The Fallacies of Joad (1943)

From the August 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

We Socialists are constantly urging workers not to judge persons or political parties by labels. It is this free acceptance of terms or words used to describe political opinions and policies that is responsible in no small measure for the confusion and misunderstanding which exists in the minds of workers everywhere to-day.

If there is one tag used more often and indiscriminately than any other it is the label of "Socialism,” and it is only by a critical examination of the various nostrums put forward by pseudo-Socialists that the bankruptcy of their claims are revealed.

A case in point is that of Dr. C. E. M. Joad, who has on many occasions stated he is a Socialist. Dr. Joad is a man who receives much favourable publicity from the Press and the B.B.C. and who has come to be regarded with a great deal of respect by large numbers of workers who fall easily under the spell of erudite and fluent speakers. He is a member of the Brains Trust and a man of undoubted ability in certain spheres, but Socialist knowledge is not one of his assets. This is made clear in an article in Reynolds of April 18, in which Dr. Joad gives his reasons for aspiring to enter the post-war Government as a Labour member. He says: -—

   I have spent my life in learning and teaching, and I can see how the educational system of this country plays a greater part than any other single factor in perpetuating the division of our nation into two peoples —the privileged and the unprivileged.—(Reynolds, April 18.)

Dr. Joad then gives his solution as to how this division can be ended. He proposes to abolish the present educational system of, on the one hand, elementary schools for children of the working class, and on the other hand, kindergartens, preparatory schools, public schools and Oxford or Cambridge for children of the wealthy. In its place he wants to substitute a system in which every child is given an equal opportunity of developing his talents as a man and serving the community as a citizen, irrespective of the economic position of his father.” (Reynolds, April 18.)

Now it is true that the education, given out to-day plays a part, among other things, in perpetuating the class division in society. Whether or not it is greater than any other single factor is a point that need not concern us here. The influence of education on the preservation of things as they are is not due, however, to the two different standards of education, as Dr. .load thinks, but to the fact that education is coloured by a capitalistic outlook and inculcates into the mind of the child an unquestioning acceptance of the present order of society. Capitalist education is the antidote to revolutionary ideas.

The important point, however, the crux of the whole matter, is this: that education merely helps to perpetuate the class division—it is not the cause. It follows logically that even if you remove one of the perpetuating factors whilst leaving the basic cause untouched, then the effect of that cause will remain.

If Dr. Joad knew as much about the Socialist case as he would have us believe then he would know that the cause of the class division, not only in this country, to which Joad refers, but throughout the world, is an economic one: class ownership of the means of life. The class that owns and controls the means of wealth production, the land, factories, workshops, machines, etc., is obviously in a privileged position. Because of their ownership of the means of producing the things by which all men live they can deny access to these things by those that own nothing but their labour- power—-by far the largest portion of society. The propertyless class, then, are enabled to live only by the consent, and subject to the conditions of those who own the world’s resources.

The proposals that Dr. Joad puts forward do not assail the privileged position of the capitalist class. The continuance of the ownership of the means of living is unchallenged. In fact, this is implicit in Dr. .load’s statement when he talks about every child being given an equal opportunity “ . . . irrespective of the economic position of his father." What does this statement imply if not that economic inequality will still prevail? If there are rich and poor then there are privileged and unprivileged. Riches are synonymous with privilege; poverty with slavery.

Unlike this self-styled ”middle-class intellectual,” we Socialists, members of the ”unprivileged” class, put before our fellow-workers a case that really strikes at the roots of the problem. Our solution is not educational reform, nor any other kind of reform, but abolition of private property—capitalism. When the means of producing wealth are owned in common by the whole of society no class will be able to exploit a subject class. There will be no classes—in other words there will be no privileged and no unprivileged. And as regards education, only then will, there be available to every child the very best that modern science and technology can offer. The whole vast field of man’s knowledge will be open to all the children of society. That is the Socialist case and one that Dr. .load could well learn.

S. Pizer

We Prepare For Action (1943)

Party News from the September 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

The delegates at our Annual Conference at Easter decided that preparations should be begun now to meet the problems of the post-war period, when excellent propaganda prospects will open up. In accordance with this resolution, our Executive Committee has decided to inaugurate a fund to make it possible to appoint full-time organisers to develop the party organisation outside the London area.

Our propagandists who visit the provinces find that the Socialist message is being received everywhere they go with gratifying interest, our literature is being eagerly bought, and there are dear indications of a growing mistrust of Labourism and reformism among the workers. At the same time, our Central Branch, the members of which are scattered up and down the country in areas where no local branch exists, is growing considerably. But Socialist ideas cannot be spread widely without organisation, and organisation has to be built up.

We shall therefore need full-time organisers, whose duty it will be to propagate Socialism both in areas where branches or groups exist and in other provincial areas which have not yet heard our message. They will assist in the formation of new branches and help them to develop their internal strength, train speakers, etc., until they are able to function as strong and active centres of Socialist propaganda and organisation, thus releasing the organisers for work in other undeveloped areas.

With these future developments in mind, we call on our many sympathisers to subscribe to the fund which is being established for the purpose.

We are convinced, after long and careful examination, that Socialism is the only solution to the problems that afflict the workers and society in general, to-day. As Socialism is in the interest of the workers, the workers have but to understand in order to accept and work for it. Our aim therefore is to get our Socialist message spread as widely as possible.

Up to the present we have not had the means to cover the country with our propaganda. Now we are preparing to do so. We are training speakers, writers and organisers, and when we have sufficient funds for the purpose and can put organisers in the field we are bound to make rapid headway.

It remains for those who wish to see our movement progress to help us with contributions towards this end. If you want a life different from the slavery of the factory, the office and the farm, here is the opportunity to help forward the change. It is a change that will bring into existence a social system in which all men and women, on a footing of social equality, will be able to control their own destinies and make their existence on earth something worth living for. That time may not be far off. It rests with the workers how soon it will come. You can hasten the progress.

Send donations to J. Butler, 298, Halley Road, Manor Park, E.12, stating clearly that they are intended for the Provincial Organisers' Fund. P.O.'s, cheques, etc., must be crossed and made payable to the S.P.G.B.

Money and Socialism (1943)

From the October 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many people are incredulous when Socialists declare that money and banking will have no part to play in Socialist society.

Those on the "left" who are informed at all keep a discreet silence on this particular subject, or have been won over to the belief that Socialism has been established in Russia. Events and more information of the internal set-up of that country will in due course dispel the illusion from workers' minds. Yet such is the inroad that apologists of Russian “Communism" have made into the general theory that is essential to the workers' understanding of Socialism, that we are prompted to quote the Soviet War News pamphlet, "Believers and Clergy of the U.S.S.R." (Hutchinson & Co., 3d.). It contains a list of monies deposited with the State bank by priests and the acknowledgment of same by Stalin. One priest gives as follows: “I paid into the Government Bank on the 28th all my private savings, totalling 273,000 roubles'' (p. 6), (equivalent to about £11,000).

How these ecclesiastics came by their money need not detain us; what is exposed are the features of capitalism that Socialists have for years contended arise from the capitalist basis of Russian economy. What are the features of which we speak? Here a brief glance back is necessary in order to view capitalism in perspective.

Historically, capitalism, or the production of commodities for a market, breaks the fetters of feudal economy, based on domestic handicrafts and land cultivation, by revolutionising the means of production, thus changing the class relationship of landed proprietors and serfs to one of wage-workers and capitalists.

The erstwhile peasants become the employees in the capitalist's manufacturing workshops for wages.

Thereafter the development of the capitalist class itself goes apace with capital accumulation, and the invention of power-driven machinery to cheapen their commodities. Small private enterprise gives way to limited liability companies and trusts, tending always to remove the capitalists further from the activity of personal supervision by the delegation of a host of technicians, managers, etc., who carry out the capitalists' mandate, until in the case of State capitalism itself the State is used as the central organisation for managing capitalism as a national whole.

Whatever form it develops, the capitalist system produces commodities, and for their exchange and circulation needs a medium for expressing their value and price. All other commodities have been ousted by gold for this supreme position by the fact that gold enshrines in a small compass much human labour for its production.

Gold is therefore the commodity par excellence for expressing value in terms of money, on the basis that the labour-time expended to produce a given quantity of gold by modern methods—i.e., socially necessary labour—can be equated to an equivalent of socially necessary labour incorporated in any other commodity.

Most national currencies are therefore related to gold— an ounce of gold of certain fineness, for instance, divides up into nearly four pounds sterling, or in currency terms £3 17s. 10½d. The fact that gold, having doffed the commodity form and given the State stamp of money, can be replaced by metal or paper tokens, gives the clue to the basis of the capitalist arrangement of credit money, or exchange without immediate payment in gold, which enables the finance capitalist to offer to the whole capitalist class the total loanable wealth via the medium of banks, much to the dismay of the “small man," who finds difficulty in getting credit as against large concerns.

Any mismanagement of token currency by the capitalistic state in, say, the printing of too many notes to do the work of gold coin leads to inflation, and a comparable rise in prices.

Money is rightly said to be the lubricating oil that enables the capitalist mechanism to move, but it is not the motive power, for the true drive is the human need of the necessities of life. Standing in need of these necessities, the workers must sell their labour-power before they can buy commodities for their subsistence; and by the social legerdemain of money they are legally robbed of full access to the social wealth which they have produced, the trick being that wages will purchase but a portion of the total wealth made by them, the surplus being split up among the employing class.

