Karl Marx — An Appreciation. (1933)

From the March 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fifty years ago, on March 14th, 1883, Karl Marx died in London, after a lifetime devoted to the workers' cause. The persecutions and privations he had endured in that cause hastened his death. When he died, much of the work he had planned still remained to be done, but, nevertheless, he had the satisfaction of knowing that he had given the working class movement all over the world an impulse and direction. His significance as a thinker and as a revolutionary grows more important each year, and although critics succeed one another in an unending line with “refutations" of his theories, those theories still stand awaiting disproof. History as it unfolds brings new illustrations of the truth of Marx*s discoveries and of the inadequacy of opposing doctrines.

But, before we consider the body of Marxian thought, let us take a brief glance at the man himself.

Karl Marx was born on May 5th, 1818, at Treves, in the Rhineland, of Jewish parents who subsequently adopted Christianity. The Germany into which he was born was very different from modem Germany. It was mainly an agricultural country, and such industry as was carried on was still greatly restricted by relics of feudal barriers. There was nothing to which the term large-scale industry, in the modern sense, could be applied. Industrialism, which had been growing apace in England during the previous fifty years, was hardly known. Politically the country was split up into a number of independent States, each with an autocratic government based on land ownership. The feudal restrictions on industry and commerce, the impediment to trade that was constituted by the multiplicity of States, made the German bourgeoisie, then just emerging into prominence and anxious for power, very receptive of the ideas that Napoleon by his victories had spread over Europe. A united Germany arid a liberal constitution, these were the popular ideals in which the needs of the rising capitalist class expressed themselves. When Marx was twelve years old, the 1830 revolution broke out in France and spread to nearly all Europe. It is quite safe to assume that the events taking place around him made a deep impression on Marx even at that age. In 1835 Marx entered Bonn University and started on a course of jurisprudence to meet the wishes of his father, who was a lawyer. He added to this a study of philosophy and history, for the economic changes of the period were undermining all established ideas and forcing all who thought at all to seek a new basis for the understanding of life. The leaders in the new thought were the Young Hegelians, the followers of Hegel. Marx became associated with this school, but soon became dissatisfied with the idealism of Hegel and began to spread a wider net than his master. It was through their common interest in Hegelian philosophy that Marx and Engels first met and the friendship was established that lasted until Marx died.

In 1841 Marx took his doctorate. The next year, when about to take up an appointment at Bonn University, he was offered, and accepted, the editorship of the Rheinische Zeitung, a Cologne newspaper started by the Rhineland Liberals, to which Marx had already contributed articles. This marks the turning-point in his career. From this time dates Marx’s realisation of the historical task of the proletariat and of the inadequacy of all current philosophy. But at this stage Marx was far from the theories that are now known by his name. He was simply a Radical Democrat interested in and anxious to improve the conditions of the peasants and the workers. The controversies in. which his work as an editor involved him soon convinced him of the need to study and understand political economy if political problems .were to be understood. When, therefore, the attention paid by the censor to the Rheinische Zeitung hampered Marx in his work, he resigned his editorship in 1843 and, with his friend, Arnold Ruge, proceeded to Paris. (Notwithstanding Marx’s departure from the editor’s chair, the paper was suppressed shortly afterwards.) Before then he had married Jenny von Westphalen, the daughter of Baron von Westphalen, who was of Scots descent and who later became, in the words of Engels, “ a reactionary minister of State.”

To Paris had come, after 1830, a number of German revolutionaries. They had formed a secret society, out of which grew the League of the Just. The. League had disappeared in 1839, but many of the leaders were still in Paris at the time of Marx’s arrival. One of the original leaders, Schapper, had gone to London and started the Workers' Educational Society among the German artisans there. This was one of the beginnings of the Communist League. In Paris, Marx and Ruge started the Deutsch-Franzosichen Jahrbucher, of which, however, only two numbers appeared. By this time Marx had progressed beyond mere Radicalism, his thoughts were beginning to move along the lines of their final development, but his realisation of the revolutionary role of the proletariat in the development of society still required the basis which the conception of the class struggle was afterwards to give it. In 1844, in collaboration with Engels, he wrote the “Holy Family.” Here the new theories begin to take form. (Engels states that Marx had worked out the ” Materialist Conception of History ” by 1845.) The importance of this book lies in the fact that, in working out the ideas, Marx had come to appreciate how essential for the purposes of his thought was a knowledge of the economic laws governing production in the society in which he found himself. As a consequence, with his usual thoroughness, he took up seriously the study of economics. In 1845 Marx was compelled to leave Paris because of his attacks on the Prussian Government. He proceeded to Brussels. Here he wrote and published, in 1847, his ”Poverty of Philosophy” in reply to Proudhoun’s “Philosophy of Poverty,” and began the career of revolutionary activities that only death brought to an end. In 1847 he joined an organisation which, after a Congress held in London in that year, came to be known as the Communist League. It had grown out of various secret societies started in the different countries in which the leaders of the defunct League of the Just had found themselves. Towards the end of the same year (1847) a second Congress of the Communist League was held in London, at which Marx was present. At this Congress the new ideas of Marx, to which his studies during the preceding years had led him, came in conflict with the revolutionary idealism which up to then had provided the workers’ movement with its basic ideas. Finally Marx managed to convert the Congress to his views and was instructed to prepare, in the name of the League, a manifesto setting out their aims.

The Communist Manifesto

The manifesto was written and issued by February, 1848, shortly before the outbreak of the 1848 revolution. This manifesto is what we now know as the Communist Manifesto. In writing it, Marx used a draft prepared by Engels before the Congress met, but to it he added what Engels himself has described as “the fundamental proposition which forms its nucleus.” Engels goes on to state that proposition as follows:—

That in every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organisation necessarily following from it, form the basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can be explained, the political and intellectual history of that epoch; that consequently the whole history of mankind (since the dissolution of primitive tribal society, holding land in common ownership) has been a history of class struggles, contests between exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed classes; that the history of these class struggles forms a series of evolution in which, nowadays, a stage has been reached where the exploited and oppressed class—the proletariat—cannot attain its emancipation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling class—the bourgeoisie—without, at the same time, and once and for all emancipating society at large from all exploitation oppression, class-distinctions and class-struggles. (Preface to Communist Manifesto. Preface written by F. Engels, 1888.)

With the publication of the Manifesto a new stage is reached in the history of the working-class movement. The Manifesto may not be a perfect piece of work, from the point of view of the present day. Had Marx been called upon to write it in 1878 instead of 1848 certain things in it would no doubt have been different. Even so it contains in embryo most of Marx’s later ideas and was a significant advance on anything of the kind that had preceded it. It took Communistic thought out of the world of Utopias and set it up on a basis of reality.

The Writing of “Capital”

On February 24th, 1848, the revolution that overthrew Louis Philippe broke out in France, and by March Germany was in the throes of liberal revolutions. The Belgian Government did not choose at such a time to have a revolutionary of Marx’s calibre in Brussels, so he had to seek shelter elsewhere. He returned to Paris, and from there went to Cologne accompanied by Engels. Here they started a newspaper, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. For nearly a year this journal poured forth the opinions of Marx and Engels and brought to an examination of the political events and problems of the day the understanding of historical processes that the “Materialistic Conception of Histor ” had provided. It was in the pages of this paper that the articles now gathered together under the title, “Wage Labour and Capital” appeared. Finally, during the period of reaction after 1848, the paper was suppressed (May, 1849), and Marx went on his travels again. After a short stay in Paris he sought refuge in London, and there he remained for the last thirty-four years of his life.

