Before you vote — what we ask you to consider (1997)

From the April 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Of all the concessions from capitalism that workers have fought for and won over the years the right to vote is potentially the most important. But simply being able to vote isn’t enough, it’s what we do with it that really counts.

We are told that we live in a democracy. In 1914 and 1939 we were told that that democracy was threatened and that it was necessary for working class people from this country to take up arms against workers from other countries to preserve our freedom and our democratic way of life. In between, of course, there have been numerous other lesser occasions when the people who run the country told us it was in our interests to go out and kill workers from some other place. So we are free people enjoying a democratic way of life that ensures freedom for all?

Does this mean that the parent(s) of the nearly four million children enduring life on Income Support are simply exercising their democratic right to see their children forced to live mean, pinched lives?

Are the unemployed just not interested in availing of their democratic right to take up the available jobs that will offer them the financial ability to lead meaningful and fulfilling lives? Are the homeless and the slum dwellers not interested in their democratic right, their freedom, to live in decent homes?

Are the 60% of the population of Britain reflected in recent opinion polls who think the world their children will have to live in will be even worse than at present, intent on using their freedom and their democratic right to fabricate such a world for their children?

These are really silly questions. Obviously the impoverished, the unemployed, the homeless, and the millions of workers performing degrading and low-paid work along with the millions of elderly people and the sick and infirm, in fact all whose lives are demeaned because of denial or the frustration of their reasonable expectations would prefer things to be different.

If our vaunted democracy is an effective instrument for the solution of our problems then those we cited, the people whose lives are blighted by one or more aspects of poverty, can rejoice that following the 1st of May of this year, at latest, their problems are over! Surely no one who has the the right and the democratic means to abolish the conditions which restrict and degrade them, which distracts in every possible way from their full enjoyment of life, will deliberately vote for the continuation of their misery!

Unfortunately, what is called freedom and democracy in the present form of society does not empower the overwhelming majority of people to resolve their poverty problems. The freedom and democracy that men and women killed and died for has always been an illusion conjured up by the political agents of capitalism and the hired hacks of the media. The fact is that our democratic rights’ are largely limited to our right to vote in elections.

Potentially this is an invaluable right and one that is denied to people is some countries. However, while we have this most important democratic right we are at present just as impotent when it comes to resolving our social problems as are workers in countries that do not enjoy our 'democratic rights’.

The freedom to vote of itself is not democracy; real democracy includes the right of every human being to the material basis of a full and happy life. What we currently have is only part of the democratic equation but it is vital insofar as we can use it to complete that equation.

What you are being offered

Let us put the question directly to you, the reader: assuming that like most people your life is restricted by one or more social problems — which are essentially poverty problems originating in your position as a member of the working class — do you really believe that you can change your condition by voting for any of the three parties that, realistically, have any chance of wielding political influence in the next parliament?

If you think so then you have not been listening to the politicians. Tories, New Labour and Liberal Democrats are in agreement with regard to what is needed to tackle the grim social problems facing Britain today: more investment in the public services. This, of course, is an oversimplification but it is true that in capitalist society money is the essential mechanism for movement. The source of public funding is, of course, taxation which, however it is presented, is ultimately a charge on capital and in today’s world of multi-national capitalism high taxation can result in job losses and the need for even more money to be paid out to increased numbers of unemployed.

With the exception of the Lib-Dems, whose poor electoral fortunes can allow them to be extravagant to the tune of an extra penny in the pound on income tax, specifically designed to improve the educational quality of ‘British’ wage-slaves, both New Labour and the Tories claim that it is not their intention to impose tax increases on a loot-satiated British capitalism. The intention of the three main political parties is to encourage investment in jobs primarily as the means of lowering public costs by reducing the bill for unemployment benefit and increasing workers’ national insurance contributions to the Exchequer.

The down-side of such a policy is that it is being universally pursued throughout all the nations of world capitalism, indeed, the viciously competitive ‘job creation’ market now requires the expenditure of vast sums of public money (which off-sets economies elsewhere in the system). More relevant to the working class is the fact that wage labour is a commodity and, like any other component of the profit system, is most attractive when it is cheap!

World conditions

Government ministers, like Major and his cabinet colleagues today, are quick to accept credit for perceived economic improvements. The implications of this claim, which is never questioned by the media ‘experts’, is that governments can exercise control over economic affairs — which, of course is the basis of a political party’s claim on the voter.

But if governments can control the economy, if they can effect improvement, then, conversely, they must be accountable for the endless economic problems that bedevil capitalism! But when capitalism is in crisis, when poverty is aggravated by mass unemployment and its chain reaction throughout the economy, governments of all political hues are quick to disclaim responsibility and argue that the problems arise from ‘world conditions’!

Effectively, then, when you vote for a political party that accepts capitalism you are placing your trust in capitalism which, in turn, means that your hopes for the future are dependent on the vicissitudes of a system of economic anarchy that is patently outside the control even of the capitalist class.

The bad news is that, with the exception of the Socialist Party who are running candidates only in five constituencies, every other party contesting the forthcoming elections stand for capitalism. The almost identical policies of New Labour and the Tories is a reflection of the fact that, while New Labour ar favourites, either may have to face up to the reality of government within the restraints of capitalism. Among the others are a selection of ‘socialists’, from the various Trotskyist factions to Scargill’s re-incarnation of the Labour Party. None of these latter parties or organisations will offer a real alternative to capitalism ; what they will present are various re-hashes of the old, failed reformist policies which take no account whatsoever of the realities of the present economic system.

For the present, our role in the elections is that of making more people aware that there is an alternative to capitalism; aware that they can use the limited democracy available to bring about a democratic revolution that will sweep away capitalism and introduce a system in which the resources of society will be owned in common and used solely to provide the goods and services that people require.

That is what we mean by Socialism: the institution of a society that will not be inhibited by the stupendous waste associated with the extraction of profit for a few from the productive and distributive process. The concept of cost will be a thing of the past and the idea that people should endure poverty in any shape or form simply to ensure that a relatively small minority of parasites can amass wealth far beyond what they could consume in a hundred lifetimes, will become an incredulous legend.

Socialism requires thinking about; it is a pre-eminently logical approach to the organisation of our affairs. But from within the madhouse of capitalism, where it is reasonable for people to starve to death while food is destroyed to preserve prices and profits, the idea of the world's resources being used in the service of humanity as a whole may, initially, be hard to comprehend.

The impending election does offer us real choice we can, by voting for any of the parties that favour capitalism, continue to endorse the lunacy of a system that demeans and degrades most people or we can consider if Socialism offers a credible alternative. If you have had enough of capitalism, if you want a change to real democracy, then you must join us to ensure that next time you have a democratic choice.

Richard Montague

The Acid Test of History (1930)

From the January 1930 issue of The Socialist

The old adage, “The course of true love ne’er runs smooth," may be well applied to the course of the “History of the Communist Movement in America." We are prompted to this conclusion after attending a lecture on the above subject, given by the National Secretary of the Proletarian Party on. Nov. 30, 1929. We heard a lengthy discourse dealing with the formation of the Communist Party of America, and the various intrigues on the part of different groups in their efforts to gain control of that organination. Of small interest to us is the claim made by the Proletarian Party to being the "real communist movement" in America. Seeing that they receive no recognition from the Third International, we cannot see how they substantiate this. Of more importance to us is their claim to being a Marxian organization equipped with an almost complete monopoly of Marxism. It is on this point that we base our criticism.

