Crisis in the motor industry (1981)

From the May 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Set-backs in the car industry are not new. Like other industries, it gets into difficulties each time there is a world depression. This time, however, special factors have combined with the depression to bring many well-established companies to the verge of ruin, and to throw an abnormal number of motor workers out of their jobs. First was the enormous rise in the price of petrol. This reduced overall demand for cars and called for new models more economical in petrol consumption. a change-over to which some companies, including Chryslers, failed to adjust themselves. The whole world pattern of car production and export has been reshaped by the spectacular rise of the Japanese motor industry, challenging the supremacy of the American companies.

In 1960 passenger car production in Japan was a mere 165,000, compared to 6,675,000 in America and 1.359,000 in Britain. Between 1960 and 1974, world production doubled, but output in America rose by only 10 per cent. and their share of the world total fell from 53 to 28 per cent. But in Japan output had jumped to nearly 4 million, putting their car industry in second place to America’s 7,332.000 Now. seven years later. Japan is on the way to being the world’s leading producer of passenger cars, and is already by far the biggest exporter. This happened because output in Japan has gone on growing in the depression while in the rest of the world it has fallen. In 1980 the output of the American company. General Motors, dropped by 26 per cent. and Toyota now challenges General Motors for first place in the world. (The course of events in commercial load vehicles is much the same as in passenger cars.)

The Japanese companies have won their success by invading the home markets of the rest of the world, forcing the local-based companies to compete by reducing prices and often selling at a loss. In spite of motor workers’ wages having been kept below the rise in prices (and in some cases reduced) most of the world’s motor companies are losing money. In America in 1980 the losses were: General Motors £500 million, Fords £677 million, American Motors (owned by Renault) £88 million and Chryslers £767 million — the biggest loss of any company in American history In Britain British Leyland lost £535 million, yet the big Japanese companies all made a profit, for example Toyota £568 million. The number of motor workers has gone on increasing in Japan, but in America 25 per cent have been laid off and the loss of jobs in the British industry is on the way to 100.000. In an earlier setback in 1965-7, the production of motors in Britain fell 10 per cent. Since 1977 output has dropped by 30 per cent.

As far as the world depression is concerned, with its consequent reduction of sales of motor vehicles world-wide (except in Japan), the companies can count on capitalism reversing the downward trend and expanding again some time or other. Many companies (including British Leyland) are investing in new models with that in view. But none of the governments has discovered a method of bringing about recovery and preventing further depressions in the future. Capitalism goes its own way whatever policies governments follow. This ineffectiveness of government policy was highlighted in Britain by the manifesto of 364 economists declaring that the Thatcher government policies are wrong and will not bring about "sustained economic recovery”. There is no policy that will do this, but if the 364 think there is, why have they not let us into the secret? After two centuries of capitalism and a score of depressions during which every possible variation of government policy has been and failed, all they can offer us is that "the time has come . . . to consider urgently which alternative offers the most hope". In other words, the 364, many of them responsible for advising past failed policies, cannot even agree among themselves on what to do.

In all the countries invaded by the cheap Japanese motor vehicles, the companies and the Unions have responded by urging their governments to curb imports; in the first place by agreement with Japan, and failing that, by imposing import restrictions. Officials of the Transport and General Workers’ Union told MPs at a meeting in the House of Commons: “The British car industry will be dead within five years without import controls” (The Times 4/3/81). The demand for import restrictions does not even pretend to be a policy for protecting the world's car workers against unemployment. It would merely reduce unemployment in some countries and increase it in Japan The Japanese companies estimate that a 15 per cent cut in their exports would put 70,000 Japanese workers out of their jobs (The Times 31/3/81).

Japanese motors are not the only ones being sold in the British market. The countries of origin include America, Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, Spain, Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and a Rumanian car is to be on sale here in the autumn. There is, of course, a reverse movement. British Leyland (along with car firms in Europe and America) is hoping to get into the Japanese market, and is planning to export its cars to Europe. Jointly with Peugeot they are to assemble and market a Peugeot car in Australia.

In several countries the hard-pressed motor companies have succeeded in getting government subsidies or loans. Contrary to declared government policy, British Leyland recently received £990 million and Chrysler of America have been saved, at least temporarily, from bankruptcy by a US government-backed loan of £360 million last year and £180 million this year. President Reagan’s statement: “This does not imply that this government approves of baling out private companies in difficulties”, sounds like Sir Keith Joseph telling MPs how it comes about that the Thatcher government has reluctantly adopted the same policy.

