Rosa Luxemburg's Writings (1973)

Book Review from the January 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Rosa Luxemburg. Selected Political Writings ed. and introduced by Robert Looker. Cape. £1.50.

Rosa Luxemburg was born in 1870 in Russian Poland but later moved to Germany. Very early on she made a name for herself in the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) as an opponent of Bernstein's Revisionism. Her pamphlet Social Reform or Revolution was an attack on the view that capitalism could be gradually transformed into Socialism by social reforms, trade-union pressure, co-ops, etc.

But she never argued that a socialist party should not advocate reforms at all. In fact she agreed with the SPD's tactic on reforms: that the working class should be encouraged to struggle for them or against specific capitalist measures in order to prepare itself for the eventual capture of political power for Socialism (see some of the articles published here in the section "Defending the Tactic"). When, in the decade or so up to 1914, she came to realise how reformism in the SPD was not confined just to Bernstein and the Revisionists but also permeated the thinking of the whole leadership, she blamed its concentrating on getting reforms through Parliament. She did not blame advocating reforms as such and in fact her answer to the danger of reformism was to involve the mass of the workers themselves instead of just a few MP's in the reform struggle by means of the "mass strike". This was a tactic she had picked up from the Russian revolution of 1905 (which she had participated in to a certain extent, most of Poland then being part of Russia).

The final bankruptcy of the SPD was exposed in Luxemburg's eyes by its notorious vote for war credits for the German government on 4 August 1914. Luxemburg began to call for a new Socialist International and eventually helped to form a new party, the Spartacus League. She herself was a determined opponent of the War and went to jail for her anti-war activities. Some of her best writings date from this period, especially the classic socialist statement against the First World War, The Junius Pamphlet (also called The Crisis of Social Democracy). Some of the articles selected here, especially "Rebuilding the International" and "Either Or", could have come from any of the SOCIALIST STANDARD  of 1915 and 1916. Indeed the first one could quite literally have done since most of it was reprinted, with a slight reservation, in our issue of September 1915.

In November 1918 the Kaiser and his government were overthrown and political power passed into the hands of pro-war Social Democrats. They pursued the policy of establishing a bourgeois, democratic state in Germany, establishing stable capitalist rule through Parliament. The Spartacus League, including Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, urged the workers to oppose this and to set up rival workers' and soldiers' councils as the first step on the long road to the capture of political power for Socialism. For the Spartacus League (unlike the Bolsheviks) did not believe in a minority seizure of power. As its 1918 pamphlet What Does The Spartakusbund Want? put it:

The Spartacus League will never assume government in any way other than through the clear unambiguous will of the great majority of the proletarian mass in all Germany, never in any other way than on the strength of the masses' conscious agreement with the views, aims and methods of the struggle of the Spartacus League.

Or, as Rosa Luxemburg herself put it:

Without the conscious will and action of the majority of the proletariat, there can be no Socialism.

Even so, some of the members of the Spartacus League were over-enthusiastic and—despite warnings from Luxemburg—were provoked in January 1919 into an armed uprising in Berlin. Loyally she went along with them. It cost her her life. On 15 January soldiers responsible to the Social Democratic Minister Noske smashed her head in.

This book selects some of her previously untranslated articles, though it omits any of those where she discusses nationalism and exposes "the right to self-determination" as a fraud. Could this be because the translator is associated with "International Socialism" and would therefore find her views on this embarrassing?

Adam Buick

My Father (1997)

A Short Story from the May 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

My parents were always poor. My father was ostracised by his family for becoming a "Bolshevik" (as they chose to call it), and marrying a "common shop girl"  . . . as they chose to describe my mother. It was a "never-darken-my-doors-again" situation. In fact he did try to "darken their doors" again when he hit upon very hard times but they would not lend him any money. They would have none of him and he was to remember this with bitterness for the rest of his life. It also meant that I was never to meet my paternal grandparents or my aunt and uncle.

I suppose to some people Dad would have been an embarrassment. He was the kind of man whose main object in going to the cinema, or so it seemed, was to watch the Pathé News, make loud, caustic comments about whatever was happening on the screen, and then try to inveigle the audience into a discussion. And then again, just as soon as the film was ended and the strains of God Save The King became audible he would leap from his seat and with great ostentation usher us along the row and out of the cinema. On one or two occasions he remained seated (when most other people were standing to attention) in order to explain the rôle of the Royal Family under capitalism in a very loud voice to the people in the row behind. Dad firmly believed that all he had to do was to expound his political allegiances and most people would come round to his way of thinking. And it is true to sat that most people did tend to keep quiet whilst he bestowed on them all the benefits of this knowledge and wisdom, but I think now that this was due more to weariness than any agreement on their part.

Visitors to the house, young and old alike, he attempted to engage in political debate, a debate he invariably won hands down because he had done masses of reading on the subject, but also because few people ever wanted to argue with him in the first place, when he naturally assumed that they did. In other words he never missed an opportunity to inform, and he did this lengthily and with patience and humour. But as he had behaved in this way for as long as I could remember he was an embarrassment to me. But for my mother it was different. Mum would ask "Must you bring politics into everything? Could we just go for one day in this house without a lecture on the evils of capitalism?" In this I thought she was unreasonable. I thought him wonderful, eccentric and handsome as the only little girl in the family would.

During the time that my father was a road-sweeper he was responsible for one of the more leafy, posher areas of south-east London. I lived in this area for a time and was to meet some of the residents who as soon as they heard my name would enquire if I was Jock's daughter, and then I would soon learn of Dad's attempts to convert whoever-it-was to socialism. From what they said he spent as much time preaching as he did sweeping. I have no evidence that he ever fully converted anyone but I have no doubt that he made a lasting impression.

Yet as I grew up a coolness developed between us. My politics changed. I no longer saw the Russian revolution in the same way and the Hungarian uprising of 1956 put a completely different complexion on the way I thought of socialism. My father could never accept the revelations about Stalin; he was ageing, becoming too ill to analyse events. He felt let down, betrayed. Now instead of hanging on to his every word I berated him. I chided him with feeding me the wrong information for so many years. I made it clear that I considered his lifetime principles to be a sham. His punishment was twofold, my behavoiur was unforgivable, and when he died the rift between us had not been healed. He must certainly have felt that he had been betrayed not only by his parents and his politics but by his only daughter too! And yet this dear man inspired me to read, to question and to be a socialist. What more could he have taught me?

Heather Ball

Editorial: The Case Against Censorship (2006)

Editorial from the March 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

The fuss over the Danish cartoons of Mohammed has not been the only recent event that has raised the issue of free speech. There was also the government’s failed attempt to make it more difficult to criticise religion. There were the trials of the BNP leaders and of the Muslim cleric Abu Hamza. The elected mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, was required to appear before an unelected body with the power to eject him from office for a remark made to a journalist from the gutter press. David Irving was arrested in Austria for holocaust-denial. All these were attempts – either by law or by direct action – to punish people for expressing an opinion.

We in the Socialist Party have always insisted on the advantages, for the advancement of the cause of socialism, of the fullest possible freedom of expression of political and social ideas, including when these take the form of religion (since all religions hold views on how society should be organised and are in this sense political). No view should be prevented from being expressed. And no view (not even religion) should be exempt from being criticised.

We have always practised what we preach. We opposed the banning of the Daily Worker in 1941. We have criticised the policy of “no platform for fascists” as censorship by direct action. We have debated against fascists and Islamists, exposing their views before their followers to the withering criticism of the socialist case.

The main case against censorship is that it considers that people are too ignorant to decide for themselves and so must be protected from hearing certain views. All censors, actual or would-be, consider themselves a cut above the rest. They are not corrupted by reading Lady Chatterly’s Lover but their servants would be.They are not affected by reading anti-Christian or anti-Muslim writings (as the case may be) but their followers would be. They are not affected by a BNP rant but other, less enlightened people would be.

Since ideas are thrown up by social conditions censorship never works to suppress them anyway. The Catholic Church was not able to prevent the rise in Europe of the secular, practical materialism generated by capitalism and has been forced to accommodate itself to this. The same fate awaits Islam, which seems to want to rival Catholicism for the title of the world’s most intolerant religion. At the moment its clerics are desperately trying to hold back the spread of capitalist secularism – and still have the power to mobilise fanatical mobs to rage against a few harmless cartoons – but, as capitalism progresses more and more in the areas where they now dominate they too will lose influence, painfully slow as this is turning out to be.