We have endeavored to obtain a definite program or declaration of principles by them but have failed to find anything of the sort in their official organ, “The Proletarian.” We are therefore compelled to look mainly to the verbal utterances of their speakers. The nearest we can arrive at anything resembling a program is a series of statements made by their National Secretary at the afore' mentioned lecture. He pointed out that the Proletarian Party stands for “Dictatorship of the Proletariat," the setting up by armed insurrection of some sort of “Workers’ Government;" also that they “realize the limitations of Parliamentary action." Being anxious to know, we questioned their speaker as to what these limitations consisted of. In reply, he premised an imaginary condition that a substantial majority of the working class having become conscious of the need for taking over the means of wealth production, and establishing Socialism, express their desires by the vote, and are met with resistance by the capitalist class in the form of military force. Therefore the workers will be compelled to organize a counter military force to enforce their desires. For proof of this their speaker asserted that the Army and Navy are officered by bourgeois and therefore would be used by the capitalist class against the working class.

Had our ultra-Marxists of the Proletarian Party an understanding of the basic principle of Socialism, the Materialistic Conception of History, as they claim to have, they would realize that, the economic conditions of capitalism having evolved to a point at which a substantial majority of the working class have reached an understanding of Socialism, the Army and Navy forces would also be imbued with the same ideology as the civil population, since the immense majority of those forces including the officers are members of the working class. They would be poor material for the capitalists to rely upon to prevent the intelligent working class from asserting its will. However, the working class has not as yet voted for Socialism; until it does we cannot formulate any utopian detailed plans for dealing with an imaginary condition in the future.

We were further told that the Communist Party in Russia is carrying toward completion, and in the same spirit, the movement begun by the Paris Commune in 1871. Both the Communist Party of America and the Proletarian Party in making this claim are either ignorant of the conditions obtaining in Paris during the few short months of the Commune, or they are deliberately distorting the facts concerning conditions existing in Soviet Russia which is a resort to the old time method of all political forces of reaction.

As far back as 1920 we find this quotation in an article, “The Dictatorship of the Proletariat," by N. Bucharin, published in the “Workers Dreadnought" (April 12, 1920).

   “Nevertheless we do not for a moment deny that our apparatus is rigidly centralized; that our policy towards the bourgeoisie and towards the parties of the compromising Socialists is repressive in character; that the organization of our own party, as a ruling party which exercises a dictatorship through the Soviets, is of a 'Militarist type.’ “

This is a direct negation of the claim made by the official and unofficial communists of America, that the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat" in Russia represents control by the masses. It is the position maintained by the Blanquists prior to the Paris Commune, and which they were compelled to abandon and act directly contrary to, during the tenure of the Commune. In the introduction to the “The Civil War in France,” (S. L. P. ed.) Engels points out that:

   “The members of the Commune were divided into a majority of Blanquists, who had also predominated in the central committee of the National Guard, and a minority, which consisted for the most part of members of the International Working Men‘s Association, who were adherents of the Proudhonian school of Socialism."

Engels then goes on to show how both the Blanquists and Proudhonists did the very reverse of which their schools advocated, thus:

  "The Blanquists fared no better. Brought up in the school of conspiracy, held together by the rigid discipline essential to it, they started from the conception that a comparatively small number of resolute, well organized men would be able not only to grasp the helm of State at a favorable moment, but also, through the display of great energy, and reckless daring, to hold it as long as required, that is, until they had succeeded in carrying the masses of the people into the revolutionary current and ranging them around the small leading band. To accomplish this, what was necessary, above all else, was the most stringent, dictatorial centralization of all powers in the hands of the new revolutionary government. And what did the Commune do, which in the majority consisted of these very Blanquists? In all its proclamations to the French people in the provinces, it called upon them for a free federation of all French communes with Paris for a national organization, which for the first time was to be the real creation of the nation. The army, the political police, the bureaucracy, all those agencies of oppression in a centralized government, which Napoleon had created in 1798, and which since then every new government had gladly used and kept up as ready weapons against its enemies, were to be abolished everywhere, as they had been abolished in Paris.”

To compare the above condition existing during the Paris Commune, to that existing in Russia, one would have to be a wish thinker like the members of the official Communist Party of America and the unofficial “real" communists of the Proletarian Party. The Red Army has not been abolished, neither has the bureaucracy nor the political police. Witness the rise of the Opposition groups and the wholesale expulsion and exile of many of those prominent early in the Russian Revolution. Is this analogous to the Paris Commune?

Again let us look at Paris during the Commune, to see the attitude of the Communards towards parliamentary action and the value of the vote. According to Engels the Commune "filled all positions of administration, justice, and instruction, through election by universal suffrage, the elected being at all times subject to recall by their constituents" (op. cit.), a system which our “communist" friends would mistake for bourgeois democracy. Engels' concept of the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” is also expressed in the conclusion to the same work, page 20, “ . . . look at the Paris Commune. That was the dictatorship of the proletariat.” The conditions existing in Russia bear little resemblance to those obtaining in Paris during the Commune. Neither, for that matter, do they resemble the conditions in America, England or any other developed capitalist countries. In Russia, where primitive peasant agriculture prevails, the institution of Socialism is at present an impossibility, because there is lacking the highly developed productive forces and the enlightened proletarian majority, both of which axe necessary for that purpose. Where matured capitalism exists and where the workers are therefore the majority of the population, they can achieve their emancipation as soon as they understand what Socialism is and desire it, and they will effect this by the simplest, and in fact, the only means available—the democratic conquest of the political forces of society—at present used for their subjection.

“He who tells the people revolutionary legends, he who amuses them with sensational stories, is as criminal as the geographer who would draw up false charts for navigators.” (Lissagaray, preface to History of the Commune.) 

Alf.

Socialist Educational Society

50 Years Ago: The Impossibility of Social Harmony under Capitalism (1965)

The 50 Years Ago column from the August 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Nothing can prevent a war throughout Western civilisation between the possessors and the dispossessed—nothing except the dominance in the mass of individuals, or at least in the leaders of both classes, of intelligence and of the ideals of peace and brotherhood . . .  If the governing class will keep in touch with all classes; if those in authority in law, in industry, in education, in religion will seek for the public good: if all classes will seek to keep open the means of understanding and sympathy with all other classes, there will be no more need of revolution as n means of social progress than there is of children’s diseases in individual development”.

(From The Social Problem by C. A. Ellwood.)

Neither in the working class nor in the ruling class can the soulful humanitarian ideals upon which he relies become dominant. Our social circumstances destroy them. Present economic conditions sow hate, not love. Figs cannot grow on thistles. If it were necessary to wait for a complete moral regeneration of the working class; if the mass had first to overflow with love and charity for our oppressors, our case as well as the Professor's would be utterly hopeless. Fortunately, it is not so. Economic development is with us. On it our essential case rests. The propaganda of revolutionary Socialism is a direct effect of present social conditions. Capitalist conditions indelibly stamp the ruling class with the selfish, cruel and hypercritical qualities of the exploiter: and we know what a little part sentiment plays in the struggle.

(From a review of Professor Ellwood's book in the Socialist Standard, August. 1915.)

Old myths refurbished (1966)

Book Review from the August 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Incomes Policy, Legislation and Shop Stewards by T. Cliff and C. Barker (introduction by Reg. Birch). 136 pages. 2s. 6d. Published by London Shop Stewards Defence Committee.

The authors' purpose in this book is to explain why an incomes policy exists, why the workers should oppose it and why the shop stewards are the key to the achievement of "Socialism". But, as will be shown, they are not really aiming at Socialism and their belief in the Shop Steward Movement is built on faulty observation of the conditions of capitalism and on failure to distinguish between "militancy" and Socialist understanding. Above all they do not face up to the fact that the act of revolutionising the social system requires control of the machinery of government by a Socialist working-class. They attack the political and industrial leaders of the workers but not the idea of leadership: what they want is different leaders. They are not consistent in this and in some places they appear to be arguing for self-reliant action by the workers and not "leave it to their leaders", but elsewhere we are told that the shop stewards are the "natural leaders".

