Fashion or principles? (1989)

From the January 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party single-mindedly pursues the establishment of a society freed from the constraints, contradictions and degradations of the market, commodity production and the wages system. Because we are the only political party in this country advocating socialism, we reject any thought of compromise or alliance with other organisations. Neither have we time for opinion polls commissioned to ascertain the level of public support for leaders and their policies.

Socialists do not water down their principles in order to trawl in workers who support reform programmes or the anti-democratic doctrines of the Left. Neither do we want advertising agencies or public relations consultants telling us what ought to be in our election manifestos or Party statements. When our candidates stand at local or parliamentary elections they are not first sent to image advisers to polish their style. Instead, we insist on workers attaining class-consciousness through argument, persuasion and their own experience, to the point where they understand capitalism and the need to abolish it altogether.

If, as a result, we are considered unfashionable and detached from the politics of "revolution" as understood by the Left, then so be it. We stand or fall on our insistence that democratic means must be in line with democratic ends. The politics of reform and compromise have left a trail of bitter failure throughout the twentieth century, with numerous and now largely forgotten casualties buried unceremoniously along the way.

Democratic method and clear objective have shaped the socialist movement, singling it out from these who use the word “socialism" to wrap up their own particular anti-working class policies. In 1917 we did not abandon our adherence to democracy and parliamentary action when all around us Leninists were crying "All power to the Soviets"; and during the Second World War we viewed the conflict as one involving the sectional interests of the world capitalist class and did not fall, as other parties did, for the rhetoric of fighting for "freedom and democracy"

The same consistency applies today. We reject the current fashion, spearheaded by the Labour Party, of describing the working class as "working people or consumers". as if “class" were an outdated concept with little or no bearing on the economic and political reality of contemporary capitalism. Politicians and journalists don't like to use the word because it spoils their portrayal of Britain as a united nation in which all interests are one and the same. But to socialists, “class" accurately defines a person's relation to the means of wealth production and distribution, bringing out the divisive nature of capitalism and the irreconcilable differences between capital and labour.

Class and the class struggle are not ideological constructs but concrete reality; changing words does not change society. The Labour Party needs to use the term "working people" in their desperate search for votes - but that's their problem, not ours We only ever want votes from class conscious socialists, for the purpose of organising to capture political power and introduce socialism. This means that the question of fashion or principles is an important one, for it is ultimately about the retention of capitalism or its abolition.

Richard Lloyd

A Word to the Unemployed (1932)

From the November 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

The economic forces at work under capitalism tend towards a growing army of unemployed, and the problem is permanent as long as the private ownership of the means of production continues. The' increasing use and complexity of machinery, and the economies in organisation, are factors that enable production to meet the needs of consumption by the work of ever fewer and fewer workers. There used to be a possibility of temporarily easing the situation by the opening up of new markets. Now that the whole world has been drawn into the net of Capitalist production the prospect of “new markets" in foreign countries is disappearing.

Each national group is speeding up and rationalising production to the utmost of its power, and in the process meeting its own basic demands and looking for a market for its surplus. Cutting across this is the operation of the gigantic international trusts which seek to rationalise production and distribution internationally.

In the past, European and American capitalists looked to the huge markets of India, Russia, Turkey and South America as El Dorado's in which to get rid of their surplus products. These areas are now well marked on the productive map and are rapidly becoming first-class productive units with their own unemployment shadows looming menacingly ahead.

In each of these backward areas the aid of European and American trained experts has been invoked, so that their industrial development is progressing faster than the advanced countries formerly did, as the latter had to do the pioneering.

The future prospect then is one of growing unemployment and growing insecurity for those who were accustomed to believe they held “permanent” jobs. Even the bank clerk, who formerly regarded himself as among the “aristocracy of labour" is being hard hit by the new developments in mechanisation. The number of girls in banks who now, with the aid of machinery, do the work formerly only entrusted to trained men, has increased to such an extent that it has become necessary for the Bank Officers' Guild to appoint a full-time official to organise them and attend to their welfare.

All the political wire-pulling and programme making cannot overcome this obstacle. The growing insecurity and misery of the workers is solely due to their slave position, to the fact that before they can eat or drink they must sell their working power to a master. It is true a few try to avoid the necessity either by robbing or by trying to live on the crumbs of charity. But both ways are unstable and a glaring illustration of the rottenness at the root of the present order of things. .

Until the workers grasp the elementary facts of their wage-slavery and the utter hopelessness of any solution but Socialism, the unemployment problem and their other ills will continue to increase in aggravation.

In spite of the attempts of blind leaders of the blind to exploit such situations as that arising out of the means test the fact remains that the mass of the workers do not understand their slave position and consequently small temporary ameliorations are sufficient to disperse the apparent revolutionary fervour and battalions of unemployed marchers and rioters fade away. An example of how far the unemployed are from grasping the real position is illustrated by a report in The Star (October 6th) of an incident that occurred at Ilford. The report runs as follows: —

   Eighty unemployed stopped roadmaking work in Eton Road, Ilford, to-day, because, they said the 20 workers were not local men.
   The unemployed first marched to the town hall and interviewed the borough surveyor. Then they went to Eton Road, where they called on the foreman to stop his men. This was done without any disturbance.
   The job was held up until an arrangement was reached with the contractor that local men should start work to-morrow.
    Ilford Council, in their contracts for work of this description, stipulate that 60 per cent, of the men engaged shall be local.

Here is a blatant illustration of the narrowness bred out of the fight for “immediate ends” beloved of the Communist and the generations of Labour misleaders. One of the elementary principles the worker must grasp, if he wishes to be free, is that local and national boundaries disappear in the great class war of worker and capitalist. The workers of the world have one interest as opposed to the interests of the capitalists and the workers must unite to abolish capitalism and not allow themselves to be split up into warring groups like dogs fighting for the bones thrown to them.

The means test, and various other disabilities that at times press heavily upon sections of the workers are products of capitalism, and the people who put these things into operation have been placed in possession of the power to do so by the overwhelming majority of the workers at elections. While the workers agree by their votes to maintain capitalism it is futile for them to complain about particular evils of the system.

There is only one way in which the employed and the unemployed can obtain lasting amelioration of their lot, and that way is revolutionary political action to bring Socialism to birth out of capitalism.

Gilmac.

A Fruitless Recipe (1935)

Book Review from the August 1935 issue of the Socialist Standard

"How to Make a Revolution," by Raymond Postgate, (Hogarth Press), 5s.