With the foregoing as a background we return to the subject of Russia.

The social upheaval that took place in Russia opened up the country for industrialisation. The Bolsheviks seized power by the support given them by war-weary workers, soldiers and peasants, for the slogans of peace, land and bread; taking control of a state where the partly foreign capitalists were very weak politically. But could they jump the successive stages of capitalist development into Socialism? The S.P.G.B. declared an emphatic no! No intellectual minority could perform the social miracle of introducing Socialism with a non-socialist majority! Around the "Communist" dictatorship gathered those who determined to end the slough of semi-feudal Czardom. Learning from the large- scale producing countries, and applying this technique to a huge backward country, they tackled the problem that once faced all capitalist countries, namely, how to get cheap food for the towns. This was done by buying at a fixed price all peasant produce and by urging peasants into “Collectives" for the more economical use of machinery leased to them by the State. Alongside with this, industry was planned on the' basis of payment by results, or piecework, thereby increasing that part of the population dependent on wages paid by the State.

Thus at a stroke, this form of state capitalism removed any would-be capitalist to the completely impersonal owner of capital vested in the state, and created a social stratum of managers, experts, and functionaries who are appointed and salaried by the government. The class relationship in Russia is not yet sharply defined, but at first glance it could be described as one of state investors as against mere wage workers.

The official account of the state debt to hand is in the Statesman’s Year Book, 1942, which gives the following: "In January, 1933, the internal debt was 10,088,900,000 roubles; the internal debt has been increasing annually; some are lottery loans, and others bear interest of 4 per cent."

“National debts, i.e., the alienation of the state," says Marx, “whether despotic, constitutional or republican, marked with its stamp the capitalist era. The only part of the so-called national wealth that enters into the collective possession of modern peoples is their national debts." He then continues, “As with the stroke of an enchanter's wand, it endows barren money with the power of breeding and then turns it into capital without the necessity of its exposing itself to the trouble and risks inseparable from its employment in industry or even in usury."—Capital Glaisher Edition, p. 779, Genesis of Industrial Capital.)

Those simple souls who look for a capitalist class in Russia living in luxury will look in vain; for accumulation has had a chequered career in that country, being sunk in the fixed capital of new industrialisation, in the shape of roads, factories, power undertakings and equipment, much of which was bought and paid for from abroad, and this, together with the necessary heavy taxation drained away by the needs of modern war, leaves little time for the production of luxury goods. It would seem that the creditors of the young Russian state must wait for better times. Austerity is the mode at present for the monied class in Russia, although glimpses can be had of the upkeep of villas and servants which suggests a much higher living standard than that of wage-workers.

In contradistinction to state capitalism and those who advocate the nationalisation of the financial system, Socialists stand for the complete ending of the assessment of values in terms of money. Socialist society will not produce exchange-values or spend any part of its labour force obtaining the metal gold for currency, so essential to capitalist production and payment.

It will, undivided by classes, produce and distribute goods and services without money or price for use by the whole community.

Frank Dawe

Now That We Are All Capitalists: A Satirical Survey (1943)

From the November 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

According to the current propaganda nonsense, all who have a few pounds in a bank account or savings certificates are capitalists—"The population almost to a man . . . have acquired a capitalist interest in Great Britain” (Sir Alexander Roger, Daily Telegraph, April 14, 1943). Adjusting. ourselves to this cock-eyed view of the situation, we have decided to recast our own propaganda. It behoves us all to show a friendly interest in the doings of our fellow-capitalists.

We were glad to hear that our comrade, Lord Fitzwilliam, who died recently, was “one of the richest peers and owner of the biggest house in England, Wentworth Woodhouse” (Daily Telegraph, February 16, 1943). In our late fellow-capitalist's house there are. 1,000 windows, and "it was the custom to hand to each new guest a small packet of wafers to drop as a trail on his way to his room so that he could find his way back.” For the benefit of any foreign readers who may think that this kind of thing is universal in England, we may explain that the wafer system of finding your way about is not necessary in most of our houses. You just open the front door and there you are. When William's father died—now that we all belong to the same family, it would be unfriendly not to call him by his Christian name— he left £2,949,830, and William in 1933 "capitalised himself at £3,750,000 in four unlimited companies.” He was a man of great physical and mental powers. Although burdened with the cares that fall on all of us capitalists of looking after our investments, and though he was "much interested in engineering, especially mining engineering ” (Who’s Who), he was able to find time to travel much in India and Europe, and when he was young “he hunted three packs of hounds, one in Ireland and two in England. He would hunt all day in England, cross to Ireland at night, and hunt there all next day, and then return at night to hunt with his third pack on the following day” (Daily Telegraph). How he fitted this in with his work at the mine we do not know, but perhaps he was not so much interested in mining engineering as all that. Here, again, particularly for the benefit of American capitalist tricksters, who tell their local dupes that England (even more than Virginia) is given over to hunting, it should be explained that most of us have not even one pack of hounds.

Reverting to the question of the houses we capitalists live in, we recall that another of us, the Duke of Bedford, who died in 1940, was "one of the richest dukes and owner of several parts of London” (Daily Express, August 28, 1940). In 1913 he sold for £2,750,000 “part of his London estates, including Covent Garden Market, Drury Lane Theatre, the Royal Opera House, the Waldorf Hotel, the Strand and Aldwych Theatres, Bow Street Police Court, and property in 26 streets.”

By dint of painstaking research and inquiry, we have been able to establish beyond any reasonable doubt that it was not one of the wage-earning section of Sir Alexander Roger's “Capitalists ” who put up the £2,750,000. Nor were we able to trace any who as a regular thing are guests at the Waldorf.

Naturally, our interest in our fellow property owners does not stop at frontiers, so we may take a glance at U.S.A., where Comrade Marshall Field has just inherited £14,000,000 from his grandfather (Evening Standard, September 28th, 1943). Some accounts say £15,000,000, but what is a million between friends and fellow-capitalists? "This is in addition to the £9,000,000 accumulated interest he received five years ago under the will and other bequests totalling £9,500,000.” Marshall got the latest instalment on his 50th birthday, “ but there will be no special celebrations.” He said that he "does not contemplate any radical change in his life,” and that the sudden increase in his wealth " does not make me feel the slightest bit different.” It is this last touch that endears him to us. We know how he feels, like we do when we win 2s. on a horse. Like us, he is just going on with the daily routine. It all goes to prove those old sayings, " One touch of a savings bank deposit makes the whole world kin,” and "The capitalist propagandists can fool most of the workers for a very long time.”

Socialism—or Barbarism (1943)

From the December 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

Recent issues of the New Leader (August 28th and September 25th) have carried rather sweeping onslaughts on the Socialist Party by Mr. F. A. Ridley.

He is annoyed at the "incurable colour-blindness” of the S.P.G.B., which is a "still surviving relic of the meliorist Victorian age" (shades of Keir Hardie!) “They seem to think that the world is a glorified Hyde Park," he snorts contemptuously. Whereas Mr. Ridley, according to the New Leader, sees through “ Socialist eyes."

These "relics" "have accused the present writer [Ridley] of exaggeration, because I have always maintained that the concrete alternative to the Social Revolution was not even the continuation of Capitalism, but, ultimately, the Barbarism of a new dark age." (New Leader, August 28th.—our italics.)

But on Saturday, September 25th, the Editor of the New Leader heads the article with the words " F. A. Ridley says the choice before humanity is Socialist Revolution or violent and bloody collapse" (our italics).

In the first few lines of this particular outburst he says, “a few weeks back I raised in this column the fundamental question of our time: Socialism or Barbarism," then follows a lengthy diatribe anent the “superannuated drivel" of those “fundamentalists" the S.P.G.B. who imagine "there are no set-backs in history."

Incidentally. he did not announce all this till after the reported destruction of Hamburg—when he says "it is time to speak out " (August 28th). Why he kept it bock till then is a mystery.

He also states, “we are in a state of war. In my opinion this state of war will end with the end of Capitalism and not before " (August 28th), i.e.. not permanent revolution, like Trotsky—but permanent world war.

The present war, "it is not fanciful to predict," will lead, he says, to an underground society like that predicted by Bulwer Lytton in his novel, "The Coming Race," and lastly, as though all this were not enough, "a grimmer .age of permanent war, of revolution and counter-revolution has arrived“ (August 28th).

Four weeks later, "apart from the victory of the Social Revolution, everything indicates the collapse of this era as the bloodiest and most violent of all." (Italics ours.)

We have cited all this wearisome rigmarole because we cannot start to sort it out until we have got the whole mass of self-contradictory notions in one heap.

We may now draw up a little table as follows:—

In the opinion of Mr. Ridley the present war shows that alternatives before humanity are:—
Socialism—OR

1. Barbarism.2. A new Dark Age.3. Violent or bloody collapse.4. An underground society,5. Permanent War.6. A grimmer age of War, Revolution and Counter Revolution.

It is obvious, of course, that to Mr. Ridley and the New Leader all these are synonymous terms.

It must be admitted that if one's only concern is to put the wind up readers of the New Leader, i.e., publish sensational "horrific" articles about what will happen to you, presumably, if you don't vote for Commonwealth candidates (who support "Victory"), and eat up all your nasty I.L.P. porridge, it is probably quite effective.