The particular target of their attack is full-time trade union officials because these officials do not support the shop stewards and unofficial strikes—"the majority of the union bureaucrats cannot be depended on any more".

There are some trade unions in which the full-time officials vote on the Executive Committee and others in which the full-time officials have no votes, but there is no evidence in this book that makes any practical difference to the policies of the unions.

The authors argue that the shop stewards and factory committees are the militants, held in check by the national executives but they have overlooked the reasons why unions have full-time officials and the conditions in which factory floor militancy vanishes.

In the early days unions had to fight to secure that the union officials could get recognition to negotiate with the employers, who much preferred to deal direct with the workers in their employ. It was to prevent sacking and victimisation of workers on the factory floor that unions demanded the recognition of the union official who could not be directly intimidated.

Cliff and Barker argue from post-war British history that it is the shop stewards and factory committees which are most active; but they have failed to draw the right conclusions from the almost complete destruction of the shop steward movement after the first World War, although they report it:

  By about 1920, with a rise in unemployment and an enormous offensive against the working class from the employers, the shop steward movement that had been born during the war was as good as wiped out.

When unemployment is heavy the shop stewards and factory committees are most vulnerable: faced with the sack they have no choice but to become passive, or, as has happened, become the instruments of the employers. Guillebaud, in his The Works Council (Cambridge University Press 1929) showed how, in Germany, although the works councils were set up by law and flourished when unemployment was low, they collapsed when unemployment became heavy in 1923. Then it was the National unions which alone could offer some protection of the workers and of the works councils themselves.

Extravagant claims are made for the shop steward movement in this book. They are given the credit for the big increase in the number of strikes in the years 1959 to 1965 and they are said to give us "the possibility of the rebirth of a revolutionary working class movement".

It is true that the number of strikes, except in mining, has increased (but why leave out the strikes in the mining industry which have fallen heavily?). But the authors should look further before drawing conclusions. If they took account of the numbers of trade unionists they might have to conclude that, measured by the numbers of strikes, the workers were more "militant" at the end of the 19th Century. But it is in any event a shallow view. Many factors influence the number of strikes—a sharp rise in prices for example and prices have been rising faster since 1960, after which most of the increase in the number of strikes has taken place. Attempts by employers to introduce new working conditions (shifts for example) may also be a factor.

And the authors should also take a look at the results of the strikes. After taking into account the effect of rising, prices, average hourly earnings have been rising by a smaller percentage as the number of strikes has increased.

And they forget that in favourable conditions unions can sometimes gel results by threatening to strike but not needing to do so.

It is when they write about "revolutionary aims" and socialism that Cliff and Barker are most confused and obscure. They claim to want socialism but tell us that the greatest problems facing the workers at the present time are incomes policy and trade union legislation. Why isn't the achievement of Socialism the greatest problem?

They talk of the "rebirth of a revolutionary working class movement", but why "rebirth"? When was the British working-class organised in a revolutionary movement for Socialism?

And why should the shop stewards' movement have any such consequence? They admit the obvious fact that the factory floor struggles are "essentially private fights, particular to workers in one shop or one factory".

They mention that one activity which strengthens the hands of the shop stewards is that they maintain control over the distribution of overtime!

How do these narrow struggles give birth to Socialist understanding?

Even the authors' opposition to the Government's incomes policy betrays that they do not aim at Socialism with its necessary feature of the abolition of the wages system for they talk in terms of opposition to "an Incomes Policy under capitalism". Is there then to be an incomes policy under their "Socialism"?

They attack George Brown's plan because it envisages a relative decline in nationalised industry and ask "What about good old Clause Four?"

Clause Four is the clause in the Labour Party constitution which commits them to mass nationalisation or state capitalism. So what, from the Socialist standpoint, is there "good" about Clause Four.?

Cliff and Barker also note that the government is "by no means the best employer", so why do they want more nationalisation?

The authors are very coy about the Socialist movement they want to see. It is to be the "the mightiest socialist movement yet in the history of Britain". It is to come out of the Shop Stewards' Movement and is to be "a new socialist movement". May we ask what is the name of this new party and what is its object?

Reg Birch, who writes the Preface, likes the rest of the book but not the talk about the increase in the number of shop stewards automatically leading "the development of a Socialist movement"; but he is equally coy about the name and object of the political party of his choice.

After all, the three of them agree in holding up the Shop Steward's Movement as the movement of revolutionary promise. So why can't they tell us about the new society they seek? Is it really Socialism or only Clause Four capitalism that they are after?

And as the authors urge the workers not to take a "deep interest in parliament" what is their political party going to do?

It would be interesting to know what the three of them were doing at the last General Election. Were they urging the workers to vote only for Socialism? Or were they supporting one or other of the parties of capitalism, the Labour Party and Communist Party for example?

Edgar Hardcastle

Past Migrations (1967)

From the August 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

The first thing to remember about emigration in the modern World, is that only workers emigrate. The wealthy “take up residence”, “pay a prolonged visit” or “retire abroad”. When King Edward VIII abdicated and left the country, nobody said that he had emigrated; he had gone into voluntary exile.

This is not a mere play on words. There is a world of difference between the two, the difference in fact between Capitalist and Worker. The wealthy do not need assisted passages, or National Assistance, and if they do not like a place when they get there, they can always move on. They are in no way economic rivals to the workers of the area they visit, so nobody worries about their accents or skin colour. No race-conscious worker would complain if the Aga Khan moved in next door; he would be too busy boasting about his distinguished neighbour for that. It’s the Aga Khan who would do the complaining, and not on account of race, but from an understandable reluctance to share the joys of working class life. The problems of emigration spring from the one thing that both immigrants and native workers share; their poverty.

Migrations are as old as humanity. From the beginning of their existence men have migrated. Sometimes peacefully, sometimes violently, they have moved in search of better and more fertile land, or to escape a stronger enemy, or because of over-population in their homelands. The last of the great migrations came in the centuries following the Discoveries. The whole of America and Australasia, together with large areas of Africa and northern Asia, were peopled by Europeans. Many went freely to seek their fortunes or to escape poverty and oppression at home, but millions were forcibly transported. Indentured servants, negro slaves and convicts all went to provide the cheap labour the new, expanding nations needed.

This was as cruel and bloody a chapter as any in the history of man. By the 19th century European type States had been established in these new lands, while the work of dispossessing the aboriginal inhabitants went steadily on. From then on an immigrant came into an established community as an outsider. There were still however vast unexplored areas into which pioneers could push. By the 20th century these had largely been occupied, except for something like a gold rush that could still send the adventurers on the move.

Emigrants flocked from Europe and Asia to all the new lands, but the one that gripped the imagination, then as now, was the United States. Most of the other new lands were either colonies of the very powers the emigrants were escaping from or, like South America, known dictatorships. America became the symbol of liberty and a myth amongst downtrodden peoples

Give me your tired, your poor
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free
Th wretched refuse of your teeming shores
Send these the homeless tempest tossed to me
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

runs the inscription on the Statue of Liberty, with more sentiment than accuracy, and into America in about hundred years went vast numbers of immigrants. It is estimated that by 1921, when the Quota Act was passed, over 35,000,000 people had entered the United States. To us in Europe today, emigration to the United States has an importance that no other emigrations have, because America is the foremost Capitalist power and its ideas spill over into the rest of the world. These include attitudes to race and colour that are grafted on to existing attitudes, like the unpleasant idiots over here who burn crosses of paraffin soaked rags in weak imitation of the Ku Klux Klan.