It is difficult to recommend this volume to anyone seriously thinking of taking up revolution-making either as a hobby or as a full-time occupation. The author does not know how to make a revolution, and takes up the major portion of his book discussing methods which have failed.

Unlike the making of a Christmas pudding or a wireless set, the making of a revolution cannot be arranged beforehand, according to a recipe or blue-print. It can occur only as a result of certain conditions, and the author adds nothing to our knowledge and understanding of those conditions. On the contrary, he endeavours to belittle the value of those ideas of Marx which express a definite advance in knowledge and understanding. After a couple of pages of obscure verbiage, he concludes comfortably, “We have, then, to abandon the dialectic," and then goes on, “With slightly more hesitation we may reject also the whole system of Marxian economics" (p. 21). In other words, we are invited to revert to metaphysics once more (under the label of "psychology") and discard Marx for G. D. H. Cole.

Discussing the concentration of capital and the exploitation of the workers, he says: " These two facts are so obvious that Marxists economics are not required to prove them." (Italics mine.) This phrase illustrates Mr. Postgate's clumsiness of thought. Marx's economic theories are not intended to prove facts, but to explain them. Only understanding can enable us to deal with society as with nature in general. The importance of the theory of surplus-value to the workers lies in the fact that it alone explains how their exploitation takes place, and traces it to its source, i.e., the capitalist ownership of the means of production.

It is because the mass of the workers are still far from clear on these points that they continue to look to politicians for the supposed benefits of "prosperity" coupled with illusory “reforms." 

Mr. Postgate rakes up afresh the bogy of the “middle-class" vote, and attributes the compromising tactics of the Labour Party to the inevitable necessity of conciliating this vote. On page 48 he makes the ridiculous statement that, “Wherever a Socialist (?) Party has approached near to office in an advanced industrial country the same thing has happened—in Italy,. Germany, France, and Britain. In each country the Party has progressed a certain way with a genuinely Socialist or revolutionary programme, only to find that its further progress depended on a gradual abandonment of that programme." Anyone acquainted with the early history of the Labour Party knows that its principal Parliamentary leaders openly gained their “safe" seats on a Liberal programme, with Liberal support. The failure of the Labour Party from the Socialist view-point is due, not to their inability to “convert” Acton and Ealing (as Mr. Postgate contends), but to their failure to educate the workers in predominantly industrial areas, Sheffield, for example, in the rudiments of Socialism. The significance of such an area returning the full complement of supporters of the National Government is obviously lost upon Mr. Postgate. The fact is that there are no safe Labour seats. All of them, having been won by compromising tactics, are liable to be swept bade into the openly reactionary fold when a period of Labour Government has resulted in inevitable disillusion.

Failing to understand history in his own country it is, of course, too much to expect the author to grasp the meaning of events abroad. Hence, on page 50, he lets fall another fatuous remark: “The more realist Socialists of Italy and Germany will admit, to-day, that the Socialist Parties of those two countries had their opportunity to make a Socialist revolution; that they failed to take it and for that reason are extinct."

Were the representatives of these Parties ever sent to the seats of Government in order to establish Socialism? Nowhere does Mr Postgate face up to this vital question. He thoughtlessly accepts the totally unwarranted assumption that parties elected for the purpose of achieving certain very limited reforms, can use their power to accomplish a social revolution. The Continental parties in the Second International have paid the penalty for having at the outset succumbed to the fatal delusion that it is the business of Socialists to play the paltry game of vote-catching in order to be able to assist the master-class in the administration of the present system.

In his concluding chapter, the author suggests the formation of yet one more organisation to reform (or should it be to “ Bolshevise"?) the Labour Party. He considers that the next Labour Government should hold on to office till it has “made Socialism." He does not tell us what is going to happen when it fails to balance its Budget. He evinces an uncomfortable feeling that the Labour Party, like its brother Parties in Italy and Germany, is hardly likely to escape from the chain of its own history, and lugubriously asks his fellow Labourites how they would like to be beaten into a state of unconsciousness with a rubber baton.

It is amusing and instructive to reflect that this is the same Mr. Postgate who, a dozen years or so ago, was cheerfully editing the official organ of the Communist Party, encouraging the workers to adopt violent and unconstitutional methods.

For a person who rejects dialectics, Mr. Postgate has certainly done his best to illustrate in his own person the negation of negation. The part of his book dealing with Communist tactics is, as a consequence, the most entertaining. His summary of the slogans of the Daily Worker could hardly be improved upon: “Come out on strike! If you do, your leaders will instantly sell you out!”

Nevertheless, Mr. Postgate has merely exchanged one form of futility for another. He is by no means optimistic about the prospects of his proposed new organisation.

He “will not even permit himself to say with certainty that such an organisation will lead to a successful revolution.” Apparently, he and others put the idea before the Socialist League two years ago without success. So that the “reform" of the Labour Party appears almost as remote as Socialism. And what is this, after all, but a reappearance of the original idea of the I.L.P. in joining the Labour Party a generation back?

Experience answers Mr. Postgate. No group, however well-intentioned, can save a Party which adopts vote-catching as one of its methods; for the group must participate in the methods of the Party and, eventually, in its fate.

Eric Boden

Editorial: Insult to injury (1966)

Editorial from the November 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Make no mistake about it. The Labour government is out to cut our standard of living. To be sure, they claim this is necessary so that standards can rise in the future. But we need take no notice of this. After all we’ve heard it so many times before from Labour and Tory alike. First it was Cripps, then Gaitskell, then Butler, then Thorneycroft, then Selwyn Lloyd and now Wilson. But the promised prosperous futures with steadily rising living standards have never appeared and, of course, they never will. You don’t have to be a Socialist to be sceptical on this point.

What the government is trying to do is to freeze wages and salaries at July 20 levels and allow prices to rise to offset “tax increases and import price rises”. If this works, our standard of living will have been cut and more of the wealth we produce will be available for profitable investment.

It’s bad enough to have this attack on our living standards and to be intimidated by the “reserve powers” of the Prices and Incomes Act. But we have also to take Minister of Labour Gunter telling us that this is what we deserve as we have been “dishonest and thriftless” and clever Dick Crossman and the New Statesman telling us that this is a step towards Socialism.

It is surprising that there are still people who think that trade unionists and workers generally have something to gain from backing Labour. Perhaps this is because of the skilful way the Labour leaders have exploited their followers’ fears of a return to the mass unemployment of the inter-war years. They have alleged that the Tories deliberately create unemployment and misery for workers while they swear, hand on heart, that they will never allow this to happen again. But it will, they claim, if workers don’t work harder; if employers don’t get “a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay”; unless- “each hour worked is filled with sixty minutes’ worth of work well done”.

