel himself in other connections. He may only object to it, therefore, at the risk of self stultification. We regret exceedingly that instead of recognising that he had allowed himself to be betrayed into an act calculated, because it lent the countenance of approval to what was merely a capitalist victory, to defeat the purpose of Socialist propaganda, he should have preferred to attempt to exonerate himself by reading into his telegram something which in point of fact was neither implied nor expressed. We expected better things of Bebel.

Our intervention in this matter, however much we may deplore the occasion for it, will, like our protest to the French Socialist Party against the fraternisation of Dr. Brousse (a member of the Party and President of the Municipal Council of Paris) with the L.C.C. representatives of capitalism in municipal politics, serve to show that in England there is now a party jealous of the integrity and the unswerving adherence to principle, of the International Socialist Movement, zealous for the elimination of all confusing elements in industrial and political warfare, and determined to do all in its power—however little or much that may be—to organise the working class upon the basis of their distinctive class interests, for the final struggle with the hosts of capitalism, whatever the form of their manifestation, and the realisation of the Co-operative Commonwealth.

Until The Socialist Party of Great Britain Came into existence our Continental comrades may well have been in lugubrious ignorance of the existence of such a party : we sincerely hope our stand for principle will remove any misapprehension they may have had on this issue.

Where Rockfeller Rules. (1913)

Book Review from the June 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Poverty," by Robert Hunter. London : The Macmillan Co. 2s. net.

This is a cheap reprint of a work that originally appeared in 1904 in America. It is written by a member of that body of reformers known as the Socialist Party of America. The author defines the main object of the volume as an estimate of the extent of poverty in the United States of America, and a description of "some of its evils."

A further object of the book, we are told, is to point out certain remedial actions which society may wisely prosecute.

To one who is familiar with the investigations in this country of Mr. Charles Booth, Mr. Seebohm Rowntree, and Dr. H. H. Mann, the method of this work is certainly disappointing. As the author himself admits : "The poor of the rural districts have hardly been mentioned and the working woman and the mother are left almost entirely out of consideration."

Little information, if any, can be gleaned beyond that already to be obtained in the works of Jacob A. Riis and Mrs. Van Vorst, etc.

The estimate given by the author of this book on poverty in America is sufficient to show of how little use the work is to the serious student. "I have not the slightest doubt," he says, "that there are in the United States ten millions in precisely these conditions of poverty, but I am largely guessing at it, and there may be as many as fifteen or twenty millions."

The condition which Mr. Hunter takes for his standard of poverty he defines as the lack of those necessaries sufficient to maintain a state of physical efficiency.

The real remedy for the poverty of the workers amidst the luxury of the idlers is not shown, and the preventive measures advocated by our author are worthy of the moat zealous supporter of the present system.

Sanitary laws and shorter hours for women and children. Laws to "make industry pay the necessary and legitimate coat of producing and maintaining efficient labourers." Compensation and Insurance Acts and Anti-Immigration laws. In short, all those measures which are in operation in many lands, where they dismally fail to improve the workers' conditions. Our author shrinks from the true position, viz., that as the poverty of the working class is due to robbery the remedy is to stop the robbers by ousting them, first from political, and then from economic power. 

Adolph Kohn