Incentive Under Socialism (1940)

From the November 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many people are genuinely puzzled by the Socialist contention that production will go on under Socialism without the existing privileges and inequalities. “How," they ask, “will people be induced to work except under the incentive of wages and the possibility of getting into a higher-paid grade or of escaping into the ranks of the propertied class, who can live without working?" They are not much impressed with the answer that normal healthy human beings who have been educated to an understanding of the social system, and trained to perform useful work do not want to escape working. They want to work and need no more inducement than is given by the knowledge that work must be done to keep society going, and that they are playing their part in it along with their fellow men and women. One curious thing is that it is never himself that the questioner has in mind. He never says that he won't work, but will try to sponge on those who do; always it is some other fellow who will do this. The same blind spot exists when the defenders of capitalism try to justify their system and its supposed “principles" of distributing rewards. In the abstract they defend capitalism on the ground that it is good and necessary that each individual should be looking after himself and trying to get or grab as much as he can, but when it comes to particular cases (always concerned with the other fellow) they repudiate their own principle. Notice how they object to the unemployed receiving a miserly dole without having to work, but never object to the millionaires (most of them in that position through inheritance) being able to live in luxurious idleness. Read the angry letters in the Press objecting to certain workers having changed their jobs in war time in order to get more wages—letters usually written by men whose income is far higher than the one they complain about.

Of more interest are the attempts to state some kind of principle to justify the present system. In the course of a letter to the Times (June 27th, 1940), Mr. Maurice Hely-Hutchinson, M.P., laid down one such principle: —

  It seems unlikely that mankind will ever move forward except on the twin foundations of reward for accomplishment and of personal responsibility. It is axiomatic that there must be a hierarchy of incomes if there is to be a hierarchy of responsibility. 

At a superficial glance it may appear that that is a correct description of the present order of things since some attempt is often made to weigh up the responsibility of grades of workers working alongside each other in the same organisation. The foreman usually gets more pay than the men he orders about.

But what is this “hierarchy of responsibility," and why is it axiomatic? Always the responsibility is responsibility which goes up grade by grade to the owners of the business. That responsibility may conflict and often does conflict with responsibility for the safety of the workers and the responsibility for the interests of the population in general. Why is it axiomatic that the responsibility to the profit-seeking owner should over-ride other responsibilities? Why should the man who supervises road transport drivers and tries to speed them up be paid more for his responsibility to the owners than the careful (but possibly not so speedy) driver who is impressed with his responsibility to pedestrians?

When we leave the individual concern and look at capitalism as a whole the practice is equally at variance with any such principle. How does anyone decide that the head of one of the railways is worth £14,000 a year for his responsibility to shareholders when the train driver or signalmen, who have great responsibility for passengers' lives, receive about one-fiftieth of that amount?

On what principle do our millionaires enjoy their vast unearned incomes? Why does the President of the American concern of Lever Brothers receive a salary of £117,500 a year (News Chronicle, July 2nd, 1940); and does Mr. Hely-Hutchinson think that the responsibility of Shirley Temple, as indicated by her income of £76,750 in 1939, is all that much greater than his own as indicated by his £600 a year for being an M.P? Why, in the Post Office, does the Director-General get a higher salary than his own chief, the Postmaster-General? According to Mr. Hely-Hutchinson this goes dead against the axiom. And would he say that the responsibility of the £5,000 a year (“plus generous expenses”) directors of the Suez Canal is greater than that of the men who run the canal on the spot—the directors, by the way, perform their “responsible” functions in Paris?

Altogether, those who take it upon themselves to explain and apologise for the capitalist system put up a remarkably poor show. Before leaving the matter just observe the Daily Express. That journal is ordinarily energetic and unrepentant in its advocacy of capitalism and ridicule of the supposed impossibilities of Socialism. Often it has dealt with this question of incentive and argued that the only satisfactory incentive is the prospect of making money. But on November 2nd, 1940, its editorial was concerned with the urgent need to find a means of overcoming the night air raiders over London. Instead, however, of being consistent and urging the Government to give large sums of money to whoever would discover the answer to the problem, the Express urged that "the public should be given the names” of the scientists who are at work on the problem. “ Remember,” said the Express, “scientists are human beings. They, too, will flourish under a nation’s praise.” So here, when it comes to the point, the Daily Express is going to rely on mere praise as an inducement to scientists to work hard and fast on a critical problem.

That should be remembered when next the Express argues that Socialism will not work because of lack of incentive.

Edgar Hardcastle

Excursions of "Vanoc II" (1936)

Book Review from the August 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

"I Am A Heretic," by "Vanoc II." (Peter Davies, 6/-.)

"Vanoc II' might easily be regarded among his contemporaries as the Iconoclast of Fleet Street, so ruthlessly has he written of all traditional bourgeois thought and custom. "I am a Heretic” comprises some of the many contributions which Vanoc made to the Sunday Referee, and those who read them at the time of their publication in that journal will, we think, readily read them again in their more permanent form. Vanoc wields a powerful pen and knows how to “get there” with a pungent broadside, and is ever-ready to “spike the enemy's guns” by the mere turn of the phrase.

It takes an able writer or debater who will first allow his opponents their points in controversy and then proceed to reveal that they possess nothing worth having. This Vanoc does to a nicety. When writing “ In Praise of Courage ” as this is expressed in military terms, he says: 

   “The men who fought and died on all sides and in all causes during the years 1914-1918 were brave. The front officers and men of all armies displayed bravery. This fact is not open to doubt. Nor is there any reason to suppose that bravery of the same kind will be lacking in a new war. . . .”
   “If history teaches us anything,” says Vanoc, “it is that military courage is one of the commonest attributes of men. In war, the enemy is just as brave as the friend; every soldier is aware of that fact. There were, it is true, cowardly Germans; but there were also cowardly British. But there was enough courage on both sides to ensure a record slaughter.”

Vanoc then contraposes this aspect of courage and calls attention to its purpose. “If history has shown the mass of men at all periods to be the possessors of military bravery, it also proves that they have been woefully deficient in civil courage. There have been millions of military heroes for one civil hero.”

The underlying reason for this, Vanoc understands well enough.

*  *  *  *

In a chapter on “An English Reformer,” Vanoc cites the case of William Wilberforce as an example of religious hypocrisy, consciously determined or otherwise, which raves against the effects of class exploitation, but persists in bolstering up the system of class rule.

“Wilberforce,” says Vanoc, “brought every argument that sentiment could sharpen and eloquence ennoble against slavery; but all his arguments were not so much a condemnation of slavery as a refutation of his own Christian ethic. When, for instance, he appealed for mercy for negro slaves,, he vindicated the fundamental social principle of Christianity—namely, the principle of inequality. For mercy between equals is an insult.”

“Even at the time when Wilberforce was denouncing the treatment of enslaved negroes, tens of thousands of his own countrymen were living in conditions that swine would have spurned." Here Vanoc strikes a note well worth understanding, when he says, that “sentimentalists who strike heroic attitudes are seldom capable of co-relating phenomena.” Possibly this may, to some extent, explain why Wilberforce “chaffered with his own conscience to the extent of acquiescing in the infamous Act of Parliament which brazenly acknowledged the right of slave traders to carry on business, provided that cargoes of slaves were limited by the tonnage of ships.”