These Labour appeals for harder work have fallen on stoney ground. Absenteeism thrives and the seamen took a month or so off work just because the shipowners wouldn’t pay them more or improve their working conditions. This failure has produced revealing reactions in some of the Labour Leaders. Now Gunter calls us dishonest. Last year he was shouting about “far too much indiscipline in every part of the nation”. Presumably we can take it that Labour is out to discipline us. As Wilson is fond of saying, the job of a government is to govern. Precisely—and governing involves keeping us in our place as honest, thrifty, hard-working and docile workers.

The Labour Party has always had a brutal streak in it. Since the war Labour governments have shown themselves more ready than the Tories to use the power of the state to discipline us. Remember that it was they who used troops as blacklegs. Remember that it was they who tried the last wage freeze. And remember that it was their Attorney General who prosecuted strikers in 1951.

Labour Party members accepted these events last time. Most will probably accept the same things this time. And this is where the talk of Socialism comes in. At election times Socialism is a dirty word among Labour candidates. But when they have to put over their policies to the party faithful the leaders brush up the speeches of their youth and declaim about Socialism. Generally they take the Tory view of Socialism—that it is whatever the Labour Party does. But surely few, even of the hard-core Labour men, can be taken in by the specious arguments put over by the editor of the New Statesman on September 16. Under the headline “How Labour Blundered into Socialism”, he wrote of the openly anti-union Prices and Incomes Act: “Prices and incomes regulation . . . may be a foundling; but it has true socialist blood in its veins and. properly nurtured, is likely to grow into a powerful champion of social progress.”

If this is Socialism people are right to want none of it. But it is not Socialism or anything like it. Socialism means a democratic world community in which the means of social life are owned in common so that they can be used to satisfy human needs. What the New Statesman editor is talking about is not Socialism but state capitalism which, as the example of Russia shows, has nothing to offer us.

Will Jesse run? (1988)

From the May 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anyone who expected the 1988 American presidential election to be refreshing for the high level of its political debate will have found the primaries ominously disturbing. Such was the level of tedious cant from the candidates that it was almost a relief to turn to the bigoted ravings of Pat Robertson, whose manic religion at least offered something other than endless grins flashing through exhausted platitudes.

Another candidate who tried to be different was Jesse Jackson, who gathered an unexpected success based largely on a mould-breaking appeal to bring a single-minded resolve to tackling the problems of poverty, housing, health, racism and the rest. Jackson has a past which is dubious enough to cast strong doubts on the endurance of his pledges. His place as an aide of the late Martin Luther King was not based on his entirely selfless devotion to the work of racial integration. His claim to have cradled the dying civil rights leader through the last moments of his life were not echoed by other witnesses of the assassination. There is some question about whose blood it was and how it got on the shirt which Jackson wore when he apppeared in public after the killing.

Whatever the truth, it has not held Jackson back in his ambition to be the first black president of the United States. His success in the primaries was such as to have the pros in the Democratic Party fussing about the awful consequences of their convention foisting on them a candidate who. because of his colour, would be unlikely to be elected. Of course the pros were equally worried in 1960. about the prospects of electing a catholic to the White House, except that the Kennedy machine rolled on its ruthless way to show them how wrong they were.

It is votes that worry the pros - not the fact that Jackson makes a blatantly cynical appeal to the people whose despair and frustration at American capitalism in 1988 makes them vulnerable to any charismatic trickster. Nothing is easier in politics and nothing happens more often - than mouthing seductive promises that a candidate has the ability to cure social ailments which has eluded everyone and every administration in the past.

That is why, when a president takes the oath, we hear a speech full of assurances about a new age, a new departure from outmoded ways of tackling problems, a new zeal to build a better world. That kind of speech was made by Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan . . . In each case it was followed by the inevitable disillusionment and an equally inevitable despair until a new candidate came along, to make the same promises, the same speech.

So if the possibly unelectable Jackson is nominated and then elected, the American people will be on course for an experience they have had many times before. After the hysteria of the inauguration the reality will set in - that capitalism takes no account of politicians' promises.

Ivan

The S.P.G.B. and the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917 (1935)

From the August 1935 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have been asked the following question: —

What was the proposal of the S.P.G.B. to the Bolshevik Government as to what should be the mode of procedure after the Bolsheviks had achieved political power ?

The question is evidently based on a misunderstanding of the attitude taken up by the S.P.G.B. It is not, and never has been, our view that the Bolshevik Government might have succeeded in establishing Socialism in Russia, or might have succeeded in engineering world revolution, if only it had adopted some policy different from the one it did adopt. On the contrary, our case has been, right from the outset 18 years ago, that the backward industrial development of Russia, and the very small number of Socialists both in Russia and in the rest of Europe, made it impossible for either of these two events to happen. It was not, therefore, a question of our telling the Bolsheviks what to do with power when they had achieved it. What we did tell them was that their hold on power would not bring Socialism, however they used their power, and that they were deceiving themselves and the working class in claiming otherwise.

Interested readers are referred to the articles published in the August, 1918, “ S.S.,” “The Russian Revolution—Where it Fails," and to numerous other articles in the years 1918-1921.

Ed. Comm.

Editorial: No More War? (1934)

Editorial from the September 1934 issue of the Socialist Standard

Twenty years ago a war commenced of a nature more devastating than any that had occurred before. So great was the feeling of horror aroused by the carnage and the barbarities committed at the time that there was general assurance that “never again” would such a thing happen—and ever since the governments have been preparing for even worse wars. At present, in Europe and the East, nations are watching each other on the verge of flying at each other’s throats, moved by economic motives similar to those which set guns belching death and destruction in those old unhappy years.

Already nations are preparing the ground of justification by measures to stir up feelings of patriotism and the rankling spirit of wrongs that require righting, Armies, navies and air fleets are being overhauled and increased, and scientists are hard at work devising means of defence and means of destruction.

The hollow farce of the League of Nations still plays its expensive and idle part in the game. One of its principal supporters, Viscount Cecil, speaking at Windermere on August 11th, said that "No one could feel security for peace at present. Every day new disturbances arose, rumours of war got about, and countries were preparing for the worst.” (The Observer, August 12th, 1934.)