Unfortunately, it has nothing whatever to do with Socialism—or its attainment.

Mr. Ridley says "I propose to apply this dialectical method, the method of Marxism, to the historical philosophy which denies the present retrogression and approaching collapse of capitalist civilisation."

"Propose" is the operative word.

Shorn of all his irrelevant allusions to various classical writers, militarists, poets, historians, etc. (his articles are liberally sprinkled with frequent references to Tacitus, von Clausewitz, Leonardo da Vinci, Marx, Lord Tennyson, dear Lytton, Darwin, Aristotle, Flinders Petrie, Spartacus and old Socrates and Cicero, of course; Sir Geo. Paish, Lord John Ball), and his alleged "quotations," page references for which he never gives, what does all this ridiculous taradiddle about “bloody and violent collapse " amount to? It amounts to this—that Mr. Ridley and the New Leader have swallowed whole the moth-eaten Communist Party nonsense of twenty years ago (and even the Communists lifted it from the Labour Party), that Capitalism will collapse; and the S.P.G.B. have not. F. A. Ridley, therefore, says they [the S.P.G.B.] think that “evolution is uninterrupted," and are like "Lot's wife frozen into a permanent pillar of salt.” (September 25th).

The plain fact is that Mr. Ridley has lost the faintest glimmer of a notion of economics—and consequently, of the part they play in history; and all his flashy citations of scores of “great names" are merely an ineffectual attempt to conceal his ignorance.

Mr. Ridley does not know what Barbarism is—or Capitalism—either. He has no notion of how it is defined, or was determined. To a scientific Socialist, these terms are not fancy trimmings for political ghost stories; they connote a certain definite stage in social development; and Marx's great merit was in discovering that a certain stage of development of the productive forces produced that scheme of social organisation, e.g.. Barbarism. In other words, he gave us a clue to the law of social development.

Ridley talks glibly of Barbarism OR a new Dark Age. The period called the Dark Age by historians was not Barbarism—it was feudalism, something totally different, and to announce blithely in print that we may revert, to one or the other, just accidentally, is sheer idle nonsense.

If Mr. Ridley could forget Socrates and von Clausewitz for a minute, and turn to the man who actually studied Barbarism—Lewis H. Morgan, or the man who popularised him, Frederick Engels, he might learn something. There, we find Barbarism defined as—

"The time of acquiring the knowledge of cattle raising, of agriculture and of new methods for increasing the productivity of nature by human agency." (Origin of the Family, Kerr ed., p. 39.)

Barbarism started with, the discovery of pottery and ended with the invention of writing.

Is Mr. Ridley seriously suggesting in an article in which he describes the tremendous advances made by aviation, that humanity is discarding the knowledge it has accumulated and returning to primitive pasturage and agriculture as occupations?

And because he is hopelessly ignorant of the economics of Capitalism, he actually says in his article that "capitalist society does not differ in its social framework of exploitation and inequality from earlier vanished civilisations, such as those of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans . . .

   

"Wage-slavery is slavery, even if technically different from chattel-slavery." (September 25th.)

So it turns out that it is no different anyway—so why Ridley is so worried about going back to it nobody knows.

Even the New Leader has hardly ever printed a more stupid statement.

Modern machinery, etc. (constant capital) presupposes "free" wage-slaves (variable capital) to operate it, and cannot be run in any other way. Chattel slaves couldn’t be trusted with a mattock—let alone a tractor.

But now we come to the guts of the question — will Capitalism collapse ?

The Socialist Party said No, when almost everybody else, including James Maxton, was saying Yes.

   "I am perfectly satisfied that the great Capitalist system that has endured for 150 years in its modern form, is now at the stage of final collapse, and not all the devices of the statesmen, not all the three-party conferences, not all the collaboration between the leaders, can prevent the system from coming down in one unholy crash. They may postpone the collapse for a month, two months, three months, six months, he cries, but collapse is sure and certain." (August 22nd, 1931: "Why Capitalism will not Collapse," S.P.G.B., February, 1932. p. 9.)

So that all Ridley has done, after twelve years, is to stick a few "bloodys" in. Maxton even knew the date then, which Ridley doesn't claim to—now.

The whole thing originates in the absurd 1920-30 propaganda of the Communists—the idea of automatic collapse followed by blind revolt of the workers—which, for the Communist Party bosses, was the "psychological moment" to "seize power." 

Everything has shown since that "BLIND” revolts of the workers don't end in Socialism—but much more likely in Fascism.

   "Our work has been made more difficult by the idea that Capitalism may collapse of its own accord. It is clear that if Capitalism were going to collapse under the weight of its own problems then it would be a waste of time and energy to carry on Socialist propaganda and to build up a real Socialist party aiming at political power. If it were true, as is claimed, that Capitalism will have broken down long before it will be possible for us to win over a majority for the capture of political power, then, indeed, it would be necessary to seek Socialism by some other means. Workers who have accepted this wrong and lazy idea of collapse have neglected many activities that are absolutely essential. They have taken up the fatalistic attitude of waiting for the system to end itself. But the system is not so obliging."
(Why Capitalism will not Collapse, S.P.G.B., p. 1.)
   "The problem of over-production that is behind every crisis is always relieved in due course for a time. Employers close down production. . . .  Capitalists destroy stocks. . . . Stocks deteriorate. . . .  As a last resort there is the colossal destruction of wars to relieve the pressure. Sooner or later, these crises of over-production have always given place to a resumption of fairly brisk trade and employment." (Ibid, p. 14—our italics.)

That's just what Ridley can't grasp. When ho avers that the crises will become permanent wars, he doesn't understand that the WAR is the temporary solution of the crisis.

   "How does the bourgeoisie overcome these crises? asked Marx. On the one hand by the compulsory annihilation of a quantity of the productive forces." (Communist Manifesto, Rejayonoff edition, p. 33.)

This war is that annihilation. Even Lenin was well aware that "no situation for Capitalism is without a way out—we know that the overthrow of Capitalism . . .  requires the most titanic and long-drawn struggle, action, organisation and victory of the working class, and that until that is attained, Capitalism will still drag on from crisis to crisis, from hell to greater hell. (Why Capitalism will not Collapse, p. 15.)

To which we added : 

"The workers will never be able to take sound action until they possess the knowledge of Socialism that it is our aim to provide, so long as the workers lack a knowledge of Socialist principles and determination to bring Socialism about—each crisis will pass off in this fashion. . . . Until a sufficient number of workers are prepared to organise politically for the conscious purpose of ending Capitalism, that system will stagger on indefinitely from one crisis to another." (Why Capitalism will not Collapse, p. 15.)

   "There have been  . . .  political parties such as the Labour Party, the I.L.P., and the Communist Party seeking support on programmes of reforms. Some of these bodies have obtained a large membership and have appeared to gain small concessions. Some have even taken over the government and tried to apply their reform programmes. But such organisations do not, and cannot, bring Socialism. Their members are attracted by the promise of immediate results. . . . They may reform Capitalism, but they cannot abolish it." (Ibid, p. 16.)

Mr. Ridley should not be entirely unaware of all this. For he has rushed in where Brockway and other I.L.P.ers fear to tread; and debated with the S.P.G.B. The result has always been the now-evident and bloodless collapse not of the Capitalist system—but of Mr. F. A. Ridley.

Horatio.

Letter From Europe: Wage-freeze in France (1983)

The Letter From Europe column from the January 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

The (total) wage and (partial) price freeze imposed by the French government following the devaluation of the franc last June came to an end on 1 November. Since the government had expected prices to rise by at least 2.7 per cent during the freeze in other words, it believed the real purchasing power of wages would fall by this amount the 1.5 per cent increase is being heralded as a success.

In fact however this slow-down in the rise in the general price level was due more to the current world depression than to the French government’s price controls, as is shown by the fact that over the same period prices rose by less in Britain and Germany.

As far as the general price level is concerned, two contradictory factors are now at work in all countries: first, there is the continuing inflation of inconvertible paper currencies which exerts an upward pressure, and then there is the world depression which exerts a downward pressure. In the 19th century, when the value of money was relatively stable, the general price level still tended to rise in times of boom (through demand for goods tending to exceed supply) and to fall in times of slump (through supply tending to exceed demand).

This latter downward movement has not ceased to operate, but it has tended to be obscured by the inflationary monetary policies pursued by nearly all governments since the beginning of the second world war. Due to the overissue of paper currencies. the general price level has continued to rise even in slumps, a phenomenon which has been dubbed “stagflation” or “slumpflation”. Nowadays the depressing effect of a slump on the price level is only discernible in the slowing down of the rate of price rises. Such a slowing-down has become particularly noticeable over the last six months or so. enabling both Thatcher in Britain and Mitterrand in France to claim the credit for something for which they are not in the least responsible.

The other result of a slump is falling real wages — what wages will buy in relation to the prices of consumer goods. In the present era of chronic inflation, this does not necessarily involve a fall in money wages (though this can happen, and has been happening). Real wages fall also if money wages increase less than the increase in consumer prices. This has been happening for some time in Britain, where trade unions have had to settle for wage increases below the rate of inflation. The recent government-imposed wage freeze in France has had the same result.

During the four-month period of the wage freeze, not only did prices rise by 1.5 per cent, representing an equivalent cut in the real purchasing power of wage and salary earners, but any rises under previously negotiated agreements due during this period were banned by law from being paid.

