Letters: The Slump (1999)

Letters to the Editors from the January 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Slump

Dear Editors,

Concerning "Boom goes bust in Asia" (Socialist Standard, October) Robert Bremner in New Left Review 229 points out how the unwillingness of capitalists to write off earlier investments inhibits the purging of excess capacity and overvalued capital. I too think that a 1929-type slump is required if there is to be a sustained recovery. I detect growing opposition on the Right to rescue packages, but the write-off fear factor works against this.

Re the October editorial, if I did not know you better I would be accusing you of predicting the collapse of capitalism. George Sosos's wrong if he is going that far, although I question whether he is. Unless a 1929 repeat leads to the appropriate reaction from the working class, you can safely bet on the continuation of capitalism. Betting on what happens next in the short term is a totally different matter of course, but while many are seeking shelter, many fund managers and others are still having to make decisions which cannot be any better than actually betting on what happens next.

Ted Edge, 

Lytham St Annes

Reply: 

As you point out, of course we don’t believe that capitalism is going to collapse. As we pointed out in the pamphlet we brought out in the course of the 1930s' slump, Why Capitalism Will Not Collapse, capitalism will stagger on from crisis to crisis until the working class organises consciously and politically to bring it to an end and replace it with socialism.

As to Soros (above), since he always talks about the "collapse" or "disintegration" of "the global capitalist system", he probably has in mind a regression to a collection of "national capitalist systems" behind their own tariff walls and exchange controls—Editors

All together?

Dear Editors,

Having just received, and read, an information pack on the Socialist Party I am still convinced that many members of other parties share your basic aspirations. Obviously there exist differences of opinion and interpretation of Marxist philosophy, but I fail to comprehend why the apparent hostility exists towards what I would describe as other left-oriented movements.

As long as those seeking radical reform of society continue to remain divided (on party lines) there, in my opinion, will be no change in the present order. The capitalist classes are totally unscrupulous as to whom they form bonds to oppress and exploit the working class. Can't we all unite under one banner and, if necessary, seek compromise amongst different factions who basically share one common goal?

Christopher Wilkins, 

Scarborough

Reply: 

We wouldn’t deny that members of many parties, and of none, share the "basic aspiration" of wanting a better world. Where the disagreements begin is over the features of this better world, which we say can only be achieved on the basis of the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources—our definition of the word socialism.

As you point out, there are others who say that their aim is socialism, or make reference to the works of Marx, but few of them mean by socialism what we (and Marx) do. For them "socialism" means state ownership and control, which in our view amounts only to state capitalism. So why should we—how can we—get together with people who don’t have the same aim as us?

As to the much smaller group of people out there who define socialism in the same way as us, they generally disagree with the way we advocate achieving it, i.e. the democratic political action, via the ballot box, of a majority of conscious socialists. Some of them favour violent insurrection or a general strike or a minority dictatorship as a means to get socialism. Others favour going off into the wilderness and setting up communities or advocate reforms they claim are steps on the way to socialism.

We certainly think that all those who want socialism in the sense of a society based on the common ownership and democratic control of resources should get together in a single organisation that concentrates on advocating socialism and nothing else. Our message to them is stop entertaining illusions about minority action or reforms and join us in creating a bigger socialist party—Editors

Socialist Pioneers

Dear Editors,

I would like to add a few additional comments to Colin Skelly's interesting article, "Pioneers of Socialism" (Socialist Standard, November 1998).

William Morris joined the Democratic Federation, which became the Social Democratic Federation in 1884, [not] in 1883. However, on 27 December 1884 Morris, together with Edward Aveling, Eleanor Marx, E. Belfort Bax and a number of other members of the SDF council, resigned and issued a statement giving their reasons, for "a body independent of the Social Democratic Federation". They said: "We have therefore set on foot an independent organisation, the Socialist League, with no intention of acting in hostility to the Social Democratic Federation, but determined to spread the principles of Socialism."

Unfortunately, as Colin Skelly noted, the Socialist League was taken over by a group of anarchists whose main aim was the destruction of the state rather than the establishment of socialism, which would in fact have resulted in the demise of the state anyway. (For a detailed account of the rise and fall of the Socialist League, mainly from an anarchist viewpoint, see The Slow Burning Fuse by John Quail.)