*  *  *  *

In Karl Marx Vanoc sees one of the best-hated figures in history, and he asks: “Why do they hate this man who has been dead for fifty years? His very beard inspires invective, and bright defenders of capitalism have even probed into his digestive processes in order to discover the origin of the class war.” And why not? Marx himself experienced his enemies' hatred, and in some measure thoroughly enjoyed it.

The men who see the way the game of human exploitation is played and who, in addition, expose the rules of the game, must inevitably arouse the ire of those who live by the sweat of the other fellow's brow. Perhaps the subtle wisdom of Oscar Wilde’s words has a special significance here, namely, that it is not the choice of one's friends that matter so much, it is the choice of one's enemies that is important. In the sense of laying bare the foundations upon which capitalism and all class societies rest, Marx chose his enemies well.

“The driving forces behind Marx's pen,” says Vanoc, “were vision and logic—the rarest of all human qualities, the sign-manuals of creative greatness. Marx shares with the great poets the power to see, with the great scientists the ability to analyse and compare, and with the great musicians the courage to orchestrate his ideas to a passionately human theme.”

Here we may say that this is no mere idealistic hero-worship. Vanoc will readily concede that specific material conditions must form the basis of all social theory, but—and a big “but” it is— Marx saw what millions of others merely felt. and Marx let them know it.

*  *  *  *

On the subject of the so-called crisis in the world of science, Vanoc is just as comfortably at home with the bourgeois scientists and their mysticism as he is in other fields of thought. “It is true,” he says, “that natural occurrences and our perceptions of them are two quite different things, just as the movements of mercury in a thermometer are something quite different from the heat phenomenon which calls them forth. But, as we have seen, this does not do away with the fact that causal connections exist between the two series of occurrences, and through this our sense-perceptions become good instruments for exploring the true nature of the world.” This is from a discourse on “The Dance of the Atoms,” which is exceedingly well done.

It may seem a far cry from all this to the institution of Christmas, but Socialists will appreciate the fact of ideological forces being conditioned by deeply-laid economic facts. Vanoc has a dialogue with Father Christmas, and the venerable old patriarch of Christian tradition is disrobed, dewhiskered and debunked. Old Man Christmas descends from the chimney into Vanoc's study on Christmas Eve. After a slight altercation, Vanoc offers the other a drink, which is readily accepted, but “without a splash.” “Good luck!” says Father Christmas.

Vanoc II: “Good luck! I suppose I can wish a fraud good luck without doing more damage?” 

Father Christmas: “Why, of course you can. And you've no need to rub it in about being frauds. What am I among so many? As a business man—”

Vanoc II: “I've always admired you as such. As a business man you're the slickest thing in the calendar. The hot-cross-bun racket is good, but—”

Father Christmas: “No, no! It's too serious. There's not enough in it. Apart from selling the 'Bread of Life' itself, I think I can pride myself on being the most successful merchant of the mysteries. I can give you exact statistics—”

Vanoc II: “ Don't! They depress me.” 

Father Christmas: “There you go again! Always the Puritan!”

Vanoc II: “Not at all. I was thinking ”

Father Christmas: “No need to think about me and my works. We're just child's play. If it happens, incidentally, to be good business, I say, ‘Thank God !' ”

Vanoc II: “No doubt. But again you're putting the cart before the horse. For it isn't child's play that happens to be good business, but good business that happens to be child's play.” 

And so on is old Daddy Christmas exposed as a mere retailer of commodities, the cash nexus being the underlying reality by which the passage down, the chimney is facilitated. This is why Vanoc compels Christmas to admit that he visits some households more than others, and some not at all.

We have no hesitation in recommending Vanoc's book, even though he sometimes skates on the thin ice of “Bolshevism,” as he went chasing after the blood of Mussolini and Hitler.

Vanoc not only says good things, but says them with telling effect. In this sense, may we say “more power to his elbow”?

Robert Reynolds

Woman's Place (1976)

Book Review from the July 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism, the Family, and Personal Life by Eli Zaretsky. Pluto Press, £1.00.

This short book was first published as a series of articles in Socialist Revolution (California) in 1973. Eli Zaretsky argues that while work outside the home has largely freed women from patriarchal constraints, the basis for their oppression now lies in their responsibility “for maintaining a private refuge from an impersonal society”. Work in the home is part of the economy, and there is increasing emphasis on “personal life” as something experienced outside work and society.

Zaretsky acknowledges the influence on his thinking of the women’s movement and “socialist currents”. This influence is obvious in his criticism of Marx and Engels. His book illustrates the confusion which arises from the failure to understand Marxian economics and the consequent absence of a clear definition of Socialism.

We read that Marx and Engels failed to see the necessity for dealing with “personal life”, including the oppression of women by men in the home, as a separate issue. Instead they believed that once individuals were freed from economic exploitation they would arrange their private lives according to earlier ideals of domestic and personal fulfilment. But: “The development of capitalism destroyed this hope and to a great extent ‘separated’ the socialist movement from the subsequent development of the family and of personal life among the proletariat” (p.63). In Russia and China the emancipation of women was part of “the ‘emancipation’ of the productive forces of society”, (p.106). Zaretsky claims that the experience in these countries, particularly China, demonstrates the “relevance of Engels’s emphasis on entry into social production to the emancipation of women.” However, the gains in personal freedom have been qualified — “substantial by the goal of developing production”.

In America, apparently, Engels’s idea of resolving the oppressiveness of the family by “revolutionizing the mode of production” has appeared “less and less plausible”. Despite the material benefits of a modern industrial society, education, the possibilities for economic independence and easier housework, women are still oppressed by their responsibilties in the sphere of personal life.

Certainly Engels did say that the emancipation of women becomes feasible when they can take part in social production and “when domestic duties require their attention in a minor degree”. But in looking to a time when women would no longer be economically dependent on men he did not mean by taking a job! He wrote of the full freedom of marriage becoming general after all economic considerations "have been removed by the ABOLITION OF CAPITALISTIC PRODUCTION and of the property relations created by it” (The Origin of the Family, p.99, Kerr edn.).

Marx saw that in giving women and children a decisive role in “the socially organized process of production”, a rôle to be fulfilled outside the home, large-scale industry was forming the economic foundation “for a higher form of the family and of the relations between the sexes”. However, in the same paragraph (Capital Vol. 1 p.496, Unwin edn.) he points out that in capitalism where the worker exists for the process of production, instead of this process existing for the worker, “it is a pestiferous source of corruption and slavery”.

Marx and Engels were looking at conditions in the 19th century, but they would not have been fooled by the undoubted improvements in working and social conditions which have since taken place (the relaxation in the tension of “the golden chain”). Within capitalism they saw the immense possibilities for the future of human relationships. But they did not expect this potential to be fully realized until after the revolutionary change from capitalism to Socialism. This revolution has not yet taken place. There are no Socialist countries!

The SPGB has never been in doubt about the class position of women — or the way to their emancipation. Most women, like most men, belong to the class which owns no part of the means of production, the working class. Their position in this class is not dependent on their being employed. (This definition is obviously not restricted to industrial workers.) There are many reasons for opposing capitalism. The limitations it places on the “personal life” of the majority is one of them. The oppression of women may pre-date capitalism but so do war and poverty. It is capitalism which now prevents their solution and the answer is obvious.