Naturally the employers were the last to complain about this since both the decrease in real purchasing power (from their point of view, a decrease in real wages costs) and the non-payment of contracted wage increases meant an increase in their profits. In other words, the money lost by the workers went into the pockets of the employers.

The government claimed at the time it introduced the wage and (partial) price freeze that this was part of a necessary national effort in face of the crisis, but the Minister of the Economy, Jacques Delors. has recently disclosed that the real aim was to increase profits. In a speech to the congress of a catholic employers’ organisation called “Ethic" on 26 October, apart from announcing that the minimum wage would not be increased as much in 1982 as originally promised (which attracted most of the publicity), he also spoke about the investment problems of private capitalist firms:

Gross operating revenues have fallen for the last three years to such levels that enterprises no longer have the minimum margin of self-financing to allow them to ensure a balanced financing of their investments (Républican Lorrain, 28 October).

"Gross operating revenues" (revenus bruts d'exploitation) is a term used by accountants to refer to the income of enterprises over a given period, normally a year, over and above their production costs but before payment of taxes, social insurance contributions. interest charges and dividends. In other words, gross profits.

After complaining, then, that these gross profits were not high enough. Delors went on:

A recovery of the gross operating revenues of enterprises is needed to restore a dynamism to our economy, and without a minimum of transfers of the national wealth to these gross revenues the minimum conditions for investment will not be met (our emphasis).

“National wealth" is a vague term, but what Delors has in mind is the "gross national product” (GNP), or the total amount of new wealth produced in a year before deduction of that used to renew used-up fixed capital. But the wealth newly-produced in a year only has two elements: the gross operating revenues of enterprises and the wages of productive workers. Clearly then, the wealth Delors wants to transfer to gross profits can only come out of that currently going to workers as wages. Which is precisely what the four-month wages freeze achieved. Indeed, the real reason for the freeze is quite clear: to decrease wages so as to allow enterprises to make bigger profits.

Although the wages freeze ended on 1 November, government-backed wage restraint is to continue until at least the end of 1983. The government has set the target for price rises in 1983 at “only” 8 per cent and has proclaimed this as the limit too for wages increases this year, though it is allowing provision to be made for additional increases negotiated in January 1984 if in the end prices rise by more than this limit. As has frequently happened in Britain under similar circumstances, it is civil servants and workers in the nationalised industries who have been the first victims of this policy of wage restraint, a case of the government as employer setting an example to private employers. One of the “benefits” of nationalisation (or state capitalism) that its advocates forgot to mention to workers in newly-nationalised industries?

We have even been treated to the spectacle of one group of employers, those in the sugar-beet industry, being told by a government composed of "socialists" and “communists" that an agreement under which wages were automatically linked to rises in the cost of living and which they had been applying for some years was illegal and should not be applied either for 1982 or for 1983. The PS/PC government unearthed a statutory order dating from 1959 declaring such indexing illegal, even though such agreements, which provide workers with a minimum protection from the effects of inflation, have in fact been widely applied in France in recent years. The government's invoking of this order now is yet another proof of their intention to reduce the real purchasing power of wages and salaries.

This blatantly anti-working class policy pursued by an allegedly socialist/communist government merely confirms that it is not possible to run capitalism in the interest of the working class and that any party which tries to do so is bound to end up running capitalism in the only way it can—as a profit-making system in the interest of those who live off profits derived from their monopoly over the means of production.

Adam Buick

(Luxemburg)

Women's Estate (1983)

From the February 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Women's Liberation Movement could be said to be divided into two groups: Socialist Feminists and Revolutionary Feminists. In one editorial of Scarlet Women the Socialist Feminists say " . . . we have to examine Socialist Feminist thought and seek to redevelop it. What we are looking for is nothing less than a total redefinition of Socialist thought and practice. We are looking towards a Socialism that abolishes patriarchy”. The Revolutionary Feminists stress the primacy of the sex struggle for women, in contrast to the Marxist emphasis on the class struggle. Their focus is on issues which directly concern the sexual subordination of women to men — rape, prostitution, control of reproduction and pornography. They claim that Marxist analyses which are based on the primacy of the class struggle are incapable of adequately dealing with these issues or any others which they say cut across class boundaries. They see women as a sex class. So there is a tendency in the women's movement to be critical of Marxist theory as neglecting the sexual division.

Simone de Beauvoir, in her book Second Sex, says men are encouraged to play out their lives in the realm of transcendence, whereas women are confined to immanence. In other words, men work, create, do things, are in positions of authority and make their own histories, whereas women are confined to the home where their function is not to create but to maintain. Women keep house and raise children. Of course, reality is not quite like this, since work in a capitalist society is often stifling and stunting and men engaging in it could hardly be described as creating their own histories by transcending themselves. Within the present social context, however, it is still true that men are trained to go out, work and, within limits, shape their own lives and that, even bearing in mind the alienating nature of work, they have more opportunities to satisfy their need for creativity than women. The myth that woman's natural place is in the home and that naturally she will find the fulfilment of her creativity in bearing and raising children is terribly destructive.

A woman may, and does, work while living with a man, although many a wife maintains a home for her husband and lives for him and through him rather than for and through herself. A mother’s job outside the home may offer the family more than week-to-week subsistence. It is her wage that enables the family to eat better food, have a holiday or new clothes. It does not follow that the job will be satisfying; many jobs open to women are unpleasant — waitresses, clerks, salesgirls, typists and factory hands. Usually the nature of these jobs makes marriage seem more attractive, and often girls hope to find the best available man for financial security or to escape from the crowded and repressive home.

The pattern of wifely subservience is changing, however, and the myth that child bearing and rearing is the fulfilment of a woman’s destiny is being questioned. Having children is no substitute for creating one's own life, but many women are conditioned to devote themselves to nothing else and so end up as intolerable burdens on their children.

Much of the resentment in Women’s Liberation movements against men is sexual — they feel they are being treated as objects (as. in fact, many are). Fashions, advertising, films and magazines all betray the fact that women are culturally conceived of as objects and, worse still, often accept this definition and try to make themselves into a more desirable commodity on the sexual market. We must recognise that this self-definition and conscious acceptance is related to economic and social structures. Men and women are oppressed together and must be liberated together. Women will not achieve anything by venting their hostility on men. They must recognise that capitalist society inculcates destructive beliefs about themselves and must understand the extent to which they have been conditioned since childhood.

If we recognise that the problems facing women are related to the structure of the whole society, then we see that the only solution is to change society fundamentally. We live in a capitalist society where goods are produced for sale with a view to profit. Simple manufacture has evolved into a gigantic electronic technology. The world retains the same basic social relations, in both public and private sectors, of capital and wage labour. All over the world there is poverty, famine, insecurity, inequality and war. The basic reason is the commodity nature of wealth under capitalism — the fact that wealth is socially produced and privately owned. Every social system has its basis through which almost every feature of it can be traced and explained. The morals, attitudes and institutions of capitalism are explained through the class ownership of the means of producing and distributing the world’s wealth.

A section of the population, as direct proprietors or company shareholders, own the land, factories, mines, workshops, ships, banks and any other trading concern, or invest their money in government or municipal securities. This is the basic social condition which forms social relationships like buying and selling, employing and being employed. It is also responsible for social institutions like shops and markets, which are needed for the relationships to operate. On one side is the capitalist class and on the other the working class.

A class is a group of people who, although they may differ in their nationality or background or their so-called race, have economic interests in common. A class, with its common economic interests, exists whether or not its members realise it. A capitalist is someone who has enough ownership to be able to live without going to work for a wage or salary. Because of this ownership the capitalist's interests are opposed to those of the working class — those people who do not own enough to give them a living but who rely for their livelihood on selling their labour power to the employer for wages.

Whenever a commodity is bought or sold there immediately occurs a clash of interests, for it is to the advantage of the seller to sell for the highest possible price and of the buyer to buy at the lowest price possible. Therefore it is in the interest of the working class to get the highest wages and best working conditions they can, and in the interest of the employers to exploit workers as intensely as they can for as little as possible. This dooms the majority of capitalism’s people to poverty. Capitalism produces for profit — when profit is not available production ceases or wealth is destroyed. Because of its basic characteristics, capitalism is unable to satisfy the needs and desires of the world’s people. It must always deprive, undermine and suppress them.

If the Women's Liberation Movement achieves all its immediate demands, such as equal pay, educational opportunities, 24 hour nurseries, free contraception and abortion on demand, there will remain the need for a revolutionary change in society.

Although Women’s Liberation came into existence in the late nineteen-sixties, feminist organisations were in being long before. Juliet Mitchell in Women’s Estate says of the Suffragettes " . . and indeed when in 1918 in England it (the vote) was given to women over thirty who owned property the most powerful wing of the movement was satisfied and the struggle evaporated”. The Women’s Liberation movement is not different from other reformist organisations which choose to put immediate aims before a revolutionary change in society.

Doreen Davies

Marx the journalist (1983)

From the March 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

For the first two years of his exile in England Marx actively involved himself in German refugee politics. He was still a member of the central committee of the Communist League and was in contact with the League's members who had stayed in Germany. His English contact was Harney whom he met again at a banquet organised by the Society of Fraternal Democrats at the end of 1849. In April 1850 Harney, for the Fraternal Democrats, together with Marx. Engels and Willich for the German Communist League and Adam and Vidil for the French Blanquists signed a declaration setting up a “Universal League of Revolutionary Communists" committed to “the overthrow of all privileged classes, their subjection to the dictatorship of the proletariat under which the revolution shall be maintained sine die until the communist society, the final organisation of the human family, has been realised". In June Harney started to publish his own paper The Red Republican, in whose November issue was published the first English translation of the Communist Manifesto, identifying Marx and Engels as its authors.