The main weakness of the Socialist League was that it "had no intention of acting in hostility" to the SDF. And after its demise, a number of its former members returned to the Federation. Even Eleanor Marx held economics classes at 337 Strand, London, the head office of the SDF, during the 1890s. Indeed, it was at the economics classes held by Eleanor Marx, in 1895 and 1896, that Jack Fitzgerald and a number of other members of the SDF learnt their Marxian economics, which ultimately led to their expulsion, or resignation, from that organisation and subsequent founding of the Socialist Party. When the Socialist Party was formed, its members made certain that their Declaration of Principles would include a hostility clause against all other parties (such as the SDF) who advocated "palliatives", not socialism.

Peter E. Newell,

Colchester

Whatever Happened to 'The Viet Cong'? (2017)

From the November 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the 1960s leftwing demonstrators used to chant 'Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh' and 'Victory to the Vietcong'. We look at what sort of society emerged following their victory in 1976.

In 1956, during a brief relaxation of censorship, a Vietnamese literary journal published a story by Tran Duy entitled The Giants. The giants in the story are created by God to help mankind fight the devils, but they end up trampling and killing more people than devils. The allegory was readily deciphered: the giants were the 'communist' party leaders, while the devils were the hated French colonialists, recently defeated at Dien Bien Phu (1954).

The history of the 'communist' movement in Vietnam cannot be summarised in a short article, but the timeline will help the reader place events in context.

Top-down organisation

    

The Vietnamese 'communist' movement emerged from the struggle against French colonial rule as a top-down organisation. The leadership was a self-appointed and self-perpetuating group from the very start. The process of party formation began among Vietnamese emigrés in Canton – the French Sûreté (security police) made it too risky to place the central leadership inside the country. In 1925 Ho Chi Minh, backed by the Comintern, put together a group called the Vietnam Revolutionary Youth League, personally recruiting its members and deciding which of them should sit on its Central Committee (CC). In 1930 the League merged with other small groups to form the Indochinese Communist Party, later renamed the Vietnam Workers' Party or Lao Dong.

As with other vanguard parties of the Bolshevik type, the internal functioning of the Vietnamese 'communist' party has always been guided by the principle of 'democratic centralism'. Lower bodies are strictly subordinate to higher ones. Debate is allowed only until a definite policy is adopted, after which all members must support and implement that policy.

In practice, local party branches in Vietnam in the 1930s seem to have had considerable autonomy due to the difficulty of maintaining communication between them and the CC in China. However, once the leadership returned to Vietnam in 1945 control was tightened.

The activity of rank-and-file party members has almost always been confined to tasks assigned from above. On training courses they might be invited to raise objections to the policy of the leaders, but the purpose of this is merely to convince them that the leadership is right. Only during the brief thaws of 1956 and the late 1980s have they had greater freedom to criticize party policy.

At higher levels there has been freer discussion at certain periods, permitting the emergence of conflicting factions. (The most persistent though not the only important factional division has been that between supporters of a pro-China orientation and advocates of closer ties with European 'socialist' countries.) Such periods, however, alternate with others in which a narrow clique imposes rigid control. Thus the 'anti-revisionist' purge of the mid-1960s, in which hundreds of critical party and government officials and military officers were imprisoned without charge, inaugurated the 'rule of the two Le's' – Le Duan (general secretary) and Le Duc Tho (head of the CC's Organisation Department, in control of appointments, and negotiator at the Paris talks). This was just one of recurrent purges that frighten people and inhibit debate.

Relations with other political groups

The 'communist' party was not alone in fighting against French rule. There were also various 'bourgeois' nationalist parties, Trotskyist organisations and religious sects. At times the 'communists' judged it expedient to cooperate with this or that group. At other times they ruthlessly suppressed rivals who did not seem susceptible to their control, even resorting to assassinations and betrayal to the Sûreté (also a source of funds).  