In 1852 the Communist League, after prolonged internal dissension among its members, came to an end, and for about ten years Marx was not actively engaged in political affairs. This was the period that commenced his prolonged economic researches, during which he laboured on the preparation of his greatest work—“Capital.” At the beginning it was a period of great hardship for Marx, whose only source of income was his pen. Three of his children died as a result of the privations to which the family was subjected. In 1851 he became a contributor to the New York Tribune. Certain of the articles he wrote for this paper on events in Germany have since been gathered together under the title "Revolution and Counter Revolution.” Another of his works, now widely read, “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,” also appeared about the same time in another paper, Die Revolution, published in New York. Engels meanwhile had gone into his father’s business in Manchester as a means of providing monetary support. In 1859 the "Critique of Political Economy" appeared. This work is the forerunner of “Capital,” and contains the first exposition of Marx’s theory of value. —

The First International

Marx’s active participation in political agitation began again with the First International in 1864, of which he soon became the leading spirit. The inaugural address and constitution were written by Marx. They follow the lines laid down sixteen years before in the Communist Manifesto, but show that Marx’s thought had progressed far since 1848. The Declaration of Principles of the S.P.G.B. bears many strong resemblances to the constitution drawn up by Marx for the First International. But in writing for a body like the International Marx could not be entirely himself, and certain parts of the constitution cannot be considered as indicative of Marx's own ideas. About one passage, for example, he is found writing to Engels: "I was compelled to insert into the constitution some phrases about 'rights' and ‘duties’ as well as ‘truth, morality and justice,' but all this is so placed that it is not likely to bring any harm.”

Marx's struggle with Bakunin sprang out of the International, as did his famous monograph, “The Civil War in France,” which was originally written as an address for the International. In 1873 the bureau of the International was shifted to New York. Three years later it had ceased to exist.

Throughout the period of his work on the General Council of the International Marx was continuing his researches and studies. In 1867 he published the first volume of “Capital.” The other two volumes were first published after his death by Engels, who prepared them from the notes Marx left behind. In 1869 Engels retired from business, and returned to London in the following year. This meant easier conditions for Marx: Engels brought not only monetary assistance, but also relieved Marx of a large part of the work to be done for the International. After the transference of the International to New York Marx devoted all his energies to his studies. On these were spent the last ten years of his life.

The Marxian Theories

Marx’s importance in the history of the Labour movement comes from his having discovered first the basic law governing the development of society, and second the essential economic principles underlying production in a particular form of society, the capitalistic form. The first of these is embodied in the “Materialist Conception of History.” which is outlined above in the words of Engels. The corner-stone of the second is Marx’s theory of value, the only economic theory that has succeeded in giving an adequate explanation of the sources of profit in capitalistic production. Both of these theories have been attacked, but it is safe to say that at no time has their validity been more apparent than to-day. A whole school of economic historians has arisen during the last fifty years, re-writing history from the viewpoint provided for them by Marx, although few of them are honest enough to acknowledge his influence. For the workers the importance of the Materialist Conception of History lies in its revelation of the class struggle as the mechanism through the operation of which social changes are produced. Without the guiding principle of the class struggle working-class thought must inevitably flounder about in a morass of reformism. Until the identity of interests of all workers everywhere, as members of the same class, was made apparent by Marx, there was no solid basis on which an international working-class movement could be established. Without such a movement capitalism cannot be overthrown.

Marx’s theory of value made clear the exploitation of the worker, gave it scientific proof and demonstrated its inevitability under capitalism. Here was the final blow to all theories of social reform. Once it was shown that the preventable evils from which the workers suffer are the result of their being numbers of an exploited class in society it followed that only by terminating their exploitation could those evils be abolished. Revolutionary Socialism was born.

The S.P.G.B. and Marx 

It is to preach this that the S.P.G.B. exists. In putting itself forward as the only party worthy of the support of the workers, the S.P.G.B. does so as a Marxist organisation. What do we mean when we describe ourselves as a party of Marxists? In the first place, it does not mean that we claim infallibility for Marx, or accept all he wrote as dogma and true just because he wrote it. But we do claim that Marx, in all his main ideas, was correct and provided explanations of social problems and guidance in the solution of those problems. To the extent that these ideas pass the test of modern experience—and we contend that, fundamentally, they do satisfy such a test —we subscribe to them, but we do so in no blind spirit of hero worship. We appreciate that Marx, like lesser men, was subject to the environment in which he found himself. The body of his thought did not emerge fully formed at the beginning of his career, it developed and grew each year as his researches and experience increased. Inevitably, until Marx had completed his economic studies, his thought was not rounded off, and certain of his earlier ideas are not altogether consistent with those of his mature years. Engels referred to this in his introduction to “Wage Labour and Capital," Engels wrote: —

All his (Marx’s} writings which appeared before the publication of the first part of. his “Critique of Political Economy” differ in some points from those published after 1859, contain expressions and even entire sentences, which from the point of view of his later writings appear rather ambiguous and even untrue.

In other words, where there are contradictions —and they are relatively few—in Marx's teachings it is on the later statement that he must be judged. The particular conditions of his times, the undeveloped nature of capitalism and the struggles to overthrow the relics of the feudal restrictions on capitalist industry, made him an advocate at certain periods of courses of action which, in his later years, he disavowed and which, in any event, are not applicable to modern conditions. For example, Marx’s (and Engels’) ideas on the use of armed force to achieve revolutionary objectives underwent a radical change during his lifetime, and the reasons that led Marx, in 1848, to advocate war with Russia, and later to subscribe to a political programme of immediate demands, including such things as the eight-hour day, are no longer operative: Marx’s example cannot be pleaded in defence of the support given to the war of 1914-18 by the various Labour Parties of the belligerent countries or in justification of reformism. Experience has shown that a programme of immediate demands cannot be used to build up a socialist organisation. In practice immediate demands have soon brought confusion and destroyed the Socialist objective of the parties which adopted them.

Marx and Engels also underestimated capitalism's strength and ability to adjust itself to the demands made upon it. They both thought in the ’fifties that capitalism could not survive its industrial crisis and that its end was imminent.

We dare to mention the shortcomings of Marx even in a commemorative article just because he was a genius. His reputation is big enough to bear the truth. Marx, like Cromwell, would have insisted on being painted “wart and all.’’ Only mediocrity has to be protected from being judged on account of its mistakes. It was Marx himself who said: “Ignorance never helped nor did anybody any good," and ignorance of the development of Marx’s thought can only lead to difficulties in understanding his final ideas. An understanding of these ideas provides a sure and complete key to all modern social and political problems. The S.P.G.B. aims in its propaganda to provide that understanding.

B. S.

The West Indies: What Next? (1962)

Book Review from the March 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

The West Indies and their Future by Daniel Guérin (Dennis Dobson.)

This book is a serious attempt to consider the West Indies history and their future from a left wing viewpoint coloured very strongly by Negro nationalism. Now this is a change from the usual run of travel books and "histories" produced by well-meaning English writers who pass rapidly through the Caribbean on a no doubt pleasant working holiday. But the book's "left wing" angle (the words masses, plutocracy, and reactionary occur frequently) cannot excuse some basic defects.

Guérin states that he visited some of the islands in 1955, but the book was not published until 1961. There have been many constitutional and social changes in the West Indies since 1955: for instance, Guérin makes much of racial prejudice and singles out especially, the French islands and an oilfield in Trinidad. The behaviour of the white inhabitants of the French islands (known as Békés) is no doubt, even now, good for a sound beating from anyone whose ideas are not completely dominated by the doctrines of, say, the Navy League, circa 1910. Martinique and Guadeloupe are still very much French colonial possessions, and the outlook of their békés is probably no different from that of their counterparts in Algeria—small wonder that M. Guérin can enjoy himself at their expense. But to describe the behaviour of the békés as typical of social behaviour generally in the West Indies is like describing the behaviour and outlook of retired generals in Bournemouth and Cheltenham as being typical of the average British citizen. Rather, in the British islands at any rate, racial prejudice nowadays takes the form of Negro versus East Indian, or manifests itself in vague anti-white sentiments.

M. Guérin’s description of the segregation of workers in the Trinidad oilfields into whites ("with enormous material advantages") and coloured ("who must do with a minimal wage") both begs the question and is many years out of date. In the first place, the oil industry is highly technical and, until recently, the West Indies just could not provide men to fill certain skilled positions: hence the expatriates who had to be offered considerable inducements to live and work in the tropics. Secondly, oil companies, wishing to keep in with the Trinidad Government to ensure the continuation of the present, favourable, oil tax, have trained local men for senior posts with the companies. It is now common for coloured workers to occupy bungalows in the senior staff compounds and to rub shoulders with their white colleagues in the senior oilfield clubs on terms of social equality.