In any event, Socialists are opposed to the attempts made by Muslim clerics to prevent and punish criticism of their religion. We are under no obligation to respect the religious dogma of these obscurantists that places the so-called prophet Mohammed beyond criticism, not that he has anything relevant or sensible to say for 21st century conditions.

The last refuge of those who favour censorship is the proposition that people should be legally banned from insulting each other. It is true that if you want to persuade someone to change their views insulting them is not the best way to begin. But you can’t legislate for good manners or good persuasive techniques. To allow one side in an argument to cry “you’ve offended me” and appeal to the law to silence the other side would mean an end to free speech.

Our answer to all censors is to reaffirm that workers are quite capable of judging for themselves, quite capable of sorting out the wheat from the chaff and working out which ideas accord with their interests –and which do not. The best condition for the emergence of socialist understanding remains free and frank discussion.

Backwaters of History - 6 (1954)

From the March 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

English Naval Mutinies 1797

There are two old, historic and important roads leading out of London, known now-a-days as the A2 and A3 and leading to Dover and Portsmouth respectively. In the late 18th century these were loose surfaced highways, infested by highwaymen and toll gate keepers.

During April, May and June of the year 1797 there was much thundering of horses hooves, rumbling of carriage wheels and creaking of wide flung turnpike gates on these two roads. There was a dashing hither and thither between Whitehall and Portsmouth and Sheerness. Steaming horses were urged on by whip and spur to break speed records. Terrific consternation—the British navy was on strike—right bang in the middle of a war.

Napoleon was threatening to invade England. Part of the fleet were at anchor at Plymouth, at Spithead, at Yarmouth and at The Nore, all in readiness to attack the French fleet if it emerged from Brest.

In March and April the seamen of the Spithead fleet sent a number of petitions to the Admiralty, to Admiral Lord Howe, to Parliament, to Charles James Fox and to the king. The sailors had many grievances.

The main grievance was pay. Rates of pay that were set during the reign of Charles II still prevailed in the reign of George III, about 130 years after, despite great increases in prices. From a sailor's meagre pay there were many stoppages and most men's pay was months and months in arrears. Now they asked for a rise and regular pay. 

They also wanted an increase in the quantity and even more important, an improvement in the quality of their food. The food they received was maggotty, rotten and mostly inedible. Any little extra they requested was charged to them at extortionate rates and supplies of the sick was embezzled by officers. They wanted proper care for the sick and pay when wounded.

Seamen were kept to their ships for years without shore leave. Conditions were so vile that the Admiralty was afraid to grant shore leave knowing that the men would not return to the sea. Now the sailors petitioned for a modest measure of leave. 

The men did not protest about discipline but they did call for the removal of the disciplinary abuses that were rife. Flogging was the main disciplinary punishment and, although naval regulations laid down a maximum of twelve strokes for an offence, no officer was deterred from giving more, even to over a hundred lashes, often for the most trivial offence that was probably provoked by the officers themselves.

"To be flogged was to be tortured. The first stroke to be laid on by the brawny boatswain's mate, as hard as he could at the full length of his arm, would always jerk an involuntary 'Ugh!' out of even the most hardened unfortunate 'seized up to' the grating at the gangway; six blows tore the flesh horribly, while after a dozen the back looked like 'so much putrified liver.' After a time the bones showed through, the blood burst from the bitten tongue and lips of the victim, and expelled from his lungs, dribbled from his nostrils and ears. To make sure that the standard of hitting was maintained, the wielder of the cat would be changed every two or three dozen and the blood was wiped off the thongs between each stroke to prevent them sticking together . . . A severe flogging smashed a man, he was ill for weeks after it, and rarely recovered his self-respect if he originally had any good in him." -"Sea Life in Nelson's Time," by John Masefield.)

Ships were rotten, leaky and foul smelling; drinking water was foul; the food caused scurvy; ship doctors were drunkards and without skill; officers like the notorious Captain Bligh of the "Bounty" were brutes.

The war with France made it necessary to double and treble the size of the navy and the ships were manned by men released from debtors prisons, shanghaied from merchant ships in port and recruited by quotas from each county, a bounty being offered to volunteers. Quite a number of men, better educated than the regular seamen, were attracted into the navy by the offer of the bounty.

Secretly, carefully and with success an organisation had been built up in the separate fleets although with little contact between the fleets. A few sporadic, single ship mutinies against the vile conditions had occurred at times during the previous years. The organisation in the separate fleets in 1797 appears to have been spontaneous.

Very wordy petitions, expressing loyalty to king and country and willingness to fight the French if the invasion became imminent, but demanding redress for their grievances were despatched and replies patiently awaited. The organisation at Spithead was tightened up, each ship appointing two delegates and the battleship "Queen Charlotte" selected as unofficial headquarters. Plans for action were circulated, signals arranged and a time set for action. The delegates were mainly young men holding some non-commissioned rank.

Before the plans were complete events on the "Defence" precipitated action and the whole Spithead fleet went on strike. It was called a mutiny but it had none of the hall-marks of the usual mutiny. The men carried on with their normal duties, respected their officers but refused to put to sea. The delegates were afforded the privileges of officers, they maintained strict discipline amongst the men and issued many statements and orders for the control of the strike. Everything on the surface appeared normal but the officers had no power.

The Admiralty and the officers made threats, but the men remained unconcerned. The Admiralty made promises to redress some of the grievances, but the men rejected them. A bill to increase sailors' pay was introduced into Parliament but there was delay and procrastination and the men became impatient. The most detested officer were put ashore and a fracas broke out on the "London" resulting in the death of one man. Further bloodshed was averted by the delegates and Admiral Colpoys. The delegates court martialled the officers concerned, found them guilty but reprieved them.

When the government realised that the seamen were not to be trifled with it granted their demands. But the delegates were still suspicious. They demanded a Royal Pardon in writing and that the officers they had set ashore should not be returned to their respective ships. Lord Howe was sent to Spithead with the Royal Pardon and authority to grant the men's demands.

Having achieved their demands the sailors organised a grand gala and there was much carousal and fraternisation between Lord Howe, Portsmouth civil authorities and the seamen. The two most prominent of the delegates, 25 year old Valentine Joyce, Quarter Master's Mate of the "Royal George" and John Fleming, 25 year old A.B., were especially feted.

As the Spithead fleet celebrated its success The Nore fleet went into action to achieve similar improvements in conditions and pay. The organisation here was less complete. John Parker, a 30 year old ex-schoolmaster, rated as a supernumerary A.B. on the Depot ship "Sandwich," was quickly elevated to the position of President of the delegates.

The "Sandwich" was a 40 year old decaying corpse ship, smaller than Nelson's "Victory" with a full war complement of 750 men. When it laid at Sheerness in 1797 it had on board about 1,600 men.

"One has a vision of writhing humanity, like worms crawling over one another in the foetid pot of a boy fisherman . . . "("The Floating Republic," by Dobree and Mainwaring.)

This hotbed of fever and disease became the headquarters of The Nore fleet mutiny.

The Naval authorities took advantage of the weaker organisation of The Nore seamen and refused to talk with the delegates, making stronger threats backed with a show of military force. All the ships of the Nore fleet were not unanimous in their support of the mutiny and before long the struggle began to weaken. The "Clyde" and the "San Fiorenzo" pulled out from the mutinous fleet.

Food supplies became short and the delegates decided to hold up merchant shipping en route to and from London. This raised the ire of the London merchants and an emergency naval force were recruited to be sent against the mutineers, civilians from all walks enlisting for the job.

By June it was becoming more and more difficult for the delegates to hold The Nore fleet together. The "Repulse" and the "Leopard" attempted to escape and were fired on by the other mutineers, only the "Leopard" getting away. During the following days other ships drew out. As arguments went on in the ships the people of Sheerness saw the Red flags replaced by the blue and white, them, perhaps the red ones going up again, to be replaced yet again.

Men tried to escape. The authorities were jubilant and took steps to prevent escape. A pardon was offered to men who would give themselves up. On June 13th John Parker handed over the command of the "Sandwich" to the officers after a meeting of the men of that ship. So the Nore mutiny dissolved.