Especially dramatic were relations between Stalinists and Trotskyists. In the early to mid-1930s the 'communists' in Saigon cooperated with local Trotskyists – a practice denounced by the Comintern in 1937 and Ho in 1939. After the Vietminh took power in Hanoi in 1945, Trotskyists were hunted down as 'traitors' and they were almost all killed.

A sole survivor, Ngo Van, escaped just in time to France, where he wrote a valuable memoir (In the Crossfire: Adventures of a Vietnamese Revolutionary, AK Press, 2010). His political views evolved in exile: he rejected Bolshevism and became a council communist.

The 'communists' again cooperated with other 'patriotic' forces in the fight against the Americans. Most members of the National Liberation Front (NLF) in the South were not 'communists' (the moniker 'Vietcong' – Vietnamese Communists – is misleading). After victory the NLF was suppressed (see: Truong Nhu Tang, A Vietcong Memoir: An Inside Account of the Vietnam War and Its Aftermath, Vintage Books, 1986). NLF veterans remained a disgruntled group in society. Taking advantage of the thaw of 1986, they set up a Club of Former Resistance Fighters, with a journal entitled Spirit of Resistance.    

   

Outer and inner power elites

Within the party we can identify an outer power elite of 150–200 members of the party's Central Committee (CC) and an inner power elite of 15–20 top leaders – members of the Politburo and occupants of important positions in the CC apparatus. The top leaders have chauffeur-driven cars and live in luxurious villas with guards, servants, and personal libraries. Other members of the CC have lesser though still substantial privileges, such as use of a special store in Hanoi stocked with goods not available to ordinary mortals and a spacious apartment (most people live in very crowded conditions).

There is also a graduated system of access to information. Certain periodicals are published specially for the power elite. A digest of the world press has a fairly wide circulation. Some documents like Politburo minutes, however, are restricted to the inner elite.

Ho Chi Minh

A few words on 'Uncle Ho'. He was the creator and symbol of Vietnamese 'communism' but he was not a dictator like Stalin or Mao, nor did he have any pretensions as a theorist. His power declined over time. In her novel The Zenith, Duong Thu Huong portrays the aging Ho as virtually a prisoner of his colleagues. Like Lenin, after death he was embalmed and placed on public display in a mausoleum in defiance of his expressed wishes (he wanted to be cremated, just as Lenin wanted to be buried). His last testament was published but in censored form (thus his call for a moratorium on the land tax was deleted).   

Doi moi

After Le Duan's death in 1986 the Vietnamese leaders embarked on a policy called doi moi, meaning 'renovation'. Initially, like Gorbachev's perestroika, this was envisaged as a process of political as well as economic reform. Later, wishing to avoid the fate of the Soviet elite, they switched to the Chinese strategy of encouraging private enterprise and foreign investment while consolidating the power structure.

As we have seen, the old state-capitalist system had its inequalities. However, the new mixed system of state and private capitalism has generated inequalities that are more extreme and, perhaps above all, more conspicuous. This has given rise to feelings of nostalgia for the old days. In particular, the period of the war against America, for all its hardships and suffering, is recalled as a time of sharing and mutual aid.

I was told of a man who was surprised one day to find on his doorstep someone who had served with him in the same unit. His pleasure turned into shame when his old comrade-in-arms told him that he was destitute and begged him to take him in as a servant. He said that he was not asking for money: he would be satisfied with food to eat and a roof over his head.

The more things change...

The Vietnamese Revolution certainly brought changes in the composition, structure and ideology of the ruling class. But what changes did it bring to working people?

Many changes were more apparent than real. Here are a couple of examples.

One of the main demands raised by 'communists' and others under French rule was abolition of the corvée – a feudal institution that made peasants toil without pay on public works for a certain number of days per year. Under the Vietminh the same practice continued under a new name – citizen labour service.

Again, after 'land reform' (1954–56) peasants no longer had to pay rent to a landlord for the land they tilled. But instead they had to pay a land tax to the state. And the amount of the land tax happened to be about the same as the rent previously paid to the landlord. Later, after the collectivisation of agriculture, the same surplus was extracted by the state from the collective farms.

As the proverb says: 'The more things change, the more they remain the same.'