M. Guérin discusses some major problems of the West Indian (capitalist) economy—monoculture, the high cost of living, overpopulation, etc.—problems which have been described in greater detail if not with such “progressive" zeal by Parry and Sherlock in A Short History of the West Indies (incidentally, Parry and Sherlock's book, although written from the "establishment" angle, is an entertaining and comprehensive source of knowledge for workers interested in the West Indies).

Immigration
Of course, these problems are mainly problems for the Capitalist class. The really pressing problem facing the West Indian worker (and his fellow-workers in other parts of the world) is not overpopulation, monoculture, high cost of living, etc., but the fact that he is a member of the working class. Needless to say, solving the West Indies' worker's problem by ending his wage-slavery has never featured in the programmes of the Capitalist economists and politicians who have propounded various “solutions" to the peculiar predicament the West Indian section of the Capitalist class is in.

M. Guérin correctly pours scorn on those reformers who attempt to curb the birth-rates in the West Indian territories by programmes of birth-control. Then there is the safety-valve for the pressure of unemployment in the West Indies—emigration. West Indian governments, especially those with high levels of unemployment, have encouraged emigration to the United Kingdom: all other countries virtually prohibit West Indian immigration.

Now that the steady stream of West Indian immigrants is being curbed by United Kingdom legislation, politicians in the West Indies fulminate against the British Government for barring the door to commonwealth citizens on the grounds of their colour. These same politicians conveniently forget that coloured commonwealth citizens from, say, Grenada and St. Vincent are forbidden to enter Trinidad to live and work (so for that matter are citizens of the United Kingdom) as, for example, labourers or typists. The larger West Indian islands have strict immigration laws preventing the smaller islands shipping their unemployed to them

M. Guérin was apparently unable to study ‘the emancipation movements" in British Guiana and Cuba, a pity because an up-to-date “ left-wing” account of recent Caribbean history can hardly be considered complete without reference to Castro's regime. But recent developments in British Guiana are a good example of the wide difference between what a “left-wing" politician often says and what he does. Dr. Cheddi Jagan, the Chief Minister of British Guiana, has been long known as the leftist of left wing, and his frank admiration of Soviet Russia and Castro has been repudiated by other West Indian politicians, such as Trinidad's Dr. Eric Williams. Dr. Jagan hinted at nationalising industries in British Guiana, which alarmed business organisations with capital invested in British Guiana and potential investors. To prevent withdrawal of capital, and subsequent unemployment. Dr. Jagan was recently obliged to state that he had no intention of nationalising any industries. During 1961 Dr. Jagan went on a begging tour of the United States and Canada in search of substantial loans to bolster his country's economy and prevent the present level of unemployment getting any worse.

And what of the future? Here. M. Guérin becomes very pessimistic; one of the reasons for his pessimism is, without doubt, that most of the diverse peoples living in the West Indies have no real sense of "belonging," from a class and a purely patriotic point of view.

Go to any village in the Yorkshire dales: the people living in that village are ordinary working folk, but what is bound to strike the visitor most forcibly is the atmosphere of "belonging." The visitor will be a "foreigner" even if he has only come from Bradford, a few miles away, and the bearing, conversation, and relationships of the villagers will make it abundantly clear that they and their forebears have lived in the district for centuries; that they belong.

Not so in the West Indies. First, there is the barrier to common communication and understanding erected by the different languages spoken. Then there is the formidable barrier of the Caribbean Sea which separates and insulates the scattered islands. The Negroes, plucked from tribal life in Africa in the not-so-distant past, strive to acquire the manners, religion, and political and social institutions of their former European masters. The East Indians cling to religious and social customs based on centuries of village life in India. The Chinese, on the whole, remain aloof. British expatriates tend to look upon their West Indian existence as a period of purgatory before their return to a wealthy retirement in the mother country.

Social Classes

Colonial education programmes have ignored teaching any ideas of a “unified'' West Indies to past generations; as M. Guérin says: “. . . . in school the West Indian child is given a detailed account of the institutions and history of the faraway mother country, but his teachers refrain from talking to him about the Antilles and avoid stimulating any untoward notions of regional solidarity. It is no wonder that the feeling of Caribbean unity (similar, for example, to that which binds together Jews or Arabs, no matter where they live in the world) has been so slow to take root in the popular consciousness." It must be added that, again, M. Guérin is rather out of date as far as the British islands are concerned at any rate. Popularly elected governments have introduced history curricula in schools with a pronounced nationalist rather than colonialist bias.

Following “emancipation,” three distinct social classes emerged in West Indian society: the white aristocracy, the free person of colour, and the black ex-slave (the hewer of wood and drawer of water). Since then, although a Socialist could differentiate between workers and Capitalists (whatever their complexion), a non-Socialist West Indian has used, and continues to use, different criteria: colour of skin, shape of nose, colour of eyes, and even degree of kinkiness of hair. A Socialist would dismiss these apparent trivia as hangovers from colonial rule, but they have been part of the West Indian social consciousness since the times of slavery and are alive today. For instance in Trinidad it is considered a social advantage to marry a person with lighter skin than your own. For a person with light skin to marry someone with black skin, a negroid nose, and kinky (“bad") hair is considered a social degradation. M. Guérin quotes an English writer who accuses the Jamaican of knowing “less about the people than the English bourgeosie about its proletariat . . .  No one in the West Indies talks so glibly of the 'lazy' black as his coloured brother.”

Small wonder that sects have arisen in the West Indies, comprising people (usually of African origin and of the poorest section of the working class) whose creed is a semi-religious determination to leave the West Indies and return to some never-never land in Africa; such a sect are the bearded Rastafarians in Jamaica, who demand nothing of the island of their birth but the right to return to Africa, to the “King of Kings"—Haile Selassie.

This feeling of “non-belonging" either causes West Indian workers to opt out (as the Rastafarians do) or to form tight little racialist/nationalist groups. In neither case are they encouraging material for politicians advocating a Federation of the West Indies, or even national unity in territories like Trinidad and British Guiana, where Negro-versus-East Indian racial tensions seem to be as strong as ever. Nor, for that matter, are they likely to be sympathetic to Socialists endeavouring to inculcate ideas of the identity of interests of workers in the various territories of the West Indies with those of their fellow-workers in the rest of the world.

M. Guérin hopes for one large confederation of all the Caribbean islands and their population of 15 million people, including a Caribbean customs union. This, he claims, would relieve some islands from the dangers inherent in their monoculture, it would allow rationalisation of production and marketing of commodities, it would lend weight to the confederation’s bargaining power, it would permit the confederation to finance and plan economic development, and it would reduce the present heavy cost of administrative, customs, fiscal, police, and technical organisations. It is hardly necessary to observe that these “benefits” of confederation are of interest only to the rising West Indian Capitalist class.

Closer Identity

With the formation of the European Common Market and the regionalisation of trade in other parts of the world in mind, it is tempting to forecast the formation of a similar Caribbean common market, with trade and currency probably tied to the Americas rather than to Europe. This might mean closer identity of the different groups of workers with one another, easier means of communication, and more effective trade-union organisation.

M. Guérin ends his book on, for him, a pessimistic note: “The West Indian Confederation has slight chance of being born within the framework of the present capitalist and colonialist society.”

The truth is that M. Guérin is no Socialist and therefore mistakes Negro nationalist movements for Socialist parties, advocates “freedom” from colonial powers and, like so many “progressives” is almost paranoiac about “Yankee imperialism.”

Guérin appears to support the affirmation of the Caribbean Labour Congress in 1945 which was that “there is no hope for the West Indies unless they become a Socialist Commonwealth.” Unfortunately, the Socialist commonwealth envisaged by Guérin is no doubt a nationalist grouping of the West Indian islands under a “progressive” government on the lines of the British Labour Government.