Working-class men and women must organize consciously and politically for the speedy establishment of Socialism. Then when social production is combined with common ownership of the means of production the whole of mankind will be freed from economic exploitation. Common ownership will mean production solely for use and free access to the social wealth. Surely the prerequisite to the arrangement of social production and personal life according to human interest and individual choice. Emancipation indeed!

Pat Deutz

The Problem of Racism (1976)

From the November 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

The riots at Notting Hill and in South Africa have once again sparked off discussion on the racial question. The Labour Party Executive (having supported and maintained the conditions which produced the riots in West London) is now running an anti-racialist campaign.

A great opportunity to debunk this and all the other rubbish about racism is readily to hand in the SPGB pamphlet The Problem of Racism. In easily understood language the whole question of “race” under capitalism is explained. Although published ten years ago, like so many Socialist statements it was prophetic.

For instance: “By trying to divide the Africans through tribalism, by building up vast internal security forces and by repressive legislation the Nationalists may ward off the inevitable for a time. Sooner or later Apartheid will go — capitalism must triumph in South Africa, peacefully or violently”.

Buy it, read it, and then go out and do battle with the Philistines.

THE PROBLEM OF RACISM PAMPHLET IS AVAILABLE FROM HEAD OFFICE PRICE 13 p. inc. POSTAGE.

No alternative (1985)

Editorial from the May 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Margaret Thatcher acquired the unlikely nickname of Tina not because of any fairylike quality but because it is an acronym of one of her earliest catch-phrases - There Is No Alternative. The message of TINA was clear: the government were aware that under their policies a lot of people were in acute suffering but there really was nothing else for it. Their policies may be tough but they were the only ideas which promised to eliminate problems which had been plaguing Britain for a very long time, which no other government had been resolute enough to deal with. If the people in the dole queues and the hospital waiting lists and the like would be patient, toughness would bring its reward in a prosperous, secure nation. Of course the government might try to curry favour by policies such as massive state investment in industry and public works; that might make things better for a while but would only postpone the inevitable. The Day of Reckoning, when it came, would be much more terrible for the delay. So the Thatcher government claimed that they were following the only possible way

One problem about this, for the government, was that it forced them to insist that their policies could be seen to be working. They have, after all, been in power for six years and it is time now for at least some of their pledges to be fulfilled, in the shape of better lives for the people. To argue in this way the government have had either to ignore little matters like the level of unemployment or to suggest that it had something to do with personal failings on the part of the unemployed. Thus Norman Tebbitt's incautious admonition to the workless, not to riot but to bike it around the country to search for non-existent jobs. Thus Nigel Lawson's lament that this year's Budget would have been an historic bonanza of state generosity except that the government had been forced to spend so much on the coal strike. Thus Thatcher's declaration last year, when interest rates began to rise and the pound/dollar exchange rate to fall, that this crisis could easily and quickly be ended if the miners went back to work. They did and it wasn't. Thus the Tories' claim that it is not their policy to reduce spending on things like hospitals, education and social services but only to re-arrange them so that they are better than ever.

TINA must mean that there is no poverty in Britain — nobody struggling to make ends meet on a wage or a paltry state benefit, nobody living in dank slums, nobody dying of the cold because they can't afford to heat their homes in the winter. TINA means ignoring reality because to face it — and this is a familiar story — to face reality would involve the government in an act of self exposure. showing them up as impotent or ignorant or deceitful.

These problems do not afflict socialists; we have no difficulty in facing reality — indeed it is our work constantly to illuminate it and to point to its lessons. The reality of TINA is that the Thatcher policies have failed. Six years of Tory rule have not built a country which is happy, secure and abundant. The social and bodily ills which disfigured Britain when Thatcher came to power are still here, in many cases even worse than they were in 1979. Socialists also point to the reality that the so-called opposition parties — Labour and the Liberal/ SDP Alliance — offer no hope of improving on the Tories' showing. In many ways the term of office of the last Labour government opened the way for the policies of Thatcher; the evidence is that if Labour had kept in power in 1979 they would have been forced to operate much as the Tories have done since then. There is no more optimism in the Alliance. Although they claim to be breaking the mould of the more established capitalist parties they are actually no more than a reconstitution, personally and politically, of the others' failures.

The opposition's fondness for blaming our current problems onto something called Thatcherism implies that the level of unemployment and of poverty in this country have been erected, piece by piece and person by person, by the will of the Prime Minister alone. On what is called the far left — that strange world of self-deception where reality is always barred from entry the priority is to smash the Tories (a policy which is never defined or described in any detail; meanwhile the workers continue to elect Tories to offices of various sorts). But there is never any encouragement from the loony left to consider what should follow, if the Tories were to be "smashed". In the past the working class have thrown out many a Tory government but, such has been their confusion, they have replaced them with other governments just as strongly committed to running capitalism. There is no point in changing one style of capitalism for another; if the world's problems are to be eliminated the radical, enduring solution of a new social order must be applied.

And here, it must be noted, we are not discussing just "Britain's problems", as would the Tories or the Labour Party or any of the other capitalist parties. The problems which matter are those of the working class world wide and there is no solution to them other than a world solution. Socialism will be a society different from capitalism in all ways, from its basis upwards and outwards. The means which human beings apply to produce wealth and distribute it will be in the ownership of the world's people. This will mean an end to production for sale and a beginning to production for human use, to meet human needs. Satisfying human needs must mean that wealth is communally available for all people to consume on equal rights of free access. It is hardly necessary to add. that such a society will not be divided into classes for the basis of class division — the private ownership of the means of life — will have been abolished. As class society is ended social relationships will change so that people will come into contact. and deal, with each other on the basis of a free and equal standing in society.

In such a world the problems which are the stuff of life for capitalism — war. poverty, famine, slums, avoidable deaths and disease — will have their cause removed and will, therefore, cease to trouble the human race. To establish socialism is the only way we can bring that about. The innumerable, agonisingly prolonged, attempts to reform capitalism have failed; it is now an historic monster which has the power to wipe most of us off the face of the earth. Socialism will work. It will be efficient. It will meet human needs. It will bring a world of peace, freedom and plenty. There is no alternative.

New Socialist Pamphlet on Ireland (1983)

From the May 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

IRELAND—PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE — THE Socialist Party of Great Britain and the World Socialist Party of Ireland. 30p 

The Irish Question has been for centuries a constantly recurring problem for the British ruling class. Since the coming into being of a mass urban and industrial working class in the 19th century — and it must not be forgotten that a large proportion of the working class in Britain today are descended from dispossessed Irish peasants who were forced by starvation to seek work in Britain in the last century — the working class too have been dragged into this affair. In Britain it impeded and slowed down working class unity for trade union ends, but in Ireland the consequences were even more serious, especially in the North where tragedy is the only appropriate term to describe the hatred and killings perpetrated by different sections of the working class on each other.