A week or two ago a huge Italian army was on the borders of Austria fully equipped to launch into war should affairs in Austria take a turn that militated against the economic interests of Italian capitalists. At the moment of writing, Russia and Japan are on the brink of conflict over the Chinese Eastern Railway. Incidentally, the diplomats of the different countries are hard at work arranging pacts for mutual aid in the event of a war breaking out.

One fact appears fairly clear, and that is that the art of the chemist will play a considerable part in another big war. According to Lord Hailsham, it would be impossible to provide adequate defence against gas attacks. The horrors of the last war may therefore appear as pleasant memories compared with the horrors of the next. The very fact that in face of this there are large groups quite ready to engage in war is a fearful illustration of the urge of profit-seeking in modern civilisation. The underlying causes of war are the efforts to further business, buying and selling, with the object of making profit and thereby enriching those who have invested capital in various enterprises, including the making of engines of war.

The way to prevent war is not by engaging in anti-war campaigns. These are quite useless, because they leave the causes of war untouched. The only preventative is to take away the urge to war; take away the profit motive. While private ownership of the means of existence remains, the making of profit is the object of the private owners. Abolish private ownership and substitute for it common ownership in the means of production and the profit motive disappears, taking with it the seeds of war, both internal and external.

Socialism is the only means to defeat the warmongers.

Hong Kong hand-over (1985)

From the March 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

In September last year the British and Chinese governments signed a Joint Declaration on the future of Hong Kong, which provided for China to resume control from 1 July 1997. This was the culmination of two years of hard bargaining over the spoils of a sordid nineteenth-century imperialist expansion, which also reveals not a little about twentieth-century capitalism.

Hong Kong Island became a British possession in 1842. In the eighteen-thirties, the Western nations had discovered that there was a vast market for opium in China, and that exporting this would offset the balance of trade, which was very much in China's favour. The massive outflow of silver which resulted prompted the Chinese imperial government to seek to put an end to the opium trade. The British merchants, in particular, resisted and were able to put pressure on their government to send a large fleet out to the South China coast to maintain trading activity. The Chinese armed forces were hopelessly outgunned, and in 1842 the Treaty of Nanjing was signed. The Chinese government paid a huge indemnity, had to open five ports to foreign trade, and ceded Hong Kong Island to Britain in perpetuity. The war itself is known as the Opium War. which gives a fair indication of the high ideals for which it was fought.

Still the rapacity of the British capitalists and their government was not satisfied. More wars and treaties extracted further trading and territorial concessions from China. In 1860, the lower part of the Kowloon Peninsula, and another small island, were ceded permanently to Britain. In 1898, the New Territories, the mainly rural area between Kowloon and the present China-Hong Kong border, were leased to Britain rent-free for ninety-nine years. British capitalism now had an important commercial and shipping base in the Far East.

Hong Kong's economic boom really began in earnest in the early nineteen-fifties. The Chinese "Communist" Party's take-over led to the flight of many capitalists — from Shanghai, especially — to Hong Kong, bringing with them capital which was used to set up textile, construction and shipping businesses. Less wealthy refugees from China provided an ample pool of cheap labour power. Despite its small size, Hong Kong is now a major force in world trade with British, American and local Hong Kong capitalists owning most of its industrial and financial enterprises.

It was this business community which, from around 1980, began to put pressure on the Hong Kong government to find out from China, through Britain, what was likely to happen after 1997. Although the existing treaties stipulate that only the New Territories are to revert to China on that date, Hong Kong Island and Kowloon could simply not survive on their own (Kowloon, for instance, would then have no access to water or electric power). Unless the situation were somehow resolved before 1997, the Hong Kong economy would gradually decline.

This would certainly not be in the interests of China s rulers. Just after the signing of the Joint Declaration. China's Premier Zhao Ziyang said:

a stable and prosperous Hong Kong is beneficial to China's reunification and our modernisation drive, while a turbulent and economically depressed Hong Kong is not in her longterm interest.

China is in fact a major economic force in Hong Kong, owning thirteen banks, a shipping line and countless other companies. In addition, Hong Kong is pretty much a captive market for Chinese produce, foodstuffs especially. In 1982 China was the largest exporter to Hong Kong and enjoyed a trade surplus with the colony of 30 billion Hong Kong dollars. Hong Kong is now becoming increasingly important as a supplier of technology and managerial know-how to China. In the last century, it may have been a small far-off spot of no particular interest to the rulers in Peking, but this is emphatically not the case today:

  Viewed at the most basic level. Hong Kong is a mechanism whereby China converts its home-grown foodstuffs and low-cost consumer goods into hard currency to finance its deficit in trade with Japan, the United States and other countries.
   Since foreign trade accounts for less than 10 per cent of China's GNP. Hong Kong's function might not seem vital. But in fact China uses imports to close crucial gaps in her industrial technology, domestic grain supplies and rare metals.

(David Bonavia, Hong Kong 1997.)

China, then, has an interest in reassuring the present economic overlords of Hong Kong.

It was this background which led to the China-Britain talks about Hong Kong's future. Both sides indulged in the usual pious nonsense, with China claiming that the Hong Kong people desired "reunification with the motherland", while Britain claimed to be representing the same people of Hong Kong. Never mind that many of Hong Kong's inhabitants are refugees who have fled from China, or that Hong Kong has no representative institutions or democratic elections.

The Hong Kong capitalist class would apparently have preferred Britain to have maintained an official presence after 1997, but this is not envisaged by the Joint Declaration. However, China has agreed to maintain Hong Kong's economic system and "lifestyle" unchanged for a further fifty years after that date. As part of China, Hong Kong will form a Special Administrative Region which means, for instance, that taxes collected in Hong Kong will be disposed of there, rather than handed over to the central government. It will remain an international financial centre and free port, with the Hong Kong dollar still being the legal currency. It seems that these and similar provisions will suffice to convince the property-owners of Hong Kong that they will do very nicely both before and after 1997.

China is thus openly committed to maintaining capitalism in Hong Kong until 2047. Its ideologues have attempted to justify this with the slogan "one country, two systems", which means that capitalism and socialism can exist alongside each other. As they point out, capitalist enterprises owned by overseas companies already exist in China, so Hong Kong will not really introduce anything new to the situation. In fact, there is no socialism in China: China is part of the world capitalist system. There is no way in which socialism (common ownership and production for use) can exist alongside capitalism (class monopoly and production for profit).