If that is the kind of future M. Guérin has in mind for West Indian workers, there are ample grounds for pessimism. Even if confederation is achieved, even if a customs union is established, even if the whole of the West Indies becomes one large politico-economic bloc, the West Indian worker will still have to face the problems of working-class life under Capitalism; problems intensified by the uncertainty of the world market’s fickle demands for the staple commodities of the West Indies. At the time of writing, workers in Trinidad’s oilfields (considered to be reasonably safe places of employment) are being laid off because the world demand for oil is rapidly being satisfied.

"Native," popularly elected, politicians are powerless to influence the trends of the world's markets and the policies of the dominant Capitalist powers, however much they may pretend to their followers that they can. During the Second World War, the Jamaican banana industry was almost ruined, with severe unemployment among the banana-plantation workers, because the export of bananas to the United Kingdom was stopped. Similarly, there is today much hardship among the sugar workers in Cuba because, as a form of retaliation against the Castro regime, the Kennedy administration has cancelled the Cuban import quota of sugar to the United States.

As the crises of Capitalism intensify, it is a sure thing that the West Indian workers will as in the past, be well in the vanguard for receiving any blows that are being handed out in the form of unemployment, reduced wages, and so on.

After so much pessimism it would be fitting, in these closing passages, to report that there was support for the world Socialist parties among West Indian workers. Unfortunately, such is not the case: most politically-minded workers support nationalist parties with programmes which even the Conservative Party of twenty years ago might consider rather reactionary.

We have tried to show how the rapacious growth of Capitalism in the West Indies has drawn Negro slaves from Africa, indentured labourers from India, Madeira, and England, free labourers from Europe, and has left them in an alien, uncertain land, without roots, without strong ties, and with no sense of " belonging."

Rebellion against European exploiters produced native leaders who eventually assumed political control, but, as with other "ex-colonial" territories, the workers remain a subject class, at the mercy of their employers and changes in the world’s markets' demands for such commodities as sugar, and bananas, whether they live as citizens of a single island, citizens of a federation of British islands, or citizens of a Confederation of all the West Indian islands.

But Capitalism has forced into existence well-organised trade unions, it has made communication including air travel between the territories of the West Indies simple and reasonably cheap, and it has made West Indian workers think in terms of politics for their future. Therefore, although there is apparently little evidence. at present, of any growth of Socialist knowledge among West Indian workers, the ground into which Socialist ideas may be sown is being well prepared.

Michael La Touche

The Socialist Party of New Zealand (1953)

From the March 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

Report of a debate on the motion “That the working class should support the S.P.N.Z. rather than the N.Z.C.P.”, held at the Unity Centre, Cuba Street, Wellington, July 27th, 1952.

Com. R. H. Everson opened the debate by stating, first, it was necessary to give a brief outline of the S.P.N.Z.s case which differed, fundamentally, from the position taken up by every other political party, including the C.P. The S.P.N.Z, took the attitude that it was necessary for the working class to understand the world it lived in; the working class was faced with the problems of poverty, insecurity, and war, and the working class could not remove these problems until it understood the cause of them. Unfortunately, at the present time, the overwhelming majority of the workers did not understand the system of society in which they lived, and in which they were exploited.

Under capitalism, wealth took the form of commodities, articles which are produced solely for sale on a market with a view to profit The means of producing wealth—the land, factories, railways, etc., were owned by a small minority of the population, the capitalist class. The working class owned none of the means of production and consequently, was forced to work for those who do own. The worker, in order to live, had to sell the only commodity which he possessed—his power to labour. However, the commodity labour-power had a peculiar characteristic not possessed by any other commodity—it could produce a value greater than its own. That value which was produced by the working class, over and above what it was paid in the form of wages, was appropriated by the capitalist class and distributed in the form of rent, interest and profit.

Because the working class was tied to the wages system, it received only the value of its labour-power, which was determined by what was required to maintain it as an efficient working class and to reproduce the next generation of wage-slaves. Hence, the worker’s lot was one of poverty amidst plenty. Moreover, the worker was only employed as long as the capitalist could make a profit from his employment. If there was no profit, there was no production, and the worker was out of a job. In order to realise the profits on the wealth produced by the workers, the capitalist class was brought into conflict with the capitalist class in other parts of the world and periodically, therefore, the capitalist world was plunged into war.

The only solution to these problems lay in the abolition of their cause, which was the class ownership of the means of life. Here Com. Everson defined Socialism as being a system of society based upon the Common ownership and democratic control of the means of producing and distributing wealth by and in the interests of the whole of society. This would enable society to produce things solely for use and thus, remove the exploitation of the working class and the social problems which flowed from that state of affairs. Socialism could only be introduced when the working class understood and wanted it. They would act upon their understanding by, first, gaining a majority in Parliament. There had been people, including the so-called Communists, who had denounced Parliament as useless. However, Parliament controlled the forces of repression, and any alternative action in defiance of the capitalist control of the armed forces was suicidal and doomed to failure. Socialists, in Parliament , would be controlled by a socialist working class which knew what it wanted and how to get it. When the working class understood its position in society, it had no need for leaders, and could not be misled or betrayed.

Until capitalism was removed the working class could not solve its problems—and where the wages system existed, capitalism existed. This applied equally to Russia as to the rest of the world. Where ail the features of capitalism existed, as in Russia, so did all its evil effects.

Mrs. Birchfield, for the C.P., began by claiming that the S.P.N.Z. was a “Hotch-Potch” of Social- Democracy and Anarchism. The S.P. did not look at the world realistically. It failed to appreciate the most important fact in the world today, viz; that the world was divided into two camps; on the one hand, the world of Socialism, the Soviet Union, the great Chinese peoples’ republic, and the new democracies of Eastern Europe and, on the other hand, the world of imperialism led by capitalist America.

The most important task of the working class today was the preservation of Peace since peace was in the best interests of the working class. The workers must fight for peace and must continue their unrelenting struggle against those who are for war. We must get out of Korea. Step up the demand against the imperialists that all troops should be withdrawn from Korea.

We must mobilise the peace-loving peoples throughout the world. If they are organised, they are stronger than the forces of the imperialists and warmongers. What would the S.P. say to the Korean peoples? It would tell them that they must all become Socialists, before they can have peace.

Then Mrs. Birchfield quoted from Marx to show that Marx, like the C.P., believed in leadership. The C.P. was the leader of the working class, and said that Socialists are made in the process of building Socialism. The S.P. on the other hand, which claimed to be a revolutionary party, wanted Socialism through the ballot box. What would the ruling class do if it felt its position endangered?—would it allow the Socialists to build-up a majority in Parliament and in the country?—No, the ruling class would not surrender its wealth tamely—look what happened in Spain.

The S.P. believed that the class struggle is only a political struggle; it had no trade union policy. That was not to say that its individual members did not join the unions—they did, and some of them have played an honourable part in trade union struggles—but the Party as such, had no attitude towards the trade unions. It did not see that the reforms won are a means to an end. Neither did the S.P. see that the class struggle began where the worker was exploited, i.e., at the point of production. The bitter struggles of the workers, on the industrial field, taught the worker the nature of the State. The C.P. led the worker in this struggle. The S.P. said that the U.S.S.R. was imperialist. Mr. Everson should go to the Soviet Union in a delegation and see the Soviet system in operation. The C.P. supported the idea of these delegations, so that the workers could learn the truth and counter the lies of the reactionaries about the Soviet Union.

This concluded the opening speeches of the two speakers, after which the chairman allowed questions and discussion from the floor. Members of the audience were limited to two minutes each. At the end of half an hour, the Chairman called upon the two speakers to wind-up the debate for five minutes each.

Going underground (1988)

From the March 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the time of writing, the "public" inquiry into the King's Cross fire in which 31 people were killed is in progress. Already there have been astonishing revelations about poor safety standards, and the hazards created by limited cleaning and maintenance budgets. The inquiry is likely to generate reams of waffle, with much soul-searching and mutual recriminations. There will be weighty statements about neglect, responsibility and human failings.

