The Thirty Years War (1962)

Book Review from the February 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Thirty Years War by C. V. Wedgwood, Pelican Books, 5s.

The Thirty Years War was in fact a series of conflicts lasting from 1618 to 1648, which devastated vast areas of Germany. Fought with a savagery that has seldom been equalled even in this bloody 20th century, the war has held the imagination of succeeding generations, whilst other and vaster conflicts have sometimes been forgotten.

Primarily a war between the States that comprised the disintegrating Holy Roman Empire, it was part of a greater conflict between the developing nations of Europe—and it involved most of the Continent and spilled over into the New World. Spain and France, England and Holland, Sweden and Russia, the permutations were endless, but the result was always the same—misery for the mass of the people.

Germany was then the main highway of Europe. As the author states:

Germany was a network of roads knotted together at intersections by the great clearing-houses at Frankfort on the Main, Frankfort on the Oder, Leipzig, Nuremburg, Augsburg. West Indian sugar reached Europe from the refineries of Hamburg, Russian furs from Leipzig, salt fish from Lübeck, oriental silk and spices from Venice through Augsburg, copper, salt, iron sandstone, corn were carried down the Elbe and Oder, Spanish and English wool woven in Germany competed with Spanish and English cloth in the European market, and the wood that built the Armada was shipped from Danzig.

The cities of Germany were more thickly spread than those in any other area of Europe. Rich, a tempting prize to neighbouring ruling classes, its semi-independent states and free cities were loosely held together in the largely unworkable Empire. In the North, along the shores of the Baltic stretched the wealthy trading cities of the Hanseatic League. Once powerful and feared by their competitors, they were in decline as the opening up of the New World swung the centre of trade to the Atlantic seaboard. Sweden, Holland and Denmark better placed geographically, fought a cut-throat battle to capture this trade.

The Holy Roman Emperor was elected to office by an Electoral College consisting of seven Princes and Cardinals, and was usually a powerful landowner with vast possessions outside the Empire. It was with private troops from these possessions that he imposed what authority he could on the states within the Empire. For over a century the Imperial office had been held by members of the Hapsburg family. Their capital at Vienna was to become the centre of the Austrian Empire which dominated Central Europe centuries later.

The Reformation had split the Empire, and an uneasy settlement in the year 1555 had given to each state the religion of its ruling house. Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists each persecuted the dissenting elements within their borders, Surrounded by powerful and grasping neighbours, and lacking a strong central government, Germany went into an economic decline.

Meanwhile German credit declined and dangerous speculation led to the collapse of one great banking house after another. The firm of Manlich of Augsburg failed as early as 1573, that of Haug a year later; the larger business of the Welsers collapsed in 1614 and the world-famed family of Fugger itself could not work out the storm but went into liquidation shortly after.

To the west Spain and Holland, who had been locked in a struggle since 1572, had signed a truce that was nearing its end. Both were manoeuvering for positions from which they could renew the conflict. France was beginning to challenge the power of Spain, and across the channel a newly united Britain was on the brink of the great surge forward that was to make it the dominant capitalist power. In the south-east the Ottoman Empire was pushing on to the gates of Vienna itself. Sweden to the north, with its ultra-modern and fanatical army, looked into Germany and Russia for room to expand. This was the explosive situation in Europe when in 1618 the "key" state of Bohemia rose in revolt against the Emperor and blew the lid off the witches' cauldron.

The Thirty Years War was first published in 1938, when Germany occupied the same position in the popular mind that Russia holds today. In some ways the book reflects the attitudes of that period. Miss Wedgwood traces, with admirable clarity, the progress of a conflict as complicated in its intrigues as it was sickening in its brutality. The war at its very beginning assumed an international character, when Spanish troops moved up to support the Imperial Forces, and a large mercenary army from Turin arrived to back up the hard-pressed Bohemians. In turn, France, Denmark and Sweden entered the struggle, and Germany became the battlefield and training ground of foreign armies—a picture so familiar to us in the 20th century.

The author tells us a lot about human suffering, which was indeed appalling. To the usual horrors of war, the murder, torture and rape of civilian populations as ruffianly mercenaries and the fanatical troops of Sweden and Spain fought over the land, was added a new horror—that of systematic pillage. Armies lived off the land for years. As one area was reduced to a desert, they moved on to new territory. No attempt was made to provision armies and the most successful general was the one who could organise pillage most effectively.

The crowning horror was the Sack of Magdeburg in 1631. This rich trading city on the Elbe fell to Tilly's half-crazed soldiery. Its inhabitants were butchered without mercy, and fire reduced the town to a blackened ruin. Whether this was a deliberate act of terror by the Catholic authorities or the action of troops out of control has long been debated. But design or accident, the result was the same to the wretched inhabitants. The news of the outrage inflamed the Protestant world to further acts of counter-violence. Years afterwards, Imperial prisoners asking for quarter were shot down with the cry of "Magdeburg quarter."

This is a book that can be read with profit by all who wish to increase their knowledge of the world in which Modern Europe, the Europe of capitalism arose.

Les Dale 

Tenners for fivers (1990)

From the April 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

The privatisation of the water industry has seen "tens of thousands" of individual buyers cashing in by selling their shares at the first opportunity. This merely repeats what has happened in every previous privitisation. When British Gas was sold off in 1986 there were 4.2 million shareholders. That figure is now 2.6 million. Of the original 650,000 who bought British Steel shares in 1988 only 400,000 remained six months later. British Airways can boast the most spectacular fall—from 1.2 million shareholders down to just 420,000 in only months. And it's the same story with British Telecom, TSB, Jaguar and the others.

Research shows that between one quarter and one third of all investors in previous privatisation issue have pulled out within the first six weeks. (Guardian, 20 December, 1989.)

Why, then, do these sellers buy shares in the first place? Simply to make some easy money. After all, the government is so anxious to make sure that each flotation doesn't flop that it sells the shares well below market value and this has been well described as "selling tenners for fivers". Indeed, buying shares in privatised industries is such a sure money maker that people withdraw savings from building societies and even borrow to buy the shares, and this, more than any belief in the "enterprise culture", is what accounts for the growth in share buying.

Of course the government has other reasons for selling privatised industries cheaply. One is the genuine desire to get government out of business. Another is to raise cash to give away in tax cuts before general elections, but the most important is the wish to create "popular capitalism" in which a shareholding population will identify with capitalism and, especially when they have shares in the company they work for, never go on strike for higher pay in case this harms their dividends. This dotty idea ignores the fact the workers depend primarily for their living in their wages and salaries which far outweigh any puny dividends they may get. Anyway, owning shares in the company which employs them didn't stop workers in British Telecom and Jaguar from striking for higher pay.

The myth of "a nation of shareholders" isn't new. Back in the mid 1800s The Economist claimed: "Everybody is in stocks now. Needy clerks, poor tradesmen's apprentices, discharged serving men and bankrupts—all have entered the ranks of the great moneyed interests." This drivel is quoted by Colin Chapman in his excellent book, How the Stock Exchange Works. And during the boom in the American stock market in the 1920s which led to the Wall Street crash the popular the popular notion was that everyone, from housewives to waiters, was "in the market". J. K. Galbraith exposed this nonsense in his book, The Great Crash 1929:

Then as now, to the great majority of workers, farmers, white-collar workers, indeed to the great majority of all Americans, the stock market . . . was in every respect as remote from life as the casino at Monte Carlo.