This 24-page pamphlet, written by a member of the Belfast Branch of the World Socialist Party of Ireland, gives a materialist analysis of the course of Irish history from the colonisation of Ulster in the 17th century to the current situation, sparked off by the civil rights campaign of the late 1960s and the reaction of the Unionist establishment. It shows that what on the surface appears to be a religious conflict between Catholics and Protestants was basically an economic conflict over access to land, the main means of production before the advent of industrial capitalism. In the 17th century Protestant tenant farmers settled in the North, or rather were settled by the British state on lands that had been taken from their previous occupants, the Gaels, who were Catholics, thus creating an antagonism which, in the circumstances, naturally took on a religious appearance. In the South, where the Catholic land-owning class had taken the side of the Royalists in the English Civil War, the Catholic peasants had imposed on them by Cromwell a new-exploiting landlord class who were Protestant, absentee and, through their agents in Ireland, ruthlessly rack renting.

From this time on Irish social history is one of a land war, sometimes open and violent, always latent and simmering, culminating towards the end of the 19th century in the victory, in effect, of the peasant class. Faced with mounting peasant unrest, the British government decided to buy out the Protestant landlord class and re-sell the land to the peasants. This abolition of the Protestant ascendancy represented the end of the Irish land question, but it by no means meant the end of the Irish problem for the British ruling class for, in the meantime, with its problems and conflicts, capitalism had come to Ireland.

Largely because of the different systems of land tenure in the North and in the rest of Ireland, capitalism did not develop uniformly in the whole island. In the 19th century it developed primarily in the North whose capitalist class — in textiles, shipbuilding and related engineering industries — became an integral part of the British ruling class, geared to producing for the British and Imperial markets. In the South on the other hand, capitalism never really reached the industrial stage and remained linked to farming and servicing the towns. In other words, the fledgling capitalist class in the South had at this time a completely different interest from the mature industrial capitalist class in the North East. Far from wanting to remain linked to the British market they wanted tariffs to protect them from the competition of the British capitalists. The mass of the Catholic peasants who formed the majority of the population in Ireland were, by and large, able to enrol under their banner demanding “Home Rule", and so the Northern capitalists were faced with a very real problem. There was a danger of their being cut off from Britain and its markets and sources of raw materials and condemned to decline behind the tariff walls of an inward-looking and protectionist Ireland.

To resist this threat, they too sought a mass basis by playing the Orange card (as Winston Churchill's father, Lord Randolph Churchill cynically put it). This involved enrolling the Protestant farmer and working class majority in the North East under their banner of “Union" (with the rest of Britain) through exploiting the dying embers of Catholic-Protestant sectarianism. In the end they won their way. In 1922 Ireland was partitioned: 26 of Ireland's 32 counties were handed over to the political control of the fledgling capitalist class of the South, the remaining six to that of the Northern capitalists within the framework of the United Kingdom. As the pamphlet explains it:

No one making a dispassionate assessment of the situation that resulted in the establishment of two separate states in Ireland in 1922 can escape the conclusion that the primary cause of conflict was the imbalance of economic development between the north and the south. The struggle was about the political needs of the capitalist class in Ireland, and that class, and its political representatives, were willing to sacrifice the lives of the working class, in the north and the south, in defence of a system that offered the working class, as a whole, only the continuation of its poverty.

The two political regimes resulting from the 1922 partition did, in fact, rival each other in their openly anti-working class nature. By the 1960s however the original uneven development of capitalism which had led to partition was beginning to disappear: some industry had developed in the South behind the dreaded tariff walls while the traditional industries of the North were declining, and multi-national capital was seeking to invest in Ireland irrespective of the border.

In these circumstances, the sectarianism which had sustained Partition could have been expected to decline and eventually die away, and this was what the capitalist class both in the North and in the South hoped would happen. But this was to underestimate the extent to which they had successfully poisoned the minds of the workers they had enrolled as pawns in their previous political battles. Sectarianism proved not to be something that could suddenly be switched off by the flick of a finger. We will again let the pamphlet explain in its own inimitable style:

History bad provided the capitalists and their political representatives with the means of disguising from the working class the nature of the conflict. The South was overwhelmingly Catholic, the North mainly Protestant. The northern politicians swept the gutters of history and recruited the holy-men of the Church and the Orange Order to whip up a vicious reaction to the threat of Home Rule. Their southern counterparts used the same tactics to infuse a vicious anti-working class patriotism. The legendmakers and the liars were at work; money and effort were both available to imbue the working class with hatred, bigotry and patriotic rubbish and. sadly, the putrid concoction was to last until the present — to inflicts its miseries on a divided working class and, ironically, to disturb the sensitive political nostrils of the heirs of the class that had introduced it onto the political scene.

Sectarianism had never served the interests of the working class, but for a number of decades now it has no longer served, as it once did, the interests of rival sections of the capitalist class in Ireland. Today it is senseless from all points of view; yet it still persists since capitalism, with the artificial scarcity it maintains, encourages competition between groups of workers for the relative crumbs it has to offer them. The pamphlet ends by explaining socialism and how it is the only solution to the problems facing workers not only in Ireland but throughout the world. In passing we must point out a misprint on page 7. The Catholic Emancipation Act (which emancipated the Catholic capitalist class in Ireland, not the mass of the irish peasants) was passed in 1829, not 1823.

This pamphlet should be in the hands of every socialist and every other person who wants to understand the present situation in Northern Ireland. Its lively, forthright style and its unique point of view make it easy and fascinating reading.

Adam Buick

A few words to non-socialists (1988)

From the February 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

You are not a socialist. You do not want to live in a society where all of the resources are commonly owned and democratically controlled where factories, farms, offices, mines and media belong to the whole community, regardless of race or sex. You do not stand for production solely for use: food grown simply so that it can be eaten, houses to be lived in. clothes to be worn, entertainment to be enjoyed. You do not want a society where all people have free access to all goods and services without having to buy them - a moneyless society. The idea of a world without national frontiers, states and the weapons of militarist murder does not motivate you to political action. You are just not a socialist.

Now, there are many ways of not being a socialist. You might be a violent anti-socialist who is committed to the defence of the capitalist status quo to the bitter end. Most workers are not passionate defenders of capitalism. Most of capitalism's victims, the working class, do not even know what capitalism is. Indeed, few capitalists are even dedicated advocates of their own system they just enjoy it while the fruits are there for them to pick. Most non-socialists are simply not bothered about the meaning of capitalism or socialism. They would describe themselves as non-political, occasionally becoming politically vocal about the odd issue, and, if they are feeling up to it, voting in elections once every four or five years - usually to keep the baddies out rather than with any real belief that the goodies are any good.

Most workers regard socialism as something to do with politics and politics as something profoundly boring. So, when the Socialist Standard seller approaches them in the street or pub. offering a good socialist read for only 30p, most workers look the other way in the hope that politics will ignore them. Politics is about power - about who has it and who does not and what the powerful can do to the powerless. If you are a worker, deprived of all kinds of basic powers over your own life - ranging from the age at which you can legally have sexual relations and with whom, to whether you and your family are to be blown to pieces in a nuclear war - politics does not leave you alone.

To the average worker in Britain socialism is a scare word. It is like AIDS and sin and Libya - you might not know quite what they mean or where they are, but you know that your mother wouldn't approve of them. Workers fear socialism. Long years of anti-socialist propaganda by those who have a direct class interest in workers' fear of freedom have seen to that.