What the final report is unlikely to admit, however, is that these deaths, like so many others, were caused by money, or rather the lack of it. In the case of the Zeebrugge disaster and many other recent "accidents", we have been able to show using the publicly available evidence, that the cause was economic. King's Cross was no exception. The profit system constantly channels resources away from real human needs and into speculative investment and capital accumulation. It is only after a disaster has happened and an "unacceptable" number of lives have been lost, that the possibility of allocating slightly more resources to public safety is considered.

We have already pointed out, in a previous issue, how some time ago, money intended for replacing the wooden escalator at the heart of the fire had been diverted into funding murals and other decorations intended to improve the image and profitability of London Regional Transport as a trading enterprise. That wooden escalator, which those who know King's Cross will be only too familiar with, was about fifty years old. It dated from an entirely different period in technological terms. Was there an automatic fire sprinkler system throughout the station? No. Was there a special alarm system, which might respond to smoke? No. The fact is. even some of the modest household devices which the moderately well-off might be able to afford are absent when they have to be funded by the state.

Why is this? Because the capitalist employers who ultimately finance the state have, as their priority, the accumulation of capital. Despite recent claims in a Conservative Party Political Broadcast that "we" pay £700 to the NHS every second, we know that PAYE is just another con to make us feel we have a stake in government. In fact, with or without tax. as workers our living standards are constantly forced to the minimum by the profit priority. Public safety is also often of low priority. We don't need a "public inquiry" to tell us that King’s Cross station, like so many others, is dirty and dangerous, with only meagre safety procedures.

LRT is in the process of putting cleaning and other maintenance duties out to tender by private companies, whose budgets and treatment of their workers are even more penny-pinching than LRT was. And some of the recent priority areas of expenditure on the Underground and Buses (which are continuing as priorities, despite the fire) show an utter contempt for human life which should earn the LRT management a medal as upholders of the capitalist mentality. Expensive video cameras are being installed on London buses to prevent vandalism. Nearly one million pounds is being spent every year on cleaning "graffiti" from tube trains, much of which in recent years has been based on New York "street art" and is quite eye-catching. But such spontaneous marks on the environment are seen as offensive, and are wiped out in favour of the imposed corporate design. It is also an example of the warped priorities we are referring to: the moral guardians who are so offended by rude words (no, they don't mean "war" or "poverty") are served by teams of special cleaners, whilst the ancient debris which fuelled the fire under the escalator was left to rot. And perhaps most dramatically of all, millions of pounds are currently being spent installing new high-tech ticket machines at every station. which are said to be more cost-effective. This will allow a massive redundancy programme of 900 ticket office staff, which is already under way. In addition new barriers (which we will have more to say about below) are being installed which also cause ticket collectors to be made redundant. Together with the recent introduction of "one-man" trains on almost every line, this is all part of the cost-cutting exercise which is the inevitable obsession of the capitalist system. The inquiry might touch on the possibility that if trains had still had a second operator the death-toll might have been reduced, but will it explore the reasons behind the cost-cutting obsession?

Leaving to one side these overwhelmingly economic factors, what about the supposed problem of callous neglect? It is true that early reports of smoke appear to have been neglected by staff, and no doubt the actions of these LRT workers will be held up to public scrutiny. Those who prefer not to see social problems for what they are will find here the perfect victims for individual blame. But it is hardly surprising that workers under pressure will sometimes act "negligently". Quite apart from the long hours, low pay and dirty conditions which all but destroy any enthusiasm or job satisfaction, the hierarchical system of management within such an institution teaches those within it that they must not step out of their assigned area, or act with creative initiative. And in addition to the weighty bureaucracy (which has always been associated with the railways in particular), there is the ethic of self-interest, the idea of the competitive rat-race which the government does so much to promote. Even without their propaganda efforts, an economic system exists throughout the world today which teaches people from birth that in order to fit in with things as they are, they must avoid too much humane caring for others, too much soppy sentimental sensitivity, otherwise they will be "done down". And then the same hypocrites who applaud the vicious self-interest of the "business world" of enterprise will try to pin the blame on the "uncaring" workers at King's Cross station that fateful day.

This brings us finally to one or two of the more bizarre escapades which have also emerged lately from the enterprising young whizz-kids in charge of London Underground. On 31 January the Observer exposed plans being urgently pursued by Chris Bennett, London Underground's industrial relations manager, to sell off the less profitable underground stations which will be run instead by commercial interests or even voluntary groups. By franchising off sections of the network to commercial operators, they will cut staff still further and approach their target of becoming a profitable enterprise with no government support whatsoever. Where private buyers cannot be found, "responsibility for stations may be offloaded to voluntary groups, such as Neighbourhood Watch schemes, or Underground enthusiasts". Let us hope that these Underground enthusiasts are also handy with a fire extinguisher. It is thought that young people on YTS schemes could also "be pressed into service". As a possible pilot area for the scheme, they have identified the line from Epping to Ongar. which has been kept open recently only because of pressure from residents (how cheeky they are to expect to have stations where they live!).

The most vivid example of profit's tyranny comes in the shape of the new barriers referred to above. They are ugly, shoulder-high constructions, designed as the ultimate obstacle to the dreaded fare-dodgers, those people who dare to go on "our” public railways without paying. The installation of these barriers will cause 1,200 ticket collector redundancies. LRT hope. The Fire Brigades Union has strongly opposed the barriers, with Mike Fordham. FBU Deputy General Secretary stating that "People will die somewhere at some point because of these barriers" (London Evening Standard, 11 December 1987). The NUR has also pointed out that if such barriers had been at King s Cross on the night of the fire, "they would undoubtedly have produced more deaths that night". But LRT push on regardless. A spokesman was quoted as saying that the King's Cross inquiry was "irrelevant and peripheral" to the installation programme. "We see no reason to delay". It seems, moreover, that these prize idiots are aspiring to comedy and farce as well as tragedy. Special panic buttons are to be fitted to the hideous barriers, to allow passengers to unlock the gates in an emergency. But London Underground has admitted that, to deter vandals and fare-dodgers. their location would be "kept secret for security reasons"! (London Evening Standard, 11 December 1987).

The FBU are right: there will be more deaths. And the sickest thing of all is that we all know there will be more deaths, more "disasters" and more theatrical "inquiries". And they will continue until we alter the basis of society, and therefore its priorities.

Clifford Slapper

The god of the killers (2007)

From the March 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

When in comes to condoning violence it’s a case of the christian kettle and the muslim pot

Those Muslims who plant car bombs and turn their bodies into human bombs and take the lives of innocent people are not simply proselytising. Of course they believe that Allah will be pleased and rewarding but their action is not simply a religious gesture; it is intended as a political act aimed at a political end - though, of course, Allah‘s approval of their action makes it a sound investment in their perceived ‘hereafter’.

Recently the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, who is apparently second in command, so to speak, of the Anglican Church speculated on the morality of Muslims who do this sort of thing. In fact he asked what conception these people had of their God. It is an excellent question and it implies that the Archbishop wonders how any rational individual could conceive of a good God who would endorse the slaughter of innocent people. That is precisely the sort of question that atheists frequently pose when told that the central purpose in life is to please an omnipotent being, thing or force with the power but not the will to frustrate the events that cause so much grief and pain to us mere human beings.

But the Archbishop’s interest in the Muslim killer’s perception of God would seem to imply a certain moral selectivity on his part; indeed, given the facts, it would seem that what troubles him about suicide bombers, for example, is not the consequences of their action but the means they employ in the performance of their evil deeds.

The United States, Britain and the other major nations of world capitalism spend some 900 billion dollars annually on maintaining armed forces whose purpose is the defence or expansion of the interests of their national capitalist class. Much of this fantastic wealth is devoted to the maintenance and development of aircraft and missiles destined to attack cities and, as we know from experience, kill vast numbers of completely innocent people. The grim total of those innocents murdered by terrorists who plant bombs or use their persons to deliver death over the last century is a very tiny fraction of the innocents murdered by massive sophisticated aerial devices, and it is a fair assumption that many if not most of the flying state killers profess one or other of the Christian faiths.