Supporters of popular capitalism argue that buying shares could become a national pastime if it were made easier by having American-style "share shops" in every high street much as there are betting shops now, but these share shops haven't stopped the decline of individual share owning in America.

Can Britain ever become a nation of small investors? First of all, dealers in the City don't want it because it produces a vast increase in unprofitable, small transactions and try to discourage the small fry by charging them double commission on deals. meanwhile the dealers have halved charges for the big institutional investors which own two thirds of all company shares. However, the main obstacle is that most people couldn't buy shares even if they wanted to. Peter Morris of MORI, the research and opinion poll agency, confirms that at least half the public are excluded from buying because they have no cash (Colin Chapman).

Of course there will be more privitisations in the future and if the government continues to sell the shares cheaply then many of those who buy will take the money and run but, like every other scheme for soothing working class discontent within capitalism and eliminating the class struggle, it hasn't got a hope.

Vic Vanni

Editorial: What We Mean By Revolution (1927)

Editorial from the April 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

When we say that Socialism means revolution and that we are revolutionaries, experience leads us to expect that we shall be misunderstood unless we take care to make our meaning plain. On the one side it will be assumed that we are advocating violence and anti-democratic methods, and on the other side, as we are frequently told by those who do advocate these things, our refusal to do the same stamps us as non-revolutionary. What then do we mean by revolution?

Our aim is to abolish working-class poverty and subjection to the owners of the means of living. We see that the workers are poor as a class because as a class they do not own the machinery of wealth production and distribution. Those who live by owning are living at our expense, and are effectively hindering the most economical use and development of the productive forces. Nothing will serve to secure the desired end, except the abolition of the private ownership of these instruments. But private property is the corner-stone of the existing laws and the very foundation of capitalist society. So that, in order to abolish private ownership, we, the workers, must obtain control of society. Revolution consists in using the power we shall then possess, for the purpose of destroying the present property rights and refashioning society on the basis of common ownership. As our aim, Socialism, can be accomplished only by this revolutionary change, we are revolutionaries and our method is revolution.

It will be observed that no mention has been made of the use of violence. We need to control society but we believe that this can be done through the existing political machinery. We believe that the working class can, when they so desire, use constitutional methods to make themselves masters of the situation, and can use their power for the purpose of instituting socialism just as easily as they use it at present for the purpose of returning the Conservative or the Labour Party, whose only difference is an inability to agree as to the best method of administering capitalism. The workers are the overwhelming majority of the electors and can, when they wish, use their votes for Socialism.

We do not intend to use violent methods because under existing conditions in this country they would not help us to obtain socialism. The presence or absence of rioting and bloodshed is merely incidental. A revolutionary end, that is, the displacement of a ruling class, may take place in an orderly fashion, but it is none the less revolutionary for that. The Socialist differs from the supporter of the Labour Party in this respect that the latter seeks to gain control of the political machinery for non-revolutionary purposes, while we are aiming at gaining control in an equally constitutional way, but for a fundamentally different object.

And just as revolution may be free any show of violence, so violence may frequently does occur where is no revolutionary object being sought and resisted.

The pre-war suffrage agitation was marked by the completest disregard for laws and property rights, but its aim was in no sense revolutionary. Strikes and lock-outs are often accompanied by conflicts with the police and even with the armed forces, without there ever being at issue more than some trifling question of wages or hours which could be settled by the employers entirely giving way, without in the least endangering their position as a privileged class.

We avoid these things deliberately, not only because they are chiefly a source of danger to those who practice them, but also because they would mislead the workers and obscure our larger aim. If we preach violence we should first have to devote time to explaining that violence cannot gain power for a minority and a majority can gain power without it. Secondly, we would be allowing our opponents the opportunity of side-tracking the main issue. If we advocated unconstitutional methods our energies would be taken up in debating the issue of constitutionalism, whereas we want to preach Socialism.

The Socialist Movement to-day is weak for one reason only, that is because of the small number of Socialists. There is no lack of believers in violence and opponents of it and no lack of friends and enemies of constitutionalism. If we added unnecessary confusion to the Socialist case by delving into these other less-important controversial questions, we might add to the numbers of muddled hangers-on to the fringes of the Socialist Movement, but that is not our aim. How true this is can be seen from the recent experiences of the Communist Party. Forgetting that their prime object should have been the  furtherance of Communist propaganda, their energies have been absorbed in fruitless endeavours to combat the misrepresentation to which they were subjected immediately they associated themselves with illegal and anti-constitutionalist activities. Had they stuck to the essentials of their case they could have argued it on its merits. As it is, their case has almost disappeared under a mass of almost irrelevant charge and counter-charge relating to side issues.

Everyone has heard of the Communist Party through the capitalist press, but hardly anyone now knows what the party really stands for. It is opposed by people who learn what Communism is from the Daily Mail, and it is supported by others who are not much better informed on the points that really matter.

We then are revolutionaries because Socialism involves a revolutionary transformation. Violence cannot assist us, and we therefore reject violence.

The great need of the moment is more Socialists. Socialist can be won only by the steady propagation of Socialist knowledge. This is dull, plodding work, but it is the only way. In carrying on that work in spite of all temptation to aim at cheap and fleeting popularity , we are performing a task which is an indispensable prelude to revolutionary action.

May Day Reverie (1956)

A Short Story from the May 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

An old man sat watching the fire burn away. His scarred features and heaving chest marked him as one of many to be found in the coal-field—men who had sold their strength and virility whilst it lasted and now, having nothing to sell, were on their way out.

Another May Day was passing—quietly—almost unnoticed except for old timers' like Evan Hughes. May Day was, after all, the traditional day of rejoicing, bringing once more the promise of warmth, plenty and a new life to the peasant folk of early times and Evan was a descendent of such people. Over a century ago they had come flocking into the valleys with the soil of the fields clinging to their trousers. Freed from the shackles of the Squire and Landlord, they took upon themselves, willingly, the fetters of their new masters the Coal Owners. Even had grown up in the valley. He had seen the coal barons, like the feudal lords of an earlier age, push out their frontiers; the lengthening grey ribbons of industrial barracks that served as houses; the black pyramids of slag that grew higher as the newly formed conscripts of Capital hewed their way into the virgin coal seams.

The valleys were a hard training ground, and it is not surprising that hard, tough men emerged. Yet, with it all, gentleness and kindness prevailed everywhere and the periods of distress and suffering were shared in common. It is little wonder that from these valleys poured men who were masters in the world's boxing rings, whose oratory from platform and pulpit thrilled the nation; whose singing lifted the heart. Yes, there were giants in the old times. Men there were who had led their comrades in fight after fight for "a living wage," "work or maintenance," and a hundred and one things that Evan had now forgotten and his grandchildren had never heard of. It had all passed, and now, May Day was fading with the light. The clock ticked on relentlessly in a silence broken only by a cinder falling from the burnt-out fire. The old man in the chair seemed to portray the futility of it all.