The naval authorities took revenge. Parker, with 28 others, was executed, a few others received from 40 to 380 lashes with the cat, whilst others were imprisoned.

The Plymouth fleet gave slight support to the Spithead seamen whilst the Yarmouth fleet adhered to their comrades at The Nore.

The Spithead affair achieved immediate results whilst the Nore mutiny appeared to have failed. But the fierceness of the Nore outbreak to which the Yarmouth fleet had been attached, the length of time it lasted and the threat to London was probably a greater contributory cause of the naval reforms that were introduced during the early years of the 19th century.

Books to read:
"The Naval Mutinies of 1797," by C. Gill
"The Floating Republic," by G. E. Mainwaring and B. Dobree.

W. Waters

Between the Lines: Their crisis; our lives and Our history (1986)

The Between the Lines column from the July 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Their crisis; our lives

It is now almost a cliché to state that capitalism is in a crisis. Less easily grasped is the effect of that abstract notion, "an economic crisis", on the lives of workers. Panorama (BBC1, 9 June, 9.30pm) attempted to show just how far the current economic mess is affecting the lives of workers in Cleveland in north-east England, described as being not so much of a black spot of unemployment as a black hole. In Cleveland, where ten years ago the council was making films about the industrial growth of the area, one in four workers are on the dole. Seven homes each week are repossessed because the inhabitants cannot afford to pay for them. Six thousand workers in Cleveland each year have their electricity cut off - that is one in every two hundred of the population. In the youth club, lads of twenty spoke of how they would never expect to get "decent" work - several admitted that stealing was the only course open to them. Some were prepared to take any job going, such as back-breaking potato-picking for £8 a day: even here they were often being undercut and put out of work by children who were prepared to stay off school and do the job for £4 a day. Suicides in Cleveland have increased sharply - a doctor told of a forty year-old man who had sat in his surgery and told him that he would kill himself rather than exist in dire poverty: what could the doctor do for him? The system is the disease. With all of its sickening moralising about "The Family", the capitalist system breaks up family life. The programme showed a family where the man had to travel for months to Surrey where he could earn a wage building luxury houses for the rich. His wife and children had to live without him. Another man's family lost him as he was sent to economic exile in Nigeria, to earn enough to stay out of extreme poverty. The illusion of capitalism is that, bad as the crisis is, it will be soon be over and better times are ahead. This crisis will end, but capitalism only offers more misery and new crises for the working class. The workers of Cleveland have no future to look forward to except the new social system of socialism, where human beings will give according to their abilities and take according to their needs. How urgent that social revolution is was, unintentionally, well-demonstrated by this documentary.

Our history

It is a rare treat for TV to offer viewers a documentary about the history of our class -  the workers who produce the wealth but do not possess it. Union Maids (C4, 5 June, 11.25pm) was a fine programme about the much-neglected topic of American labour history. The women interviewed were pioneer trade unionists in the USA in the 1930s who took on themselves the task—begun by the Wobblies some years earlier—of organising black, women and unskilled wage slaves into trade unions. Their descriptions of the struggles reminded us of the tremendous resistance which workers are capable of once they have started to perceive their class interest. At least one of these women possessed an understanding of socialist ideas, pointing out that nothing which currently exists in the name of socialism is socialism. The documentary was made even better by the inclusion of some excellent Joe Hill songs (some of the greatest music to come out of the workers' struggle) and so we could sing along to such favourites as The Union Maid and Solidarity Forever, the latter containing the verse:

In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded goal;
Greater than the might of armies, magnified a thousand-fold;
We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old;
For the Union makes us strong.

Steve Coleman

Supermarkets and Their Slogans (2013)

From the April 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Adulterating food for profit isn’t a new story. 'The Old Testament' first alerted its readers to it with the shrill warning that there is, ‘death in the pot!’ (II Kings chap.4, verse 40). At the turn of the twentieth century The New York Evening Post even penned an ode to it:

Mary had a little lamb,  

And when she saw it sicken, 

She shipped it off to Packingtown, 

And now it's labelled chicken.

David Cameron revealed his thoughts on the subject when he stated that it was a 'very shocking story, it's completely unacceptable. . . people will be very angry to find out they have been eating horse when they thought they were eating beef.’ So will those that sold it to them—the supermarkets. They’ve been caught out at their own game by their suppliers: horsemeat costs £300 per ton and beef £700 per ton.

‘Every little helps’ chirps the Tesco slogan, and your helpful cash brings in around £3+ billion in pre-tax profits per year for Tesco from a market share of 30 per cent. About £1 in every £10 spent in British shops ends up in Tescos’ tills. Asda, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons share a further 47 per cent of the total market. With the UK grocery market worth more than £163 billion, the big four are engaged in a constant battle to out manoeuvre each other for a juicier helping of the profit pie.

Sainsbury’s ask you to ‘try something new today’. That’s not too difficult giventhat almost 80 per cent of the food sold in supermarkets today didn’t exist 15 years ago. The majority of these new items are packaged junk food distinguished by their significant lack of nutrients thanks to the pioneering work of the food processors. Like many modern technologies, food processing was developed over the past two centuries to serve military needs: junk food is the lucrative spin-off. People didn’t suddenly demand spicy burgers or chicken nibbles. The market was created because cheap raw materials could be converted into much more expensive, and thus extremely profitable, items to be sold through supermarkets and other retail outlets. Fresh food has its pecuniary advantages too. Researcher Tania Hurt-Newton revealed that the income derived from pineappleswas shared out in these ratios: 4 per cent was earned by the workers; the plantation owners pocketed 17 per cent; 38 per cent went to the multi-national traders; and the supermarkets scalped 41 per cent. A survey conducted by the NFU in 2002 discovered that abasket of food (eggs, milk, bread, tomatoes, beef, and apples) costing £37 in the supermarket returned just £11 to the farmers. Today it is less.

Morrison’s slogan, ‘More of what matters’, will obviously include what in America is called ‘pink slime’, and in the UK the food industry calls ‘filler’. Pink slime is the scraps left after butchering that has been cleaned with ammonia. In 2012, ABC News claimed that of the ground beef sold in American supermarkets around 70 per cent was composed of pink slime. Filler is fat and collagen; derived from the ligaments and tendons of butchered carcasses. This is what bulks out mince meat. New EU rules want to limit this to 19 per cent fat and collagen. But The Telegraph (3 February) revealed that, ‘Supermarkets will be able to sell minced meat containing more than 50 per cent “filler” under Government plans to avoid EU limits’. Similarly, the pressure by supermarkets to force down suppliers’ prices has driven manufacturers to concoct ever cheaper ingredients. Thus the BBC (28 February) can report that European meat suppliers are: ‘using a loophole in the law to sell a banned low quality material to UK sausage makers. Called desinewed meat . . . it’s retrieved from animal bones using low pressure water. Visually it is said to be similar to a fine mince, and closer to meat than the more liquid ‘mechanically separated meat’ (MSM) ‘slurry.’

US poultry meat and cattle exports reached almost $10 billion in 2011, and a total of 33.5 million head of cattle were slaughtered. A few novel ingredients were added to boost profits: around 80 per cent of all antibiotics sold in the U.S. are gobbled up by factory farming. Cows, poultry, fish and pigs are routinely dosed up by U.S producers. In 1946 the food industry discovered that using antibiotics in livestock feed increased their growth by as much as 3 per cent. It also allowed livestock to be incarcerated in overcrowded and filthy conditions that under other circumstances would have spawned rates of disease and death that would have made it entirely unprofitable. The US Food and Drug Administration has finally acknowledged it as a, ‘mounting public health problem of global significance’ (inthesetimes.com). And a New England Journal of Medicine study found that ‘20 per cent of ground meat obtained in supermarkets contained salmonella. Of that 20 per cent contaminated with salmonella, 84 per cent was resistant to at least one form of antibiotic’ (pbs.org/).

Asda’s slogan asks: ‘Why pay more?’ And why should they?The National Beef Association recently accused supermarkets of ‘short-sighted, price-led, purchasing tactics and a bullying culture.’ When you control around 86 per cent of the market you can use that buying power to put tremendous pressures on suppliers to deliver goods to you at extremely low prices under terms and agreements dictated by your monopoly of the market. Unsurprisingly, those pressures are then exerted downwards on those that actually grow, pick, pack and deliver the food through low wages, long hours, and piss-poor conditions of work.