From the very beginning, the more capital or influence that a settler possessed the better it was for him, and the greater his chance of success. This applied equally to the later immigrants who, if they had money, could push on from the ports of dis-embarkation into the new areas. Many Swedes, Germans and Dutch had some capital and struck out into the Middle West to start farms. Land in the frontier areas was usually available to all, but money to buy tools and equipment made life easier. Many settlers had special skills and abilities, for which there was a growing demand in an expanding economy, and in this they resemble the people who leave Britain today for Canada and Australia and for Africa and New Zealand. But a vast number were poor with only their passage money and some not even that, in Britain private and public assistance boards grew up to pay the passage of poor people. In Ireland the famines of the 1840’s drove a vast number overseas, while the city of Hamburg found it cheaper to ship paupers to the United States than to provide relief for them or to jail them. The abortive revolutions of 1848 also swelled the numbers. The conditions endured on the journey in these cases are too well known to repeat.

A pattern emerged that is a familiar one today. Poor immigrants tend to settle at their points of dis-embarkation, which are usually industrial centres as well. This is found in Britain today; areas near large airports and main-line railway termini often have large immigrant populations. It is no accident that the Southall area has a large coloured population. Nearness to a point of arrival, plus industry and cheap housing, continue to produce this effect. The areas around Euston Station, the main point of arrival from Ireland, have a large Irish population. Once such a pattern becomes established, friends and relations come to join the pioneers. This happened in America, where New York, the main point of arrival, became a great immigrant centre, with vast populations of foreign origin. When an immigrant prospered, as many did, they soon moved on to pleasanter areas, but the less-fortunate stayed to swell the slum population.

In the early part of the 19th century the main stream of immigrants into America came from Western Europe—from Great Britain and Ireland, Holland, Scandinavia and Germany. Of these the main prejudice was directed against the Irish. They were anti-British, Catholic and, coming from a poor agricultural economy, tended to undercut on wages when they first arrived. The notice “No Irish" was a common sight outside factories. By the 1880’s immigrants from Western Europe were falling off and Eastern Europeans, Mediterranean and Oriental people began to flock in. These were poor, illiterate and were referred to as New Immigrants. The older immigrants, who had begun to be absorbed, treated the new arrivals with hostility and contempt. In 1877 during a slump in San Francisco an unemployed meeting ended in a two-day riot against the Chinese. A party was formed called the Working Men’s Party of California commonly known as the Sand Lot Movement. Its main plank was to get rid of cheap Chinese labour. The irony of the situation was that the party was led by Irish immigrants.

Racial prejudice is essentially irrational, and the prejudices that grew up around American immigration bore little relation to common sense. The thirteen colonies that became the nucleus of the United States were British, consequently the laws, customs and language of the new State were British. At a later stage French and Spanish areas became incorporated and much of their culture was absorbed. Nevertheless, these were subordinate to the existing pattern. At the time of the American War of Independence Americans regarded themselves as the only true Britons, and thought that the ones left behind in Britain had deteriorated and become decadent In this they resemble the Rhodesians of today.

The most desirable thing to be in 19th century America was Anglo-Saxon. The use of this name to describe anything as racially mixed up as the average Briton, is itself typical of the arrogant nonsense talked by the racial theorists of the day. The following masterpiece of idiocy was written in 1885 by Josiah Strong, a Congregational minister and secretary of the American Home Missionary Society in Ohio. In his book Our Country he claimed that Anglo-Saxons above all other races were champions of “a pure spiritual Christianity" and were being schooled for the “final completion of the races"

  Is there room for reasonable doubt that this race unless devitalised by alcohol and tobacco, is destined to dispossess many weaker races, assimilate others and mould the remainder, until in a very true and important sense it has Anglo-Saxonised mankind. (Age of Excess—Ray Ginger).

In its cool arrogance, it makes the puny efforts of our home grown racialists very tame indeed.

Scaling down from the “Anglo-Saxon" came other West Europeans, Mediterranean peoples, East Europeans, Mexicans down to Orientals, who had the additional disadvantage of being considered coloured. American official policy strove to make all immigrants into Americans, and discourage the formation of minorities. In this they had a great deal of success but real antagonisms still lay under the surface.

Until workers learn to recognise the real cause of their poverty, Capitalism, they will continue to find scapegoats, and who better for this purpose than a stranger from across the world?

Les Dale

The Wandering Worker (1967)

From the August 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Throughout history man has wandered over the face of the earth: in primitive times, in communities seeking new pastures or hunting grounds. Today people move as individuals looking for work. These movements are studied and discussed by sociologists and politicians who consider “mobility of labour" highly desirable but one aspect of it — the “brain drain” — as disastrous. The problems of modern migration give rise to many proposals of social reform and even to political parties whose case rests on stopping workers from abroad coming in to Britain and on getting out some of those already here. The immigration is blamed for bad housing, crime, spreading disease and undermining the security of local workers. The period since the war has seen millions of workers all over the world moving from the lands of their birth in search of a better life elsewhere. Their destinations have been the industrial centres where boom conditions demanded their services. Many set off from lands where large-scale industry is hardly known so that it is no surprise that problems arise from such dramatic changes of environment..

Britain provides a good example both of the inflow of workers from other lands and the outflow of local workers to distant lands. Western Europe too has attracted workers in large numbers over the past ten years, not only from southern Italy but also from North Africa, Spain, Portugal, Yugoslavia, Greece and Turkey. British workers, with their long experience of industrial capitalism, find their labour-power in great demand in places like Australia, Canada, South Africa and even in recent years Western Europe.

Posters with such messages as “Opportunity Wears A Thousand Faces In Manitoba”, articles and adverts in the press on the joys of life in Canada and Australia rub home the point. Such is the dissatisfaction of workers in Harold Wilson’s New Britain that in recent years more have left the country than have come in. The housing problem and the prospect of higher wages are among the factors that tempt workers to move elsewhere. There are other factors too. In 1957, after the Suez affair, 160,000 left Britain, nearly doubling the figure of earlier years and the years which followed until 1963, when the number started rising to an estimated total of 170,00 in 1965. The feeling that “the country is going down the drain”, a sort of negative nationalism, is expressed by disillusioned workers who hope that prospects may be better elsewhere. A Canadian official pointed out in a letter to The Times (27.1.65):

   From 1953 to 1964 the changes in the total number of pre-immigration medical examinations carried out in our European offices correspond to changes in unemployment in Canada (Our emphasis).

The other side of this coin is that when there is unemployment in the receiving country, the immigrants tend to be the first out of a job. Estimates say that about half-a-million workers returned to Britain during the slump years of the 1930’s for just this reason. In spite of the rosy pictures drawn by governments touting for immigrants, and [they made] their way home again. An article in The Times of 13 January this year, discussing why immigrants leave Canada, pointed out that of 195,383 British immigrants to Canada in the ten years between 1956 and 1966 more than 56,300 returned to Britain. Some went back to Canada again after rediscovering the joys of working class life in Britain.

One difficulty is that of being in a strange country without friends. Canadian health and welfare services were considered inadequate. The article concluded by remarking that “it is really a question of whether one is sufficiently hard working and adaptable to meet modern changing conditions in a dynamic country”. But, as workers should know, this is a requirement of capitalism the world over. They are also only too familiar with the smear that things have gone wrong because they haven’t worked hard enough.

Australia, with its sunshine and fine beaches, attracts far more British workers than Canada. But the assisted passages for immigrants are not given in order to fill the beaches, but to fill the vacancies in the mines and steelworks, factories, shops and offices. Their energies are also needed to open up new mineral deposits well off the beaten tracks and on the building sites where skilled bricklayers are in short supply. There are snags, of course, as the Daily Telegraph (8.10.66) pointed out:

  Hundreds of British immigrants at Elizabeth, a satellite town 20 miles from Adelaide, are unemployed or in financial difficulties, mostly because of retrenchment in the local motor and building industries . . .
   Mr. Bill Simpson, a local estate agent, says ’hundreds’ of immigrants are selling or trying to sell their houses to return to Britain or to move to other States in Australia. The Rev. Ralph Hood, a Methodist Minister, said recently: ’People are on the bread line and sometimes below it. I know of some children who had not been able to go to school because they haven’t any shoes’.