Evan, and those like him, are passing away. What can we say for them? That they were sincere fighters for a better world there can be no doubt. We charge them with no crime. They were, after all, the victims in a tragedy—unaware of the nature of the society they sought to better. They were often caught in the moment of the grand oration, duped by the opportunist slogan. Responsive with a dog-like devotion to their leaders whom they sent to Parliament, where in time they achieved the cherished but empty dream of Nationalization. And now?

The story continues, though Evan is no longer interested. The ranks of the "old contemptibles" are rapidly thinning, leaving the present generation to carry on the struggle for the life that is as far away as ever. There are today no shortages of leaders, the slogans continue to pour out, the orations are to hand for the occasion. The workers in the valleys and everywhere else on May Day, 1956, still find themselves spinning around the fulcrum of Capitalism, dancing to the latest tune their masters care to play. Is it any wonder they are dizzy?

W. Brain

Out of Step With the Left and Right (2012)

From the September 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

America’s political landscape is drearier now that two cantankerous radicals are gone.

Late July saw the deaths of Alexander Cockburn (b. 1941), a radical muckraking journalist, and Gore Vidal (b. 1925), historical novelist, essayist, playwright, and two-time political candidate. Each was something of a one-man political tendency –viewing himself as of the Left, as it’s called, but willing to question leftist assumptions and engage with those inhabiting that other imaginary political zone, the Right.

To the purebred liberal or conservative, with feet planted squarely on the either bank of the Mainstream, the politics of Cockburn and of Vidal could seem irresponsible, irrelevant, or just irritating. Loyal Democrats never forgave either man for supporting Green Party candidate Ralph Nader in the 2000 presidential election.

The liberal magazine American Prospect still nurses that wound; its editor Harold Meyerson bluntly titled his Cockburn obituary, “The Man Who Hated Liberals,” writing that, “contempt for liberals and social democrats was a hallmark of Cockburn’s work . . . it informed, if that’s the word, [his] attacks on Al Gore and his paeans to Ralph Nader during the 2000 presidential campaign.”

The (more or less) liberal New Republic gave Vidal an even rougher going-over in its obituary, “Where Have All Our Racist Aristocrats Gone?” –and reminded readers of old Vidal feuds related to his criticism of Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians; a position he shared with Cockburn, and which earned them the label of “anti-Semite.”

Conservative magazines were not especially sad to see them go, either; The Weekly Standard, begins its obituary of Vidal with guns ablaze: “The most puzzling thing about the career of Gore Vidal, who went toes-up last week at 86, was the reverence in which he was held by people who might have known better.”

Yet there were also those on the Right who were fond of Vidal or Cockburn: some liked how they regularly laid into liberals, while a few thought that behind the radicalism was a true conservative yearning to breathe free. “Libertarians” (anarcho-capitalists), in particular, viewed Vidal and Cockburn as kindred souls. Justin Raimondo, founder of the libertarian website, antiwar.com, praised Vidal as the “last Jeffersonian”. And he questioned the use of the term, “radical leftist” in obituaries of Cockburn (who was briefly an antiwar.com columnist): “He was radical, all right, but as for the ‘leftist’–I have my doubts”; describing him instead as “a paleo-radical who had survived long enough to be considered a reactionary.”

The obituaries of Vidal and Cockburn written by the “radical leftists” themselves were full of praise and a few criticisms. The International Socialist Organization hailed Vidal as an “uncompromising critic of America’s rulers” on its website (socialistworker.org), while noting that his “politics were not without their flaws.” The same organization praised Cockburn as a “modern-day muckraker” who “never stopped speaking truth to power,” but proceeded to list a number of “points where we . . . disagreed with him, sometimes very sharply.” Indeed, Cockburn deviated sharply from the radical Left a final time just weeks before his own death when he pronounced the Occupy movement dead of its own incoherence.

This talent Vidal and Cockburn had for winning friends and enemies across the Left and Right divide struck many as contrarianism in the style of Christopher Hitchens, their erstwhile comrade. But their politics were more radical and coherent than Hitchens’s ever were, even in his lefty prime, and their apparent “contrarianism” was more a result of sticking to their guns than seeking attention for its own sake (although both relished a good fight).

The populist and the radical

Vidal and Cockburn were not political clones by any means. A difference between them in background and generation clearly affected their politics. Vidal’s starting point was the Democratic Party at the tail-end of the New Deal, while Cockburn came out of the radicalism of the 1960s. One noteworthy similarity is that the politics and personal ambitions of each were strongly influenced by a close family member.

For Gore Vidal, the influential figure was his grandfather Thomas Gore, a Democratic Party senator for the state of Oklahoma (1907–21; 1931–37). As a child, Vidal spent countless hours reading to his blind grandfather from weighty tomes on bimetallism and constitutional history or from The Congressional Record. Through this political education Vidal assimilated the political outlook of Senator Gore, which had been shaped by his participation in the short-lived People’s Party (‘Populist’) movement of the 1890s. This had arisen out of southern farmers’ anger against the power of northern railway monopolies and banks. Even after joining other Populists in ‘fusing’ with the Democratic Party, Gore continued to oppose banking and railroad interests, and he voted against the party leadership at crucial times (to his own political detriment): he opposed Woodrow Wilson’s call for involvement in World War I and Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation. On top of this, he was an unabashed atheist. But whether Thomas Gore belongs on the Left or Right is anyone’s guess. The senator’s fiscal conservatism would win cheers from today’s Tea Partiers, certainly, but his blaspheming the Holy Trinity (war, banks, and God) would sound like ‘commie-talk’ to the ears of the Republican and Democratic faithful.

By the late 1940s, when Gore Vidal gained fame as a novelist, there were not many populists in the mould of Thomas Gore left in the Democratic Party. But Vidal remained a Democrat, even running for Congress on the Democratic ticket in 1960 (on a platform of taxing the rich) and in a Senate primary in 1982. Vidal did not simply inherit his grandfather’s beliefs: he was no foe of the welfare state, as was clear from his campaigns. Yet the general influence of the old Populist politics is unmistakable. And in interviews Vidal often described his politics as Populist, bewildering anyone who knew his patrician ways better than his politics.

In the early 1970s, Vidal co-chaired the anti-war ‘People’s Party’ coalition, and was already saying around the time that, “There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party . . . and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat.” In subsequent years, Vidal in his political activity and writing was consistently opposed to American militarism and empire-building. The gradual transformation of the United States from a “republic into an empire,” as Vidal puts it (as do libertarians), was the central theme of his Narratives of Empire series of historical novels, for which he is best known as a writer.

For Alexander Cockburn, the influential family member was his father, Claud, a radical journalist who joined the Communist Party in the 1930s and stayed with that outfit until 1947. At the time of Alexander’s birth, Claud was editing a muckraking newsletter called The Week, described by Graham Greene as the intellectual inspiration for Private Eye, which Cockburn also edited, in the 1960s.

Cockburn idolized and modeled himself after his father, whom he called the “greatest radical journalist of his age”; this influence determined his decision to enter journalism. In the 1960s, Cockburn worked for the New Statesmen and other publications in London, where he was also on the editorial board of New Left Review.  In 1972 he moved to the United States, where he wrote first for the Village Voice and later for dozens of other publications, including The Nation, for which he wrote his long-running column, Beat the Devil (named after Claud Cockburn’s pulp novel of the same title). And in the 1990s, he also started to edit the muckraking newsletter (and website) CounterPunch.