Socialism, the non-socialist will tell you. is what exists in Russia. And China - which is a national enemy of Russia. And Albania - which is a national enemy of Russia and China. Socialism is what they have in Australia - and Spain - and Greece - because they have "socialist governments” in those countries, don't they? And then there was Attlee and Bevan and Wilson and Callaghan - they were supposed to have called themselves socialists. Tony Benn, Ken Livingstone, Arthur Scargill: these men even use the word "socialist'' so they must be the real thing, mustn't they? Adolf Hitler called himself a National Socialist. All very confusing.

The Leftists who talk about "socialist countries" and "socialist governments" and "socialist leaders" do immense damage to working-class understanding of socialism. Most workers look at leftism and its aim of turning private capitalism into state capitalism (which the Left calls socialism) and, quite rightly, they reject "socialism". Labels deceive.

Many workers think that socialism is a moral proposition: that it has something to do with being nice to people. Most socialists do try to live their lives as decent beings in an indecent world, but that is not what socialism is about. Socialism relates to the material conditions within which we are able to live and behave. Socialists who own factories must exploit their employees or else they go broke, socialists who are competing with other workers for jobs will not endure the punishment of the dole queue so that their fellow workers can live well. Capitalism is a dog-eat-dog system and socialists are not dogs who will not bite, but dogs who are barking in pursuit of a system where we do not need to bite. Socialism is about the co-operation of humankind for the sake of us all.

Some workers like the sound of socialism. It has the sort of sound to it as an idea, when you consider it carefully, which reasonable people tend to find attractive. Yes, it would be good if we could all share this world as one human family, but . . . But, says the non-socialist, things can never be that way. The non-socialist has a fundamental doubt about tomorrow ever being different from today. Which is a rather groundless doubt when you come to think about it. for it is the ceaseless lesson of history that the certainties of the past are repeatedly tossed aside by new ideas, new conditions, new certainties. Just as capitalism, with its world market and working class freed from the ties of feudal serfdom, once seemed like a utopian dream, so socialism is only a dream to those who imagine that the capitalist nightmare is unlike all previous historical epochs and will go on forever.

Once workers have been convinced that human nature is not a barrier to socialism, many non-socialists, while agreeing that socialism sounds worth having, are too tired, too apathetic, too busy with other things to get up and join the movement for socialism. They may offer support for The Socialist Party - perhaps even regard themselves as sympathisers. We are glad of their support. But a disorganised minority of workers who will be for socialism when it comes can and will do little or nothing to change history. Their visions will be lost in the mists of dust created by the bombs which are being prepared for use as you read this article.

There is no way of forcing the non-socialist to become a socialist. It will not happen by electing so-called socialist governments to bring about socialism for the workers even though they know nothing about it. Nor will it happen as a result of the efforts of the counter-productive Leninist sects which think that the workers can be marched to freedom with guns to their heads. There is no substitute for winning a majority of our fellow workers to understand and want socialism. The Socialist Party will not do this alone. If our efforts were the sole means of transforming society from capitalism to socialism the world would be in for a long wait. It is the capitalist system, with its relentless class struggle, which creates the material conditions within which socialists are made. The task of The Socialist Party is to take the discontent which capitalism provides for us and see that it is not wasted upon the politics of futility.

If you are a non-socialist you should think carefully about why that is. If - as will be the case with very many workers - you have never really thought about why you are not a socialist, never regarded yourself as a supporter of the capitalist system which enslaves you, then now is the time to consider your position. If you are an anti-socialist, then you have some obligation to tell us socialists why we are wrong. If you agree with what we are saying, then now is the time to do something about it: visit your local branch, place a regular order for the Socialist Standard. And if you agree with the Socialist Party, why not join?

This is not an academic article. It is not about whether Victoria was a good Queen or a useless old parasite. It is not an article for reading and then forgetting. It is an invitation to think and to act. It is that capacity which human beings possess to a higher degree than any other animal. Think, act - and who is to say what sort of world this shall be by 1990?

Steve Coleman

Obituary: Maggie Hallard (1978)

Obituary from the November 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Members will be sorry to learn of the death of Maggie Hallard, a Party member for over 56 years. She was born in 1893 in Stratford, East London, a district in which she lived for the whole of her life. After Maggie left school she worked in the clothing trade as a machinist. and she soon came into contact with working class agitation and the class struggle. In her teens she went to the Socialist Sunday School — where one learnt not about religion, but the class basis of society. When she met and married Percy Hallard her long association with the Party began. Percy joined in 1918, and he did many valuable years of work for the Party, including the secretaryship of the vigorous West Ham branch for 37 years. Maggie and Percy had no children and the Party became the focal point of their lives, and for Maggie the members became her family. She loved to reminisce, and was a mine of information on old members and Party history. Until a few months before her death she never missed a branch meeting, and attended every other Party propaganda meeting that she could reach. Even when she was 83 she would turn up to Branch outdoor meetings on the draughty street corner opposite Ilford Station, bringing a cold drink for the speaker. It is hard to recall a Conference or Delegate meeting without Maggie, and we will miss seeing her indomitable old face amongst us

Alice Kerr

Singing the Praises of the Beautiful Banks (2017)

From the June 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Co-operative bank has had various scandals in recent years, financial and otherwise. The Co-op 'brand' has decided it needs to clean up its image. The result is a current television advertising campaign which is as preposterous as it is insulting to our intelligence. The television ads are voiced by Russell Brand’s former radio show on-air commentator, George The Poet, who utters ponderous platitudes as if these capitalist high-street banks and supermarkets were some kind of socialist utopia. In fact, of course, today’s Co-op bears hardly even a trace of the idealism of the Rochdale Pioneers of 1844. Like the John Lewis Partnership, it has long succumbed to the pressure to act just like any other profit-hungry, hierarchical corporation within a capitalist world.

In 2016 a total of £16 million was allocated nationally by the Co-op to community projects and 'good causes', out of a group turnover of £7.1 billion. Just three of their bank directors (Niall Booker, Liam Coleman and John Baines) that year shared an income of £4 million, a quarter of the entire national community causes budget. So when George The Poet intones 'let’s work together and strive for unity' as 'great things happen when we work together', it is an utter sham. Likewise, when he asks, 'What if communities got a share of the profits? What if everyone could win from this?' he neglects to mention that last year the share handed to 'the community' (in lieu of tax) was only 2p out of every £10.

The recruitment of artistic talent to sell such messages has become the holy grail of companies, and it was a great coup that they had this film directed by one of our greatest living film makers, Shane Meadows (This Is England, Dead Man’s Shoes, SomersTown, A Room for Romeo Brass), well known for his working-class realism and affinity. Rather than carp from the sidelines, however, we can rely on the self-description from the horse’s mouth, as it were. The director of the Co-op brand, Helen Carroll, has praised the style of this new campaign, as it 'doesn’t feel like advertising at all. It shows the power of community'.

In using that power to sell products and make millions for people like Niall Booker and Liam Coleman, the Co-op has shamelessly copied a series of adverts run shortly before by a rival bank, also with false pretensions to being less bank-like than other banks, the Nationwide. Those ads featured a whole range of 'cool' and popular young performance poets, telling us through their rhyming sermons that Nationwide is another bank devoted to sharing, caring, community, responsibility and fairness. But try going to either of these banks if you have just been made redundant and can no longer pay your mortgage or rent. Ask them to show a bit of community spirit by covering it for you for a couple of years. Let us know their response.