Throughout 1850 Marx and Engels contributed a regular column to the Revue of the Neue Rheinische Z'eitung which was published in Hamburg. Among the things they commented on was the political scene in Britain, such as the death of Sir Robert Peel and the prospects of the Chartist movement, but the bulk of the material they sent on Britain concerned the economic situation there. Some time in the autumn of 1850 Marx came to the conclusion that there was a direct connection between economic crises and revolution. He read through the back numbers of the economist and a volume of Thomas Tooke’s History of Prices which had just been published to try to understand the economic crisis of 1847 which had preceded the revolutionary outbreak of 1848. The result was the detailed account of the course of this crisis which appeared in the Revue.

Marx's position about there being a direct link between crises and revolution led him to a further conclusion: that in the then period of prosperity there was no immediate prospect of revolution; the revolutionary wave sparked off by the 1847 crisis was over and it was pointless to continue to try to provoke an immediate revolutionary uprising. This was a revision of the view Marx had expressed as recently as April 1850 in the statement he had signed with the Blanquists and Harney and it led to a split in the Communist League. It also led Marx to break with Harney who, as a romantic revolutionary, sympathised with those, including Marx’s opponents in the Communist League, who wanted to continue plotting a more or less immediate insurrection. When Harney's position became known, Engels at Marx's request immediately stopped contributing articles to his paper, which had in the meantime changed its name to The Friend of the People. Their other pre-1848 contact, Ernest Jones, was released from prison in 1850 and was soon involved in an acrimonious dispute with Harney over the use of the title of O'Connor’s paper The Northern Star, which ceased publication in 1852. Marx and Engels took Jones's side in this dispute and in 1851 Engels was contributing instead to Jones's Notes to the People which later became The People's Paper.

The split in the Communist League occurred at a meeting of its central committee held on 15 September 1850. According to the Minutes. Marx explained his opposition to the policy of plotting immediate insurrection on the grounds that workers must be told that "if you want to change conditions and make yourselves capable of government, you will have to undergo fifteen, twenty or fifty years of civil war", by which he meant many years of intense class struggle, certainly involving occasional violent confrontations with the state, rather than "civil war" in what has become the literal sense. This was to remain Marx's view for the rest of his life and represented a return to the pattern for the evolution of working class political consciousnss which he had outlined, on the basis of experience of the English Chartist movement, before the bourgeois-revolutionary interlude of 1848-9. He first acted on this when he participated, through Jones's People's Paper, in the English working class movement between 1852 and 1856.

But Marx's immediate concern was to earn a living. If he can be said to have had a profession it was journalism. He had been the editor of a democratic newspaper in Germany in 1842-43 and again in 1848-9. It was as editor of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung that he had met in 1848 an American journalist. Charles Dana, who was touring Europe. Dana was the editor of the New York Daily Tribune, one of America's leading newspapers. It had been founded in 1841 by Horace Greeley and took up a generally democratic position on the issues of the day. Three years later Dana, who was anxious to increase the paper's circulation among the German immigrants (and refugees) who had come to America after the final failure of the German bourgeois-democratic revolution in 1849. wrote to Marx asking him to contribute a scries of articles on this revolution. Marx gladly accepted this offer but. although it was submitted in Marx's name, this series — later published as Revolution and Counter-revolution in Germany — was in fact written by Engels, partly because Marx had not yet acquired the confidence to write directly in English. Dana was very pleased with the contributions Marx had sent him and Marx became the regular London and European correspondent of the New York Daily Tribune for the next ten years. The first article written by Marx — an introductory article on the political parties in Britain in the context of the then impending General Election appeared on 21 August 1852. The last article appeared in March 1862. Marx's first articles were written in German and translated into English by Engels — indeed, Engels throughout this whole period continued to write articles in Marx’s name — but later Marx began to write in English himself; which explains the peculiar grammar and vocabulary of some of the earlier articles.

The sub-editors of the New York Daily Tribune felt free to alter the articles as they considered appropriate. Marx eventually objected to this, since not all of the changes were of a purely editorial nature. One of the sub-editors was pro-Russian and often toned down the anti-Russia views expressed by Marx in his articles on the Eastern Question and the Crimean War. As a result of Marx’s protests, it was agreed that his articles should no longer be published with his signature. The last article signed by Marx (though ironically in fact mainly written by Engels!) was “Prospect in France and England" which appeared on 27 April 1855. Even before that date, Dana had used some of Marx’s articles as unsigned editorials.

Marx was a conscientious journalist who always read up a subject before writing an article on it. But his main source of information was inevitably the London daily and weekly papers. Apart of course from The Times, the main dailies Marx relied on were the Daily News, The Globe, The Morning Advertiser, The Morning Chronicle, The Morning Herald and The Morning Post. Marx also occasionally, through his contact with Engels who was living there, used the Manchester Guardian. Marx gives a useful run-down on the London dailies and their polities in an article published in Die Presse of Vienna on 31 December 1861. The article describes the press scene at that time rather than in the early and middle 1850s, when Marx did most of his writing for the New York Daily Tribune, but it had not changed all that much during this period. As to weeklies, Marx relied on The Economist, The Leader, and Jones's People's Paper.

But Marx also did some direct reporting himself, especially for the articles he wrote in 1855 for the Neue Oder Zeitung. He attended political meetings and rallies in London and was present in the Visitors’ Gallery for some of the debates in the House of Commons which he reported.

Marx came to be the London correspondent of the Neue Oder Zeitung through Ferdinand Lassalle (1825-1864). whose cousin. Max Friedlander (1829-1872). became one of the paper’s owners at the end of 1854. This paper had been published under this name since 1849 in Breslau on the river Oder (now Wroclau in present-day Poland) and, like the New York Daily Tribune, took up a generally pro-democratic position, though Marx had not agreed with the line it had taken during the German revolution when it had attacked workers’ organisations and “socialists". Marx contributed articles, some again written by Engels, some translations or German versions of articles he had sent to the New York Daily Tribune, throughout 1855. Marx's last article appeared on 8 October and the paper ceased publication soon afterwards. Marx seems to have felt freer to express his pro-working class position in the Neue Oder Zeitung than in the New York Daily Tribune, though this position is evident in the latter too, even if not so pronounced.

When collected together Marx’s articles do indeed provide an analysis of British politics and society in the 1850s by the same journalistic pen which wrote the much more widely known analyses of French politics over a shorter period, in the Class Struggles in France and The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon.

The other paper for which Marx regularly wrote paid articles was Die Presse in 1861 and 1862. This was the leading liberal daily published in Vienna, indeed one of the leading papers in the Austrian Empire. Marx had had opportunities to write for it earlier than 1861, but had turned them down on political grounds. The contact was again Lassalle's cousin, Max Friedlander, who had in the meantime become the paper's editor. In 1861 and 1862 Marx contributed a number of articles to Die Presse, a large number of them dealing with the American Civil War. especially about relations between Britain and the United States but also covering other subjects.

Marx's work as a paid journalist came to an end with the publication of his last article in Die Presse on 4 December 1862.

Adam Buick

Failure of Keynesian policies (1983)

From the April 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the depression of the thirties, with unemployment rising to peak levels and governments toppling because of their inability to do anything about it, most economists and many political parties were overjoyed to adopt the theories of J. M. Keynes, which held out to them the guarantee that capitalism's principal troubles were over. This is not surprising since Keynes promised continued full employment — the end of depressions with their accompanying massive demonstrations of working class discontent, the removal of one of the causes of war, and the arrival of lots of other good things. Keynes, they said, had revolutionised economic thought, blotted out the growing interest in Marx’s theories, and made capitalism safe. In 1944 the three parties. Tory, Labour and Liberal. all part of the war-time National government. formally endorsed the main Keynesian doctrines in the government White Paper, Employment Policy, which set out the principles to be followed by post-war governments.

The attitudes of the three parties have partly changed since then. While the Labour Party, the Liberals and their allies the Social Democratic Party are still unrepentant Keynesians — as also are some Tories—the main body of the Tories, under Thatcher's leadership, have thrown Keynes over and adopted the theories of Professor Milton Friedman.

Some leaders of the Labour Party went through a phase of doubting their saviour when Callaghan the Labour Prime Minister and Healey the Chancellor of the Exchequer adopted the “monetarist” policies now followed by the Thatcher government. It is for this reason that the present leader of the Labour Party, Michael Foot, gives 1976 as the date of the abandonment of those Keynesian principles which, he says, "for a quarter of a century or more, worked with such beneficial effects" (New Statesman, 26 November 1982).

The Keynesian argument is that if the demand for goods is maintained at a high level, industry is kept busy and unemployment will remain low. The "demand management" cure for rising unemployment is therefore for the government to increase its expenditure and investment, meeting the additional cost by borrowing: this will, the Keynesians say, increase the number of jobs. It is crucial for the Keynesian argument that the increase of government expenditure and investment should not be offset by a simultaneous fall in the investment by private industry. The Keynesians claim indeed that increased expenditure by the government will positively stimulate investment and activity in private industry.