Alexander Cockburn tended to make light of Claud’s rather long time spent in a Communist Party, usually by recounting one of the humorous anecdotes his father had told him of that experience. He recalled, for instance, how his father once encountered a jargon-riddled passage in the Daily Worker: “The lower organs of the Party must make even greater efforts to penetrate the more backward parts of the proletariat,”and worried it “would be construed by the masses as a dirty joke.” Such anecdotes seemed intended to underscore how Claud was a most unorthodox Communist –and, of course, to get a laugh.

But the joke falls a bit flat when we see how the dead weight of dear old Dad’s “Old Left” dogma held Alexander back, at times. For all his exposure to Sixties radicalism, there was a soft spot in Cockburn’s heart for Communists and he quoted Lenin enthusiastically right up to the end. Worst of all, he mistook some of the state-capitalist countries for post-capitalist ones, an assumption that was fatal to his ability to understand the meaning of socialism. Cockburn’s criticism of the Occupy movement just before he died applies equally to his own reform-focused politics:

“There also seemed to be a serious level of political naivety about the shape of the society they were seeking to change. They definitely thought that it could be reshaped –the notion that the whole system was unfixable did not get much of a hearing.”

And often the twain shall meet

Despite their different political backgrounds, there are key positions that Cockburn and Vidal held in common. First, both opposed US militarism and its wars around the globe. They also denounced the erosion of civil liberties and authoritarian abuses of the state. The third principle that animated their politics was an opposition to ‘corporate power’ –particularly the power of large banks.

All three of these positions would seem to merit the Leftist label for them, but a second thought (and the memory of Senator Gore!) might even raise some doubts on this score.

Anti-war would seem a Lefty view, certainly, but the ‘isolationists’ were associated with the Right. And in the eyes of Leftists, there have always been good and bad wars. Opposing corporations would seem a sure mark in the Left column, again. But the old Populist’s opposition to banking and railroad giants reflected the interests of agricultural capital. And today as well, opposing big business can be the ideology of the small-fry capitalist struggling to become a big shot. Even in the case of civil liberties, one could point to how Leftists often lead the charge against ‘hate speech’ and call on the state to limit the expression of ‘dangerous ideas.’

The dividing line between Left and Right on a specific issue seems clear at a given time, but it is always shifting over time, revealing the essential meaningless of the two categories. None of that seems to matter much to reformist activists on both sides who judge your politics according to what positions are taken on the ‘hot-button’ issues of today, adding up the checks in the Left and Right columns to calculate your political score.

The positions Vidal and Cockburn took on some of the issues of the day certainly had Leftists scratching their heads in confusion, or their chins in suspicion.

One example was their indifference (but not outright opposition) to gay marriage, which both found a boring issue. Vidal’s position came as a surprise to many, for he was an open “homosexualist” (with prickly precision he thought the term ‘homosexual’ should only describe the act and not define the person), had fought against homophobia long before it was a popular cause and lived for decades with his partner Howard Austen. The reasons Vidal and Cockburn gave for their position were the exact opposite of the right-wing view that gay marriage “threatened the sanctity of marriage.” Vidal quipped that “heterosexual marriage is such a disaster, why would anyone want to imitate it?” And Cockburn said it would make more sense to “figure out how to relieve heterosexuals of the outdated shackles of matrimony,” while ridiculing the Right’s notion gay marriage would, “bring the whole edifice of Western civilization crashing down.”Even though their position on gay marriage is glibly expressed, and its practical consequences for individuals are dubious, it was nonetheless based on a radical view of marriage (in general) as a reactionary institution.

Another jaw-dropper for Leftists was Cockburn’s position on global warming, namely his belief that, “There is still zero empirical evidence that anthropogenic production of carbon dioxide is making any measurable contribution to the world's present warming trend.” This is of course a scientific issue, not a narrow political one and must be judged on scientific grounds. But however cranky his science, Cockburn’s political reasoning on the issue is, again, that of a radical. He described the “turn to climate catastrophism” as “tied to the decline of the left’s optimistic vision of altering the economic nature of things through a political programme” and its belief that the “emergency response [to a catastrophe] will lead to positive developments in terms of social and environmental justice”; whereas Cockburn believed “environmental catastrophism will - in fact it already has - play into the hands of the sinister-as-always corporate interests.”

Even at their cantankerous worst, which was when their wit was often best, Vidal and Cockburn held positions that were arrived at through independent thought. But in reformist politics the reasons a person gives for a position matters less than the political company he or she seems to keep in holding it.

Not radical enough?

“Why is a question the media are trained to shy away from. Too dangerous. One might actually learn why something had happened and become thoughtful.”(Gore Vidal)

The willingness to ask that question, even when it might lead in an uncomfortable direction, brought Vidal and Cockburn into conflict with Leftists, not to mention liberals and conservatives. That is not to imply that they always arrived at a convincing answer. (Vidal in particular was far too willing to flirt with conspiracy theories during his last decade.) In posing dangerous questions, though, they shook many out of their complacency; in their writings, one senses an independent, probing mind in action.

Yet despite this fearless questioning of assumptions, I don’t think either asked enough (or good enough) “why questions.” Even when they grasped why something had happened, they did not necessarily “become thoughtful”enough to recognize why similar somethings kept happening, over and over. Not why this or that war occurred, for example, but why war itself continually springs from the soil of capitalism, or why economic crises reoccur ever few years. Instead, they were too prone, as they tirelessly raked through the muck of American society, to pin the blame on rotten individuals or a public too apathetic to stop them.

By not asking the second, third, or fourth “why” question”so as to dig down to the root of a problem, Vidal and Cockburn were not as radical, in the literal sense of the word, as they should have been; they remained reformists who only sought to reshape capitalism. Vidal and Cockburn could have learned useful things from genuine socialists about questioning their own political and social assumptions.

But socialists have much to learn from Vidal and Cockburn, too. Their way of expressing unpopular or controversial ideas with verve and confidence is worth emulating; as is their ability to write in jargon-free English for a wide audience without spoon-feeding the content or sacrificing wit; and having skin thick enough to weather criticism, and a pen sharp enough to pierce it. All of these qualities are useful to ‘contrarians’ propagating the still unpopular idea that capitalism must be replaced by a new form of society.

Michael Schauerte

The Passing Show: Fighting Mad . . . (1967)

The Passing Show Column from the May 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

FIGHTING MAD . . . (1)

There is a delightfully vague phrase beloved of the left, meaning all things to all left wingers. They talk glowingly, emotionally, of "the fight for Socialism." The words roll from their tongues and dribble from their lips and probably there is barely a handful among them who have the slightest notion of just what the words mean.

This is equally true of the young left-wingers as of the old. Year after year, we hear them protesting about this act, denouncing that man, telling governments to do the other thing, and generally making a nuisance of themselves to the authorities. Such actions are all described as "fighting for Socialism", but if you listen to those concerned or read their literature, quite clearly Socialism is the last thing they would dream of fighting for. Yes, of course, the term is thrown about like so much confetti at a wedding, but never are its implications discussed as you will appreciate if you take a look at The Newsletter, the weekly organ of the Central Committee of the Socialist Labour League.