The Archbishop of York is simply articulating the selective attitude of the churches to the killing business. In fact by confining his speculation to the terrorist’s conception of God he is effectively restricting his condemnation of the killing of innocent people to suicide bombers, car bombers or those who plant bombs as opposed to those who drop massive bombs.

This is not meant to imply that the numbers slaughtered determines the measure of guilt. Numbers do not influence the principle and both legal and illegal military operations don’t confine their anti-human activates within certain ‘morally’ defined limits. Of course, church leaders, like military leaders, deplore war and killing but they make it acceptable by claiming it as an inevitable consequence of what they call the weakness of our ‘human nature’ - which, peculiarly, the ‘human nature’ of socialists seems to lack.

It would be a fairly safe bet that Dr Sentamu’s academic distinction is theology especially Christian theology - effectively, interpreting ancient religious texts to suit the mores of an intellectually superior society. He must at least have read the Bible but surprisingly, while wondering at the barbaric licence a Muslim killer finds in the Koran, he fails to acknowledge the appalling savagery endorsed in the Old Testament by his own God.

Does he, for example, accept that people who break the Sabbath or who are disobedient to their parents or commit adultery should be stoned to death or that the ‘chosen people’ of the Lord should slaughter their enemies? Does he accept the modern Christian view that the slaughter of anonymous innocents can legitimately constitute a ‘just war’ or that the state can set aside the Fifth Commandment?

Socialists can empathise with the Archbishop’s puzzlement at a Muslim killer’s perception of Allah and the fact that he is confused by it manifests what is good in the human condition. Doubtless that goodness would be outraged by the brutal endorsements of the God he believes in but that is part of the complexity of religious belief – no stranger, indeed, than the incantations and prayers of humans supposedly wicked in their nature imploring the compassion of an all-merciful god.

The Archbishop, to his credit, raised a more profane issue when he roundly condemned the current Labour government for its encroaching infringement of civil liberties. As an native of Uganda he probably experienced the dictatorship of Idi Amin and like anyone who values the limited liberties of political democracy he expressed his grave concerns at the growing authoritarianism of the Blair government. Indeed, when you think about it, it might lead you to wonder how the publicly religious Tony Blair conceives of his God.

Richard Montague

Rubbish about Royalty (1975)

From the March 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the more risible sights of capitalism is when its politicians and journalists think they must appear to be down on unfair stakes. The crisis does it, of course. Here is the Man in the Street, and they have nothing to offer him but unemployment, cuts, shortages and rising prices; and there are the Very Rich, rolling in luxury as ever. In ordinary times the vulgar opulence is the fun of the fair and Our National Heritage, but in times like these it is an inconvenience. So out come the false noses and falsetto imitations, and across the stage they go.

On this occasion it centres on royalty. The Queen has a private income which is secret but estimated (The Guardian London Letter, 28th January) to be £300,000 a year. From the Government she gets £980,000 a year, and on 12th February the Prime Minister almost brought apoplexy on some Labour MPs by announcing that she wanted another £270,000 and proposing to give it to her. A tribe of her relatives and hangers-on exist on the Civil List of government allowances. Prince Charles has £105,000 a year, Princess Anne £35,000, and the young princes Andrew and Edward £20,000 each. The Sunday Mirror on 26th January told us about the Queen’s Hereditary Champion, the Master of the Horse, the Keeper of the Swans and:

Enough Brigadiers, Admirals and Air Marshals, equerries to mount a blitzkreig; a smothering of Mistresses of the Robes, Ladies of the Bedchamber — ho! ho! — Ushers with, and without, Sword, Sergeants at Arms, Constables, clergy with powers of bell, book and candle — apothecaries with vials of goodness knows what!

There are three “official” royal residences besides Buckingham Palace: Windsor Castle, Balmoral and

Sandringham House. (The last, according to the London Evening News on 6th February, has 274 rooms.) In addition there are the racehorses and limousines and the Royal Yacht, which was attacked scathingly in The Sun on 27th January:

She sails endlessly round the world at a cost of £7,700 a week, stopping off occasionally to pick up this or that royal couple for a dream honeymoon . . . When her royal hull was noticed to be less than gleaming, 80 gallons of exclusive royal blue paint were flown from Portsmouth to New Zealand by commercial jet at a cost to the public of £2,180 . . . Her fuel bill, alone, makes nonsense of the oil crisis. While British motorists are confined to 50 mph to conserve the odd gallon. Britannia bums her way through a ton of oil every seven miles.

Veblen with his theory of “conspicuous wasteful consumption” as the apotheosis of class societies would have loved that. It sounds like the crazy pomp of a barbarian super-chieftain; and that is its genealogy.

However, the details are no more offensive than the criticisms of them now being made for public consumption. Royalty has to be surrounded by servility. In R.H.S. Crossman’s diaries published in the Sunday Times, the former Labour minister described the ritual of induction to the Privy Council:

. . . the “fantastic ritual” of rehearsals. He recalled that for over an hour “16 grown men” were taught to stand, kneel on a cushion, raise the right hand holding the Bible and advance three paces to kiss the Queen’s hand.
Of the Queen, Mr. Crossman wrote: “In our ten minutes she talked, as I am told she always does, about her corgies. Two fat corgies, roughly the same colour as the carpet, were lying at her feet. She remarked how often people fell over the dogs . . .

It may all be a printing error, of course. Perhaps it was some corgi dogs which were being trained to sit up and beg and lick their mistress’s hand, and a couple of putty-coloured Labour MPs that were lying on the carpet. But, assuming the scarcely-believable to be true, there is something Crossman’s diaries do not tell us. If it was so pathetically degrading, why was he in it?

There are also the comic sop-gestures which if they were imitated in everyday life would not deceive a child, but are intended to persuade the working class of something or other. The Evening News big headline on 6th February was: The Queen tightens her belt. What was the dour, austere step taken? A plan for improvements at Sandringham House, which was to have cost £250,000, has been postponed as “inappropriate when many face difficulties.” The Queen will keep the money in her pocket instead. Noblesse oblige.

The name which has become well known for attacking royalty is the Labour MP William Hamilton. That is a piece of good luck for the journalists and commentators. Hamilton is an earnestly nonentity; so the press can have the luxury of criticizing the extravagance and forelock-touching and the secrecy over the Queen’s wealth, and at the same time disparaging Hamilton. He is reported in various papers as saying he does not want actually to abolish royalty.

The object of my book is not to destroy the Monarchy.

(News of the World) 

Sack the lot except the Queen, her husband and Charles. Pay them properly taxed salaries and take over the two Duchies.

(Guardian)

Does it matter? Hardly at all. Hamilton gave his case away in a TV interview on 31st January. Explaining the origin of his hostility to royalty, he recalled his father’s wage as a miner between the wars — £2 a week — and went on: “And it is still the same today, there are the rich and the poor.” Yes, it is. One has to ask if he seriously thinks, then, that putting down the royals would alter it? And, if this is still the position after the voluminous Labour reforms for which he has worked, why has he not thought of working for Socialism instead?

But there is an opposite fallacy which should be mentioned too. It is the idea that a surge of resentment of the sheer plutocracy the Queen represents in an indication that the working class are up in arms against the system. Unfortunately, no. The fact is that royalty’s popularity has always had ups and downs. Indeed, it was never widely popular until the nineteen-thirties, when a number of factors turned feelings in its favour. In particular, the British monarch was practically the only European head of state whose speeches were not warlike harangues (the reason being that he had and has no powers in that direction).

The same sentiment probably remains today, despite the criticism: the alternative to monarchy could be a dictator, or a Nixon. Looked at from another point of view, this brings us to the truth. Are things any different for the working class in the countries where they have no monarchy? Manifestly they are not. The class division of which royalty is a tiny, if spectacularly absurd, part exists just the same. The great majority spend their lives struggling to make wage-labour’s ends meet, and other people with other titles lap up the fat of the land.