The Telegraph(27 April 2008) disclosed one of the many tactics used by supermarkets, coined The Flaming Lamborghini. ‘Supermarkets ship in young, hungry graduates in their mid-20s. They send them to be trained to learn a particular buying strategy and then send them out to do battle with the suppliers. Pay is linked to performance. Squeeze another half penny out of the supplier and the buyer's pay will rise. . . Buyers' lives are often short-lived and they are shuttled from pet food to beer to toiletries. The goal is to ensure they never build up close relationships which might tempt them to treat suppliers more kindly.

The Co-operative Group stands at number five in food retailing controlling 9 per cent of the UK market. Its slogan is: ‘Good with food’. The question is: good for whom? Beginning with inputs like seeds, to fertilisers and agricultural machinery, to the processing, transportation, and finally the retailing of food, each area is now dominated by a handful of extremely powerful multinational corporations. Over the past 20 years, through a series of deals and corporate takeovers, names like Monsanto, Syngenta, Unilever, Diageo, Nestle, Kellogg’s, through to Sainsbury’s, Asda and Tesco have gained control of their respective market sectors, thereby escalating their profits to once unthought-of levels. This process is the embodiment of capitalism. Dynamic—fully tuned and optimised—generating a brimming pot for division amongst a faceless class of parasites.

David Cameron considered that the horsemeat saga was a 'very shocking story’. A so-called ‘fraud’ in a global system built and maintained on fraud. Here’s another story: UNESCO acknowledges that there is ‘Abundant supplies of food for 100 per cent of humanity’. But over 16 million people are dying from starvation and 800 million are seriously malnourished, whilst billions live a hand to mouth existence - and all too often very little making it to the mouth. This ‘other’ story will continue to run until a majority of us adopt the slogan: One World—One People. Only then will we gain control of what we produce.

Andy Matthews

Worse is better? (2015)

Book Review from the January 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Things are Going to Get Worse and Why We Should be Glad.  By Michael Roscoe. New Internationalist. £9.99.

The basic assumption of this book is one we can share: ‘Real wealth creation requires real work, and real work must involve the transformation of nature’s raw materials into something of value to us humans. There is no other way to create wealth.’ This is, of course, the basis of all labour theories of value including Marx’s, even though wealth and value are not the same.

Roscoe argues that, as wealth can only be material, the service sector does not create any, but just consumes it, even if the service is useful and/or contributes indirectly to future material wealth production. Education, healthcare and various personal services do contribute to this by maintaining and improving the workforce that produces the actual wealth. Finance, on the other hand, says Roscoe, does not. It can play a useful role in channelling funds to the productive sector but most of its activities since the 1980s have just been shuffling money between speculators which doesn’t help wealth production at all.

The growth of the service sector reflects  the rise in productivity in the productive sector (agriculture, fishing, mining, manufacture and construction) over the years. The extra wealth produced has gone to maintain and expand the service sector, absorbing the workers displaced from the productive sector by rising productivity.  Why, according to Roscoe, ‘things are going to get worse’ is that this can no longer continue because the service sector is being automated  too (and oil is going to run out and the financial bubble is going to burst). As a result unemployment is going to grow until the system collapses. As ‘it is only in times of crises that real change can be brought about’, this is ‘why we should be glad’.  In other words, worse is better.

This may (or may not) be true, but Roscoe’s ‘real change’ turns out not to be one. He wants to retain capitalism but modify it by government action, a return to the ‘mixed economy’ of before Thatcher which he oxymoronically calls ‘market socialism.’ Actually, it’s not quite a return to those days as one of the things he wants governments to do is to slow down growth (as it’s using up the Earth’s resources) by slowing down the rise in productivity. Given capitalism, that’s like King Canute ordering the tide not to come in. It won’t work and can’t work because capitalism is a system of capital accumulation driven by competition between profit-seeking enterprises,  both private and state, which imposes rising productivity and growth on them as the price of staying in business.

A disappointing book, then, which starts off making a good point but which ends up advocating an impossible reform of capitalism.

Adam Buick

Obituary: Ron Melia (1990)

Obituary from the June 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are sad to report the death on 11 March of Ron Melia. He was very well known as a professional entertainer, and his death was met with media coverage on television, radio and in the press. Throughout his years of entertaining people, he always linked this concern for bringing happiness into people's lives to the struggle to end the organised misery of the profit system. He was an active member of the Socialist Party for many years, and his death was a loss to the movement.

As a dancer, comedian and all-round entertainer under his stage name of Ronnie Ross, he performed in most of the better known music-halls in the post-war years. With the closing down of such venues by the 60s and 70s, however, Ron took his act out to people as a street entertainer. He had a regular and, eventually, famous spot in London's Leicester Square, where thousands of cinema-goers over the years had their wait in the queues filled with Ron's sparky visual humour. The police made life difficult for the buskers and Ron found it easier in later years to continue his act in Paris and elsewhere in Europe. Even in his seventies he was a familiar sight, bringing smiles to the faces of people sitting outside the "Deux Magots" at Saint-Germain-des-Prés. He was engaged as a choreographer by the National Theatre in recent years and also appeared in Dennis Potter's TV series Pennies from Heaven, which was repeated just before his death. Throughout his years of busking his wife Peg, also a Socialist Party member, was always with Ron as his assistant and "bottler" collecting the donations.

Ron became a socialist during the war years and joined the Socialist Party in the 40s. At different times since then he and Peg had been members of Bloomsbury, Westminster and Islington branches. In recent years Ron often spoke at meetings at Speakers' Corner, Hyde Park, in London in a gusty fashion which was straight to the point and uncompromising in style as well as content. Likewise, many of the debates which have taken place at Islington branch in recent years were helped along by Ron's inimitable contributions often acerbic in their wit (and fortunately captured on tape). Ron's passion for advocating socialism at every opportunity continued to the very end.

When travelling across Europe he and Peg made contacts, generating interest in socialist ideas, as they worked from country to country. In Denmark, for example, one group they met developed a keen interest in socialist ideas, and in Paris in 1981 they were present at the first Socialist Party public meeting conducted in French there.

There is no doubt about the epitaph Ron would have wanted—that the struggle for socialism must go on with increased vigour until we achieve our objective. Our best wishes go to Peg and also to their sons, Chris and Phil, both also Socialist Party members.

CS 

Bolshevism and the Third International (1936)

From the February 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

By no means unanimous will be the interpretations placed on the programmes formed at the recent seventh World Congress of the Communist International. The official Communist Parties, of course, hail these programmes as the highest expression of revolutionary political wisdom, calculated to promote the best interests of the world proletariat, at the same time aiding the "Socialist Fatherland" in its unparalleled task of building up Socialism within its borders. The Communist opposition parties, with Trotsky as their moving spirit, see in these programmes full justification for their claim that as a force making for world world revolution the Communist International is utterly dead. Groups like the Proletarian Party of America will no doubt continue in their role of reluctant apologists for the rank opportunism of the Communist International. Socialists, however, will content themselves with pointing out the non-Socialist character of these programmes. To Socialists it would indeed be strange of the Third International, whose fountain head is in Moscow, would devote its energies in the struggle to achieve Socialism. Russia is now busily engaged in administering capitalism, to which end it naturally uses its influence over the Third International. This fact is no secret to the Socialist Party of Great Britain and its companion parties in the United States, Canada and New Zealand. For years the Socialist Party of Great Britain, in face of bitter attacks from those who read Socialism into the Russian conditions, have consistently and uncompromisingly exposed the capitalist nature of Bolshevist economy.

Socialism means the common ownership of the instruments of production by the whole society. It is inconceivable without the fullest democracy. Bolshevism means the State ownership of the instruments of production administered by a dictatorial minority. Lenin regarded as chimerical the notion that the working class could democratically effect a Socialist revolution. From the very first he held the view that the working class was so politically immature that it had to be led by a small, resolute group of professional revolutionists. This party of professional revolutionists was in no way to be democratically responsible to the working class, but was to demand the utmost obedience from this class. As Rosenberg points out in his "History of Bolshevism," the split in the Russian Social Democratic Party in 1903 was caused by Lenin's insistence that the Party must be exclusive and guide with an iron discipline the infantile working class. Contrary to the belief of so many Communists, the Soviets played no part in Lenin's theories for many years. It was not until the March Revolution in 1917, when the Soviets arose spontaneously, that he accepted them as an accomplished fact and proceeded to make use of them. Even as he worked with them he had every reason to believe that his party could gain control over them, which is precisely what happened.