I got a copy dated March 25th; it was full of glowing reports on the discussion at the Young Socialist conference at Morecambe the previous week. "The delegates who assembled at Morecambe are much more politically mature than when they were expelled from the LabourParty in 1964" enthused the front page reporter. Well, let us see. In one resolution, Vietnam was described as the "cockpit of the world struggle of the working class against capitalism". In another on Rhodesia (which was passed unanimously) the demand was "arm the Africans; scrap the 1961 constitution". What maturity! Just how the cause of Socialism is to be advanced by such notions escapes us.

The paper is full of demands, recriminations, accusations and wild claims on the effect of the Y.S.; for instance: "They are rapidly being transformed into a hard core of revolutionary socialist leaders inside the Labour movement."

But perhaps their astounding capacity for self-deception is best illustrated by their assertion that " . . . Everyone can see that the reason why Wilson expelled the Young Socialists was because they were the first section of the labour movement to expose his treachery . . ." And what were they doing before they "exposed his treachery" (whatever that may mean)? Why, helping him into power of course! Political maturity? It's pathetic!

FIGHTING MAD . . . (2)

But of course the Young Socialists are not the only ones who are wholly headed. Labour M.P.'s seem to think you can have capitalism without its evils, and wax indignant when the system proves them wrong.

Take, for instance, the Hon. Member for Eton & Slough, Miss Joan Lestor. On March 13th, she voiced concern at the appearance of Navy recruitment adverts in children's comics and accused the Services of "seducing" young people. Yet what the devil does she expect? The armed forces have to compete with the rest of capitalist industry for manpower and of course will want to create a favourable image at as early an age as possible. They are not going to tell a youngster of the filth and mire he is likely to encounter during a forces career or of the blood and gore he may have to spill in various parts of the world. And in this they are doing no more or less than many other adverts aimed at catching 'em while they are young.

We agree, it is pretty horrible that killer adverts are aimed at kids, or anyone else, but if Miss Lestor objects, then the way to deal with it is to end all armed forces by doing away with capitalism; not  by urging some piffling reform like extending the option period for boy recruits from three months to six. Ah, but we forget, Miss Lestor is not in favour of abolishing capitalism—she is too busy helping to run it—and she certainly does not want to get rid of the armed forces. Rather does she want their image to be less objectionable; hence the grave concern that:

Including such advertisements in children's comics is bringing nothing but discredit on the armed forces.

(Guardian, 14.3.67).

E.T.C. 

"Labour's Way to Use the Land. (1936)

Book Review from the January 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Labour's Way to Use the Land." Tom Williams, M.P. (Metheun, London. 2s. 6d.)

This addition to the "Labour Shows the Way Series" is a useful contribution to "Labour's" main task of showing the capitalists the way to run capitalism. It deals, as its title indicates, with the agricultural side of capitalist production, and argues with considerable ingenuity that all the efforts of the other capitalist parties are and must be in vain, and that the millennium for the farmer, the farm labourer, and the consumer lies in the crania of the Labour "experts."

Well, we can leave the interested parties to fight that out. The madness of all these reformers has its methods, like other madness, but which is the best—or the worst—is of no interest to the Socialist.

The latter must criticise a work of this nature and origin from a different standpoint altogether. He sees it as the production of a sect professing—when expediency does not forbid—to be Socialist. His duty, therefore, is to "plunge the (Socialist) test-rod in" and "speak as he finds."

And in this case it must be unequivocal repudiation, for the book is nothing but a barefaced attempt to snatch political support from the farming element on one hand, and from the industrial and clerical wage-slave on the other.

The exposition of working-class politics should show that behind all this talk of organising the marketing of agricultural products lies the old, old story of the struggle between the industrial capitalist and the agriculturalist to determine how cheaply the latter can be compelled to feed the former's human cattle.

It should show that the industrial wage-workers are about as much interested in this struggle as the ox is in the bidding of rival butchers for his carcase.

It should stress almost beyond all things, that wages depend in the long run on the cost of food and other necessaries; and that therefore the attempt to inveigle them into this struggle between the producers of their food and the ultimate purchasers (who are their paymasters) is seduction pure and simple.

History provides confirmation of this in the Corn Law struggle of the middle of last century. With a heavy import duty on wheat, and the loaf at a shilling, the farmers were well off, and the manufacturers were not doing so bad. But the working class position was one of appalling misery. The sufferings of their wage-slaves so rent the tender hearts of the manufacturers that they nobly rallied to the cause of the bottom dog. They backed the demand for the abolition of the Corn Law. The law was abolished; and in a few years the workers were in just the same plight as before: their wages adjusted themselves to the "cheap loaf."

But the fortunes of the industrial magnates waxed marvellously, while those of the farmers waned in proportion.

The proposal to nationalise the land, and so bring the farmers into the direct service of the industrialists, as the Post Office workers are, may be sufficiently alluring to the hard-headed men of the soil to catch their votes—the present scribe cannot tell. But to all events, this land nationalisation is the only definite thing in the book. For all its criticism of the existing marketing schemes, it has nothing better to offer. A few pages of "constructive" wind and piffle, a list of "Boards" and "Commissions"—that is all. What these Boards and Commissions are to do, and how and when and why, we are not told. To venture any further than the author has done would have been dangerous, hence, as Educated Evans would have said, its all "gaswork."

A. E. Jacomb

Police Brutality in Manchester (1911)

From the August 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

The tranquility of the city of Manchester has recently been disturbed, owing to the somewhat militant attitude adopted by its carters, to obtain the outrageous wage of 25s. per week.

The capitalist Press, ever ready to paint in livid colours the vices and shortcomings of the proletariat, has enjoyed itself immensely; the strike has given the smooth-tongued, facile penned journalist data sufficient to fill a thirty-two page liar chock full. Proprietors have revelled in the abundance and quality of the matter contained, and, of course, there is the increase of circulation.

But while they have deprecated the gluttony and greed of members of the working class demanding 25s. a week, they have poured vials of eulogy upon those patient and long-suffering individuals, the police. We read of them "doing their work admirably," and "under such great provocation," too.

There is, however, another side to this picture, a side hidden by our pure, non-partizan (!) Press.

We (by "we" I mean two Socialists) wended our way to the city's centre, really to study the psychology of the mob, and seeing a body of police patrolling a narrow street, we stood and awaited developments.

No one seemed inclined to bloodshed, and had not the facts been known one would have thought here was a coronation crowd waiting for the appearance of the King.

But presently a banana-skin hurtled through the air and alighted on a constable's helmet. It was enough. The policemen's nerves, strained to breaking-point by the terrible ordeal of having to stand scowling at a half-starved, unarmed mob, could stand no more. Their long-suffering patience collapsed, and at the command of an officer to "charge!" on came the myrmidons of the Law like a blue fury.

Waving their batons they swept the crowd before them, hitting right and left, one burly "slop" missing by a inch the head of a seven-year old boy.

The crowd rushed past, and as we were stationed against the wall we thought it advisable to stay there. Presently an old man, bent and unable to hurry, shuffled across the road. He gained the centre of the street when he was struck two severe blows on his sides by a couple of "patient" policemen, and fell to the ground.