The Joint Declaration, then, is an agreement between capitalist powers, designed to ensure the smooth continuation of exploitation in a small part of the earth's surface. The exploited — the working people of Hong Kong — have had no say in these talks about their future. The British government has now dreamed up a new form of nationality. British National (Overseas), to cope with them — they will have British passports, but no special rights to settle in Britain. So the poor are manipulated while the rich cream off the profits.

Paul Bennett

Between the Lines: Forbidden moments (1991)

The Between the Lines column from the May 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

FORBIDDEN MOMENTS

Under capitalism the best things are forbidden. Access to the best things in life are denied to most of us because of lack of money. Other things are removed from us by the forbidding state. News and information, plays and films, jokes and songs: any of these images of life can be censored if they are considered liable to disturb the passivity of the wage slaves' minds. The Banned season on Channel Four has shown a number of programmes previously censored for TV audiences and has produced some first class discussion on the theme of censorship in its many forms. It has been a revealing few weeks of TV. Pathetic little voyeurs, hoping for a bit of naked flesh in their living rooms, will have been disappointed by the Banned season; the majority of censored TV is denied to viewers on grounds that to show it would be politically insensitive. The ruling class can live happily with the daily Page Three, but when it comes to exposing scrutiny of its precious, oppressive values it is time to pull the plugs.

The Truth About Lies (C4, 9pm, Monday, 8 April) offered a valuable survey of how the British ruling class has used censorship to keep workers in the dark. It documented how the BBC was used to attack the 1926 strikers, to serve as an appendage to military propaganda in the Second World War, to ban numerous programmes about the Army's current operations in Ireland, and to prevent life and death information — such as the coming of US Cruise missiles to British soil — from being communicated to the public. The liars who rule Britain came across as very scared people. They are afraid that the workers might see too much of what they are up to. They forbid speech on certain mailers because they know that they could not win the argument if they discussed them openly. In short, they confirm the socialist claim that when the working class understand what is going on in society it will be an explosively and unstoppably potent force.

John Pilger's excellent Frontline - The Search For Truth In Wartime (C4, 8pm, Saturday, 13 April) presented a survey of how TV coverage has been used to drive the millions into the frenzy of war fever. Pilger, whose own journalistic standards are in marked contrast to most of his cringeing, knee-bending colleagues, showed how war reporters, from Vietnam to the Gulf, have simply served the propaganda needs of the militarists who gave them the briefings.

News is not the only victim of the censors. Numerous films and plays have been censored from TV audiences. For years The War Game, which was commissioned by the BBC, was banned from being shown on the grounds that it depicted loo realistically what the effects of a nuclear bomb would be. In the late 1970s the BBC commissioned a play on the legalised brutality of the borstal system: the play Scum, was banned from being shown to us until it appeared in the Banned season (C4. 10.30pm. Sunday, 14 April). Even comedy has been the victim of the censor. No TV station would show Monty Python's Life of Brian (C4, 10.30pm, Tuesday, 16 April) and in several British cities local government outlawed the showing of the film which superbly sends up the myths of Christianity. Only Joking? (C4, 11pm, Friday, 12 April) was about comedy and the limits of "public taste". To be sure, there are lots of comedians, notably in the current US "comedy of hate" vogue, whose unfunny racist rambling! can appeal to to those with Sun-reader mentalities. The documentary showed a performance by a racist creep called The Dice Man whose New Year's Eve show in the USA attracted an audience of 17 million cable viewers. But who needs the state to tell us what is unacceptably unfunny? If we are unamused by Bernard Manning or Gerry Sadowitz, then we need not watch them. The price of any kind of free speech is that you cannot set up a dogma called Good Taste and then ban those who transgress it. The alternative price to be paid was well illustrated in two documentaries about Christian bigots and their efforts to "clean up" (for which read censor) TV output: Damned in the USA (C4. 10.30pm, Sunday, 14 April) and Dancing With the Devil (C4, 11pm, Friday, 19 April). When the superbly produced Thirtysomething showed a scene with two male lovers in bed together fifteen major advertisers pulled their money out of the network making the programme, resulting in millions of lost dollars as a result of the homophobic bigotry of a handful of rich marketing directors. Under capitalism it is these people who decide what is good for us to see.

Socialists oppose censorship. Ironically, C4's Banned season was itself censored: in the hitherto unshown Mother Ireland the voice of the IRA woman shot by the British troops in Gibraltar had to be dubbed over by an actress lest we be contaminated by her authentic voice; a Yugoslav film-documentary about Wilhelm Reich had to be changed so that the male genitals in it could not be seen by the highly-corruptible late-night audience.

A more significant irony was that C4 did not once in its season give any consideration to the ultimate ban which it seems to find quite compatible with its own liberal values: the ban on serious TV exposure to those ideas which are considered "way out" or "utopian". In short, the ban which we socialists have experienced when trying to obtain more than a two-minute chance to explain our ideas on Channel Four. Perhaps now is a good lime for the C4 gang to ask where they draw the line. And why. And who might lose their jobs if the boundaries were redrawn.

THE LONGER VIEW

You can never be depressed in the company of a geologist. Why hasn't socialism been established after all these years? After all what years? Clive James interviewed Stephen Jay Gould, the eminent and very worth reading Harvard palaeontologist (BBC2, 6pm, Sunday, 7 April). "What would happen if a nuclear holocaust destroyed the whale of human life?" asked James. It has happened before, responded Gould — in fact, there have been three wipe-outs of life over the past 260 million years. "We'd just have to wait a few million years and it would all start again" replied Gould. And the struggle for socialism is hardly a century old. Come to think of it, when they banned The Life of Brian less than twenty years ago the censor probably thought that it would never ever be shown - the fools.

Steve Coleman

Sick as Parrots (1982)

The Briefing Column from the March 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

While the collapse of Laker Airways may have hogged the headlines, media attention was also devoted to the near-collapse of a far less well patronised institution, Bristol City Football Club. For the “national game”, taught by Britain to all those foreigners who are now so good at it, is in a state of crisis. Several clubs are on the brink of going under, losing money boot over foot and struggling with large overdrafts and interest payments. Even the larger clubs are having to tighten their belts.

The short-term reason for the crisis is clearly the current economic situation. As registered unemployment tops the three million mark, short-time working increases, and real wages fall, workers have less and less money to spend on leisure activities. Even enthusiastic supporters may decide that there are better things to do with their hard-earned wages than stand in the rain for two hours waiting for a piece of skill that would merit being an edited highlight. Spectator sports are always sensitive to the ups and downs of the economy, and cannot avoid the effects of booms and slumps, whether local or national. Look at the locations of the clubs which have been forced out of the Football League in recent years Workington, Gateshead, Barrow—and replaced by the likes of Peterborough.