Having exploited to the full the direct export of cars to foreign markets, Japanese companies are now planning to set up plants inside these markets. They are negotiating to manufacture in Britain, thereby gaining unrestricted access to the whole EEC market, providing they use materials that are 80 per cent EEC origin.

One of these companies is Nissan, makers of the Datsun. They plan to invest £275 million, to produce 200,000 cars a year, subject to finding a site of the right size and location, and reaching agreement with the components companies and the trade unions. Nissan already has. or is planning, car plants in America, Mexico, Spain. Italy, Australia and Taiwan, and plans to manufacture motor components in Ireland. Toyota, Japan's largest motor company, has so far not favoured setting up plants abroad, but it is reported (Sunday Times 22/3/81) that they are considering joint production with Fords in America.

British Leyland has reached agreement to build a Honda-designed car in Britain and discussions are reported to have reached agreement on joint production of the Mini-Metro in Japan. Japanese cars dominate world exports because they are competitive in price and quality. The Chairman and Managing Director of Fords in Britain said:— "The Japanese, more than anyone, have the ability to produce high quality vehicles on a massive scale at low cost." (Daily Mail 4/4/81). (He also said that Nissan’s plan to set up a plant in Britain “could be catastrophic for this country’s motor industry”.)

Whatever may have been true in the past, it is not because wages in Japan are lower. Car workers’ wages in Japan are now higher than the British. The Japanese companies score because their productivity (output per worker) is higher. Their plants are all new, or relatively new, and all use the latest and most efficient machinery and techniques. They have developed more efficient methods of management and work organisation, avoiding costly production hold-ups through delays in the chain of processes, and using fewer staff in supervision and control. Having succeeded in getting continuous strike-free production in motor plants in Japan, the managements are looking for the same in Britain. According to an article in the Financial Times (25.2.81) the Nissan Company in its search for the right site will not look at plants or districts with a record of frequent strikes.

A problem British motor companies have had to handle is the multiplicity of unions. Lord Scanlon said in 1972, when he was President of the Engineering Union, that it takes members of 38 separate unions to make a motor car (Sunday Times 9/4/72).

The Nissan Company is insisting as one of the conditions for setting up its plant in Britain that there must be agreement for only one union to represent all the workers. Whether and how this obstacle can be overcome with the unions remains to be seen. The company is also insisting on the abolition of union demarcation practices. The Japanese style of manning is already being copied to a limited extent by Fords at Dagenham, with a proposal to abolish the whole grade of General Foreman.

As regards the future of American and European motor companies, an article in the Financial Times (23/2/81) takes the line that their only way to survive is to equal the high productivity and quality control of the Japanese companies, by learning to apply Japanese techniques in their factories. Those who fail to do so will go under, as happened in the American television industry, when it was faced with an onslaught from Japanese exporters similar to that in the motor industry.

British Leyland hopes to reduce its losses in 1981-2, but expects to take from five to ten years to achieve “business results of a standard which will attract external funds on normal commercial terms". (Financial Times 20/3/81). Some observers think that it will never pay its way and is doomed to founder.

In the all-pervading gloom that overhangs the British motor industry, there is one small corner in which the sun still shines. The Financial Times (20/3/81) reported: “Sir Michael Edwards. B.L. Chairman, has almost completed arrangements to sign his first contract with the company. This is expected to raise his salary to about £100,000 a year".

Are you being driven mad? (1981)

From the May 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

One in twelve males and one in eight females in Britain will spend some part of their lives in a psychiatric hospital. Most women between thirty and sixty are regularly prescribed tranquillisers by their family doctor. Since its introduction in the 1930s, ECT (electric shock treatment or electroconvulsive therapy) has been used on thousands of people. There is a widespread use of neurosurgery and other therapy methods, and admissions to psychiatric hospitals are increasing as daily life in our society becomes more tense and frenzied.