My comrade was unable to restrain his sympathy upon witnessing this cowardly brutality, and he hurried to the old man's side, and turning to the constables, protested against such inhuman methods. No sooner had he spoken than he was struck down from behind, and lay bleeding in the road.

The following morning the Press reported that an old man had been trampled on by the crowd, and lay in a critical condition.

Another instance, "Where are you off to?" said an officer to a man with a work basket. "Home," was the reply. Then the uniformed brute took the poor fellow by the coat-collar and threw him back.

"I'm going home, sir" the victim of this rough treatment said, and for that he was dragged off to the police station, and next morning was fined 10s. 6d for disorderly conduct.

"Police Entertained to Luncheon at the Exchange Cafe by Chief Constable," ran a heading in a Manchester paper.

"One knew that they would uphold the traditions of the police force, and one could not help but be delighted that no complaint whatever had reached the Chief Constable of any man amongst them." — Councillor T. Lewis (Manchester Chronicle, 10.7.11).

My comrade a letter to the Press explaining the circumstances under which he was injured and uttering his protest, but that letter was never published. No wonder there are no complaints.

Occurrences such as these show plainly that the capitalist Press, like Law and the armed forces, is merely an instrument in the hands of the capitalist class to maintain their ascendancy, and shows once again the urgent need for, and the value of, the SOCIALIST STANDARD.

J. H. Lamb

Correspondence: S.D.F. tactics in Lancashire. (1908)

Letter to the Editors from the January 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Comrade,

The branches of the S.D.F. in the Rossendale Valley have been sold by the Executive Council of that body.

These branches: Rawtenstall, Crawshawbooth, Bacup, Haslingden and Waterfoot, having been assured of sufficient money to bring out a Parliamentary candidate, adopted J. F. Green, and his candidature was sanctioned at the last Annual Conference of the S.D.F. Suddenly, and without consulting the Rossendale branches, it was announced that J. F. Green had been adopted as the candidate for South Bristol. The branches thereupon wrote to J. F. Green who did not reply, and also to the Executive Committee. The latter's reply was quite up to the "revolutionary" standard of S.D.F. action during recent years. They regretted they could not contest Rossendale because of the expense (the branches say they have half the amount ready) and because "they do not think it wise to put up a candidate against Mr. 'Lulu' Harcourt, as he is about the only member of the present Liberal Government who has added prestige to his name"!

What has caused this change of front on the part of the S.D.F. Executive? It cannot be altogether a matter of branch funds, because, as stated above, the branches have promises of half the amount and, moreover, at the quarterly meeting of the Executive held on October 20th, a deputation from the Leigh branch was received and asked for a candidate to be put forward to contest the Leigh Division. This request was complied with. Is it that the S.D.F. Executive has come to a secret understanding with the Liberals? During the Municipal elections in Rossendale local Liberals stated that J. F. Green would not go to the poll, and that the S.D.F. were only "kidding." Did they know more than the members of the S.D.F.? I believe that Messrs. H. M. Hyndman, J. F. Green, and other prominent members of the S.D.F. are also members of the National Liberal Club. Has there been a bargain? and if so, what has been bought and what has been sold? When J. F. Green was withdrawn from Rossendale and announced for South Bristol prominent Liberals said, "The S.D.F. will run no candidate for Rossendale." What did they know?

Yours fraternally,

Moses Baritz.

Manchester, Dec. 16th, 1907.

Oil and Slaves. (1913)

From the February 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

The oil age is coming. Year books, financial journals, the sharks of Throgmorton Street, together with the rest of the interested, "far seeing" exploiters and worshippers of the golden calf, are eagerly discussing the possibilities of oil as a motive force, and how much more profit they can grab by its use.

It behoves the working class to consider the question also, because it is they who are going to suffer, as usual, from what would be a boon and a blessing to all were the toilers sufficiently enlightened and determined to make it such.

The "Diesel" engine has already proved itself capable of propelling ocean going steamers, and will doubtless be in general use in the near future. Look at this: "The engine room staff of the 'Selandia' consists of eight men and two boys. No firemen required. No boilers needed. No loading with bunker coal for the voyage."

How our masters must rub their hands with delight when they think of the saving of wages, extra cargo space, cheaper ships, and many other advantages. How the thoughtful fireman must curse when his job disappears, and the boilermaker when he reads: "No boilers required." How joyous the coal-porter must feel when, instead of fifty men engaged in coaling a ship, he see the engineer turn on the oil cock and fill his tank in a few hours! Oh! the unspeakable happiness of the lightermen and railwaymen at the thought of not having to transport any more dirty coal to the docks! What joy dwells in the heart of the miner as he thinks of the near future when oil competes fiercely with coal, and thousands of him are saved the trouble of squabbling over "abnormal places," having gained the displaced wage-slave's normal place—the gutter.

The "Selandia" saved on her first voyage to Bangkok a sum of £1,200 for fuel alone. She is only a small ship. The saving on great liners will be commensurably greater, as will the numbers of "hands" displaced. Great is oil!

A Royal Commission with Lord Fisher at its head was appointed in July last to enquire into the possibilities of oil-driven "Dreadnoughts" (many torpedo craft already use oil), and the remarks of "The Times" were significant when announcing its appointment. "If," said that paper, "oil as a fuel and oil-driven engines were adopted exclusively as the result of the Commission's enquiries, not only might great economy be effected, but fewer men would be required to attend the engines and there would be economy in space and weight." Yes! indeed. It will be splendid they sack half the "black squad" of the navy, and what an inspiring sight it will be when the enemy's shells drops into the oil tanks!

Already it is announced ("Lloyd's Newspaper," Jan. 12) that a large tract of oil land in New Brunswick has been acquired for the Admiralty at a cost of £2,000,000, to supply oil fuel for the Navy, and that a chain of storage depots is being built round the coasts. Mr. Keir Hardie will now be satisfied, I anticipate.

Then, again, the railway companies are going in for oil from sheer necessity, having been badly hit by the motor lorries. Sir Sam Fay, manager of the Great Central Railway, declares that "we shall soon see oil-driven cars running on all the railways and supplanting the steam engines." Of course, he says nothing about the supplanted firemen—doesn't interest him a great deal.

Altogether, the advent of oil as a fuel will have a far-reaching effect upon the working class, and its moral effect for them is obvious. Every great labour-saving invention or discovery—and the use of oil as a propelling agent has been made possible by the invention of Dr. Diesel—spells unemployment for thousands while capitalism lasts. Many are flung "out" to accentuate the competition of those "in". When the workers will it the work will be flung out instead, lessening the labours and adding to the leisure and pleasure of all.

We call it Socialism, this condition of affairs wherein every invention will contribute only to the comfort and happiness of the whole people. Work for it, for there is no hope for the slave class in any other direction.

Wollie.

Labour and the reform of capitalism (2004)

From the May 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Labour Government of 1945-51 was the highwater mark of one strand of activity within capitalism, the triumph (much of it temporary, as we now know) of one school of thought on the question of how capitalism should be run. Its significance cannot be understood without knowing the background from which it sprang.

The population of each separate capitalist country is divided into two classes: the minority, who own the means of production, distribution, and exchange, and the majority, who operate all those means – factories, mines, offices, transport systems, banks, media and so on - but do not own them. This minority of owners constitutes the ruling class, and the rest of us constitute the working class.