The creation of the Red Army marked the end of the Soviets as democratic organs of administration. The Soviets were then reduced to the position of a shadow government, a position that they occupy to this day. A dictatorship of the Communist Party arose, governing Russia from one end of the land to the other. Centralised governmental organisations took over the function of managing production. One branch of State machinery after another was created, until a bureaucratic State apparatus arose more powerful than the Tzar's. The passage in Lenin's "State and Revolution" which demands that every workers' revolution must begin by smashing the bureaucratic State machine was conveniently forgotten. A huge bureaucracy developed. The leading positions became increasingly filled by men adept at the game of what in America is called "boss-politics." Freedom of expression within the party becomes ever more curtailed. So far did these developments proceed in Russia that already in 1921 an Opposition raised its head, sounding the warning that one form of tyranny was being supplanted by another.

In an industrially backward country like Russia, Socialism was unthinkable. When the Bolsheviks made so much to-do about building up Socialism they are simply cloaking material conditions with fine-sounding phraseology. State capitalism formed an integral part of Lenin's theoretical system. It was not Socialism he contemplated for Russia, nor for that matter for Europe when he thought he saw a revolution impending there. What he called Socialism was nothing more or less than nationalisation. He could only envisage what we call Socialism as a later development still. Rosenberg quotes Lenin's definition of Socialism: "Socialism is nothing else than the next step from the stage of monopoly State Capitalism. Or—alternatively: Socialism is nothing else than a capitalistic State monopoly worked in the interests of the whole nation and therefore no longer a capitalist monopoly." ("History of Bolshevism," p. 103.) This is not Socialism; it is purely nationalisation. It is capitalism. It is what exists in Russia to-day. There the fundamental relations of capitalism exist. The workers in Russia, like those of any other capitalist country, are divorced from the means of production. To live, they must sell their labour power for a wage, which on the average is merely sufficient for their maintenance. Production of commodities for exchange on the market, money, with its multiple functions in a commodity-producing society, interest payments on bond flotations, income tax laws—most of the usual social processes of a capitalist economy are in operation in Russia.

Neither are class distinctions wanting. On this point we may quote Rosenberg:

Official Soviet statistics published in 1930 show that deposits amounting to 722 millions of roubles were credited in the books of the Russian Savings Bank. Of this only 91 millions belongs to workmen, 205 millions to employees and Government officials, 134 millions to "special" workers, i.e., members of professions, manual workers, etc., and only 46 millions to peasants as individuals. To these figures must be added 246 millions belonging to "legal" persons, behind which designation were concealed chiefly Collectives and other co-operative societies. This statistical panorama serves admirably to reveal the multiplicity of classes in modern Russia no less than the fact that in standard of living and opportunity for saving, the workers are by no means favoured above the rest. (p. 237.)

As industrialisation proceeds and the social wealth increases, these class divisions will become sharper. Capitalism may differ in form as between different countries, but its basic relations and consequences are the same everywhere. By erecting a string central government, keeping Russia unified, and establishing an embracive State capitalism which hastens industrial development, the Bolsheviks may have helped on social development in Russia. But this is quite another thing from saying that Russia is building up Socialism.

The American millionaire, Hearts, and others of his class who see their privileged position menaced by the Communist International, ought to be reassured upon reading the reports coming from the Seventh Congress in Moscow. For America, the Congress has in view such startlingly revolutionary measures as the creation of a Farmer-Labor Party, which is to ". . . win a majority of elective posts in the local, state and Federal Governments, levy a special tax on capital to obtain funds for social insurance and relief, cancel the Supreme Court's right to make laws, and democratise the Senate." Apparently some delegates to the Congress have the sagacity to see in these measures little difference from the reforms advocated by the Democratic Party. In a speech at the Congress on August 15th, Dmitroff called upon the American Communists to support Roosevelt in order to "prevent reactionary, anti-new deal finance capital from setting up a Fascist Government." (Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, August 17th, 1935.)

The Communist International has always been used to serve the needs of Russia's domestic policy. The sudden somersaults that mark the history of the Communist International reflect changes that occurred in the economic policies inside Russia. From 1918 to 1921, when Lenin felt that the Russian Revolution would fail unless the revolution occurred in Europe, the tactics of the Communist International were shaped accordingly. The European Communist parties were ordered to preserve their independence and to expel all irresolute members. Proclamations were couched in flaming revolutionary language. By 1921 War Communism, so-called, brought things to such a pass that Lenin was forced to retreat by way of the New Economic Policy. Moreover, it became clear that the European Revolution was not imminent after all. With compromise at home went compromise abroad. The Third International ordered a United Front with the Social Democratic Parties of Western Europe. Finally, in 1928, when Stalin entered upon his course of so-called "building up Socialism in one country," all attempts seriously to influence the European Labour Movement were abandoned.

The Communist International to-day serves chiefly to keep alive the fiction that the Soviet Union is ruled by the working class, who are engaged in building up Socialism. It is largely by means of this fiction that the ruling power in Russia secures the support of the working masses. These masses are told that they are building up Socialism and that on some fine day not too far in the future theirs will be a paradise on earth. This fable must be maintained if the Government's standing with the workers is not to be damaged. The Third International aids in perpetuating this fable by propagating it among sections of workers in other countries. Because they believe Russia is leading the way to Socialism for the international working class, these sections lend their sympathy and support to the Soviet Union. In France the workers are even told that in the event of a war with Fascist Germany the French workers should fight in the trenches and abstain from subversive propaganda behind the lines.

Socialist refuse to be carried away by the Bolshevist myth. They will continue to point out the capitalist nature of Russian conditions. They well explain to the workers everywhere that they have nothing but death and untold suffering to gain by engaging in the next capitalist shambles—even of one of the belligerents happens to be Russia.

F. M.,

Workers' Socialist Party, U.S.A.

Backwaters of History - 5 (1954)

From the February 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

Peasant Rebellion 1381

" . . . that the offender be dragged to the gallows; that he be hanged by the neck and then cut down alive; that his entrails be taken out and burned while he is yet alive; that his head be cut off; that his body be divided into four parts and that his head and quarters be at the King's disposal."

That, with additional provisions, was the punishment known as being hanged, drawn and quartered which Mr. E. S. Turner informs us was supposed to have originated in the reign of King Edward I of England. (Roads to Ruin, by E. S. Turner. Pages 83-84.)

That was the punishment meted out to John Ball by Lord Chief Justice, Robert Tressilian on July 15th, 1381, at St. Albans. Others who were prominent in the peasant rising of 1381 met similar fates. William Grindcobbe of St. Albans with fifteen others was subjected to the lesser penalty of being hanged and drawn without quartering. Jack Straw, John Kerby and Alan Threder were killed without trial in London; John Shirle at Cambridge and John Wright with George Dunsby at Norwich were hanged; Geoffrey Litster of East Anglia was hanged drawn and quartered  and his quarters sent to Norwich, Harwich, Lynn and Yarmouth to strike terror into other prospective rebels. John Wrawe of Sudbury turned king's evidence and escaped punishment for twelve months, being hanged in June 1382. The man who gave his name to the rebellion, Wat Tyler of Colchester, after being severely wounded at Smithfield, was dragged from a hospital bed in St. Bartholomew's by William Walworth, Lord Mayor of London, beheaded and his head paraded around London on the end of Walworth's lance. So, the Feudal nobility of the 14th century took its revenge for the fright the rebellion had given them. The gibbets all over the eastern and southern counties of England were loaded.

By the beginning of the 14th century in England, feudalism was pregnant with the embryo capitalism. Commerce was developing, a merchant class was arising, the use of money was expanding, peasants were commuting feudal services for money payments and the nobility, as anxious as the peasantry to escape its feudal obligations, was squeezing more and more wealth from the merchants and peasants to maintain the feudal state and to indulge in parasitic luxury.