The Keynesians have an early showpiece, supposed to vindicate Keynes, in the Roosevelt New Deal in America. A Keynesian admirer of the New Deal is Dudley Dillard, sometime Professor of Economics at Maryland University who wrote about it in his The Economics of J.M. Keynes (Lochwood & Son, London. 1948). In his book Professor Dillard compared the Keynesian policy of the New Deal with what happened in Great Britain at the same time, under the anti-Keynesian National government. His specific claim for Roosevelt is:

The economic expansion between 1933 and 1937, despite occasional minor relapses, was one of the most rapid in the history of American business cycles. The speed of this recovery was undoubtedly conditioned by the depths to which activity had plummeted in 1932. It was, nevertheless, a remarkable recovery which was nurtured by fairly large-scale loan expenditure (p. 127).

So how successful was the New Deal with its Keynesian policies? Unemployment in America was 24.1 per cent in 1932, the year when Roosevelt became President, and 25.2 per cent in 1933. By 1937 it was down to 14.3 per cent, though it rose again in 1938 to 19.1 per cent, which is nearly double what it is in America in 1983. In Britain at the same time, with a government running a non-Keynesian policy, unemployment fell from 22.1 percent in 1932 and 19.9 per cent in 1933 to 10.8 per cent in 1937. and it was 13.5 per cent in 1938. So, as Marxist theory would lead us to expect, the trend of unemployment was much the same whether the policy was Keynesian or not.

And what about the Keynesian argument that increased government expenditure stimulates private industry? In the pre-depression year. 1929, “government expenditure, including capital expenditure” was $22 billion, and “gross private domestic fixed investment” was $39.5 billion. In 1938 the former had risen to $34.2 billion but the latter had dropped to $21.5 billion. As the one went up and the other went down. Dillard admits that private investment “remained abnormally low". He and Keynes met this with the plea that it might have been different if the Roosevelt government had increased its expenditure still more. It is difficult to counter arguments of the “what might have been" variety, but it is worth remembering that in Germany where the government in 1920 not only increased expenditure but multiplied it enormously (also in the belief that it would create jobs) in 1923 about 25 per cent of the workers were out of work and nearly as many again were on short time.

Michael Foot believes that Keynesian policy was a success for 1945 to 1976 in Britain. But did it work as he thinks it did? Unemployment for years after 1945 was abnormally low. In fact it was considerably lower than Keynes expected from his Full Employment policy. But was it the result of Keynesian policy? One Keynesian, Joan Robinson, in her Problems of Full Employment (1950) said it was not. “Employment after the war would have been high in any case.”

Another Keynesian, Alvin Hansen, in his Guide to Keynes (1953) said the same: “Full employment was however primarily the result of the war and post-war developments, not of consensus policy”. And Aneurin Bevan, Minister in the Attlee government, attributed the low unemployment to Marshall Aid. These hundreds of millions of dollars enabled British industry to obtain materials the lack of which was hampering production. Bevan said, in 1948: “Without Marshall Aid unemployment in this country would at once have risen to 1½ million.”

So it wasn’t Keynes but Marshall and the American government who kept unemployment abnormally low for some years after the war. From the mid-fifties until 1976, in spite of Keynesian policies, unemployment has been on a more or less continuous upward trend. It touched 575,000 in 1958, 747,000 in 1963, a million in 1972, and 1½ million in 1976, and so on to the present 3⅓ million. Keynesian policy had nothing to do with the very low unemployment in the early post-war years, and nothing to do with the subsequent steady increase.

A major factor was first, the war-time destruction in Japan, Germany and some other countries which pul them for all practical purposes out of the world market, and later on their return to the world market in strength after their industries had been rebuilt and modernised, largely with American finance. They came back as cheap producers able more and more to undersell British products.

In 1955 British capitalists’ share in world exports of manufactured goods (based on 11 industrial countries including Japan and Germany) was 19.8 per cent. It had dropped to 13.8 per cent in 1965 and to 10.6 per cent in 1970. The fall has continued so that for the first time British imports of manufactures now exceed exports. And with this change of conditions unemployment in Britain went on rising, well before the start of the great depression in 1979. So Keynesian “demand management” is based on fallacious theory and its two showpieces, Roosevelt’s New Deal and Foot’s golden age of 1945-76, demonstrate that it does not work.

Two other aspects of the doctrine deserve mention. The 1944 White Paper looked forward to more or less stable prices, and Keynes himself looked to slowly rising wages “while keeping prices stable" (General Theory, p.271). What we got was continually rising prices, so that the level in 1976 was more than four times what it had been in 1945.

Lastly. Keynes held that many wars are caused by “the competitive struggle for markets” and they would be ruled out by the adoption of his full employment policy (General Theory, p.381). It is therefore interesting to notice that the Labour Party, Liberal Party and Social Democratic Party, while all professing to accept Keynesian policies, are all busy with schemes for increasing the competitiveness of British exports against foreign rivals, by such devices as lowering the exchange rate of the pound. In the House of Commons on 10 November 1982 Roy Jenkins, Leader of the SDP, said that “Britain’s lack of competitiveness was the central problem requiring solution”, and he agreed with the Labour Party spokesman, Peter Shore, that “a reduction in the exchange rate could make an important contribution".

According to Keynes, his full employment policy makes it unnecessary to go in for the war-promoting, competitive struggle for markets. Is the explanation that the three Keynesian parties do not now believe that full employment works, and are hanging on to it only because they have to oppose Thatcher’s policies and believe that the empty promise of full employment may still be a vote-catcher at the next election?

Edgar Hardcastle

Power struggle in Zimbabwe (1983)

From the May 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent massacres in Zimbabwe have shown more clearly than ever that the real choice facing black workers in Africa is not between “white” and “black" rule. The issue runs deeper, and is a question of power itself. Zimbabwe, like Russia, is a capitalist state masquerading under the name of socialism. The rich resources of gold, chromium, tobacco, asbestos, copper and diamonds are controlled by a minority, including private shareholders and state bureaucrats both within and outside its artificial national boundary. The majority of the people are wage-workers, earning under £25 a month in many cases, so that their “national” bosses can accumulate capital.

At the end of March, the government stepped up a campaign of terror aimed at “dissidents” supposedly associated with Joshua Nkomo’s opposition ZAPU party. The Fifth Brigade, a government force of specially trained ex-guerrillas, were reported to have slaughtered whole villages in Matabeleland, in a series of horrific atrocities. Thousands were detained without trial, opponents were tortured and trade unions suppressed. Government denials of these barbaric examples of a capitalist state in action rang very hollow. For example, in the Assembly on February 3, Nkomo accused the Fifth Brigade of having raped "masses of teachers” near Tsholotsho. The Deputy Minister for Education hotly denied this, pointing out that it was six teachers who had been raped, not “a mass”. Brigadier Garver, in charge of National Army operations, was sent to instruct the Fifth to be less brutal in future. Food aid and drought relief to Matabeleland was cut off by the government as part of its "anti-dissident" campaign. Thousands are on the verge of starvation and relief was resumed in some parts only after some ministers said they had seen local people eating grass.

There is a long-standing animosity between the Shona and Ndebele tribes, with the Shona forming the great majority, except in Matabeleland. There, former members of Nkomo’s Z1PRA guerrillas had imposed a brutal reign of terror "on behalf’ of the Ndebele agricultural workers, whose white farmer employers are protected by the government. This was the reason given for sending in the Fifth Brigade, known to many as the “Shona hitmen". But the real issue is one of class, not tribe. The tribal divisions are to some extent being bridged. The new head of ZAPU, since Nkomo’s departure is himself a member of the Shona tribe. At least one government minister (Mark Dube) is of the Ndebele tribe. Clearly, neither the self-appointed "dissident" guerrillas of Matabeleland nor the government shock troops can serve the interests of the majority who are excluded from all power and property. The new black and white élite  drink in the exclusive Harare Club (known as the Salisbury Club under the previous regime) and dine extravagantly at La Fontaine. They know that their wealth is secure as long as their wage-slaves kill and maim one another over past divisions and diversions, instead of rejecting political violence and demagoguery and uniting for socialism.

News reporters from various foreign newspapers have been expelled or banned from working in Zimbabwe for revealing the details of the government campaign. The slogans of peace and freedom on which Mugabe won support have been rapidly abandoned. It is just one of many ironies of the situation that one of the banned journalists was Nick Worrall of the Guardian, whose father was banned by the Ian Smith regime in 1969 when working for the same paper. There are many other examples of continuity between the former “colonial” and white-racist regime of Smith and the "black nationalist” rule of Mugabe. The Central Intelligence Organisation is run directly by Mugabe, as it was by Smith, and the Ministers for Security and Defence are now answerable directly to him, rather than to the Cabinet. The notorious Emergency Powers Act, under which some members of the present cabinet were once indefinitely detained, has been renewed every six months since independence three years ago. The traditional tortures of electric shock and suffocation by water have been kept in use for opponents of the state, and some claim to have been tortured by the same white officers as during the war for independence. The Law and Order Maintenance Act has never been repealed, and there has been a renewed use of Smith’s Indemnity and Compensation Act, which prevents any prosecutions from being brought against state forces. Ministers have even complained publicly that the judges are not as keen to enforce these oppressive laws as they were under the previous regime. Political rallies can now only be held with government permission, and Mugabe has been pressing for the abolition of the Senate and the further consolidation of state power for his party.