All of those poets were either incredibly stupid and gullible, or ambitious and easily bought. The Nationwide, like the Co-op Bank, is a capitalist institution, committed to invest in order to accumulate surpluses. It stands right at the heart of the most exploitative system ever to curse the human species. Is this what music and lyrics are for, to praise banks? If only these artists had possessed one tenth of the decency and principle of Ricky Gervais, who once turned down a million pounds rather than advertise something he found tacky and undesirable – and that was at a time when he was not yet wealthy himself. What those cheap, venal sell-outs bought into was the modern trend in which capitalist corporations do not advertise the products they are selling, but rather their proclaimed decency and high moral values. Of course, they protest too much. The people and organisations who really devote themselves to caring about people and working for the community do not need to spend millions of advertising dollars insisting how nice they really are.

Clifford Slapper

Material World: South Sudan – Another Failed State (2017)

The Material World column from the June 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

South Sudan, the world's youngest nation, was plunged into civil war in 2013, just two years after gaining its independence from neighbouring Sudan, after President Salva Kiir dismissed his deputy, Riek Machar. During the first two years of independence, the country was producing nearly 245,000 barrels of crude oil per day, raking in billions of dollars in revenue annually which paid for this trade. South Sudan's ruling class, responsible for atrocities, have managed to accumulate fortunes while the people suffer under a civil war. The country’s competing privileged elites are sacrificing their own people’s lives to secure the political and economic benefits derived from control of the state. Peace remains a distant prospect, with Kiir and Machar seemingly hell-bent on a military solution.

The conflict has divided the nation along largely tribal lines. Kiir told the UN general assembly back in September 2014 that 'The conflict in South Sudan is purely a political struggle for power, not an ethnic conflict as reported.' Yet violence has broken out along ethnic lines in many parts of the country, pitting forces loyal to Kiir, a Dinka, against those of his former deputy Machar, a Nuer. Festus Mogae. a former Botswanan president, who tried to broker a peace, said, 'We were trying to persuade him [Kiir] that they were leaders and they should think of the welfare of the people, but they failed to do that.' The United Nations reported that government militias raped women essentially as a form of payment, under an agreement that allowed them to 'do what you can and take what you can.'

More than 3 million people have fled their homes out of a population of 12 million. The UN has declared a famine in some parts of the country and nearly half its population face food shortages. Kiir's government has continued to make arms deals even as a famine was declared. In March UN humanitarian chief Stephen O’Brien reported that in South Sudan 'more than one million children are estimated to be acutely malnourished across the country, including 270,000 children who face the imminent risk of death should they not be reached in time with assistance.' We now witness the return of the old colonialists but instead of pith helmets, they are donning the blue helmets of the UN. 400 British troops will eventually be deployed to provide engineering and medical support to the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS.)

It is true to say that this is a human-made famine but it would be more accurate to describe it as capitalist-created famine. Hunger in South Sudan is the work of politicians and elites. Up to 75 percent of the country’s land area is suitable for farming. South Sudan has vast fertile lands, abundant water and climate suitable for production of a wide variety of food and cash crops. Experts estimate that up to 300,000 tonnes of fish could be harvested on a sustainable basis from its share of the River Nile swamps and tributaries. What food South Sudan produces often is left rotting in the bush due to poor road networks to transport the commodities to the market yet chicken arrives from Brazil. Tomatoes, onions, maize flour, cooking oil, dairy products and beans are imported from neighbouring Uganda. Every year, South Sudan spent between US$200-300 million on food imports, according to estimates for 2013 provided by the Abidjan-based African Development Bank (AFDB). 'South Sudan currently imports as much as 50 percent of its needs, including 40 percent of its cereals from neighbouring  countries, particularly Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia', according to AFDB.

Nationalism and sovereignty are frequently promoted as solutions to many social ills but only too often, the reality is very different. The Republic of South Sudan was declared an independent nation on 9 July 2011. The new national flag was raised, the band played the new national anthem and the countdown clock flashed 'free at last.' African nations do not share many things in common except the forcible grouping together of tribes. In the past when the continent didn't have artificial boundaries such as there are today, wars and hatred were not as rife. Nationalism imposes the idea of the nation to legitimise both the state and class rule. The problems of exploitation and exclusion that once came from the government of Sudan are now replicated in South Sudan. The Socialist Standard has often cautioned workers to be wary of simplistic nationalistic solutions. The oppressed very quickly become the oppressors.

ALJO

The World in Crisis (2017)

Book Review from the June 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

'The World in Crisis'. Edited by Guiglelmo Carchedi and Michael Roberts, (Zero Books, 2017)

Karl Marx believed that capitalism had a tendency for the rate of profit to fall, and that this is ‘the most important law in political economy’. The Socialist Party has been non-committal on this ‘law’, partly because of its unfinished state (basically notes edited for publication by Engels after Marx’s death), and partly because the ‘law’ seems to be questionable due to what Marx called ‘counteracting factors'’. Also, some leftists have invoked a tendency for the rate of profit to fall as the cause of capitalism’s inevitable collapse (not heard so often these days, they are capitalism’s falling rate of prophets).

This collection of essays from writers around the world examines the evidence from states around the world (including China) using Marx’s theory of value. Marx’s ‘law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall’ (LTRPF) can be stated in a couple of sentences:

•  Capitalism is based on the competitive accumulation of profits through technological innovation.

•  Technological innovation increases output but reduces the value of commodities and therefore the profit of what is produced.

This, in one form or another, is the explanation for the cause of capitalism’s inherent economic crises. What the writers here refer to as the ‘Great Recession’, which began in 2008, was the LTRPF manifesting itself as a financial crisis. The LTRPF is also a rejection of explanations of crises in terms of a general lack of purchasing power (Keynesian economics), high wages or government spending (the right wing) or inequality (the left wing).

Against the LTRPF Marx identified five counteracting tendencies which raise the average rate of profit:

1.         Increases in the intensity of exploitation (getting more out of the same or fewer workers).

2.         Reduction of wages below their value (in money wages or in real terms through inflation).

3.         Increasing unemployment (depressing wage levels and holding back wage rises).

4.         Cheaper constant capital (less money spent on productive assets).

5.         Foreign trade and investment (new markets and export opportunities).

Marx mentioned other possible counteracting tendencies but did not go into detail. For Marx and the authors in this book the counteracting tendencies are insufficient to prevent a long-term fall in the average rate of profit. The long-term trend is downwards (in the UK since the late nineteenth century), punctuated by upsurges brought about by the counteracting tendencies. The main part of this book is a detailed statistical analysis of evidence from around the globe. It is, the editors admit, ‘often dense in analysis and flush with figures and numbers’. But for anyone looking for the hard data which backs up Marx’s LTRPF, here it is.

Marx was in no doubt that ‘permanent crises do not exist’ and the writers here agree. So what of the future? The intensification of class struggles and further bouts of austerity for the working class, alternating with booming economies, seems the most likely. All in the name of a declining rate of profit. Perhaps the most important consequence of the analysis in this book is that there are no reformist solutions. As long as the profit system – capitalism – remains the future for the working class is a world in crisis.