Into this state of affairs, in the middle of the century, came the great pestilence known as The Black Death which, it is estimated, mortally affected between one-third and one-half of the entire population of this country. The peasants and wage workers who survived the plague were in an advantageous position. Wages rose whilst more poor peasants became wage workers. Other peasants, striving to produce for a regional market instead of for a feudal lord, became more wealthy. Although the wealthier peasants did not object to accumulating their wealth at the expense of their poorer brethren, they did object to contributing considerable sums to the nobility.

In an attempt to control the situation the ruling class introduced the Ordinance and Statues of Labourers by which they tried to fix wages at a low level, bind the worker and peasant closer to his lord and master, and to keep prices at a "reasonable level." The efforts to enforce these things gave rise to many local acts of resistance.

Throughout the country there wandered a number of poor priests who preached as much against the corruption of the feudal nobility as they did in favour of the Christian heaven. One such was John Ball. Jean Froissart, the contemporary historian, tells us in his "Chronicles," that John Ball,

" . . . was accustomed to assemble a crowd round him in the market place and preach to them. On such occasions he would say, 'My good friends, matters cannot go well in England until all things be held in common; when there shall be neither vassals nor lords; when the lords shall be no more masters than ourselves. How ill they behave to us? For what reason do they thus hold us in bondage? Are we not all descended from the same parents, Adam and Eve? And what can they show, or what reason can they give, why they should be more masters than ourselves? They are clothed in velvet and rich stuffs, ornamented with ermine and other furs, while we are forced to wear poor clothing. They have wine, spices and fine bread, while we have only rye, and the refuse of the straw, and when we drink, it must be water. They have handsome seats and manors, while we must brave the wind and rain in our labours in the field; and it is by our labours that they wherewith to support their pomp. We are called slaves and if we do not perform our service we are beaten, and we have no sovereign to whom we can complain or would be willing to hear us. Let us go to the King and remonstrate with him, he is young and from him we may obtain a favourable answer, and if not we must ourselves seek to amend our conditions."—(Quoted by Fagan and Hilton in 'The English Rising of 1381," page 99.)

A Parliament met in Northampton in 1380 and decided to levy a very heavy Poll Tax on the peasantry to help pay for the expensive war with France. The tax was made progressive by providing some relief for the very poor at the expense of the wealthier peasant. This united the whole of the peasantry in opposition, the wealthier members frequently giving the lead in evading the tax and resisting the collectors.

On May 20th, 1381, there rode into Brentwood, one Thomas Bampton, a tax Commissioner. He summoned the inhabitants of Fobbing, Corringham and Stanford-le-Hope to appear before him. They came, armed and led by Thomas Baker of Fobbing. When Bampton tried to arrest Baker the villagers attacked Bampton and his party and drove them out of the town. This was the beginning.

A similar event took place at Gravesend. Abel Ker of Erith led a party against a monastery, then crossed the Thames, joined up with another group ay Barking, recrossed the river and marched to Dartford where Ker handed over his command to Robert Cave, a master baker who was leading the Dartford rebels. After marching around nearby villages recruiting his forces, Cave marched them to Maidstone to release John Ball from jail. It was here, in Maidstone, that Wat Tyler, a man comparatively unknown until the last few days of his life, was placed at the head of the rising.

Tyler took his army to Canterbury where they searched the Palace of the Archbishop and destroyed all papers and rolls that recorded the peasants' bondage to their masters. At Canterbury Cathedral Tyler made a pronouncement from the pulpit stating that Archbishop Sudbury was condemned and would be put to death and it was intimated that John Ball should be appointed to the office.

Tyler's army returned to Maidstone, joined up with the main force, attacked and captured Rochester Castle and marched on London. On Wednesday, June 12th, the peasant army pitched camp on Blackheath. From this camp parties were dispatched to release the prisoners from the King's Bench and Marshalsea prisons most of whom were offenders against the Statute of Labourers.

Inside the walls of the City of London the ruling class was in a panic. The king with some of his nobles went by barge to Rotherhithe where the Kent and Essex rebels were camped on opposite banks of the Thames. The royal party took fright and scampered back to London. The rebels then marched to London Bridge and to Aldgate, burning the Lord Mayor's brothels and destroying all the feudal documents that they could lay hands on. 

Alderman Walter Sybyle, a fishmonger, was in charge of London Bridge, and threw it open to Tyler and his men, whilst Thomas Farrington opened the Ald Gate to the Essex men. The rebels had many such sympathisers amongst the merchants and workpeople of London who were themselves victims of the rapacious nobles. Many of them joined Tyler's forces when they entered the city and were punished for their part in the rising when it was suppressed.

The main body of rebels marched past the Gothic edifice of St. Paul's church, down the hill to Lud Gate and along the Strand to the Savoy Palace,  the residence of the most hated man in England—John of Gaunt, the leader of the corrupt gang of noble speculators who were bleeding the people. The rebels maintained a strict discipline, executing selected enemies, destroying documents and property of their especial enemies, but stealing, taking or looting nothing. They encamped by the Tower of London which they eventually occupied.

The rebel army had a childish faith in the king, Richard II, a boy of 14 years of age. John Ball encouraged this faith, according to the quotation from Froissart that we have given. The king was regarded as a person of power who stood above all class antagonisms and emnities and who could be relied upon to be fair in his judgement of peoples wrongs and powerful enough to put them right. His nobles who surrounded him were an evil influence. If he could be spoken to and told of the rebels troubles, they were sure that he would remedy them. This faith proved the undoing of the rebellion.

The Earl of Salisbury, a mature statesman, concocted a plan to destroy the rebel army. Leaving Archbishop Sudbury of Canterbury, who was also Chancellor, Robert Halles, known as Hob the Robber, who was Treasurer, John Legge and the king's confessor, Appledore, to be tried and beheaded by the rebels in the Tower, the king and his other nobles rode out through Ald Gate to the fields at Mile End. Here he made promises to the assembled rebel forces.

In the house of John Farringdon in London the rebel leaders had drawn up their demands which they now placed before the king. To the men of Hertford he promised:

"Know that of our special grace we have manumitted all our liege and singular subjects and others of the county of Hertford, freed each and all of their bondage, and made them quit by these presents; pardoned them of all felonies, treasons, transgressions, and extortions committed by any and all of them, and assure them of our 'summa pax'."—("English Rising of 1381." Fagan and Hilton. Page 130.)

Similar charters were granted to other sections of the rebels. This satisfied many of them and, as Salisbury had anticipated, large numbers drew off and returned. delighted, to their native villages.

A reduced army under Tyler remained and continued to dig out and execute the particular enemies that they had listed. Those peasants who returned home spread the news of their great success and hosts of other risings occurred all over the country. John Farringdon with Alderman John Horn and other members of various London Guilds did a bit of cleaning up in the city on their own account, executing some of their class enemies and straightening out a number of social injustices.

It was necessary to disperse the remainder of the rebel forces. The king again met the peasants at Smithfield and the nobles managed to separate Tyler from his men, surround him and, under cover of dusk, to strike him almost to death, without his followers realising what was happening. The rebels were told to go to St. John's Fields where a beknighted Wat Tyler would be returned to them. At the rendezvous the rebels were met by a strong military force that Mayor Walworth had raised and they were easily beaten and dispersed. Farringdon and Horn tried to raise support for the peasants within the city but most of the erstwhile supporters, having squared their own accounts were only too pleased to see the end of the rebel forces.

Needless to say, the king's promises were never kept, but a hunt for rebels was conducted throughout the main areas of disaffection and cruel punishments inflicted. The rising was probably a contributory factor in the improved conditions of the peasantry during the following century but the main factor was the change in the economic forces within feudalism.

Many workers today have the same faith in the capitalist state as the 1381 rebels had in their king. They regard the state as an independent organ, detached from class interests, acting as a mediating force in the struggles between employers and employed. Just as the feudal king was a member of the exploiting class of his day with the same interests to uphold, so the capitalist state of today is representative of capitalist class interests and uses its forces  to maintain the capitalist system and protect the property of capitalists.  Like the feudal state machinery, the capitalist counterpart will always be used to subdue rebellious workers.

Books to read:

"An Economic History of England", by Charlotte M. Waters.

"Six Centuries of Work and Wages", by James E. Thorold Rogers, M.P.

"The English Rising of 1381", by H. Fagan and R. H. Hilton.

"The Black Death", by G. G. Coulton

"The Revolutionary Tradition in England", by F. A. Ridley.

"A Peoples History of England", by A. L. Morton.