For many workers in Zimbabwe, 1980 was a year of great hope. After years of poverty. violence and institutionalised racism, there was at last a chance to vote for a black leader of the newly-established independent state. The election was hardly democratic, with widespread intimidation. Mugabe (ZANU) called himself a "Marxist" and promised wide-scale nationalisation and social reform in contrast to the “free market” capitalism of Bishop Muzorewa. He also depended to a large extent on Shona tribal loyalty. The government now claims that it has had to resort to all the oppressive actions of its predecessors because it has come under pressure from multinationals, white farmers, armed dissidents, militant socialists, drought and world recession. But this is merely a rather belated admission of what Mugabe could not afford to admit during his election campaign. Without democratic revolutionary action by a majority of workers, the system of production for profit remains, with all its violent contradictions. Mugabe is not a Marxist, but a Leninist. Although he opposes the Leninist state dictatorship in Russia, nevertheless he stands not for workers freeing ourselves by taking over the world’s wealth democratically, but for the control of society by a bureaucratic elite who “charitably” grant crumbs of reform “if conditions allow".

In this he represents a continuity with the history of oppression in Africa, rather than radical change. Like the rest of the continent, Zimbabwe has passed under the control of one band of parasites after another over the last hundred years, while the impoverished majority of black workers have worked to produce wealth which they do not own. In 1890, the British South African Company used armed force to invade Matabeleland (Southern Rhodesia) and take from King Lobengula its rich mineral and agricultural resources. The natives were herded into “reserves” and the fertile land was handed over to white European settlers. Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland were taken at the same time, and these states were linked by Britain in 1953 into the Central African Federation. This was an attempt to form an enlarged and lucrative market area under the control of the “settler” government. The Federation was broken up under African pressure in 1963 and Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland became independent as Zambia and Malawi.

Rhodesian state racism

The white settlers in (Southern) Rhodesia had ruled from their own parliament in Salisbury (now Harare) since 1923, but the British government refused to grant them full independence until the Africans who formed 19 out of 20 of the population were given more of a share in the government. This the colonial government refused to do and in 1965 Ian Smith made a Unilateral Declaration of Independence. The resulting United Nations sanctions were widely broken, but it took fourteen years of negotiations, culminating in the Lancaster House talks, before independence was granted to the new state of Zimbabwe. From 1973 a violent guerrilla war had been waged by the Patriotic Front, representing the forces of native rather than settler nationalism. Through all these struggles since 1890, there is one common factor. Developments in the productive forces of the region have produced a succession of propertied interests competing for state power. It may appear strange to trace a line of descent from Mugabe, through Ian Smith to Cecil Rhodes himself, but each of these has stood for a particular sectional interest, always dressed up as something with more popular appeal. Mugabe represents a trend which is already prevalent in Africa, in which the traditional capitalist exploitation of wage-labour for the accumulation of capital is organised to a large extent by the state, rather than by private individuals. This nationalisation, often referred to as “public" ownership, is popular with would-be rulers of states which are not highly industrialised. since it allows the rates of profit and the pace of capital accumulation to be rapidly increased by organising industry in larger units.

Since 1890, most workers in Zimbabwe had suffered not only the poverty and insecurity of all those who depend on selling their daily ability to work in order to live but were seen by the colonial government as barely human, because of the colour of their skin. Almost inevitably, the constant fear and terrible indignity of this second-class existence was assumed by many to be simply the result of white rule and foreign domination. By the 1970s many black workers had gained the political confidence and strength to challenge that rule, and the arguments for “self-determination" and "democratic national independence" gained many committed supporters for the Patriotic Front. But the vote for Mugabe in 1980 was a vote for state capitalism. The informal apartheid of Rhodesia was to become a thing of the past, but the pervasive contradictions of world capitalism were to be allowed to flourish, under the enthusiastic leadership of Robert Mugabe. We do not just make these observations with hindsight. Before the election, the Socialist Party of Great Britain stated:

Whoever gains power, we may be sure he will be hell-bent on building up the capitalist economy and on training his citizens to become hard-working, obedient wages slaves, regardless of whether his advice, investment and technical assistance comes from the Soviet Union. Great Britain, South Africa or wherever. The hollow phrase “Victory to the Patriotic Front", beloved by the left-wing, means for African workers the victory of a different style of exploitation. (Socialist Standard, March 1980.)

Many lives were lost in the war for "self-determination" and "majority rule”. It is now clear that even with a black figurehead in Zimbabwe to represent international capital, the problems of class division and violence persist. Events in Zimbabwe have shown that capitalism, as a system of production, is truly world-wide. Seventy per cent of industrial and commercial assets there are owned by multinationals. I.onhro controls over a million acres of ranchland, and the South African-based Anglo-American corporation dominates the sugar, mining and banking sectors. Any notions of national self-sufficiency are unrealistic and backward-looking in a world of rapidly growing interdependence. The capitalist class ignore national boundaries when they are seeking profitable investments. The nationalist response to the oppression of imperialism is its mirror image and leads to further oppression on a local scale.

The pressure of global uniformity is so great today that it has not been possible to implement even Mugabe's cynical programme of state capitalism. As early as 1980, his party policy-makers encouraged "the continuity of private enterprise in Rhodesia" and accepted “the need for a close commercial and logistic relationship with South Africa". (Guardian, 28 January 1980.) Now Bernard Chidlero. Minister for Economic Planning and Finance, has produced a National Development Plan which stresses the importance of foreign companies:

Government recognises the need to stimulate private sector investment by creating a favourable investment climate and taking necessary fiscal, monetary and other financial measures. (Guardian, 24 March 1983.)

Nationalisation has been held back for fear of losing the particular capital and technology tied up with European interests and the Western trade which is linked with them. There is also the fear of military interference from South Africa, which has occurred in Angola and Mozambique. Land reform has been held back for fear of alienating the 4,600 English commercial farmers who own 38 per cent of the land and receive 47 per cent of foreign currency earnings. A clause in the Lancaster House agreement threatens that if any land is seized, British land resettlement funds would be withheld; 700,000 African families are still struggling to survive on the poor soil of the old Tribal Trust Lands, which have simply been renamed the Communal Lands. The overwhelming point which arises from this is that a small minority, of whatever colour, monopolise the resources of Zimbabwe, as in the rest of the world. The shareholders of the Anglo-American Corporation are of a great variety of nationalities and colours.

In a speech in the Zimbabwe Assembly in July 1982, Robert Mugabe said of dissenters:

Some of the measures we shall take are measures which will be extra-legal . . .  an eye for an eye and an ear for an ear may not be adequate in our circumstances. We might very well demand two ears for one ear and two eyes for one eye. (Guardian, 23 March 1983.)

The time is long overdue for us to turn with disgust from this vicious talk of murdering workers for opposing one of the national state governments of capitalism. This is where the "practical politics" of administering the profit system lead. The suffering of black Africans at the hands of white colonisers was often beyond description, so that a great deal of emotional energy has gone into the forming of the newly independent states. Similarly, the Jews who formed the state of Israel after their experience of Nazi Germany were committed to the idea of the Jewish national state. But all these nationalist movements whether Irish. Polish or Pan-African. are tragically caught within the net of capitalist social relations. As such, they have no future except as administrative units for the profit system.

Socialists are engaged in the enormous task of persuasion and organisation to build a powerful world-wide movement for democratic revolution. There can be no socialism without a majority of socialists. One of the most popular strip cartoons in Africa in the 1970s was Seraphina in Jeune Afrique, in which the heroine fights against Octagone. headquarters of the “Soviet-American Republic”. Many Africans are aware of how the Warsaw Pact countries merely mirror the West in their capitalist policies of profitable investment, military expansion, state oppression of dissent and, above all, the persistence of the exploitation of wage-labour for the accumulation of capital. At the moment, Africa is still itself reflecting the same domination of the world by the interests of private and state property. The political leaders are looking for sheep to follow them to the semi-realisation of their empty, divisive dreams. But the power of class consciousness has been accumulating for centuries, and the African workers know what has happened to them. They have only to take the next step towards human liberation, and the arrogant élitism of Mugabe and the others who offer to act “on our behalf" will be broken forever. There are not three worlds — just one, and it is ours for the taking.

Clifford Slapper

The Sorcerer's Apprentice (1983)

From the June 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

How do the views of both CND and the government relate to the current state of military technology and its impact on arms control? Are their propositions — respectively preventing the deployment of Cruise and Trident and multilateral and verifiable disarmament — tenable within capitalism in general and contemporary military technology and doctrine in particular?

The main focus of present CND policy is to prevent the deployment of the Ground Launched Cruise Missile (GLCM) and the replacement of the Polaris A-3 missile with the Trident D-5 missile — a qualitiative improvement, they argue, which brings the doctrinal concept of nuclear war-fighting closer. Moreover, Britain can only avoid being a major target in the event of war by cancelling Trident and Cruise as a step towards unilateral nuclear disarmament. While it is correct to say that the Trident D-5 Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile (SLBM) is a qualitative improvement on Polaris (it has a longer range, 11,000 km compared to 4600 km; 14 independently targetable warheads with a yield of 150 kt each compared to 3 re-entry vehicles each with a yield of 200 kt; improved accuracy and terminal guidance) its cancellation will not make Britain any less of a target in the event of war.