“Madness” is very often behaviour which conflicts with conventional ideas of normality or proper thinking. We all think as an involuntary activity, in ways which are specifically human and which differentiate us from our older animal relations. To think is to reflect m the brain the material reality of the environment: il is a relationship between matter and matter. The way in which we relate to our material surroundings determines how our thoughts are to be classified by other people. In primitive society people believed that they were in touch with another world when dreaming. In the Middle Ages people who rejected Christian morality were tortured as lunatics who were possessed by the devil. "Sanity” can be interpreted as a readiness to accept common experiences in conformity with common ideas; "insanity" can be dissent from the social conditioning process.

Mediaeval society had certain ideas about how women should behave. Those women who did not fit in with those ideas were often persecuted as witches. Sprenger and Kramer's hook on how to spot a witch, The Malleus Maleficarum, written m I486, was the downfall of many a woman who suffered from epilepsy. the symptoms of which were listed in the book as the classical characteristics of a witch. In 1515 five hundred unfortunate women were killed for witchcraft in Geneva in the space of three months. In the eighteenth century the "mad" were confined to institutions where they were chained up. beaten, humiliated and put on public display. The diaries of many a nineteenth century nobleman contain reports of Sunday afternoon outings to the lunatic asylum to be entertained by the misfortunes of the deranged.

Most British mental hospitals were built to fit m with nineteenth century ideas about mental health: these days the chains have gone, but the humiliation of the confined has not. Many inmates in modern asylums were first put there for moral or criminal transgressions An unmarried servant girl at the turn of the century who bore a child would face such moral outrage that she would become depressed and, instead of receiving sympathy from those around her, would be locked up in an asylum. Soldiers who could not take the conditions of war, homosexuals who cracked up trying to repress their feelings for the sake of acceptability, poor children who saw nothing wrong with stealing from the rich, men who broke under the monotony or responsibility of their jobs, wives who were left on their own by husbands who grew tired of them, girls who could not conform to the advertisers' modes of anatomical excellence —all of these may be found m any psychiatric hospital. They are not sick just sick of what society is.

Conventional mental disorders are experienced by almost everyone at some time. Depression is a perfectly natural response to a lifestyle in which we are taught to have expectations, but are denied the opportunity to fulfil them. If we are depressed because we are not allowed to do what is technically feasible but socially forbidden, we are simply reacting to a seemingly insoluble social dilemma. Socially produced ills are what cause such depression: people formulate their own reasons to be miserable. Another common mental illness is paranoia: the feeling that there is some force beyond you which is trying to dominate or oppress you. Most of us have felt vulnerable, threatened, unwanted or inadequate at some time. But are we ill because we have these feelings? In a society based on the hypocrisy, artificiality and authoritarianism of the sort that is an integral part of the buying and selling system, are those who are in the inferior social class wrong to have a feeling that we are being oppressed?

It would be very nice for our bosses if every worker who complained that he is oppressed could be classified as a nutcase, but responding to the oppression which surrounds us is not paranoia. In a society which locks people up for taking what they have produced (stealing from work), for refusing lo kill (in many countries military service is still compulsory) or for attacking the government (as is the fate of dissidents in the Russian Empire and South Africa), it is the ignorance of oppression which betrays the greater mental contusion. Then there is schizophrenia which most psychiatrists define as a state of mental fragmentation: it is a condition in which part of the mind accepts reality as it is, while the other part entertains delusions. These so-called delusions are sometimes treated by neurosurgery, the aim of which is to modify the patient's thinking so that the brain responds to all events in a standard way. A case of schizophrenia is cited by Morton Schatzman in his book, Radical Therapist:

Recently, a young man in the NATO military forces, with a position in a chain of command to push a nuclear-missile "button”, decided to refuse to obey orders related to his job. He told his superiors that they should not command any man to do such a job. He was diagnosed as a schizophrenic and was hospitalised.

Mental problems are caused by the relationship between the human mind which is rational — and a mystifying social environment — which is irrational. If we misunderstand the world around us we are entitled to feel depressed and threatened and deluded. When one considers just how crazy the present system of organising human affairs is, mental non-conformity is to be strongly advised. What is often called “madness" is a rational response to such problems as war, poverty and insecurity. In The Inner World of Mental Illness, so-called psychiatric disorders are characterised as

. . . opposed to a normality which is intimately related to the major value orientations of western society. It may be asserted therefore that abnormality (psychosis) involves negative relationship to prevailing social normative prescriptions . . . In the jargon of the moment we may call this "alienation”.