There are longer-term factors too, though. In the last thirty years, the number of spectators each season has been halved (it’s now just under twenty million). It is significant that the largest drop has been for games outside the First Division, from twenty-three million in 1951 to eleven million in 1981. Whereas even reserve games once attracted crowds numbered in thousands rather than hundreds, now only the best can expect sizeable audiences, and even certain First Division crowds are down to the ten thousand level.

When faced with rival leisure activities, football has failed to compete. Other spectator sports —basketball, for instance — have gained in popularity while football has declined. Television enables one to watch football at weekends without the hassle and expense of getting to the ground, getting crushed and soaked, and running the risk of involvement in a fight. Even the daring experiment of three points for a win has failed to make the footballing package more alluring. Success in the World Cup may give the game a temporary boost—as happened in 1966—but that success is unlikely, and in any case would hardly alter the long-term picture.

If attendances cannot be increased easily, so that (sponsorship apart) income will at best remain stable, clubs will have to reduce their expenditure to survive. And the main possibility for this is a wholesale change to part-time footballers, as are found outside the Football League and in many Scottish League clubs. This has not yet been actively proposed, but it’s surely on the cards. Players of Third and Fourth Division clubs will resist this, in the realisation that it will mean a drop in living standards, and that they will have trouble finding jobs outside football. Most, of course, are unskilled in anything beyond ball-trapping and dummy-selling. The footballing equivalent of short-time working will be part-time playing, with another full-time job or full-time unemployment. What effect this arrangement would have on the quality of football remains to be seen.

Of course, it might not happen. The recession might suddenly end, workers might suddenly find lots of spare cash in their pockets, the missing millions might return to the terraces. But that’s not the way things work. The present recession will end in time, but the long-term decline of football as a spectator sport is unlikely to be reversed even then. Of course, unexpected things might happen; while we're on the subject of fairy stories, England or Scotland might even win the World Cup.

Paul Bennett

A Matter of Definition (1948)

From the June 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

A great obstacle standing in the way of the spread of socialist propaganda is the term Socialism. In 1892 a Parisian political paper, Le Figaro, published over 600 definitions. In 1924 a Labour Councillor, Dan Griffiths, compiled and edited a book called “What is Socialism,” which had 263 definitions; most of them different. The definitions were by prominent Labour leaders. According to them, Socialism is a science, a religion, an attitude, a process, a way of living, a demand, an atmosphere, a name, a faith, “sunlight opposed to darkness," “the navigation of social current by the liberated soul of man," etc. In recent years Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and Churchill with his “ We’re all socialists, now," have played their part in adding to the confusion.

There would appear to he some ground for the statement often expressed that everyone has their own idea what socialism means. But the absurdity of the attitude implied in that statement, if it were applied to everyday affairs, is clearly shown in the schoolboy conundrum: “What is the difference between an elephant and a postage stamp?" “ I don’t know!" “I wouldn’t like to send you for a postage stamp."

The obstacle can’t be overcome by using another term. Obviously that would make “confusion worse confounded." Therefore the only solution is some clear thinking regarding the term itself.

We think in words. To think effectively we must have clear definite meanings for the word we use. For this purpose, the knowledge how to form a definition i6 helpful and can be found in any textbook on logic. It should be remembered that definitions are provisional but they are useful guides to understanding. The three most important terms used in forming a definition are—first, the genus, the class to which the object being defined belongs, for example, man is an animal. The second term is the difference, any essential characteristic distinguishing the object being defined from all other objects in the class. In our example, man is a tool-making animal. The third term, property, is any quality arising from the essential characteristic, as in the example, upright posture and co-ordination of hand and brain are qualities suggested by the essential characteristic, tool-making. The formula used by logicians in definition is the genus and the difference and it should be the difference bringing out the most interesting properties.

Applying this formula to the present form of society we find the essential difference between the present form and past forms is. that the capitalist class own the means of living and consequently the working class are propertyless—a free but exploited class. Interesting properties arising from this difference are, the division of society into two classes, the wages system, production of commodities—articles produced for sale—and general use of money. Therefore the definition given in the first of the eight principles of the Socialist Party of Great Britain that capitalism “is based upon the ownership of the means of living (i.e., land, factories, railways, etc.) by the capitalist or master class, and the consequent enslavement of the working class, by whose labour alone all wealth is produced ” more than fulfils the requirements of the formula.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain maintains that as the enslavement of the working class follows from the ownership of the means of living by the capitalist class the interests of the working class can only be served by the establishment of socialism. A system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interests of the whole community. Here again we have the genus and the difference bringing out the most interesting properties; classless, as all will have free access to the means of living; wageless, as it won’t be necessary for any section of society to sell their labour power in.order to live; moneyless, as money arises only to facilitate exchange between private owners; commodityless, as articles will be produced for the use of all and not for sale.

Jim Thorburn

Profitably Modified Food (1999)

From the June 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Research to improve food supplies and nutritional quality is worthwhile, but under capitalism its findings are distorted in the interests of profit.

Genetically modified crops of maize and soya were first introduced, in the United States, in 1983 and proved cheaper to grow and gave higher yields. Both are used extensively in the growing market for readymade meals and are attractive to multinational companies; soya is used in about 60 percent of processed foods. Agribusinesses have invested in GM crops on a large-scale: last year about 7.7 million hectares were used for growing them.

Although it seems an advantage to have GM crops that are resistant to pests, cross-pollination could lead to the development of "super weeds" that are difficult to eradicate, endangering future food supplies. There is the danger that producing crops that insects will not eat will lead to their extinction and that birds and other small animals that feed on them will be imperilled. However, the real danger under capitalism comes from the development of a gene that produces sterile seeds.

The profit gene

Normally cereal farmers save a part of the grain produced in one year so it can be sown and harvested in subsequent years. But in March 1998 the United States Department of Agriculture, jointly with Delta and Pine Land Co, patented the "Terminator" technique which introduces a "transgene" into plants. The crops are harvested normally, but the germ of the grain is biologically sterile and seeds have to be purchased each year. In May 1998, Monsanto acquired Delta and Pine Land Co, and is patenting the "Terminator" gene in 87 countries and negotiating exclusive rights with the United States Department of Agriculture (Guardian, 22 February). This modification of crops is not designed to feed the hungry, but to increase profits. Indeed, the sale of grain that cannot be harvested again is likely to decrease food supplies amongst the very poor if they cannot afford further supplies. At the moment 80 percent grown in developing countries are from seeds saved from one season to the next.