No doubt some are cursing the day they ever read an advert like “Get Up and Go People Are Cut Out for Australia” and the passage that read “Australia offers you a future as big as you wish to make it. Help Australia grow and you'll share in her prosperity”.

At present the movement of workers from Britain to Australia, Canada and the United States is growing. Many are young and highly skilled. This is the so-called brain drain. Some politicians try to make a moral issue of this, claiming that the country that paid for their training has a right to their services. It’s another story, of course, when doctors trained in India or Pakistan come to Britain to work. This well shows that workers’ energies and skills under capitalism take the form of commodities. It is up to the seller to get the best possible price. That they leave the land of their birth to do this shows that they have no stake in it. The workers have no country.

While some workers have been leaving Britain, many others have moved in. It is estimated that two million immigrants are now resident in Britain, 700,000 from Eire; 350,000 from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa; 400,000 from the rest of Europe; and the remainder from the West Indies, India, Pakistan, Africa and other ex-colonial territories. It is the last group which, by the colour of their skin, have been the most conspicuous. Generally, only the most menial jobs have been open to them and they have suffered most from discrimination in housing. The 1964 election saw the immigration issue used by certain Tory candidates as a weapon against the Labour Party. Quite unnecessarily as it turned out; the new Labour government soon outdid their predecessors in limiting the number of immigrants allowed into Britain.

Immigrants did not import the housing problem. It was here already. Like workers coming from Eire, they found themselves barred from many lodging houses and as a result the landlords who were prepared to take them were able to charge above average rents. Workers coming to Britain have settled in areas with low unemployment, mainly in the London area, the Midlands and parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire. Few have gone to Scotland or Ireland where unemployment is high and where the local workers are themselves moving out.

A further aspect of migration is the movement of workers within a country. The recent tendency in Britain has been called “the drift to the South East”. This highlights the changing industrial structure of Britain with the decline of industries like coal mining, shipbuilding and heavy engineering which were located in the north of England and Scotland; and the advance of light engineering, electronics, motor and aircraft production mainly located in the Midlands and South East England.

This sort of situation was summed up by Townsend Warner, writing at the end of the nineteenth century in Landmarks in English Industrial History:

   Man is of all kinds of baggage the most difficult to be moved. . . .Man is classified as ]labour' and is represented as 'followings' where there is a demand for labour.

However, this applies only to the working man who has to get his living by working for an employer. It applies to capitalist society where the economic considerations of having enough workers at the right place at the right time overrides all other factors. Homesickness, insecurity, housing problems are all by-products of it. Workers seeking a better life elsewhere represent only a small proportion of the movement of population in recent years. Most have moved as the result of wars and the setting up of new states:

  It has been estimated that the migrations of the last 25 years, bound up with the Second World War and the nationalist movements which followed it constitute the greatest population movement of all time, perhaps a hundred million people have been involved (J. Beaujeu Gamier, Geography of Population, Longmans, 1966).

After the independence of India and Pakistan 17 million people moved: “in 1957 there were 8.4 million refugees in Pakistan and 8.85 million in India”. Nor is there any let up to the problem, as the new flood of refugees following the recent Middle East war shows.

Migration of workers brings problems in its wake but is itself caused by capitalism. Wars and nationalisms are part and parcel of the system, as are the erratic movements of the trade cycle which require a mobile labour force. Wherever workers may move their problems will go with them. The employer-employee relationship remains, along with the insecurity that arises from production for sale with a view to profit.

Migration in recent years, with assisted passages and government schemes for helping the immigrant settle in, has changed in detail from the days of convict settlements and the mass movements following the Highland clearances and the Irish famine; but the essential features remain. For the capitalist class opportunity to make a profit wears a thousand faces in Manitoba and elsewhere. This means millions of workers have to move to the places where their energies can be most profitably used. Welfare states or not, discontented workers still wander the world in search of that elusive “good job.” The answer is not in a new job or better employer but in abolishing the status of labour-power as a commodity. The world would then belong to all to enjoy, instead of as today the world and its workers being at the disposal of a privileged few.

Joe Carter

Prices since the 1200s (1969)

Book Review from the August 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Cost of Living in Seven Centuries (A History of the Cost of Living) by John Burnett (Pelican, 8s.)

There are two kinds of half-truth letters which will always find a place in the correspondence columns of certain newspapers. One is from readers who recall how low prices were when they were young. A Sunday newspaper in June 1969 published a letter quoting old grocery prices, and ending “we certainly did not know how well off we were in 1915". The other is from readers who draw attention to the smallness of the wages received by their fathers and grandfathers. So we have the conflicting beliefs in the ‘good old days’ and the ‘bad old days’. John Burnett, reader in economics and social history at Brunei University, brings together a large amount of detailed information to show not only what people paid in past centuries but what was the income of different social groups, how they lived, and what was their standard of living.

He deals with the big movements of prices and how these movements, along with other changes, affected the different classes. For example, the rise of prices in the 14th century, accompanied however by the labour scarcity after the Black Death of 1349 which led to a rise in wages and “placed the labourer, perhaps for the first time in English history in a strong bargaining position". On the other hand, the second half of the 17th century saw the opposite situation—rising prices and lagging wages causing a drastic fall in living standards.

Burnett stresses the difficulty of obtaining enough representative statistics about prices in earlier centuries and warns the reader against expecting a greater degree of accuracy than the information warrants. He reproduces two indices, one by Prof. Guy Routh covering the years 1906 to 1960, the other by Prof Phelps Brown 1906 to 1954, and a graph summarising price changes of consumer goods in Southern England from 1264 to 1954.

He comments on the general long-period agreement between the two indices but might well have used their non-agreement in the war years 1938 to 1945 to illustrate the way in which—in certain circumstances—indices, accurate enough for their defined purpose, can diverge if they cover some different articles and if the articles excluded from one index are rising (or falling) in price at an abnormal rate.

For the years 1938 to 1945 the Routh Index shows a rise of 47½ per cent, while the Phelps Brown index shows 79 per cent Two other indices (Ministry of Labour and London and Cambridge Economic Service) show 30 per cent and 49 per cent respectively.

One of the major reasons for war-time divergence was that it was Government policy to use subsidies to keep down the prices of articles which were heavily represented in the Ministry of Labour Index.

Burnett might also have warned the reader against the still widespread belief that the larger the number of articles covered by a price index the higher the price rise it will show. It all depends on whether all prices are rising at much the same rate or whether some are rising faster than others. If all prices rise by a uniform 5 per cent in a given period it does not matter whether an index contains 10 articles on a 100 or only one: the answer will still be 5 per cent.

Complaints were often made that the official index in past years gave greater weight to certain articles than was warranted by the relative amounts spent by certain social groups. It was sometimes forgotten that this can work both ways. When civil servants had their pay automatically regulated by the cost of living index they were the losers when food prices were falling fast because food was overweighted in the index, but equally they were the gainers when food prices were rising faster than other articles.

On a number of aspects of price and income movements Burnett has been able to extend the range of his information beyond what was known to earlier writers. One such aspect was the decline of the fortunes of the aristocracy because of rising prices between 1540 and 1640. The traditional view of this was, he writes, “derived ultimately from the economic interpretation of history of Marx and Engels, modernised and qualified by R. H. Tawney and Lawrence Stone” and he now argues that the decline was less general than has been assumed.