One other reason why many of the working class don’t mind royalty too much is that it gives them pageantry and a show. That should not be dismissed. We all need colour and variety in life: and the fact that large numbers of people get them from a royal wedding every few years and from distantly viewing other splendours is a testimony to the meanness of life under capitalism — another kind of poverty. Establishing Socialism does not mean simply getting rid of parasites; it is the opening of the doors to living.

Robert Barltrop

Guevarian Ideology (2005)

Book Review from the March 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Che Guevara Reader: Writings on Politics and Revolution. Edited by David Deutschmann. Ocean Press. £15.95  

The reader comprises speeches and articles that trace the development and implementation of Guevara’s theories from 1956 to a time shortly before his death in October 1967. The book falls into four sections covering the period prior to the Cuban Revolution, Guevara’s work in the Cuban government, international issues and selected letters.

Guevara’s ideology combined romanticism with elitism. He passionately believed that an enlightened conspiratorial minority could establish ‘socialism’ and use political power to free the ideas of the uneducated masses – a theory where mass political consciousness emerges after a revolution initiated by a small minority or vanguard. In this struggle, the vanguard is the “the catalysing agent that create[d] the subjective conditions necessary for victory” as well as the “generator of revolutionary consciousness.”

Guevara was essentially a guerrilla leader engaged in a war of national liberation. He believed that only violent revolution, waged in the countryside, could end colonial exploitation and introduce ‘socialism’ into Latin America. Urban areas were to remain essentially passive being vulnerable to betrayal and superior military force. The basis of this struggle was the peasantry, but his attitude is ambivalent, fearing that peasant ignorance, isolation and hunger for land makes them unreliable and in need of direction from “revolutionary intellectuals.”

In the second section on the ‘Cuba Years 1959-65’, we gain an insight into the difficulties of ‘Democratic Centralism’ and the organisation of the state-run capitalism that followed the Cuban insurrection. The economy is based on commodity production where imports are dependent on maximising exports at competitive market prices. As with the rest of Latin America the central problem is the “one crop economy,” with Cuba “slaves to sugarcane.” His speeches call for diversification and increased output prompting the introduction of ‘emulation,’ involving setting factory and individual output targets to maximise industrial output. His theories were greatly influenced by Lenin, who is quoted throughout his works. In the article entitled, ‘On the Budgetary Finance System’ Guevara uses a quotation from Lenin in an attempt to explain how state capitalism is a step towards an eventual ‘socialist’ society, necessitating the introduction of capitalist accounting methods, price setting, money, factory profit, bonuses and formal contracts with monetary penalties.

But increasing output means greater incentives and this conflicts with Guevara’s image of ‘socialist morality’ where work and achieving output targets is the workers moral obligation, his “social duty.” Cuba, he claims, is ‘on the road’ to ‘socialism’ while the transition to ‘communism’ a distant vision in the future. At the same time he is compelled to accept that trading with world capitalism necessarily imposed severe limitations on his action, in short acknowledging that the economic conditions dictate the country’s direction. National defence, nationalisation, industrialisation, agrarian reform and the development of foreign trade, particularly with Russia, are all urgent issues that have to be addressed if Cuba is to survive.

In the years following the Cuban Revolution his speeches impart increasing frustration as the vanguard attempts to impose ‘socialism’ on the ignorant masses that neither understood nor wanted it. In passionate speeches to students, cadres and trade unionists he repeatedly stresses the need for education to strive for the ‘socialist ideal’ and eradicate the bad habits from the “previous epoch.”

The third part of the book is a collection of Guevara’s speeches and articles on international issues. Not unexpectedly, the rhetoric is anti-Americanism and anti-colonialist and the message to the people of Latin America is to follow Cuba’s example and create “many Vietnams” to expel US imperialism and achieve economic independence. Other speeches demand fairness in trade and an end to dumping, price fixing, foreign debt and foreign bases – in fact all the things you might expect from a leader struggling to administer capitalism in an underdeveloped country surrounded by a hostile world.

A book of limited historical interest carrying a bankrupt anachronistic prescription for violent revolution to be orchestrated by a vanguard and leading inevitably to state-controlled capitalism.

Steve Trott

Bordiga and the First World War (2017)

From the March 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

The concluding article on the political ideas of Amadeo Bordiga up to 1917

In an article in Avanti, the newspaper of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), in August 1914 Bordiga identified as a dangerous development 'a sympathetic feeling for the Triple Entente [the alliance between Britain, France and Russia], not only justifying, but praising the attitude of the French socialists, to support that Italian socialists should hasten to fight in defence of France’. This was to become the position of Mussolini, at that point editor of Avanti.

For Bordiga, the concept of ‘fatherland’ was by definition anti-socialist and a defensive war on its behalf inconceivable. In September, in an article in Il Socialista on ‘Avanti and the war’, he addressed Mussolini's attitude openly, criticising the ambiguity of the line he had taken on the war in the party’s newspaper.

The ‘Manifesto against the War’ by the leadership and the parliamentary group of the party was published soon after, of which Mussolini claimed authorship. However, a few days later Mussolini’s famous article on 'active and operative neutrality' appeared in Avanti and which led the party to dismiss him as editor. Bordiga responded to Mussolini’s article with an editorial in Il Socialista entitled 'For an active and operative antimilitarism'. In it he wrote of the ambiguity of the concept of ‘neutrality’:

'The neutrality concept has for subject not socialists, but the State. We want the State to remain neutral with regard to the war, absolutely, until the end, whatever happens. In order to achieve this we act upon the State, against it, in the field and with the means of the class struggle. So we do not want to disarm. Our war is a permanent war.'

When Mussolini then started to attack the PSI, Bordiga, writing in Il Socialista, launched an appeal to boycott him. Finally, in December 1914 Mussolini's ‘socialist’ story came to an end. Because of his continuous attacks on the PSI he was expelled from the party. Bordiga reported this news in Il Socialista with satisfaction, and stressed that 'convictions against traitors are without appeal’.

Another series of his articles appeared in Avanguardia entitled 'Socialism of yesterday before the war of today', which give us some interesting insights into his thinking:

'The war . . .  is certainly a destruction of capital, but the bourgeoisie as a class cares more for the preservation of the juridical relations which allow it to live off the work of the large majority than for the material possession of capital. Those relations, basic in every nation, consist of the right to monopolise the means of labour, which in turn are alsothe product of the work of the proletarian class. Thus for the proletariat the war is disastrous from all points of view while for the bourgeoisie it is a damage to material wealth, but it preserves and strengthens the potential relations for rebuilding such wealth, because it causes the class struggle to fade and turns it into national glorification.’

Modern states, he insisted, with their ‘democratic regimes’, maintain in economic slavery the working class who can be mobilized in 24 hours for the war front. For this reason, he noted, a revolutionary uprising will always have more chance of success in time of peace than on the eve of a war.

Bordiga, who still had some faith in the Second International, identified the real failure of socialism in the support of the socialist parties of France and Germany for the war. He argued that the leaders of those parties often due to their ‘superior culture’ (i.e. bourgeois culture) had too many links with bourgeois ideologies and felt more represented by ‘the nation’ than by socialism. So socialism must 'replace on a more solid basis antimilitarist action and review in a more revolutionary sense its parliamentary action’.

On the national question, Bordiga developed the notion that wars now were carried out by states and not by nations. He therefore distinguished wars of national unification from imperialist wars and pointed to the justification, still used today, about spreading democracy at the point of a bayonet.According to Bordiga, this was obviously a bourgeois excuse. He published an article on the principle of nationality in Avanti in January 1915. His position on this is interesting if compared with the discussion on it between Luxemburg and Lenin, of which Bordiga was unaware at the time. He developed his own independent ideas on the national question, in which he distinguished wars of national unification (which he was prepared to support) from imperialist wars. According to him, cultural identity did not match the concept that the bourgeois state had of the 'nation'. The state cared about economic interests not about cultural identity.