The owners, however, are not a monolithic block, all having exactly the same opinions. Naturally, they all believe that the capitalist system is divinely ordained, and will last for ever. But they do not all have the same ideas as to the best way of running the system from day to day, or year to year. Many factors can cause disagreements within the ruling class. Some are internal, some are external.

Internally, there are always two main schools of thought. All capitalists want to get the most out of their workers, obviously. But what is the best way of doing that? Some think they should rule largely by fear. Toe the line, accept long hours, low wages, and poor conditions, they say to their workers, or out you go. And if you can’t get a job, you can join the unemployed – who, this school of thought believes, should be treated as harshly as possible.

Alongside the “treat-’em-rough” school is the “pretend-to-be-nice” school. One basic reason for this school is the desire to avoid the harmful consequences of the alternative - disease spreading across class boundaries, and decrepit recruits for industry or the armed services. But apart from that, some capitalists think that more humane methods are more profitable in the long run. Less primitive conditions in the workplace, a bit better treatment of families, somewhat less harsh handling of the unemployed, will all pay dividends, they think: be nice to your workers, and they will be nice to you, says this philosophy.

External factors also cause differences of view within the ruling class. When capitalism’s continuous conflicts lead to open warfare, with its clashing armies and bombing raids, its heartless slaughter of civilian populations and its massive destruction of towns and cities, the capitalists within each country often draw closer together, and feel they must strengthen their state as a bulwark against the threatening dangers from foreign capitalists which have now been made so obvious. For instance, when there is danger from abroad, and armies may have to be transported quickly round the country for the benefit of the country’s capitalists as a whole, then ruling class opinion tends to believe that the country’s transport systems should be in the hands of the state – the executive committee of the capitalist class.

The General Election of July 1945 came at a time when war, and its dangers, was in the forefront of public debate. There had of course been an enormously destructive war across Europe (and elsewhere) in 1914-18. When that ended, there was a huge feeling of relief: it must have been a fit of madness, people thought, and could never happen again. It was, in fact, “the war to end wars”. But then, only a score of years later, a second even more destructive global conflict erupted – so close to the first that some men actually had to fight in both, and certainly many families suffered in both. The electorate after the first war, in November 1918, returned the victorious wartime premier, Lloyd George, with a large majority committed to a return to the status quo; but in July 1945 the wartime premier, Winston Churchill, was defeated, and the Labour Party gained 393 MPs, compared with 213 Conservative and 12 Liberals. Labour formed a Government, and Clement Attlee became Prime Minister.

Stronger state

After two catastrophic world wars within only thirty-one years (1914-45), the preponderance of opinion within the capitalist class moved over to the support of a stronger state. The state had already been dictating much of the country’s economic activity during the war, under the direction of the Conservative-majority Coalition Government. A series of Acts of Parliament after 1945 took much fuel and transport into state ownership, and in many ways gave a formal framework to what had already been happening (owing to military necessity) throughout the six years of the Second World War. The Government took over what it regarded as essential services to support the other industries, which of course continued in private capitalist hands. It nationalized the Bank of England, coal, and civil aviation in 1946, electricity and transport in 1947, gas in 1948, and iron and steel in 1949.

Conscription into the armed forces, and compulsory direction into “essential industries”, e.g. munitions, during the war, had revealed that the working class were neither as well educated nor as healthy as they should ideally have been if they were going to supply the maximum of rent, interest, and profit to the owning class. A soldier who is not physically fit enough to join an attack on an “enemy” army, or skilled enough to read the instructions about how to operate a heavy machine gun or a tank, is not much use to the high command. The peace-time worker, too, has to be active and knowledgeable in order to operate modern machinery. So reforms were pushed through in health, creating the National Health Service, which (as the Labour Government boasted at the time) cut down the number of days lost to industry through illness. In education, the school-leaving age was raised to fifteen in 1947, and the Labour Government implemented Butler’s Education Act (passed by the Conservative Parliament in 1944), which created a tripartite system of grammar schools, technical schools, and secondary moderns, all of them free, with entry based on the so-called “eleven-plus” exam. These schools in effect aimed respectively at supplying office-workers, skilled manual workers, and the rank-and-file of the labouring population, to service capitalist industries. (The capitalists themselves continued to send their offspring to “public schools”, that is private schools outside the state system.)

Measures were taken to give a degree of social security to the whole population, “from the cradle to the grave”: a policy which put into effect the 1942 Beveridge Report, written by a Liberal. This social security, plus the free Health Service, meant that the great majority of the population, the workers, were kept in reasonably good condition, able to operate the industries of the country, and not likely to catch infectious diseases which could spread to the owning class. (Germs do not believe Mrs Thatcher’s assertion that there is no such thing as society.)

A very large part of Labour’s reforms was accepted by the Conservative governments which followed the Labour Government after 1951. This is not to say that all opinion within the ruling class supported nationalization; some voices still spoke out in opposition, and decades later nearly all of this carefully-constructed apparatus of state capitalism was dismantled and returned to the ownership of private capitalists. The capitalist organization of industry, of course, was undisturbed. The whole of the great nationalization debate had been simply about whether to have particular capitalist industries owned by the state, acting on behalf of the whole capitalist class, or by particular individual capitalists.

Much of the so-called Welfare State, however, has been preserved throughout the following half-century by Governments of whatever complexion. It has been recognized as benefiting the operation of British capitalism, and therefore it is still here.

The Labour Party claimed that their reforms were Socialist. The Labour Party fought the 1945 General Election on the programme outlined in its manifesto Let Us Face the Future, which declared that the Labour Party “is a Socialist Party, and proud of it. Its ultimate purpose at home is the establishment of the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain” and so on: hardly language which Labour’s leaders would use today. Though this was the “ultimate purpose”, the measures which it actually proposed (and, to do it justice, the measures which it actually carried out) were those described above. Its ringing declaration was one thing; its immediate objectives - the nationalizing of half a dozen fuel and transport industries, and health and education reforms - were another. Despite its fine-sounding claims about its “ultimate purpose”, the Labour Government of 1945-51, like every other Government, in practice merely tried its hand at running capitalism.

Why did that Government claim to be Socialist? The over-riding reason is that no ruling class can ever tell the truth about its own system. No owning class is ever going to say to the people at large, “You go on working and producing, and we’ll go on taking off you what you produce”. Instead, every ruling class seizes on whatever philosophy, or religion, or system of belief is currently popular or persuasive, and claims it for itself. When the British bourgeoisie made its first attempt to grab power, it claimed to be merely promoting Christianity (Cromwell called one battle “a crowning mercy” from Heaven). Many European countries, two or three centuries ago, proclaimed that Catholicism, or alternatively Protestantism, was their guiding light. When the French bourgeoisie took power, it claimed to be bringing in Liberty Equality, and Fraternity. The twentieth century saw a number of state-capitalist revolutions in Eastern Europe, Russia, and China, during which the revolutionaries claimed that they were introducing Communism, and Democracy (in some cases to the extent of putting Democratic in the official name of the country). In the Middle East, the ruling class of many countries claim that they are marching under the banner of Islam. In the same way, the Labour Government of 1945-51 claimed (as we saw) that they were going to introduce a “Socialist Commonwealth”.