The French colonialists and their American successors placed little value on the lives of the 'natives'. But the 'communist' leaders too placed little value on the lives of their people. Even if one accepts the dubious propositions that the country had to be reunited and that this could be achieved only by war, the goal could have been reached at a much lower price in blood. For instance, the 'Easter offensive' of 1972, which cost the lives of almost an entire cohort of poorly trained 16-year-old boys, served no rational strategic objective. It was already clear that the US was withdrawing – all that was needed was a little more patience.

Impoverished by decades of war and devastation, Vietnam now lies alongside Bangladesh on the bottom tier of the global economic hierarchy, with wage levels only one half of those now prevailing in China. Chased out at such vast cost, the 'imperialists' are welcomed back to exploit Vietnamese workers and resources as foreign investors.    

Stefan

VIETNAMESE 'COMMUNISM' TIMELINE

1880s French complete conquest of Indochina

1925 Ho Chi Minh sets up Vietnam Revolutionary Youth League (VRYL) in Canton

1930 VRYL merges with other groups to form Indochinese Communist Party (ICP)

1941 Ho creates Vietnam Independence League (Vietminh)

1945 Japan surrenders. Vietminh takes power in Hanoi. Ho proclaims Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). ICP officially disbands

1945–54 Resistance War Against France

1951 ICP reappears as Vietnam Workers' Party (Lao Dong)

1954 Geneva Agreement divides Vietnam into northern zone (DRV) and southern zone (Republic of Vietnam)

1954–56 'Land reform' in DRV

1959 Collectivisation of agriculture begins in DRV

1960 National Liberation Front (Vietcong) established in South

1960–75 Resistance War Against America

1969 Ho dies. Le Duan becomes general secretary of party Central Committee

1976 Country reunified as Socialist Republic of Vietnam

1977 Collectivisation of agriculture begins in South

1978 Vietnam invades Cambodia

1979 Border war with China

1986 Le Duan dies. Start of doi moi (renovation)

1988 De-collectivisation of agriculture legalized

Looking Forward (1943)

From the July 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

What sort of world awaits the working class after the war? Will it be a brand new world free from class privilege and wage-slavery; a world of social equality, security and happiness? The so-called progressives of all political colours have indulged in unlimited crystal-gazing, but no tangible blessings for the workers have emerged out of their Utopian vapourings. Certainly, President Roosevelt has said that he is looking forward to a world freed from want, but he carefully defines it as "economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peace-time life for its inhabitants." (Message to Congress, January 6th, 1941.) So, after all, we are not going to have the common ownership in the means of life, and production for use; merely "economic understanding."

The President also said that he stood for the ending of special privileges for the few, though he did not propose the abolition of rent, interest and profit. It is quite evident that Roosevelt does not consider the exploitation of one class by another as a "special privilege." To him and his supporters the making of profits is a necessary condition for progress and civilisation. In the same message to Congress he also expressed himself in favour of bringing more citizens under the coverage of old-age pensions and unemployment insurance. We can, therefore, expect, as he expects, that in the new world where want is to be abolished, there will also exist large numbers of elderly working-class paupers and jobless dole-drawers.

In another celebrated message, this time to I.L.O., held in. New York in 1941, he observed: "If that world is to be one in which peace is to prevail, there must be a more abundant life for the masses of the people in all countries. There are so many people in this world who have never been adequately fed, clothed and housed. By undertaking to provide a decent standard of living for these millions, the free peoples of the world can furnish employment for every man or woman who seeks a job."

We think the President is mistaken. There are certain facts he has overlooked. Firstly, what the workers receive as wages, high or low, represents only a part of what they have produced. Secondly, assuming a higher standard of living for these inadequately provided millions, the resulting increase in the speed and efficiency of industry would leave the workers in a relatively worse position, and suffering conditions of more acute insecurity. Experience has already proven that an increasing demand for goods will not necessarily prevent increasing unemployment, and the prospects of employment for every man and woman who seeks a job are a remote possibility under capitalism. Employers are only willing 'to give the workers more wages when they can anticipate more profits out of them, and they are not prepared to allow production beyond the point where it ceases to be profitable. Surely, the President must know that in his own country, where wages are the highest in the world, unemployment and starvation were prevalent!