"Chronicles of France, England and Spain", by Froissart (English version in Everyman Library).

"Survey of London", by John Stow (also in Everyman Library).

"Dream of John Ball", by William Morris

W. Waters.

An unbalanced diet (1997)

Theatre Review from the November 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Chips With Everything by Arnold Wesker

Chips With Everything, currently revived by the National Theatre, is about power and social class. Based on Wesker's own experience of National service in the RAF in the early 1950s, this stunning production makes compulsive viewing. In it we follow the fate of a group of young conscripts in the first weeks of training as they are taught systematically to respond to orders without thinking; to defer to officers as though the latter were possessed of infinite wit and intelligence; and to be brutalised by constant drilling. The officers have power but this is for the most part not manifest directly in their contacts with recruits. Rather it is dispensed through the agency of their lackeys, the sergeants, corporals, lance-corporals and other non-commissioned officers. Officers kick NCOs, who in turn kick the recruits and other ranks. It must have all been very familiar to young recruits with previous experience of factory work. In most factories orders are given not by grey-suited men in remote offices, but by large-as-life foremen and chargehands who patrol the workplace. The word chargehand is apt. Chargehands are in charge. But this group of young recruits is different. One of its number, Pip, is not an apprentice or recent school leaver, but a public schoolboy, the son of a general. Why is he here? Why hasn't he taken the opportunities presented by his privileged background and school cadet experience, to transfer for officer training? Wesker hints that Pip's behaviour is fired by a desire to rebel against his father, but more than this Wesker also intriguingly suggests that Pip, too, may be interested in power. Familiar with the intentions and strategies of the officers, Pip uses his knowledge to thwart authority: frustrating an attempt by the officers to get the recruits drunk at a Christmas party; and leading them on a daring raid on a coal dump when they find themselves shivering in their barracks on a icy midwinter night. In so doing he is instrumental in changing the recruits' perception of themselves; in increasing their confidence and self-worth, and suggesting the possibilities of growth and change. Yet this apparent desire to escape from his father's influence leads him to cast the officers as pseudo-father figures and, paradoxically, to manipulate his fellow recruits in much the same way as his father seemingly manipulates him. Pip finally gets his comeuppance when the officer in charge finds a way of coercing him into applying for officer training, leaving the other recruits bereft.

Wesker is clearly intent on registering something in which social divisions are part and parcel of life in the armed forces, and giving us a glimpse into their nature and the way in which they are perpetuated. This he manages, very well, especially when—as in this production—he is well served by a skillful cast, excellent production staff and imaginative director. But whilst social class divisions are, so to speak, centre stage, Wesker does little more than describe and delimit some of their effects. He fails to talk about the origins of social class and, crucially, he makes no mention of economic class as primary.

Whilst social classifications may be useful they are hardly sufficient. If we want to understand something about the life chances of children—that is, the likelihood that they will be healthy and wealthy, even if they are not wise—then it is best to take note of the economic class of the parents. Children born to members of the capitalist class will in general live longer than those of the working class and enjoy a higher standard of living. Social classifications per se may be useful to an extent, but they have relatively little of the explanatory or predictive power of classifications based on the economic division of capitalist and worker. The predictive power of the kind of social classifications which inform Chips With Everything is limited, and it is also rooted, exclusively, in capitalist society.

In a socialist society it may well be helpful to classify people on the basis of activities such as reading, attendance at opera performances, frequency of consumption of Indian curries, and so on—not least if the intention is to try to meet the needs of readers, opera buffs and curry eaters. Even in today's capitalist society it is certainly the case that within the working class it is possible to find correlations between these activities and length and nature of formal schooling, occupation, and income, etc. But if we really want to understand such things as how the world works at a macro level, the origins of power, and how to resolve the antagonisms that lie at the heart of the kind of relationships that Wesker describes, we must look beyond mere social classifications however useful they may be at the margins to the more profound economic realities below.

At one level Chips With Everything works very well. It makes some telling points about the nature of social hierarchies and offers some encouraging (and for this viewer, inspiring) evidence of the capacity of young people to resist the brutal conditioning of life in the armed forces; and it is difficult to see how the present production could be bettered. However, because Wesker hasn't widened his focus to look beyond social classifications, at another and deeper level, his play turns out to be as inadequate as what the words of its title imply.

Michael Gill

Greasy Pole: Who You Calling A Pleb? (2015)

The Greasy Pole Column from the January 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

For more than three years the nation was gripped in paralysing uncertainty. Was that policeman, standing on guard on 19 September 2012 at the very centre of British government, being petulant and obstructive when he refused to allow a man with a bicycle to wheel it through the main gate? Was he telling the truth when he said that the cyclist abruptly responded with a word which, even without being backed up in abusive swearing, was cruelly offensive? Was it so urgent that the cyclist should not be delayed because he was going to one of London's most exclusive clubs? And during those three years why did so many participants in the incident appear to change their minds about what happened?

High Court Judgment

The matter eventually came to a head with the conclusion of a libel case at the High Court in late November 2014 when Mr Justice Mitting ruled that Andrew Mitchell MP, ex-Minister of International Development, ex-Government Chief Whip, had behaved 'childishly' when he told PC Toby Rowland at the Downing Street gates that he, and the other police officers on duty there, were 'fucking plebs'. The judge did not accept Mitchell's defence that Rowland had made that up; his opinion, in the coldest terms, was that Rowland was not capable of anything so subtle and effective: he was '...not the sort of man who would have had the wit, imagination or inclination to invent on the spur of the moment an account of what a senior politician had said to him in a temper'. So Mitchell lost his libel case, which landed him with a massive debt starting at £300,000 but which could run into millions.

Politically Toxic

Perhaps to emphasise the basis for his decision, Mitting chose to describe the word 'Plebs' as 'politically toxic'. That may not be universally agreed; for what about that adjectival word which apparently Mitchell often uses, and which he uttered before 'pleb', which may be considered to be the more toxic – more aggressive, more emphatic, more friendly to being spat at a victim (one of the facts to emerge from the libel hearings was that there had been 16 recorded incidents of Mitchell clashing with the police in Westminster, including one which involved a direct insult). In comparison 'pleb' is the less pejorative word, easier to use in exasperation rather than anger. It is a shortened version of 'plebeian' for the underdogs – the more common people – of ancient Rome, expanded to cover anyone behaving in a coarse or vulgar manner. In the case of Mitchell there is more to it than that. He was a pupil at Rugby School, where he attained the exalted rank of a prefect known, for his harshly disciplinarian manner, as 'Slasher'. Among the privileged toffs of Rugby it was common for the non-teaching staff to be known, contemptuously, as plebs. At Jesus College in Cambridge, where Mitchell went after Rugby, the word was used for workers such as cleaners, porters and 'townies'.

Tirades

After Cambridge Mitchell had been employed as a trader at the merchant bank Lazards, making a great deal of money for himself before becoming an MP. He became notorious for his short temper and his abusive tirades against his staff. 'He could be cantankerous and aggressive' said one of his Ministry staff '...a horrible person to do business with.' Although in some cases 'business' was what he was ready to 'do'. For example there was the situation when, according to the Tory journalist Simon Heffer – one of his admirers – when he was International Development Secretary Mitchell agreed to some £500 million being paid to 'consultancy' firms which resulted in some handsome payouts within the firms. All in all, it was no coincidence that when he was embroiled in the stresses of Plebgate he had so little support from the other Tories (it was said that he kept a list of those he considered to be unreliable in that respect) that it was inevitable that Cameron sacked him.

Poverty

So far Mitchell has not expanded on his concept of what he calls 'plebs'. We know that they are the lower, in the sense of the exploited, class in society to the extent that it is permissible for ex-public school pupils to regard them with contempt. But he overlooks the fact that other members of the government prefer to adopt a more subtle and patronising – if equally contemptuous – attitude, describing them as 'hard-working people', when a more appropriate term would be 'long suffering'. For example in 2011/12 according to the Joseph Rowntree Trust – who are heavily experienced in this field – there were 13 million of those 'hard working' ones in poverty, with a million of them being paid below the official living wage.