The mental health pressure group. PROMPT, has stated that one of its roles  is

. . . to demonstrate that what currently passes as "mental health" is often the measure of the person’s exploitability by those who own (or otherwise control) the means of production and distribution of that which is necessary to sustain life; and to show that a person called “mentally ill” is often someone strongly reacting against their exploitation.

In state capitalist Russia dissidents who try to criticise the bogus socialism are often locked away from the public on the grounds that they are mad. Once locked away, many of them are driven to actual mental derangement by excessive isolation and the use of drugs. Once diagnosed as being insane the dissenter loses whatever credibility he may have once had. Bukovsky and Gluzman, in their Manual on Psychiatry for Dissidents, points out that

Dissidents, as a rule, have enough legal grounding so as not to make mistakes during their investigation and trial, but when confronted by a qualified psychiatrist with a directive from above to have them declared non-accountable, they have found themselves absolutely powerless.

The other capitalist states use similar methods. British television, for instance, is quite expert at branding social dissenters in such a way as to lead acquiescent workers to reject what they are saying very often before they have even said it. Most socialists will have been called a crank or a lunatic at some time for having spoken about a world without money. Of course, men like the Duke of Edinburgh who dress up in military uniforms and talk about how safe nuclear weapons are, are considered to be perfectly sane and worthy of public respect.

The battle for socialism is the battle against the conventional ideas of our age. Socialists ask questions. We ask why it is that there are people who produce all of the wealth of society and yet live in poverty and people who are idle who live in luxury. Why do grown men and women cry when they run out of money in the middle of the week and they have a family to feed. Why are children sent to school to be conditioned? Why are otherwise rational men and women occasionally seen to address the sky and ask for help? Why must we live in constant fear of being killed by bombs that none of us want? Why are our fellow human beings dying of starvation by the minute while food rots? Why slums? Why palaces? Why unemployment? Either it is all normal and those of us who reject it are 'insane,' or else we are sane and it is mad.

Socialists aim to bring the ideas held by the majority of people in line with their experiences. This is the role of any scientist who is serious about his work. But instead of endeavouring to examine social reality, government scientists tend be employed to perpetuate the current form of reality. This is particularly true of modern psychiatry which is more concerned with the treatment of symptoms than with examining their cause. Indeed, if psychiatrists were to study causation they would be put to the impossible task of either giving up their occupations and trying to change society or continue their jobs in the knowledge that what they are doing is futile and often counter-productive.

If a man lives his life in chains and responds by kicking out at those around him, the psychiatrist’s solution of binding his legs or dulling his brain so that he is too weak to kick is less reasonable than the socialist solution of destroying the chains. However, under capitalism — the social system which prevails throughout the world today — the freedom of the parasites at the top can only he secured by the social constriction of the vast majority. So, reasonable a proposition as it may he to smash the chains which presently confine us, they who pay the psychiatrists are paying to ensure that symptoms are treated while the problem remains.

But surely if we, the majority class in society, are the victims of this system, we should be destroying the chains ourselves? Indeed we should but it is an unfortunate fact that a majority of that majority class have become accustomed to the confinement of life under capitalism and nothing would disturb them more than the prospect of social freedom. How is it that capitalism has spared its victims from such dangerous thoughts of non-conformity? We can begin by rejecting the most popular explanation: that human beings come into the world with ideas already implanted in their brains. This is the argument of the apologist for capitalist normality, who is anxious to inform us that we have "forgotten about human nature”. (As if the moment he reminds us we are going to stop being socialists!)

In fact, ideas are not inherent, but are acquired by convention. Our language is a learned code. Our concepts of right and wrong are products of historical change. Learning is the essence of our conformity. We learn to accept things as they are in three ways: firstly, by the overt agencies of thought control, such as schools, universities, newspapers, television, radio, parental guidance, and religion, secondly, by experience of the system which one comes to accept as natural phenomenon; thirdly, at an early age our feelings of freedom and human creativity are repressed to fit in with conventional social relationships. Rejection of these conditioning. processes is often labelled as insanity.