Faced with growing resistance to GM food, Monsanto adopted the advertising slogan "Food-Health—Hope", claiming that the attempt by the European Union to stop their use was preventing them ending hunger in underdeveloped countries. But the sale of crops which are sterile will enslave the world's poorest farmers to multinational agribusinesses.

Also, genetically-modified seeds can be patented whether or not they are sterile. Monsanto has advertised in farming journals in the USA, threatening farmers with legal action if they save "Biotech", a GM seed which is not sterile, for planting the following year or if they sell surplus grain to their neighbours. Thus, Monsanto is creating a monopoly of the supply of its patented foodstuffs.

The British government has set aside more than £15 million to encourage biotechnology firms to expand in Britain; Monsanto received part of a £1.5 million incentive to expand investment in Scotland (Independent on Sunday, 14 February).

About 500 sites in Britain are used for the experimental growing of GM crops although none is used for commercially grown food. Tony Blair has said that he would have no hesitation in eating GM food. Blair's assurance is coloured by the government's commitment to fund research, and the fear that British farmers could become uncompetitive if GM crops are produced more cheaply abroad than food grown by traditional methods.

There may be other reasons too. Lord Sainsbury is a major contributor to the Labour Party, reported to have donated £3 million to New Labour (Times, 26 January). He was ennobled by Tony Blair in 1997. Until 1997, Lord Sainsbury was chairman of Sainsbury's supermarket chain. His position as the Minister of Science is seen as a conflict of interest as Sainsbury's supermarkets use GM ingredients or derivatives in 1,500 of its own brand products. In addition, Diatech which has exclusive rights to the "genetic switch" used to boost the effectiveness of GM crops. Lord Sainsbury relinquished control of the firm when he joined the government, but still profits from the invention. He also has links with Dupont UK and Zeneca plc, engaged in researching and producing genetic material. New varieties of GM wheat will be promoted through a British company called Plant Biosciences. One of its directors, Dr Roger Freeman, is a director of the Sainsbury Laboratory and of Diatech. The John Innes Centre has a "research alliance" with Dupont UK and Zeneca plc. It is grant-aided by the Biotechnology and Biological Research Council whose funding is decided by Lord Sainsbury (Daily Mail, 17 February).

There is a growing resistance to GM foods; the Vegetarian Society has withdrawn its logo from foods believed to contain genetically modified material because they may have been tested on animals and a number of councils have withdrawn GM foods from schools because of parental concern. Thirty environmental groups have demanded a five-year moratorium on planting GM crops. This, together with widespread public concern, and Marks and Spencer's announcement that they will not stock any brands of GM food has forced Agricultural Minister, Jeff Rooker to announce the postponement of planting modified crops until Autumn 2000. The government is also trying to allay public fears by soon making it compulsory to label all GM products. As yet, the government's attempts to placate public opinion have failed; there have been too many food scandals and misleading information in recent years for politicians to be credible.

Research to improve food supplies and nutritional quality is worthwhile, but the manipulation of food for profit, such as Monsanto's "terminator gene", is an indictment of capitalism. Such an abuse of scientific knowledge would simply be inconceivable in a socialist society geared to meeting needs. What would be the point of modifying a crop so that its seeds were sterile? Only capitalism could think up such a project, let alone implement it.

Carl Pinel

Imperialism lives (1980)

Editorial from the March 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Imperialism is dead. Long live Imperialism!” So might the world powers of capitalism proclaim, if ever a blush of honesty were to tinge their self-righteous propaganda.

Imperialism may be dead, in the sense that there are now no longer great empires flung across the globe, ruled over from some European capital. The very word is now something of a jibe, redolent as it is of the Victorian conquerors who first crushed, then patronised, the unhappy peoples of Africa, India, the Far East . . . Whatever excesses of invasion, repression, pillage or murder are committed now—many of them outdoing the most savage acts of Victorian capitalism—they are no longer characterised as imperialist.

For example, this applies to the American occupation of Vietnam and to what they did to the people there—and to the people of Thailand and Cambodia. That, we were told, was not imperialism; the American troops were there as saviours of the Vietnamese people, even if they had to kill them in the process.

The Russians used the same justification for their crushing of the Dubcek government in Czechoslovakia in 1968; their tanks rolled into Prague, they said, to rescue the Czech people from the ravages of a “counter revolution”. And they make the same claim for their intervention in Afghanistan where, they assert, they have merely responded to a cry for help.

In fact the name given to such outrages matters not one jot. Neither is it significant, in terms of working class interests, that such conquests may no longer result in the establishment of a colony directly under foreign rule but rather in a puppet government, trying to run the country on instructions from Moscow or Washington. These things do not matter to the workers who die in the conquests, who are maimed or made homeless, whose lives are shattered.

What is important is to understand that such conflicts are an inseparable part of capitalism. For this is a society where wealth is produced for sale and profit, with a ruling class whose interests are in the capture and the protection of markets, fields of mineral wealth, sources of raw materials, access to cheap primary products. Capitalism is a society of competition, both within its states and internationally.

This is the root cause of expansionism, imperialism—whatever name it goes under-and of modern war. It is the reason for the build up of massive armed forces and of the unimaginably destructive power at their command. It is the driving force behind the expansionist ambitions of powers like Nazi Germany, Japan, Russia and states already in possession, as once was British capitalism. 

It was the driving force behind the imperialism of Victorian Britain, of Germany at the turn of the century, of the Belgians under Leopold II. And it energises the imperialism of the 1980s—the Americans in the Far East, Russia towards the Persian Gulf, China against India . . . Imperialism, if dead, will live for as long as capitalism survives.

And as long as imperialism lives so too will the opposition to it—the nationalist “liberation” movements, which often develop into armed guerrilla struggles against the colonial occupying power. This has been the recent history of many states in Africa and the Far East, of Cyprus, Aden and so on.

Such struggles attract a lot of support, much of it infused with a blind hysteria, among workers who arc convinced that their interests arc served in replacing one set of rulers and exploiters by another. That this is a delusion is apparent from the experience of those countries which have had their “independence” for a long time-Australia, India, Canada. But it is a powerful delusion, which still deceives the people in places like Africa, where “independence” has often brought repression, mass imprisonment and murder under a native ruling class.