Oceania       

In this matter there is an instructive irony in George Orwell's novel 1984, first published in 1949. In his bleak probe into the future, Orwell suggests a world divided into three super powers, constantly at war with each other while ruthlessly imposing a class society of meticulously unrelenting exploitation. In the state of Oceania the lower class is known not as 'plebs' but 'proles' – the different root of which does not relieve the misery of their lives. Even the music they are allowed is prepared for them at the Ministry of Truth on a kind of kaleidoscope known as a versificator. The central character of the book, Winston Smith, feels he is almost alone in being aware of the situation. It is his belief that If There Is Hope It Lies With The Proles – until he is taken in by the Thought Police to learn to love Big Brother.

Purged of his expletives, Mitchell began his tirade against Rowland with the advice that 'Best you learn your...place. You don't run this...government'. It would indeed be progressive if the lower class in society, exploited and ridiculed as plebs or proles or hard working, took heed of this advice in the sense of understanding their position and the reasons for it and the universal problems which ensue from it. That would be the beginning of the end of all the negatives associated with capitalist society. And it would not need a Minister of the crown or a high court judge or a police officer.

Ivan

Backwaters of History - 4 (1954)

From the January 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

Civil War in Austria

Behind the closed doors of the Hotel Schiff in Linz a group of workers stood holding rifles and light machine guns. Earlier that day they had listened to the measured tread of the armed levies of the fascist Heimwehr marching through the town on their way to the offices of the Landeshauptmann (Prefect) of the Province to demand that all members of the Austrian Social Democratic Party be removed from political office. At the same time the federal police were going from house to house in the working class districts, confiscating any arms they found in the workers' possession.

In the turmoil of the struggle between Republicans and Monarchists at the end of the 1914-1918 war many workers and peasants who had joined in that struggle, had kept the arms issued to them during the war. In the country districts of Carinthia and Styria the peasants had organised in the Heimwehr for defence against Yugo-Slavs and the possible spread of Bolshevism. In the towns the workers joined the Republikanische Schutzbund to defend and maintain the new republic.

During the years following the 1914-1918 war there were a number of minor armed clashes between the Heimwehr and the Schutzbund with killings in both sides. When legal action was taken after these clashes it was invariably to the detriment of the workers.

The governments of Italy and Germany were striving against one another for a dominating influence over Austrian politics and Austria became the battleground on which these two powers fought out their commercial antagonisms. The Austrian Social Democratic Party had for years favoured association with Germany, while a small Austrian Nazi party stood for a complete union between the two countries. The Heimwehr was supported by Italy.

In 1934 the government of Austria was a coalition between the Catholic Christian Social Party and the Heimwehr with a few smaller parties attached. During the previous few years the Christian Social Party had been getting steadily weaker, losing many members to the Heimwehr, so that, by the beginning of 1934 the Christian Social chancellor, Dr. Dollfuss, was desperately seeking support from other parties. He could have the support of the militarised fascist Heimwehr or of the largest single political party in Austria, the Social Democratic Party. He chose the former, knowing that that party aimed at the complete suppression of the Social Democrats and the trade unions.

Otto Bauer, leader of the Social Democratic Party, Julius Deutsch, leader of the Schutzbund, Karl Seitz, Mayor of Vienna, and other Social Democrat leaders were prepared to make all manner of sacrifices, short of their own suppression, to stave off the clash that was ahead. They also prepared for the clash by arranging for a general strike to take place in the event of any of the following four contingencies.

1. If the Government, in defiance of the law and Constitution, introduced a Fascist Constitution.
2. If the Government illegally and unconstitutionally deposed the municipal and Provincial authorities of Red Vienna and handed over the administration of Vienna to a Government Commissioner.
3. If the Government dissolved the Party.
4. If the Trade Unions were dissolved or "brought into line." (Resolution of the October 1933 Conference of the Austrian Social Democratic Party. quoted by Otto Bauer in "Austrian Democracy Under Fire.")

The Heimwehr, lead by the vice-chancellor, Major Fey and by Prince Starhemberg, urged on by Mussolini in Italy, was demanding that the municipal councils controlled by the Social Democrats should be "cleaned up," that Italian should be taught in schools instead of French and that the trade unions should be curbed. The Social Democrats asked Dollfuss to reject these demands and they would be willing to accept "his policy, however bad this might seem to them." (Quoted by Alexander Schonau in "Civil War in Austria.")

The Social Democratic leaders were still vacillating when the blow struck.

When the police forced their way into the Hotel Schiff, which was the headquarters of the labour organisations in Linz, the workers inside opened fire with their rifles. They felt that the decisive moment had come. Whilst the armed Heimwehr fascists were free to force their will at the point of a gun, the government authorities were disarming the workers to prevent them from offering resistance. It was a spontaneous decision to die fighting rather than surrender without striking a blow.

The news of the fighting at the Hotel Schiff spread like wildfire through Linz. Troops were called in. Street fighting began. The members of the Schutzbund brought out the weapons that they had managed to conceal from the police and the battle spread all over the town.

The news spread to other industrial towns and fighting started in Steyr, Bruck-on-Mur, Eggenburg, Graz, Kapfenburg, Judenburg, Wilhelmsburg, Worgl, Haring, the Traisental and in the capital, Vienna. The incident in Linz happened on the morning of Monday, February 12th, 1934, the first shots were fired in Vienna at 5 p.m. the same day.

"The fighting began. On the one side members of the working class, many of them unemployed, armed with an old war-time rifle and a few clips of cartridges. On the other side troops and police, with full modern equipment—armoured cars, artillery and howitzers, minethrowers."—("Austrian Democracy Under Fire," Otto Bauer.)

The general strike did not materialise. Electricity, gas, newspaper, tram and some factory workers came out spontaneously, but the strong railway union, which had been brought to heel some time previously, did not respond. The indecisive policy of the Social Democrats had lost them the confidence of large sections of the working class.

In Vienna the troops isolated different groups of workers and drove them into the residential districts. The government maintained control of the broadcasting stations, the telephones and other means of communication so that each group of workers had no means of knowing what was happening outside its own immediate district. The Schutzbund leaders were arrested at the outset and lying propaganda was broadcast.

Despite all the disadvantages the workers fought on for four days. But,

"The artillery, the heavy howitzers, won the day . . . Hundreds of workers, women and children have been slaughtered. Thousands of wounded people are writhing in pain. Thousands of lying herded together in the prisons. In blood and slaughter has the new Austria, 'Christian, German and corporative,' been founded." —("Austrian Democracy Under Fire.")

Otto Bauer and Julius Deutsch, despite radio reports that they had fled the country, remained in Vienna till all hope was lost, then, with a group of workers, they fought a rearguard action all the way to the Czechoslovak frontier and crossed over fully armed.

Bauer states,

"The Hungarian Social-Democrats in 1919, and the Italians down to 1922, pursued a 'Left' revolutionary policy, closely akin to Communism—and in both countries their policy ended disastrously. Conversely, the German Social-Democrats adopted a very 'statesmanlike' nationalist, 'right' line of policy—and they, too, have been laid low. We in Austria tried to tread a path midway between the Italo-Hungarian and German extremes—and we, too, have been defeated. The causes of defeat of the working class clearly lie deeper than in the tactics of its parties or than in this or that tactical mistake."—("Austrian Democracy Under Fire.")

How right he is. The Austrian Social Democrats, like similar "labour" parties all over the world, aimed to reform capitalism and tried to make it operate to the benefit of the working class. An impossibility. The discontent bred of the capitalist system drives the workers to support one reformist party after another, hoping to find relief from their oppression.

Housing and welfare schemes seem attractive but they do not remove the workers' poverty and insecurity. When the workers find that a party that they have put into power does not produce "the goods," they turn from it to another reform-promising party, then to another and another and, maybe, when their memories dim, back to the first one again.

Any political party, without control of the armed forces of the state, is at the mercy of those who do control the state forces, unless these forces rebel and pass over to the support of the party. Only a socialist understanding—a clear recognition of their class status—by a majority of the workers can be a guarantee of their continued, unwavering support for their political party. With such a majority, the control of the state forces can be achieved and then capitalism will not be reformed, but abolished.

Books to read:

"Austrian Democracy Under Fire," by Otto Bauer.

"Civil War in Austria. A Reply to Otto Bauer," by Alexander Schonau.

"The Tragedy of Austria," by Julius Braunthal.

"Austrian Workers' Tragic Heroism." SOCIALIST STANDARD, March, 1934.

W. Waters.