Anyone who wishes to find out what is really happening in the world must first learn to distinguish between talk and action.

Alwyn Edgar

The Educational Cuts (1952)

From the April 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Educational cuts suggested by Mr. R. A. Butler, and put into effect by the Minister of Education, Miss Florence Horsbrough, have raised a great outcry from many quarters. Perhaps the most vociferous sections have been the teaching profession and supporters of the Labour Party.

We look at the matter from the point of view—what fundamental effect will it have on the workers' position? But this is not the reformers' attitude. This prompts a further question—why in fact are we educated at all?

"Teacher's World" of 16th January, 1952, can perhaps throw a little light on these questions. An editorial article headed "Freedom" shows us the extent to which freedom can be practised. It is quite clearly stated that "this is the true freedom of the teacher to teach how he thinks best. But what he teaches is not, and never has been, left solely at the choice of the teacher." Who, then, decides what the teacher has to teach? Let us return to the article—"Curriculum, inevitably, must conform with the law, with public policy and with convention."

The last statement is further elaborated by being applied to three aspects, namely religion, politics and language.

"It would be wrong to leave teachers in maintained schools, or even Eton, free to play the tunes of atheism, paganism or gnosticism. For this is a Christian country. It is the policy of the State that the generality of its people should be Christian."
"Nor is it possible to give teachers the utmost political freedom. The tunes of communism, fascism, nihilism and anarchy are not to be played by teachers in county schools. It is public policy that the young of this country shall be educated as democrats."
Even the language of education is decided by public policy. Children must be brought up to speak English—or Welsh with English."

To sum up, then, the law, public policy and convention intervene in the educational system through the state. Since the state is the expression of the capitalist class, it must pursue an educational policy in their interests; it must ensure that there are at all times sufficient replacements for that vast army of wage-workers so necessary for the profit-motive system. In other words, the children of to-day are educated with a view to their being being the workers of to-morrow.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain does not seek to reform the education of the workers; it seeks to abolish the present system of society, Capitalism, and with it the educational policy which it creates. In its place we would establish a system of society where the education for our children will not be determined by the interests of a ruling class, but will be in harmony with an administration which satisfies the needs of all mankind.

Margaret Hopwood 

Greasy Pole: Catching a Crabb? (2015)

Stephen Crabb MP

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

Although he was out of step with his own declared standards of order – which included training ex-soldiers as teachers to impose stricter discipline in the schools – the former Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove in March 2014 gave voice to his opinion that David Cameron's inner cabinet included such a concentration of Old Etonians as to be 'ridiculous' and comparable to that of Robert Gascoyne – Cecil, Lord Salisbury, whose cabinet at the beginning of the twentieth century '... was known as Hotel Cecil. 'The phrase “Bob's your uncle” came about and all the rest of it. It is preposterous'. It was shortly after this outburst that Gove was moved from Education to become the Tory Chief Whip and then, after the 2010 election, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice so that his attendance at certain traditional events requires him to appear in robes that an outsider might consider to be as preposterous as those of any ceremonial Old Etonian.

Beard

But among Gove's colleagues on the Tory benches there is Stephen Crabb the MP for Preseli Pembrokeshire and Secretary of State for Wales, whose background and ready smile clearly place him outside the ranks of the blue-blooded but preposterous. For Crabb was brought up by a single mother – his father's violence in the family led to the parents splitting up – on a council estate in Pembrokeshire; as a student he spent his holidays working on building sites. He was first elected in 2005, winning the seat from Labour in what had been a 'Tory-free zone' and went on to increase his majority in 2010 and 2015. He was promoted to Secretary of State after his predecessor David Jones was sacked – a result of Jones' persistently combustible contacts with the Welsh Administration. There is another Tory MP in Pembrokeshire but he is Simon Hart who, in contrast to Crabb, went to public school and agricultural college and was for ten years Master of the local Hunt (the less respectful locals are inclined to lump the two MPs together as Crap and Fart). Another way in which Crabb distinguishes himself is that he has a beard; he is in fact the first Conservative Cabinet minister to be so adorned since the Fourth Earl of Onslow, an Old Etonian who in 1903 was President of the Board of Agriculture. But Onslow's beard, with his handlebar moustache, was bushy and abundant while Crabb's is cropped and trained; during Prime Minister's Questions he sits on the Front Bench inviting one of the cameras to swing towards him and he smiles – or rather the beard smiles. Its message is that he is contented with his record so far and expects it to see him into an exultant future.

CARE

In the beginning Crabb was a youth worker in London, going on to apply what that experience taught him as a marketing consultant at the London Chamber of Commerce. His first taste of the Commons was as a parliamentary intern – which then, as now, was a demanding but unpaid job - for an organisation called Christian Action Research and Education or CARE. There are now some 20 MPs using this service, supplied by CARE free of charge for work such as research and organisation. Crabb has one on his staff but there is no mention of it in his current biography website. CARE describes itself as a 'Mainstream Christian charity bringing Christian insight and experience to matters of public policy' but others prefer a term more in tune with its association with the 'mission' of the American pressure group Focus on the Family of 'defending the God-ordained institution of the family and promoting biblical truths worldwide'. These 'truths' involve a theory that homosexuality is a disorder which all-right thinking people would strive to 'cure'; opposition to equal rights, including marriage, for same sex couples, to the processes of assisted dying and to the repeal of the infamous Section 28. There are five MPs who have broken their contact with CARE, one of them describing its policies as 'deeply offensive'.

Food Banks

As part of his avowed intention to alleviate poverty, even as a staunchly ambitious MP, Crabb became a trustee of the Pembrokeshire Action To Combat Hardship. One of the starkest and most debilitating symptoms of hardship right now is evident in the growing dependence on food banks. Foremost of the charities in this field – the Trussell Trust – states the problem clearly and without doubt: between 1 April 2014 and 31 March 2015 they distributed three days' food on 1,084,604 occasions, feeding some half a million people, which represented a year-on-year increase of 19 per cent. Of the people they helped some 44 per cent were in emergency through delays in, or cessation of, their benefit payments. Crabb's response to this crisis of need was to vote to reduce the benefits of social tenants subjected to the infamous bedroom tax. And to vote against raising welfare benefits in line with price rises. These votes were a part of the government policy to inflict even worse damage on the people already suffering extreme poverty. At the same time they improved Crabb's chances of working his way up the Greasy Pole.

Expenses

And then there is the matter of his expenses. He claimed over £8,000 on a second home to refurbish a flat which he then sold at a considerable profit; then he 'flipped' a claim for a house which he was buying in Pembrokeshire and a room in another flat was classed as his second home. His justification of all this was that he had not '...claimed for things like plasma TVs, even though the rules allow it' and then that an official in the fees office had encouraged him in the manipulation: 'Steve I'm looking at your allowances and you've spent hardly anything... you'd get more for your allowances if you switched'. In all during four years he claimed £67,633 in second home expenses. These details must have been of some interest to anyone struggling to survive on what are called welfare 'benefits' and food bank 'charity'.  And to anyone interested in the flexibility of what Crabb presents as his 'Christian honesty'. To be recalled along with the 'honesty' of the others like Michael Gove, Simon Hart, David Jones . . .

Ivan