Socialists do not stand aside from the struggles of nationalism. These struggles are a potent force for the delusion of workers, for the promotion of divisive, anti-working class theories, for the diversion from the essential object of the establishment of socialism. So we cannot stand aside from them; we must expose their basic fallacy, we must be undyingly hostile to them and we must strive to replace their theories with the idea of the united, co-operative world of socialism.

We stand for a society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means of wealth production and distribution. In this society wealth will be produced for use instead of for profit; it will be freely available to everyone instead of for sale to those who can afford it. It will be a society in which all human beings will be together in the single aim of making life as abundant, free and pleasurable as possible. There will be one people, working together for one object.

In socialism the national divisions of capitalism-and the wars, the repressions, the cynicism—will fade into a black history. They will be components in human experience, the agony which the world’s people have endured to learn that a better society was possible and necessary. From the experience and the learning will come the free world—peaceful, fertile, abundant and united.

Black Anger (1958)

Theatre Review from the July 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

When we consider racialism, the image that arises almost invariably is one of white prejudice against coloured people. It is as well to be aware that racial antagonism is not one-sided and prejudice of white against coloured or coloured against white are equally reprehensible.

It is on this account that issue must be taken against an otherwise interesting play by the West Indian writer, Barry Reckord, called “Flesh to a Tiger,” recently produced at the Royal Court theatre.

The majority of West Indians live in a condition of appalling poverty—the corrugated iron barnyard erected on the stage was a fair presentation of the facts. Now it is all too easy to interpret white prejudice, power and opulence as being the origin of black misery, and see hope and salvation in building the white man’s world for themselves.

It is not just that white men oppress black; the cardinal point is that capitalists oppress workers. That the ruling class may happen to be white is not the essential factor. In Mr. Rickard’s philosophy—"to the White man the Black is as flesh to a Tiger and as much as the Deer may look to the Tiger, so the Black to the White—we must build on our own." The European power over the minds and bodies of the West Indians, as depicted in the Christian religion is a monument of evil, in the shadow of which they crawl in awe and fear, under the aegis of a lecherous self-made priest who rules with the white man’s insidious power. Now this is the point: the priest and his stooges are black, but it is the white man's religion that they have absorbed like a virus and use to tyrannize their fellow men.

That Christianity is an enemy of the working class we readily accept; not because the white man originally administered it along with the overseer's whip, but because it is a means of subjugation in the hands of the ruling class no matter what its colour and a barrier to working class emancipation. That the white man brought it is again irrelevant.

Racialism is no solution to the problems of West Indian workers, no more than it would be to us. If anyone gains it is only those who want for themselves the rare fruits of capitalism that a few white men enjoy. Why change the colour of your Masters? 

Ian Jones

Should Socialists vote for Labour candidates. (1928)

From the September 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

At its formation the Communist Party of Great Britain decided by a small majority to seek entrance to the Labour Party. But while willing to sacrifice their independence, they nevertheless denounced the leaders of that Party and ran candidates against MacDonald at Woolwich, and Morgan Jones at Caerphilly. Later they were ordered by those who pay the piper and call the tune to advocate the policy of the “united front." They expressly pointed out that this did not mean unconditional support of the Labour Party, but only a willingness to co-operate in any action against the employing class. At the 1922 Congress of the Communist International, the following statement was issued :—

The tactics of the United Front should by no means imply the forming of electoral combinations of leaders for the pursuit of certain parliamentary aims. The tactics of the United From is the call for the united struggle of Communists and of all other workers, either belonging to other parties and groups, or belonging to no party whatever, for the defence of the elementary and vital interests of the working-class against the bourgeoisie. (Fourth Congress Thesis on Tactics, page 10).

In actual practice, although the Communists have all along strenuously denied that the Labour Party has been engaged in “the defence of the elementary and vital interests of the working-class," they have given them full and unconditional support at election times.

Now Moscow has ordered another volte face, and the Communists are busy trying to prove that the United Front never existed, or alternatively, that it is not inconsistent with opposing Labour candidates.

At the Linlithgow bye-election they first put up a Communist candidate against the Labour candidate (E. Shinwell) and then withdrew him on the plea of shortness of time and told the workers not to vote at all. Their manifesto says:—“We, therefore urge the workers not to waste time and energy in voting for any candidate in the present election."—(Sunday Worker, 25th March.)

A few weeks later, at the Hanley bye-election, the Communist, J. R. Campbell, was speaking in the constituency, billed as the "man who brought down the Labour Government.". After denouncing the Labour candidate at Hanley, Campbell told them to vote for him!—(Daily Telegraph, 19th April, 1928.)

In the Labour Monthly (April, 1928) the Communist Editor, R. Palme Dutt, tries to explain away this confusion, and actually has the temerity to quote with approval the views of Marx on the need to run independent working-class candidates. At Aberdeen the Communists did indeed run their own candidate—but on a programme of reforms!

With the views expressed by Marx on this subject in the Address to the Communist League (1850) we heartily agree. They are in line with our own attitude and directly opposed to that of the Communist party in the past seven years.

Beside the bourgeois democratic candidates there shall be put up everywhere working-class candidates, who, as far as possible, shall be members of the League, and for whose success all must work with every possible means. Even in constituencies where there is no prospect of our candidate being elected, the workers must nevertheless put up candidates in order to maintain their independence, to steel their forces, and to bring their revolutionary attitude and party views before the public. They must not allow themselves to be diverted from this work by the stock argument that to split the vote of the democrats means assisting the reactionary parties. All such talk is but calculated to cheat the proletariat. The advance which the Proletarian Party will make through its independent political attitude is infinitely more important than the disadvantage of having a few more reactionaries in the national representation!!

Now contrast with Marx’s definite and clear-cut attitude the muddled Communist record. At the 1923 election quite a number of Communists were running as official Labour Candidates. Mr. W. Paul went to the poll with his election address graced by a message to the electors from Ramsay Macdonald. The Communists worked and voted for J. H. Thomas and Clynes, and the rest of the Labour defenders of Capitalism and boasted of it. In particular compare Marx’s advice to ignore the “stock argument ” about splitting the democratic vote, with the following words written by Mr. Harry Pollitt after the 1923 election. He said that the Communists, if they had used the information in their possession, could have prevented the election of Mr. Frank Hodges. Instead they supported him. "We did not expose Mr. Hodges during the Election because we did not desire to split the workers’ vote."— (Workers' Weekly, December 21st, 1923.)

As against this tortuous and ineffective Communist policy we commend to Palme Dutt and his fellow Communists the passage he quotes from Marx.

Edgar Hardcastle