Examining the more concrete pronouncements of American spokesmen, one can see their anxiety to establish post-war conditions wherein their goods will be able to penetrate to every country in the world. For example, Mr. J. G. Winant, speaking at Liverpool University, November 26th, 1941, said: "Divergencies between Great Britain and the United States might easily arise if each country insisted on becoming as self-sufficient as possible in respect of producing goods of outstanding importance in war-time. This policy would necessitate the production at high cost within one country of goods which could be produced at much lower cost in the other country, and this would involve the erection of serious obstacles to trade." In plain words, Mr. Winant demands a free field and no favour, on behalf of American capitalists. On the other hand, British interests, being at a disadvantage with their American rivals, prefer to be reticent on this important subject. No doubt, after the war, they will become very voluble, as their interests may determine.

Another gentleman, Milo Perkins, Executive Director of the U.S. Board of Economic Warfare, in a speech on May 25th, 1942, delivered himself of the following:

   "The greatest untapped markets industrial capitalism has ever known will open up before us. Their development will be the one hope for our profit system. Industrial capitalism cannot survive without those markets. Of Course, it won't be easy. . . . There will be the problem of how to get purchasing power into the hands of potential customers so that they can become real customers. . . ."

He does not say exactly how all this is to be done, but he dwells on the virtues of “faith in the future of our country . . .  a new buoyancy . . .  a sense of adventure."

Mr. Churchill's recent speech gives a good pointer to what the workers may expect when the blood-letting is finished. He said: 

". . . we must beware of attempts to over-persuade or even coerce His Majesty's Government to bind themselves or their unknown successors in conditions which no one can foresee, and which may be years ahead, to impose great new expenditure on the State without any relation to the circumstances which might prevail at that time, and to make them pledge themselves to particular schemes without relation to other extremely important aspects of our post-war needs. . . . Therefore, I tell you round your firesides to-night that I am resolved not to give or to make all kinds of promises and tell all kinds of fairy tales to you who have trusted me and gone with me so far." (Daily Telegraph, March 22nd.)

Thus our masters, through their spokesman, are here saying quite plainly that they don't intend to give the workers anything now, and that they will not bind themselves to any definite promises for the future.

The motto of the Curzon family, "Let Curzon hold what Curzon has," is applicable to the whole of the property owning class, and it must necessarily be so for obvious reasons.

Now contrast Mr. Churchill's cautious utterances with the free and easy attitude of Sir Kingsley Wood on the occasion last year when he asked for another thousand million pounds for war purposes. He told the House that “our" total expenditure during this war has already reached the astronomical figure of £8,600 millions. He added: "This is by far the costliest war in history. But this does not dismay us. There will be no faltering in the financial or any other sphere." (Our italics.)

Let the workers consider for a moment the immense amount of wealth that is being expended for the purposes of destruction, and then let them reflect how easy it would be to organise society on a basis that would give each individual a civilised existence. The vastness of the wealth wasted on war is evidence of the vastness of the world's industrial and mineral resources.

As Mr. John G. Winant said to the miners of Durham on June 6th, 1942: 

"What we want is not complicated. We have enough technical knowledge and organising ability to respond to this awakening of social conscience. We have enough courage. We must put it to use. When war is done, the drive for tanks must become a drive for houses. The drive for food to prevent the enemy from starving us must become a drive for food to satisfy the needs of all people in all countries. . . ."

But we might well ask Mr. Winant a few very pertinent questions. It was just as easy to build houses before the war as it is now to build tanks and battleships. Then why were those houses not built?

Mr. Winant can only reply that there was something fundamentally wrong, but he does not say what it is that is wrong. We can tell him. It is the private ownership in the means of life, and the fact that food and clothing and houses are primarily produced to make profits for the capitalists, and NOT to satisfy human wants. When the fields, the factories, the mines, and all the means of producing and distributing wealth are placed into the hands of society, only then will human wants set the machinery of industry into motion.

Kaye.

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