Lew Higgins

General Election: Manifesto of The Socialist Party. (1910)

From the January 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

FELLOW MEMBERS OF THE WORKING CLASS,

Unlike the usual election manifesto, this is addressed to those who have not a vote as well as to those who have. Its object is to gain, not your vote, but your understanding. You think, perhaps, that the choice now before you is only between the various candidates clamouring for your support. But there is, as we shall show, another alternative that follows logically and inevitably from the position of the working class. And since a knowledge of this position is essential to intelligent political action, we shall deal briefly with it first, and ask you in consequence to give it a moment’s attention.

WHAT IS YOUR POSITION?

It is your lot to toil for a master while you can, and to starve quietly when you cannot. When you are in work to-day, you toil harder, and produce enormously more than ever before, — yet your wage barely suffices for your maintenance. Unemployment, with all the misery it entails upon you and those dependent upon you, dogs your footsteps. Of the total produce of your labour an increasing portion goes to an idle class, while, though you make all the good things, you are forced to consume the cheapest rubbish. Why is this?

Are you poor because there is not abundance of the necessaries of life? Is it because the means of producing them are insufficient, or because there are not willing hands to labour? No. There are hosts of willing labourers. And the instruments of labour become every day more perfect and more productive. Surely, then, with marvellous labour-saving machines and huge waste-saving combines, there should be increased wealth and leisure for all. Why, then, is it that wealth and leisure are only for a class, while poverty and arduous toil are the lot of the producers ?

You have noticed that when a labour-saving machine is introduced into a factory to-day, men are thrown out of work to starve. The toil and insecurity of those who remain in employ are increased, while only the owner of that machine reaps the benefit. Clearly, however, if those who produce owned the machine, the result would be entirely different; there would be shorter hours of labour and higher remuneration for them. It is, consequently, not the machine that injures us, but the ownership of it by the non-producer. Because the workers do not own and control the land and industrial machinery they are the hirelings of those who do own these things, and must sell their bodily energy to them. Thus the propertyless are compelled to cede to the capitalist class the whole product of their labour over and above their maintenance. That is why, so long as class ownership continues, greater poverty for the working class will accompany the increasing wealth and productivity of society.

The abolition of unemployment and the brightening of the workers’ lives can. consequently, only come with the abolition of wage-slavery and of class ownership in the instruments of production. The means for producing wealth must be restored to the workers; and this, to-day, can only be done collectively. This collective ownership and democratic control of industry scientifically organised is SOCIALISM.

And while there is admittedly no other remedy for unemployment and poverty, there is also no way to Socialism except by means of the conquest of political power by a Socialist working class. Your rulers expend huge sums to retain their control of Government in order to maintain and extend their exploitation. And in advancing to the conquest of the political machinery, we shall, consequently, always find the capitalist class our implacable enemy. As in the past, each side will struggle for its interests as it understands them, and the interests of the working class being diametrically opposed to those of all the capitalists, no quarter can be expected or given. Any alliance or compromise with capitalists in the political struggle can only be a working class surrender. Hence the supreme importance of adhering consistently to the fundamental Socialist principle of the CLASS STRUGGLE. For it is only when the wealth-producers control political power— only when the workers are victorious — that the work of transforming the means of production from ruthless instruments of profit for a few into the means of healthy life for all, can begin.

In the light of these facts let us examine the political parties which are begging for your support during the present election, taking first

THE TORY PARTY.

Tariff Reform, say the Conservatives, is just what you need. It will relieve the admittedly terrible unemployed evil, will improve the lot of the worker and increase his wages. These and similar Tory statements can only be described as “frigid and calculated lies.’" The position of the worker as outlined above holds good of every capitalist country, whether it has Protection or Free Trade. Poverty and unemployment are rife, and tend to increase, despite temporary fluctuations, under both fiscal systems. In every country the wage of the worker has a direct relation to his cost of subsistence, but none whatever to the presence or absence of tariff walls. Tariffs, at most, benefit one set of capitalists at the expense of another, but the toilers are wage slaves exploited to the utmost all the time. The 'Tories, indeed, are frankly our enemies; they stand for the present system of robbery in all its ugliness. 'Their antagonism to working-class aims has been proclaimed from the house tops, and by supporting them the working man stultifies himself and sets a seal on his slavery. Let us now turn to

THE LIBERAL PARTY.

Equally with the Tories they stand for capitalism, and make no secret of their hostility to Socialism As Dr. Macnamara said, “Radicalism is irrevocably opposed to the principles on which Socialism is based.” [1] Mr. Asquith, Mr. Ure, and Mr. Churchill have been equally definite. Take the present Budget over which so much bother is being made. The increased expenditure is due, above all, to huge armaments for the protection of capitalist interests and property. It is a Budget of exploitation. Its disputed taxes have been advocated by Tories, and are in operation in other countries with no benefit to the workers. The only valid grounds for the Tory objections are the exigencies of party politics, and the possibility that the new sources of revenue may postpone the necessity for a tax on imports.

Mr. Lloyd George rightly summed up the overdone Tory opposition and showed what the Budget really is when he said [2]

   When I come along and say to the landlord: “Here, the State wants money to protect you and your property —your land —your mansion —your rights —your privileges: we want money to protect you; you must pay ,£15 out of £150 —they say Robber!"

And do they intend to abolish the House of Lords? Mr. Asquith said: [3]

   You will be told that the issue lies between government by two chambers and government by a single chamber. That is not the case. I myself, and I believe a large majority of the Liberal party are in favour of what is called a bi-cameral system.

Thus the Liberals do not intend, and, indeed, never have intended, to abolish the House of Lords. That institution is regarded by the capitalist class as a great bulwark of the “rights of property," and any reform of the Upper House, put forward by the Lords themselves, the Tories, or the Liberals, can only result in strengthening it against the people. The Liberal party would, moreover, be impossible without the Lords as a foil. It is their perpetual election cry and universal excuse for broken promises. Indeed, while pretending to protest against usurpation, the Liberals have deliberately canceled new privileges. After saying that to dissolve at the dictation of the Lords would be to capitulate, they have deliberately capitulated. Instead of making use of the undoubted rights of the Commons, or using the power which Lord Courtney [4] has shown that the Government possesses over the Lords, the Liberals have given the Upper House the powerful precedents and privileges of rejecting a Budget and compelling a dissolution; precedents which even the ultimate passing of the present finance bill will neither destroy nor weaken. Even the Church Times was moved to remark that “There is only one true description of the situation—ministers have capitulated to the House of Lords." [5] It is seemingly part of a great conspiracy to strengthen the Upper Chamber and humbug the people. There is every reason, therefore, why your attitude toward Liberal candidates should be one of uncompromising hostility.

But we have not quite finished with the Liberal party. There is still a section of it which claims our attention. We refer to

THE LABOUR PARTY.

(which includes the so-called Independent Labour Party). The Labour M.P.s cannot be completely separated from the Liberals in politics, for their political independence is non-existent. “My Budget," says Mr. Lloyd George. “My Budget," says Mr. Philip Snowden. [6] They are "whole heartedly" for the capitalists’ Budget. And it is amusing to find them trying to assure the murmuring rank and file that no understanding with the Liberals exists, in face of the withdrawal of “Labour" men in favour of Liberals, and of Liberals in favour of “Labour" men. One does not. of course, expect to find a written compact. It might become awkward evidence while, as the Times says. “With friends who understand each other so well it is unnecessary.” [7] Quite so. The compromise of the last General Election, in fact, is being repeated on a more complete scale.