About the date at which money was gradually coming into general use his views do not appear to differ from earlier ones. He writes: “That money was in regular, if limited, use on 13th century Manors is certain”. Townsend Warner, writing in 1899, said that money payments on the Manor “begin to be common in England in the early years of the 13th century” (Landmarks of English Industrial History). Of course both writers agree that money was in use centuries earlier among traders and merchants and in the big towns generally.

About the causes of the price rises in recent years Burnett is not satisfactory. He offers a sort of explanation but it is difficult even to understand what it means. It starts with the statement that “one of the main influences on prices must be the pressure of demand” but later on goes on to say “The pressure of demand, it seems, has had little direct affect on prices, but it does have direct effect on earnings which then lead to price increases by the process known as ’cost-push’: price increases then lead to renewed wage-increases by a process of ’cost-of-living push’. In popular language this is the wages and prices spiral”

So we are asked to believe (in direct contradiction to the facts) that sellers of goods do not put up their prices in response to increased ’pressure of demand’ but only because and after wages have gone up. So price increases are due to the workers’ ‘demands’; but why then did prices rise twice as much in Britain as in Switzerland and the U.S.A. in the 20 years to 1968 ? And why did not Burnett offer the same kind of explanation for movements of prices and wages in earlier periods ?

What he entirely ignores here is the effect of currency depreciation as the biggest single factor of the price rise. It is strange that he overlooks this on p315 for he is aware of it on p11 and elsewhere. On p315 he offers his explanation, not directly as his own conclusion, but as what “most economists would accept”; but on p4 he puts forwards a view which nearly all the economists he refers to would completely repudiate. They reject the view of earlier economists, including Marx, that there is a direct relationship between the amount of inconvertible paper money and the price level, but on p11 Burnett appears to accept this as he states that ’’prices are determined by the ratio between the supply of and the demand for money: the supply of money is the currency in circulation . . .”

It is a pity Burnett allowed the confusion of modern monetary theory to divert him from his earlier view.

Edgar Hardcastle

What is obscenity (1971)

From the August 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Lord Longford,

On learning that you wish to investigate the pornographic and the obscene in our society, might we respectfully suggest some relevant fields of enquiry? So far you have only apparently investigated the obscene in relation to art and entertainment, such as books, films, plays and peep-shows.

This however is too superficial an approach! The Soho growth industries are merely a pimple on the very warty nose of an extremely nasty way of life.

Is it not obscene that millions of men and women have no roof over their heads and with their children have to queue in refugee camps for a bowlful of stodgy rice? This is obscenity.

Is it not also obscene that one class of men lives in poverty and misery, whilst producing all the wealth owned by that other class, the class of affluent parasites? This, too, is obscenity.

Is it not also obscene that in every country the wealth spent on armies and police, with all their inhuman paraphernalia of napalm and H-bombs, gases and coshes, that this wealth is produced by the very class of people who will find these weapons turned against them ? This surely is obscenity.

Is it not also obscene that this once beautiful world in which we live is being so polluted in pursuit of quick profits that society now has to pay the polluting class to make profits from de-polluting the places they themselves have polluted? This paradox too is obscenity.

Is it not an appalling and filthy obscenity that man throws food into the sea rather than give it to his starving and impoverished fellows? This, Lord Longford, is obscenity.

Poverty is obscene: will you investigate this?

War is obscene: will you investigate that ?

Capitalism’s sordid cheating, squalid exploitation and phony values are all obscene: will you investigate them?

Capitalist society is an obscene and filthy thing: it has been investigated. Will you join us in destroying it, Lord Longford, or will you continue to damn the effects while defending the cause ?

Charmian Skelton

Jesus Christ! (1972)

From the August 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

On Saturday, while standing by Queen Victoria pointing with her sceptre in the customary direction, I witnessed a disturbing spectacle. A Salvation Army band was marching round the statue playing Onward Christian Soldiers while the latter indulged in cries of “Jesus” and “Hallelujah”.

No, it wasn’t the Black and White Minstrels. It was the so-called Hull and East Riding Festival of Light aiming to promote love, purity and family life. About 250 people attended which must have disappointed the organisers who expected a growing movement following the London version. Most of the crowd were young and somewhat hairy in contrast to a later meeting in which the middle aged and self-styled middle class sang hymns and loved each other with cold, aloof, even frigid passion.

The well rehearsed vocal responses of the younger section suggested that they might have been imported by coach from various communes of Jesus People to make up the numbers. The citizens of Hull were no doubt engaged in such selfish pursuits as scouring the market to spread out their dole and Social Security money or cleaning up the fallen ceilings of their slums. They might even have been making love!

The reader will probably have noticed many parallels between the Salvation Army and their political counterparts, the Socialist Labour League. But some other interesting comparisons suggest themselves. The Jesus Freaks who demand the Jesus revolution now are surely none other than the elusive third wing of the Situationists.

From a distance the ritual spelling out of “Jesus” (Give us a J! etc.) and “Who’s alive?. . Jesus!” gave one the impression that the childishly intended and executed swastikas on the festival’s posters were not so inappropriate after all. In contrast, something analagous to political vanguardism also seemed to be present in the march behind the band and the great crusade for liberty fearlessly waged by Mrs. Whitehouse and her small but dedicated élite of television addicts who know what’s best for us better than we know ourselves.

A petition was available aimed at forcing the government to put through the transitional demands of television censorship and book burning. At the evening meeting the well known right wing Tory Patrick Wall M.P. spoke in support. A socialist asked if questions were permitted, to put other points of view. On being told that the people had only come to hear the speakers, several opponents left the meeting pursued by an embarrassed and apologetic methodist.

But the Festival’s supporters had the last word from the top of the City Hall steps. Our friends who did not have their questions answered have the consolation of knowing that they will be prayed for. Meanwhile Mrs. Whitehouse spoke of the enemy within and forces working for the overthrow of our society; and some Labour M.P.s sent their support for the Festival.

Consider love, purity and family life. “Love” is simple enough, being a feeling of general benevolence for everybody but especially one’s enemies. Any physical relationship must remain in strict bureaucratic limits. The Jesus Communes hold everything in common except each other.

“Purity” means that certain biological facts can be mentioned while others cannot, especially when children are waiting around to be corrupted or frightened out of their wits. When Christians advocate family life they are at their most naive. Can they say that the family structure of western civilisation, or that of 2,000 years ago from which their dogmatic rules which control it derive, are in all or even most cases satisfactory?

Of course a “perfect” family life with unbounded happiness would be great as would "perfect” feudalism or “perfect” slavery. They say that failures and stresses in family life are due to the faults of people; their ungodliness; their lustful desires and their failure to appreciate the fact that family life must be the best possible system because that is what it says in the bible.

The usual reasoning prevails of accepting the dogma and twisting the facts to fit it, just as much now in this mini-revival as in the ancient Catholic church which fiddled a second marriage for Joseph to explain away Jesus’s brothers while preserving Mary’s virginity for her crowning in heaven.

And it is this attitude that makes nonsense of the Jesus People’s claim to be a revolutionary force. True, they claim to be for democratic action. Two of their banners showed ballot papers with the choice: Jesus—Satan and Porno—Purity. The communes are just self multiplying bisexual monasteries with regular biblical readings and rhythmical incantations.

An organisation which bases itself on divine revelation can hardly be expected to be able to analyse the modern system and thereby find serious ways to change it. However, the movement is not catching on; if it did, it would be one more force against the free thought and free discussion and the build up of revolutionary consciousness.

ALF.

So They Say: For Ever England (1973)

The So They Say Column from the August 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

For Ever England

The petrol companies have agreed to stop competing with “free gifts" to customers: no more soup-bowls, Famous Paintings, one-size tights, or the sets of imitation medallions which looked like becoming the successors to cigarette cards.