For instance, if a child takes no notice of the social norms imposed by its parents and teachers it will be persuaded, bribed, locked up, beaten — but if these things fail and the child does not step into line it may be labelled as disturbed, insane or subnormal. This label will have profound effects upon the future economic and personal prospects of the non-conformist. People who reject the 'naturalness' of their social environment are easily dismissed as fantasists or utopians. It in within the terms of sanity to complain that the rent is too high, but it is a case for psychiatric concern if one demands decent living conditions for everyone. Many innovative scientists, who have challenged conventional hypotheses, have been dismissed as lunatics. The non-repressed individual is virtually unknown in our society, but if you try to live in an unrepressed manner you are likely to end up either being isolated in squalor or confined to an institution. How many of us could honestly say that we would live as we are living now if we were really free?

In The Manufacture of Madness Thomas Szasz says that psychiatry

. . . is harmful to the so-called mental patient. This is not because it is liable to abuse, but rather because harming people categorised as insane is its essential function. Institutional psychiatry is, as it were, designed to protect and uplift the group (the state) by persecuting and degrading the individual as insane or ill.

He goes on to point out that there is no basic difference between modern ideas of madness and those of mediaeval society. Despite the so-called liberalism of the modem state

. . . there are still the disadvantaged, the disaffected, and the people who thought and criticised too much. The non-con formist, the objector, all who deny or refuse to affirm society's dominant values, are still the enemies of society.

This view is confirmed by an article in The New Scientist (21/6/79) in which it was reported that in South Africa, Germany and Japan

. . . doctors unabashedly carry out psychosurgery to make “patients" more obedient and supposedly as a “cure" for homosexuality.

It should be pointed out that many patients have died as result of needless psychosurgery. It should also be pointed out that many of those being presently held in such top security mental hospitals as Rampton are undergoing corrective treatment involving drugs and ECT, as well as brain surgery, simply because they have refused to obey the social norms. The terrible thing is that the more such people claim that they are being abused, the more the psychiatrists who are supposed to be treating them accuse them of being mentally ill. It is not only in Russia that offenders against the status quo are sentenced to insanity.

Dissent is safest when it is engaged in en masse. The purpose of the Socialist Party is to be an instrument for mass opposition to the capitalist system as a way of living. If you stand out against it alone your friends, family and workmates will try to dismiss your non-conformity as eccentricity or utopianism. The more of us there are, the harder it becomes for the Normals to ignore us with a nervous laugh. We, the overwhelming majority of the human race, have no weapon which is more effective than our capacity for critical thought. Ideas coupled with political solidarity will penetrate every single aspect of the social edifice which seems so unbreakable to the lone dissenter. If we are bitter and vociferous and impatient it is only because the system which aims to control us has driven us to it. Now let us be mad and sane enough to learn to control the system.

Steve Coleman

Running Commentary: Census count (1981)

The Running Commentary column from the May 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Census count

In early April, workers in Britain were treated to some special attention. We were counted. “Today well all be counted because we all count", said the official adverts in the papers. It was a bit like election time or war time, when we are required to lay down our votes or our lives. We had to fill in the sordid details about our living conditions and the company exploiting us. We could then read the free leaflet explaining the usefulness of the census: "Housing: to work out present and future needs we must know how people are housed now, and the sizes and ages of their families." But don't they realise that in this capitalist society needs are only ever met if people can afford to pay the price, and ensure the profit for the shareholder or the government? That is why most cities have had a “housing problem" for generations, and why there are thousands of homeless people in Britain today, while there is a “slump" in the building industry.

Wealth before health

Another example of how the profit system fails to satisfy human needs — private wealth must come before public health. The latest report of the Alkali and Clean Air Inspectorate says that concern for the environment is increasingly having to compete with worries about inflation, employment, difficult trading conditions and profit. And for the first time since the thalidomide case twenty years ago, the regulations governing drug-testing in Britain are to be eased. The Sunday Times reported that the Association of Community Health Councils is worried that “the interests of industry, rather than any great concern for patient benefit, seem to have been the motive force behind the changes” (5/4/81). The same edition contains advertisements for a Mayfair house costing £625,000, a Knightsbridge “family home" for £550,000, a Rolls-Royce car for £55,000 . . . so it seems that not everyone is tightening their belt.

Imagine!