Targeting is the key to military doctrine. The CND argument loses sight of this, focusing on particular weapon types, such as Cruise and Trident, without attempting to relate them to overall force structures and strategic doctrine or to the political and economic conflict from which they originate. In terms of military doctrine CND miss the main point — the vital importance of command, control, communications and intelligence (C3') to the capacity to wage and win a war. Without C3’ Cruise and Trident are useless. The location and targeting of C3' installations determines priority in target selection. In this respect Britain is high on the list, irrespective of existing military-targets, because of its strategic importance in relation to C3'.

C3’ includes all modern communications systems: radio, telephone, air traffic control, early warning systems, satellite tracking stations and airports. In war installations such as those at Cheltenham, Rugby, Preston and Fylingdales would be priority targets. These facilities are elemental to the use of weapon systems; for example, C3' is necessary for the rapid transmission of targeting information and directions to offensive forces. The vulnerability of C3’ is not restricted to a direct hit by a nuclear device. The air detonation (the higher the better) of a thermo-nuclear bomb several kilometres from a C3’ target is just as effective. This is because such an explosion produces an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) which creates a voltage surge in electrical circuits strong enough to be permanently- damaging; moreover, EMP can obliterate information stored in computer software. Other affects include “TREE" — transient radiation effects on electronics. The combined effect is the disruption and dislocation of C3', a communications blackout which seriously inhibits the capacity to wage war. An explosion at an altitude of 100 km would be more than sufficient to affect all of the British Isles.

Soviet military commanders could not allow C3' facilities in Britain to remain intact even though Britain possessed no nuclear weapons. (John Erickson, The War About Peace, Central TV, 21 April 1983 and a Radio Scotland Broadcast 2 April 1983). They would have to be "denied" to the Americans. So Britain is a major target, and from a military point of view, when C3' is so vital this is an eminently sensible policy. In this respect unilateralism is irrelevant. In fact, for Britain to avoid being targeted all telecommunication systems and airports would have to be dismantled, in effect reducing Britain to the level of a medieval agrarian society, and would then need to be towed to somewhere like the South Atlantic.

Target identification and location plays a major role in modern military strategy. Here the technical improvements to weapons, increased accuracy and yield to weight ratios for example, militate against a doctrine of "minimum deterrence" in which about 200 to 400 warheads would be enough to destroy either superpower. The identification of potential targets is no problem; there are 40,000 in the Soviet Union alone, and when one considers that there are only about 200 Soviet cities with populations in excess of 100,000 and relatively few specifically military targets, then it is clear that there are numerous non-military targets. C3' has already been mentioned, but other targets include petroleum refineries, power stations, railway yards, docks and shipyards. This form of targeting is known as "countervalue" and Britain has no shortage of such targets either; for example Grangemouth, Drax. Millerhill and Southampton.

The targeting of military sites, missile silos and troop concentrations is known as "counterforce” and despite the CND argument that preparation for fighting a nuclear war is something new, counterforce has been around since the late 1950s and early 1960s. The US Airforce was committed to counterforce by the early 1960s; this provided a rationale for the development of the Multiple Independently-Targetable Re-entry Vehicle (MIRV) which would make more targets available per missile.

In 1964 . . . the Mark 12 Task Group realised that the MIRV system it was developing could not be justified by any existing mission requirement. Its members made a conscious effort to find a strategic rationale. Counterforce targeting and growth of Soviet missile forces promised the solution. MIRV could be justified by the need for greater target coverage.

(Making the MIRV: A Study of Defense Decision Making, Ted Greenwood, Ballinger. Cambridge. Mass.. 1975. p.53).

So what appears to be happening is that technology is running out of control in relation to weapon systems, doctrine and C3’. In short it is the technical improvements to weapons that shapes doctrine and not the other way around. Just how the banning of Cruise and Trident is supposed to reverse this process is not clear.

As civil and military technology develop the distinction between nuclear and conventional weaponry becomes blurred. In effect the major difference between different types of weaponry is time — conventional, chemical and biological weapons will take a rather longer time to destroy the world. The notion that war can be sanitised by the removal or barring of specific weapon systems is ludicrous; for example, there is a fuel air explosive (Arms Control and Technological Innovation, eds. D. Carlton & C. Schaerf. Croom Helm, London, 1977, p.65) which can create the same overpressures as a small yield nuclear weapon; secondly, the new Soviet 5.45 x 39mm bullet contains a mild steel core surrounded by lead which forms a plug toward the tip of the bullet but fails to fill the tip. The centre of gravity is far to the rear ensuring that it will flip over when hitting the human body. It will thus very effectively deposit its energy in the body, causing an “explosive type wound". (World Armaments and Disarmament 1982, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Taylor & Francis, London, p.451). Efforts to contain these technological developments have not been conspicuous by their success. This brings us neatly to the whole question of arms control in relation to technological development.

The British government insists that multilateral arms control is the best road to disarmament; however, it is clear that disarmament has never been a serious possibility. The Russians claim that they have tabled 150 separate disarmament proposals since the 1950s, all of which were rejected. The West could no doubt make the same claim. Such proposals were, and still are, for propaganda purposes and chiefly for internal consumption; arms control, on the other hand, seeks to “stabilise" the arms race; it can never provide “security". The object is to institutionalise the arms race by avoiding or limiting major quantitative improvements to existing forces. The superpowers agree to put certain areas out of bounds to save the expense of developing or deploying new weapon systems; for instance, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the Antarctic Treaty, the Outer Space Treaty and the Seabed Treaty. In contrast, SALT actually fuelled the arms race since it placed no restrictions on qualitative improvements which in any case are very difficult to monitor, let alone enforce. SALT only limited launchers — holes in the ground or in submarines — not warheads or accuracy. The MIRV was left unchecked permitting a legitimate increase in the number of warheads. The US had 6784 in 1973, but 9000 in 1981. Since a Mirved missile is externally indistinguishable from a non-mirved one it is impossible for satellites to tell the difference. In this respect arms control achieved its principal aim which was to put the arms race on a more predictable course and avoid de-stabilising events. In any event technological improvements in weapons makes existing arms control procedures increasingly redundant.

As one American general said you cannot compare “apples and pears”; this refers to not only the asymmetries in superpower force structures, but also to their strategic doctrines. The Russians prefer large land based missiles, reflecting technological inferiority, 72 per cent of Russian warheads are land based. The Americans prefer to put their deterrent to sea, 50 per cent of warheads are on SLBMs. This presents accounting problems. Considerable time was spent in SALT II disputing the status of the Soviet Tu-22m, Backfire bomber. The Americans insisted that it was a strategic delivery system (intercontinental) whereas the Russians argued that it was for the Eurasian theatre only.

In the European theatre the asymmetries and technical complexities are even more acute making arms control more difficult, if not impossible, to come by. For instance, in the Intermediate Nuclear Force talks both sides cannot agree on what to count or include. The question of nuclear capable aircraft (those able to drop nuclear bombs) is a case in point; for example, should the Russian Mig 23/27 Flogger be classed as a “Primary long-range theatre aircraft" or a “marginal long-range nuclear aircraft"?

The inclusion of British and French forces is another area of contention. Both insist that their forces should be excluded; the Americans agree, but the Russians argue that anything that can hit Soviet territory, irrespective of origin, must be counted. All this despite the fact that a rationale for Britain’s “independent deterrent" is that it allows access to the “top table". Indeed the Nassau Agreement of 1962. when Britain bought Polaris from America, specifically allocated Polaris to NATO for targeting purposes, in other words a theatre role as opposed to a strategic one.

Conventional weapons control in Europe is equally confused and unsuccessful. The Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction talks have been going on since 1973 and have achieved little. NATO considered the number of Warsaw Pact divisions and tanks a problem, but then discovered that it could not even count its own. Arms control is more than a numbers game. The case of the British government, that deterrence has kept the peace since 1945, is quite irrelevant to the state of military technology. In fact no one really knows what deters in deterrence in the first place, and when one considers the technical barriers to arms control, the government’s position is untenable.

Nor has Britain been active in the field of arms control. Lawrence Freedman in Britain and Nuclear Weapons notes that Britain has judiciously avoided arms control since it would involve the complete dismantlement of Britain's nuclear force. Despite the fact that Britain signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968 in which Article VI puts the onus on the signatories "to negotiate in good faith on effective measures relating to the cessation of the nuclear arms race", Britain avoided the SALT talks, fearing that the US would bargain away the Polaris force or be restrained from transferring weapon systems in the future. Furthermore Britain has no interest in a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and as Thatcher has stated, "The British deterrent has no place at the INF negotiations" (Hansard, 18 January 1983. col. 109 written answers). Therefore, in addition to the technical obstacles to arms control, Britain has little enthusiasm for it, as is made clear by the decision to buy the Trident D-5. Just how arms control is supposed to lead to disarmament is never made clear.

Many in the arms control fraternity fear that technology is out of control making arms control an impossibility. The focus of concern is that it will be impossible to reassert human control; likewise with the talc of the Sorcerer’s apprentice who, having summoned up magical powers, lost control and was unable to regain it by himself since he did not understand the power he had brought into existence. The reassertion of social control over military technology is impossible even within the confines of capitalism; arms control, whether unilateral or multilateral, is an irrelevancy. Supporters of CND or the government would do well to consider such a proposition.

John Walker