Texaco’s series of reproduction Army badges is therefore the last of its kind, and it is almost worth the 25p for the album to find a cat let out of the bag in an unexpected place. “Great British Regiments” has an introduction by Lieut.-General Sir Brian Horrocks, and he says:

  In my opinion, however, their greatest contribution to the British Empire which is rarely mentioned has been the protection they have given to our indomitable British merchants who, in search of fresh markets, spread our influence all over the world. For some this has involved spending many years in distant garrisons where their casualties from disease were often far greater than those suffered in active service.

Young collectors may find that enlightening. They should remember it when they are being told the Army is there to defend freedom and combat oppression, and dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.


If Things Don't Alter . . .

Sir Geoffrey Howe, Minister for Consumer Affairs, has been trying to impress with a muscular posture. On the front of the Observer on 24th June, under the headline “Minister’s Warning on Profits”, it was reported that he had

  yesterday warned businessmen that they would be wise to remember that if they were making good profits the Price Commission could compel them to reduce their prices.

The same issue of the Observer shows, elsewhere, plenty of scope for Sir Geoffrey. On page II Weston Pharmaceuticals, who have 197 retail branches, reported that their profits rose from £459,070 in 1972 to £1,872,586 this year. The dividend was 27.3 per cent., and the “earnings” per share went up from 5.6p to to 8.1p. On page 13 Lead Industries Group Ltd. state an increase in profit before tax from £6,585,000 in 1971 to £7,040,000 in 1972, and in gross dividends from 11.5 per cent, to 12.075 per cent.

Both these companies appear to be making “good profits”. Are they alarmed by Sir Geoffrey’s warning? The annual report of Lead Industries Group says:

   There must inevitably be uncertainties as to the effects on profitability of the Governments’ anti-inflation policy and fluctuating currencies, nevertheless the present picture is a cheerful one overall and prospects for the current year look good.

In other words, they are “being wise” — and expect to go on doing well.


. . . they'll Stay as They are.

The strongest uncertainties, in fact, appear to be Sir Geoffrey Howe’s — as to what is going to happen anyway. The report of his speech ends:

  He quoted the view of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research that commodity prices would fall back from their recent high levels . . .  if the national institute was right, he said, ‘we can certainly expect a significant reduction, in the months ahead, in the pace of inflation that has beset us all’.

This recalls the classic headline-question: Did She Fall Or Was She Pushed? What the Minister says, summarized, is that he could try to make prices come down, but if they do it will be of their own accord.

The inability of governments to control the economic working of capitalism could hardly be demonstrated more clearly. While Sir Geoffrey waits for the answer, anyone with £25,000 can try phoning Bevington Lowndes Ltd. (20 lines, 24-hour service) — who, in the Sunday Times the same day, were advertising “the lifelong investment that beats inflation”. That sum will bring you £2,500 a year tax-free, and to heck with the Price Commission.


Into Europe

We recently reproduced an item from The London Property Letter, which tells its subscribers how to play the regulations and exploit the housing situation. Its publishers, Stonehart Publications Ltd., are now launching The European Property Letter, again with Robert Troop of the Sunday Times as editor. The annual subscription is £25.

The introductory leaflet is headed 1975: The Year of the Property Gold-Rush, and begins:

  Over these past months British property companies have taken a quickening interest in Europe. Samuel Properties spent £8,000,000 on an office block in Frankfurt. Abbey Life £7,500,000 on one in Brussels. This is clearly the right moment for UK investors, large and small, to begin exploring the EEC — not simply because Britain has now joined, but because there is bound to be a huge rush of funds into European property and a consequent rise in prices when exchange controls are lifted, somewhere about 1975.

They promise to present:

  Street-by-street profiles of cities and towns where property is still underpriced.
  How to exploit the many investment anomalies that still exist in European backwaters.
  Advice on land: where to buy, what to pay, whether you’re permitted to hold.
  Planning: where it’s easiest to get it and why.

And other good things — for capitalists. Thrilling to be in Europe, is it not?


Meanwhile, back at Mon Repos —

Still in property, The Guardian had something cryptic in its house-market page on 6th July. Stating that mortgage repayments have gone up on average from £19.75 a month at the end of 1970 to £32.74 at the end of 1972, Nicholas Heman wondered how people were finding the money “when wages and salaries have not risen by anything like the same amount". His view was that

   the greater number of first-time purchasers may be explained by the fact that they are now regarded much more favourably by building societies who previously would have been more demanding in their requirements.

Which sounds like saying that building societies lend money to people who cannot afford to repay it with interest. And on 11th July The Guardian reported “the whole chilling picture" given by Shelter Housing Aid Centre, headlined “Shelter Finds Better-Off Have Housing Problems". It said:

   In this situation, people are more willing to commit themselves to higher mortgage payments than they can really afford. SHAC encountered one example of a 37½ per cent rate of interest. One man was paying a £140 a month mortgage on a £200 a month salary . . . “In 1973, a family needs an income of at least £2,500 and savings of £1,000 minimum before house purchase in London becomes a possibility."

There is something wrong with The Guardian’s headline. These people are not “better-off”: they are living in crippling poverty.

Give the Fellow a Break

“What you've got to remember about Prince Philip is that he is in a dead-end job.” — A Pressman in “The World at One”, 11th July.

Robert Barltrop

Why Socialism? (1974)

From the August 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Confusion is undoubtedly the strongest weapon in the capitalist armoury. The fraudulent Labour Party, without a single measure on their programme that can benefit or interest the working class, lends itself to Tory and Liberal politicians as a socialist chopping block.” So said the Socialist Standard in July 1913 and to this day the smokescreen of gibberish constantly perpetrated by the capitalist parties obscures the class nature of society, and the antagonisms that therefore exist. Every proposition is debated ad nauseam except the most important one: necessity for a new society (Socialism) — now. The interest of the working class lies in the immediate establishment of Socialism, and this is the one and only object of the SPGB. We are not to be fobbed off by the “Immediate Demands” or “Something Now” Brigades. We have seen them march in confusion backwards and forwards across the social reform parade ground only to remain where they were. The “realists” have had their chance to find solutions to social problems and have failed miserably. Now is the time, not to be disillusioned, but for members of the working class to study our case and realize its validity.

Capitalism is the predominant form of society in all countries throughout the world. In this country it is estimated that 72 per cent of the wealth is owned about 10 per cent, of the population [1]  — the capitalist class. They also own the means of producing and reproducing wealth. Those who own nothing of the means of production, the working class, must sell their labour-power, skilled or unskilled, to an employer for a wage or salary. The working class forms the majority of society and is composed of all wage-earners, not just industrial workers but also those who would like to think of themselves as "middle class”. It is through the labour of the working class alone that all the wealth of society is produced and yet this is legally appropriated by the capitalists who produce nothing and are socially a useless class. As Engels so clearly put it:

   The capitalist has no further social function than that of pocketing dividends, tearing off coupons and gambling on the stock exchange.

(Socialism, Utopian & Scientific)

Apologists for capitalism often argue how necessary (and no doubt kind-hearted) the capitalist class is to society by providing, at great pains to themselves, the capital for investment in new factories, works etc., and thus providing work for the workers. If the capitalist class think of themselves as doing society a good turn it does not concern us, although we rather suspect that their motives are not sublime. What can we be sure of is that capitalism inevitably creates unemployment and that an individual capitalist will invest not to provide work for others but only for profit or good “return” on his capital.