He went on to state, in clear contrast to the left reformists:

'Pacifism? No. We are advocates of violence. We are admirers of the conscious violence of those who rise up against the oppression of the strongest, admirers of the anonymous violence of the masses, which revolts for freedom… But legal violence, official, that the authorities are free to use in a disciplined way, … that violence… is disgusting and repugnant.'

Several time he cited Karl Liebknecht for his anti-militarism and his speech in the Reichstag on 2 December 1914, opposing the war and the approval given by the German Social Democrats to war credits. Bordiga explicitly linked his own antimilitarism to that of Karl Liebknecht, the Social Democratic members of the Russian Duma, the Serbian Socialist Party, the British Independent Labour Party (probably referring to an article by J. Bruce Glasier in Avanti in which he mentioned Keir Hardie’s position inthe Labour Party) and the anarchist Sébastien Faure in France. This list shows that he was not taking into account the other policies of these figures, only their antimilitarism.

On the Russian revolution, we limit ourselves to Bordiga’s writings in 1917. This is because post-Lenin his political views changed significantly. In 1917 Bordiga wrote a series of articles in Avanguardia entitled 'The Russian revolution in a socialist interpretation'. He saw the Russian revolution as a phenomenon that has already lasted fifty years. In contrast to Antonio Gramsci, who while supporting the revolution without reservation saw in it a contradiction with Marxian thought, Bordiga commented that, while it might seem that 'the most rigorous application of the lines of the Marxian system' was ill adapted to a politically underdeveloped country like Russia, 'here a strong Party was formed – perhaps the most orthodox in the world'. He was referring mainly to the Bolshevik movement. In fact, a few lines later he wrote of them that 'the extremist current is the most genuine … wants peace, it refuses even transitory collaboration with the other classes and calls for the seizure of power to apply the Communist Programme'. He noted, however, as did many other socialists, that socialist methods did not sit well with a country mainly consisting of immense masses of peasants.

Bordiga concluded his series of Avanguardia articles in December 1917 commenting on the triumph of the 'Maximalists', i.e. the Bolsheviks. 'Finally, the government is overthrown’, he wrote, ‘and the seizure of power by the Soviets, in which the extremists have become the large majority, has taken place. While we write, in the jumble of contradictory and biased news coming to us, it is understood that socialists work to realize a programme along simple and grand lines – the same one as that of the Communist Manifesto – that is the expropriation of the private owners from their means of production, and in the meantime proceeding logically and consequently with getting rid of the war.'

Thus began Bordiga’s transition to Bolshevism and Leninism for which he is most well-known. The pre-Lenin Bordiga, however, showed himself to have had a clear idea of what revolutionary Marxist socialism meant. He was an intransigent, anti-reformist, class struggle socialist, though with a predisposition for anarchist-type direct action including the use of violence. Post-Lenin he was to lean towards Blanquist centralism, from which we can only distance ourselves.

Cesco

The Last Meeting of The Commune (1912)

From the March 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

By Édouard Vaillant.

   In 1908 Vaillant gave the following account of the last assembly of the remnant of the Commune on May 27th, 1871 at Belleville, a working- class quarter of Paris.
  The details of that meeting are very little known, and a description by one of the actors in that last episode of Bloody Week will therefore be read with lively interest.

We were compelled, with Parent, to whom the military command had been entrusted in succession to Varlin, to abandon all hope of organising the defence. The pavilion and garden at the right extremity of the rue Haxo, near the fortifications, were abandoned; and the centre and direction of the resistance had been transferred on the Saturday to the town hall of the 20th District, then situate in the rue de Belleville, opposite the church. Ranvier and Trinquet, the elected representatives of the 20th District, seconded by several of their colleagues, made such arrangements for the transfer as were possible.

The town hall was encumbered by a crowd eagerly seeking news. But all the militants, forced back there by the defeat, were still animated by the same communard spirit, and not a word of weakness or of discord was uttered. Optimistic, but false, news came at intervals to revive hope; nevertheless, the forebodings of final defeat were accumulating. The agents of Versailles hid themselves less carefully. They were taken to the town hall, and, avowing spontaneously their guilt, were shot in the courtyard.

Toward the end of the afternoon, while Ranvier and Trinquet remained at the town hall, such other members of the Commune as could be notified and reassembled met for the last time on the first floor of a house situated on the right-hand side of the rue Haxo, where Oudet, wounded in the defence of the 19th District, had just been carried.

We numbered about fifteen, of whom two or three were militants, secretaries of the Commune.

The fact could no longer be ignored that the last moment had come, and we now examined what remained to be done. All reports agreed that the Versaillese massacre was becoming general in Paris.

I suggested sending an emissary to the nearest Prussian commander, asking him to serve as intermediary in proposing to the Versaillese Government the voluntary capitulation of the remaining members of the Commune, on the single condition that the massacres ceased and the liberty of the defenders of the Commune be guaranteed. This proposal, strongly supported by Vallès, seemed to obtain unanimous acceptance. I proceeded to draw it up.

I had finished writing it in order to get it signed, when Constant Martin declared that in his opinion it would be a mistake, and that what made and would in future make the greatness of the Commune was its end in combat, without negotiation with or capitulation to the Versaillese. Others remarked further that our proposal had very little chance of acceptance. And after a short debate it was withdrawn It was then decided that in order to mark effectively the end of the resistance it was necessary to unite all the combatants that could be found for a final attack. The rallying point was to be the place des Fêtes. But the day was already drawing to its close, rain supervened, and the attempt was a failure.

On the following morning all Paris was in the power of the Versaillese.

Translated for the Socialist Standard.

Mr. Walton Newbold Makes a Confession. (1932)

From the March 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

Writing in the One Big Union Bulletin (Winnipeg, November 26th, 1931), Mr. J. T. Walton Newbold makes a confession of political faith, or rather lack of faith, which is intended to be startling and is certainly interesting. It will not be understood unless it is remembered how much and often Mr. Newbold’s political views have changed. He has found a home for himself at different periods in the Fabian Society, the I.L.P. and the Labour Party, the Communist Party, the I.L.P. again, the Social-Democratic Federation, and then at the last General Election in MacDonald's National Labour group. It now appears from Mr. Newbold's article in the O.B.U. Bulletin that he never had faith in any of his parties. He says that although he has four times stood for Parliament, he never—

regarded the capture of a majority of seats in the House of Commons as in any sense a step to power. All that it could be was a step to enlightenment in the hollowness of the whole system of “democracy.”

He never expected “the Labour Government to do anything but to prove the bankruptcy of reformism."

He once ran as a Communist and claimed at the time that his constituency was converted to Communism (actually he got in on a reformist programme and with the backing of the Labour Party).

Now he declares that it was “enough to make a cat laugh," that anyone should have supposed that either he or Saklatvala was a Communist. Incidentally, it would interesting to hear Saklatvala's views on this.

Newbold opposed Churchill at Epping in 1929. At the time Newbold was trying to raise funds through the O.B.U. Bulletin and stated that he ran as a Socialist. We were able at the time to point out that Newbold had one story for Winnipeg and a very different story for his constituents at Epping. Now he declares that he only opposed Churchill in order to prevent the Tories from putting up another Tory, his object being to secure the election of Churchill.

All of this is interesting, but, like many confessions, it hides more than it discloses. We flatly do not believe it. When Mr. Newbold pretends that his woolly-headed support for all kinds of anti-working-class policies was part of an astute and longsighted manoeuvre, he is deceiving himself. It was Newbold himself who was taken in by these series of fraudulent policies, and his super-cleverness is just a face-saving afterthought.

If Newbold was so clever, he might explain how he came to land himself in his present position of being thoroughly mistrusted by every organisation of which he has been a member, as well as by the small number of organisations to which he has not yet turned his attention.

To Mr. Newbold the workers have been a crowd of boobs to be led and inoculated with knowledge by the Machiavellian schemer, Newbold. He should ponder over the saying of Voltaire, that he who believes he can lead a great crowd of fools without a great store of knavery is a fool himself.

Edgar Hardcastle