The legislatively impotent “Labour” members claim as theirs measures passed by the Liberal majority, and are now engaged in booming the bogus agitation over the Lords and the Budget, and in rallying the workers once more to the support of the Liberal section of the exploiting class.

That there is no Socialism in the “Labour” group is proven by the welcome given them by the anti-Socialist Liberals. Mr. Churchill said: [8]

   Don't let there be any division in our ranks at this juncture. I know that the Lords and their backers are counting on divisions between Liberal and Labour But I think they are likely to be a little bit mistaken.

Several of the newer candidates have been speaking plainly of the pressure brought to bear on them to force them to retire in favour of the Liberals. Mr. Vernon Hartshorn made a vigorous protest. He said : [9]

  I would have gone on in spite of this, but I have been reluctantly compelled, from circumstances of a very personal kind, to conclude that the whole machinery of the Labour Party throughout the country is under the control of the Liberals, and as the latter did not approve of a fight in Mid-Glamorgan, the former are left with no option but to submit to their masters, and I am left with no option but to surrender.

Of such is the “Independence” of the “Labour” Party. The workers pay the piper and their misters call the tune!

There is, however, another organisation, which need not be given a distinct heading We refer to the SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY. This organisation talks of the Class Struggle, but denies it by its every political act. and does not otherwise differ from the “Labour” Party, which it jealously emulates. One of their number. Mr. Will Thorne, was elected in 1906 as a “Labour” member under the auspices of the Labour Party, and is a candidate now under similar conditions. In the present instance the political worthlessness of the S.D.P. may be gauged by the fact that in their official organ, while they denounce the campaign against the Lords as a mere "stage fight,” and assert that the “ Liberals do not wish to abolish the veto of the Lords,” on another page they publish as leading article “A Plea for Unity,” in which they say : [10]

   We are inclined to accede to the claim of ministerial journals and politicians that in the present contest we should be content to waive every other consideration and make the question of the House of Lords the supreme issue, and therefore avoid on this occasion all division of the forces which might be arrayed against the House of Lords. We are all for showing an undivided front against them.

And they conclude this touching appeal by suggesting to the Liberals that they refrain from opposing their candidates and help to get them returned. If the S.D.P. has not “got on” it is not because it has any principles that stand in the way. It “waives every other consideration," including every vestige of Socialist principle, in order to get into Parliament, and offers to aid the Liberals in what it confesses to be a bogus agitation.

WHAT SHOULD YOU DO?

It is evident that from your standpoint as wage-workers none of the foregoing parties is worthy of your support. Not by voting for any of them could you strike a blow for your class. Indeed, from the position laid down it is obvious that the only party you should support must be in direct contrast with these parties. Your party should be democratic. It should have Socialism as its programme and the Class Struggle as its guiding principle. Its candidates should be controlled by the rank and file. It should devote its energies to converting the workers to Socialism, and to organising them for the conquest of political power for its realisation. It should never compromise with capitalist parties, and should refuse to barter away the workers’ salvation for crumbs that profit not. 'That is the party that you should support, and for its candidates alone could you logically vote. Only one party answers to that description in this country—the SOCIALIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN. But since the ground must be well tilled before the good harvest can be reaped, that party is putting no candidates forward during the present election. Even the poverty which impedes the activity of the working- class party is in itself only a reflex of the present unreadiness of the electorate. Therefore the principles of Socialism must be more widely propagated and the workers more fully organised, before candidates of the Socialist Party can usefully enter the Parliamentary arena. And if you agree that your position is as we have outlined it; if you realise that your policy must be distinct from and hostile to all capitalist politics, and that Socialism alone can help your class, then it is your duty to join the Socialist Party and take a democratic share in its work; thus advancing the day—not far distant—when it will place its own candidates— your candidates—in the Parliamentary field to wage uncompromisingly the fight for Socialism. But until you can thus vote for yourselves and strike a blow against exploitation, it is clearly your duty to ABSTAIN FROM VOTING.

To do otherwise would be to-stultify yourselves and to support the system that crushes you. Go to the ballot box by all means, but only to write Socialism across your voting paper; for if you cannot vote now for what you want, it is folly to vote for what you do not want. The vote, like the razor, is an instrument for a purpose. If you cannot for the moment use it to your advantage, it is madness to cut your throat. And by voting for your enemies, for traitors and charlatans, you are surely cutting your throat.

Above all, however, whether you have a vote or not, realise how much depends upon you and how much remains to be done. A vote, even for a candidate of the Socialist Party, is of no value unless it expresses a Socialist consciousness. Understanding must precede action, for Socialism is impossible until the workers become class-conscious Socialists. There is, therefore, work for you to do. There are outlets for your energy infinitely more profitable to your class than voting for the defenders of exploitation. The army of Socialism must be recruited, and your place is within the ranks of the organisation of your class, taking your part in the battle for the emancipation of your fellows from wage-slavery.

                                             THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF 

                                     THE  SOCIALIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN

NOTES
[1] Daily Chronicle, Oct. 21.
[2] Carnavon (italics are ours).
[3] Albert Hall, Dec. 10.
[4] House of Lords, Nov. 30.
[5] Quoted Daily Chronicle, Dec. 6.
[6] Portsmouth Dec. 3.
[7] Dec. 9.
[8] Crewe, Dec. 9.
[9] Quoted Daily Mail, Dec. 8.
[10] Justice, Dec. 11 (italics are ours).

Exhibition Review: Never Going Underground (2017)

Exhibition Review from the June 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Sexual Offences Act became law in 1967, the consequence being that sex between consenting adult males in private was no longer a criminal offence. An exhibition ‘Never Going Underground’ on LGBT+ equality at the People’s History Museum in Manchester marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Act (it’s on till 3 September). The title is a reference to the use of a logo based on that of the London Underground.

Many gay men had had their lives more or less ruined. For instance, in 1958 Conservative MP Ian Harvey was found guilty of ‘committing an act of gross indecency with another male person’. He was fined £5 but, as his counsel noted, he would in fact be paying for the rest of his life. Not that the 1967 Act would have made much difference to Harvey, as his offence took place in a park.

The exhibition covers a number of themes, such as the importance of activism and demonstrations in getting the law changed. The Sexual Offences Act was of course not in itself the end of the campaigning. The age of consent for gay sex was 21 and was only reduced to 16 (the same as for heterosexuals) in 2003 in England and Wales. In 1988 an amendment to the Local Government Act, the notorious Clause 28, barred local councils from ‘promoting’ homosexuality (which was given a very wide interpretation); this was repealed in Scotland in 2000 and in the rest of the UK in 2003.

It is also clear that there have been arguments within the LGBT+ community on various matters. One was whether it was acceptable to have the police, the armed forces and big business involved in Pride Parades. Another was whether legalising same-sex marriages represented a kind of liberation or acceptance of an oppressive institution. Also, many gay black men have found that racism in the gay scene has been greater than homophobia in black communities.

At least two interesting general lessons can be learned. One is that legal status is not by itself sufficient: there has never been any ban on lesbian sex in the UK, but there has been plenty of anti-lesbian prejudice and discrimination. Another is that solidarity across different causes is important: co-operation between a lesbian and gay group and some South Wales miners played an important role in the 1984–5 miners’ strike.       

Paul Bennett