Capital constantly seeks to expand and stretch its grasping tentacles into every conceivable avenue, and of course engulf capitals smaller than itself. The real needs of human beings are not taken into account where production of wealth is only carried on with the motive of producing more and more capital. As long as the profit motive is the driving force behind production the needs of people cannot be met. Since the way in which wealth is produced and distributed in a given society will be the basic factor in determining the character of that society, it is not surprising that the anarchy of capitalist production and distribution gives rise to myriad social problems: housing, poverty, unemployment, etc. Such problems are indivisible from capitalism and insoluble under it. Historically capitalism has been a useful form of society in that it has enabled the means of production to be developed on a vast and world-wide social scale. Commodities are exchanged on a world-wide basis; e.g. many British workers have New Zealand lamb for their Sunday lunch, those that can afford it that is. There is however no world-wide social control over production and distribution, only an anarchy of competing capitals chasing the surplus-value produced solely by the working class.

The only alternative to capitalism is the establishment of Socialism where society as a whole will own and control in common the wealth and means of transporting it. Common Ownership means that individual members of society will have free access to what they want and require without regard to any form of exchange system. As Socialism can only be brought into being by the political act of the majority of people wanting and working for it, we assume that the majority of people would want to co-operate with each other in running and maintaining a Socialist society. Democratic control means that decisions affecting society would be taken by the majority and based upon the best available information. Society will make decisions in its own best interests. This is not the case today. We do not claim that Socialism will be trouble-free but compared with the madhouse of capitalism it will be a sane society indeed. Socialism will be the beginning of civilized history before which all societies will be classified as barbaric.

Tony D'Arcy

[1] See Hansard, 5th July 73.

Ideas and Understanding (1975)

From the August 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

For some unexplained reason we are constantly being told that capitalism is so different from previous societies that it is not subject to the law of social growth which governed the development and decay of these previous societies. The point is, can capitalism make history stand still and do its bidding? Can it, in effect, ensure that it will continue to exist simply by the power of property which most men worship but very few enjoy? Presumably, if capitalism can make its own historical rules there could be no prospect of its abolition.

Looking at the evidence around us, the working class show no signs of challenging capitalism’s rule. There is plenty of social discontent, but this is largely concerned with social reforms or Trade Union issues, and cannot be regarded as revolutionary activity. What are we left with? First, a solidly entrenched social system, second, an apparently disinterested working class, and third, a relatively small revolutionary party. Little wonder we are dubbed as dreamers, Utopian preachers and sectarian cranks by our opponents. Yet we persist. An organization which takes on the task of making workers Socialists in face of tremendous difficulties is considered to be either unrealistic or motivated by spiritual rather than material influences. We are neither.

We do not accept the permanence of capitalism any more than we accept the fact that the workers’ ideas of society cannot be changed. History shows that social systems change, and that these changes are accomplished by thinking men, and that mens’ ideas change with them. This includes ideas on all subjects — religion, politics, morality, science, law and art. Ideas have changed considerably over the centuries and dramatically in the last 100 years. The spread of opinion, or social consciousness, as with man’s social life generally, develops in accordance with the development of his productive forces. Today, the artificial organs of man, his greater control over nature, play a decisive role in his social existence. These artificial organs are not individual but social in character.

If social man’s intellect, his opinions and culture, are dominated by the circumstances of his economic conditions, at what point can we expect a change in men’s ideas which will result in a political decision to establish Socialism? The body of opinion today, or the prevailing ideology, is overwhelmingly capitalist, because capitalist ideas are socially sponsored, propagated and broadcast at all levels. Socialist ideas, which arise from the same economic conditions, are ignored or misrepresented as State capitalist, or distorted in other ways. Yet the battle of ideas can be fought against such overwhelming odds. In the first instance, we are not merely dealing with men’s opinions but the social factors which give rise to those opinions. The old French materialists were nearly right when they said opinion governs the world. We know that throughout the ages men’s ideas of politics in particular have changed. For example, the political domination by the Catholic Church as in Feudal society is no longer feasible or tolerated, yet the Catholic Church was the political centre of Feudalism for over a thousand years. Further back in early society it was moral to have incestuous sexual relationships, group marriages, infanticide and cannibalism. These were the product of well defined social conditions. The absence of these today has nothing to do with moral enlightenment or higher idealistic standards, but to the changed social conditions. Capitalism produces its own sophisticated form of barbaric cruelty and inhumanity on a far greater scale than these seemingly outrageous practices of yesteryear.

Idealists, and this includes religionists, moralists, humanists, etc., constantly refer to the innate goodness of man, and what the world ought to be — the world of the true and just. This conception of the world as it ought to be bears no relation or connection with the world as it is, but also with the historical development which has occurred. The idealists’ conception of history, which claims men’s development to be purely intellectual, based on some timeless ethical cause, is the happy hunting ground for the ostensibly reasonable apologists of capitalism — reason will solve everything, they claim. Pure reason, like abstract truth, does not exist. Every thought process must be related to social man’s material needs. This is what society is all about, the organization of a system of production to meet men’s material needs. The question which obviously arises is does capitalism satisfy or can it be made to satisfy men’s needs? The answer is obviously — no. The contradictions within the system of poverty in the midst of plenty, its dependance on the market economy, its unpredictability and general anarchy, disqualify it as a social system rendering social service in the real sense of the term.

The capitalists’ monopoly of propaganda undoubtedly influences the millions of workers who give their support to it generally. But the performance never matches the promise. You cannot indefinitely persuade people that the temperature at the North Pole is 80° Fah. The greatest ally of the Socialist is the temperature of the economic conditions. We apply our materialism, our factual analysis, continually to the economic background. Socialist propaganda is not aimed at man’s ‘innate goodness’ or higher nature, but at man’s practical material needs. It will be this factor alone which seen as an alternative will create revolutionary consciousness, and the subsequent political action based on that consciousness.

Opponents of Socialism can be divided into two main groups. One, the out-and-out supporters of capitalism, and the other the false friends of Socialism; Labour, Communist, I.S. etc. — supporters of State capitalism. Of the two groups, the latter, these knights of confusion, are the most pernicious, rendering lip-service to Socialism they attack our case on the ground that workers want something now — not Socialism, which according to them the workers will never understand anyhow. Incidentally, the workers have got neither. Mr. Clive Jenkins, Mr. Jack Jones, Mr. Hugh Scanlon, Mr. Len Murray, and all the other “Lairds of Cockpen” are steeped in capitalist mythology. They really believe it can be made to work. To listen to the nauseating ignorance coming from these people on the subject of Socialism makes us wonder what has happened to elementary working class education, even at Socialist Sunday school level. Then we have the ‘instant men’, the featherbrains of IS, IMG, Trotskyists, who want to grow an oak tree in a plant pot in seven days. These groups always want something for themselves, and want it now, and to Hell with the future. These phoney militants are not equipped to carry on the class struggle for Socialism. For a start, they have no staying power, little knowledge of political economy, and no principles whatever. They can only be described as the Fifth column of the Labour Party.

Most of the people who tell the SPGB the workers cannot understand Socialism do not understand it themselves. Socialism cannot be established without working class's understanding, and this we accept. There is no alternative other than to work for that mass understanding. Workers are not fools. If a proposition is presented to them in a reasonable way they will consider it. At the moment information about Socialism is rare in most working class circles because of the present size and influence of the Socialist Party. There is a vast difference in having a splendid case to propagate and the opportunity to get yourself heard. This is the real reason why the workers do not understand Socialism. It is purely a technical problem of communication and not, as our critics would claim, a flaw in our case. The responsibility for the extension of Socialist propaganda is the workers at large. The speed in acceptance of Socialist ideas by the working class depends on that. There are no innate principles in men’s existence. Man, with all his views and feelings, is what nature and society has made him. The establishment of Socialism is a task well within the capacity of the modern working class. The alternative is to watch civilization degenerate and deteriorate under an obsolete social system.

Jim D'Arcy