In his hit record Imagine, the late John Lennon sang of a society rid of the religious myths which offer the false hope of paradise beyond the grave: 

Imagine there's no heaven, it's easy if you try,

No hell below us, above us only sky

Imagine all the people, living for today;

Imagine there's no countries, it isn't hard to do,

Nothing to kill or die for; and no religion too . . .

So it is rather odd that a memorial service should have been organised for him in Liverpool cathedral. The crowning irony, though, was that Imagine was played as part of the service!

As for the shooting of Ronald Reagan, we have no sympathy for one of the figureheads of the most violent and barbaric society the world has ever known: world capitalism. America is one of hundreds of states competing to see who can exploit their populations most efficiently, and organising wars all in the interests of the privileged minorities (including Reagan himself) who profit from expanding markets. American expenditure on weapons of violent destruction is rapidly approaching S 400 billion a year, that is more than twenty million pounds in hour Massive military aid is given to murderous regimes such as that in El Salvador. Each year millions die of starvation, while millionaires like Reagan are prepared to use any kind of violence to defend their privilege and profits. He represents a system in which those with power are free to kill, free to exploit.

So we will not shed any tears over Reagan’s wounds, unlike his fellow capitalist rulers. President Brezhnev sent a telegram from Russia: "1 wish you, Mr. President, a full and early recovery”. President Zhao Ziyang of China was "shocked to learn of your being wounded . . . I wish you a speedy recovery", while the Pope and Prince Philip both organised prayers for Reagan (The Times 1/4/81) 

Apart from Lennon and Reagan there are thousands of others being murdered all the time, for it is the poverty, the coercion and the frustration of the present system which provokes theft, despair and violence. Let Reagan think of that the next time he orders the murder of a few thousand people from Latin America or Vietnam or anywhere else in the name of "freedom”.

Russian gold

Those who still hang on to the myth that there is something about the Russian Empire which is different, and better for the workers than other nations in this capitalist world, will have had their illusions shattered by Gold and Diamonds — the Kremlin Connection (Panorama, BBC 1, April 6). Russia and South Africa hold between them a virtual monopoly of the world’s gold, platinum and diamonds.

This programme exposed the secret collaboration between presidents of Russian marketing organisations and directors of companies like De Beers and the Anglo-American Corporation of South Africa to fix the world market and control the prices of these commodities.

It was shown how gold sales to the West are set up by WoZchod (Western) Bank of Russia in Zurich. The film focussed on the hypocrisy of this partnership in the face of the proclaimed military hostility between “Communist” Russia and capitalist, race-segregated South Africa. But it was also evident that the Russian ruling class, involved in high finance, is just as removed from the workers of the world as are the ruling class in other countries.

Capitalist Russia

There are many other examples to demonstrate how countries like Russia and China are part of one world-wide capitalist economy, in which commodities are produced by wage-workers and sold on the market at a profit.

At the end of March, the Midland Bank opened a branch in Peking. A project currently being undertaken by Buckinghamshire College of Higher Education and the Humboldt University in East Berlin to study differences between the systems of East and West is in danger of being terminated by the East German authorities, because of the similarity it shows between the two (Guardian 24/3/81).

An international conference in Hangchow recently announced that foreign investors in China need not worry, for they will be guaranteed a profit. China has now officially adopted a policy of what they call “commodity economy", with fierce market competition through the price mechanism (Guardian 27/3/81). The Sunday Telegraph Magazine on October 15, 1978 showed about ten limousines owned by Brezhnev, including one of the Russian hand-made Zil cars.

A booklet published in 1972 by the Novosti Press Agency Publishing House, Moscow, on “Labour Remuneration" boasts that in Russia "The level of profitability rose from 13 per cent in 1965 (in industry as a whole) to 22.5 per cent in 1969” and even makes the outlandish claim that "Profit and the level of profitability are the most important indicators of the operation of a socialist enterprise”.

But this does not mean that socialism has "failed to work"; in fact it has never been tried. There cannot be socialism without socialists; a majority of people who are ready to co-operate in a democratic society based on a real community of interests, people who want and understand socialism.

Clifford Slapper

SPGB Meetings (1981)

Party News from the May 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Storm over Shipping (1944)

From the April 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

The most critical period of World War 2 is now but a painful memory to the members of the British and American capitalist class. The dark days of Dunkirk, of Singapore, of Pearl Harbour, are to them fast receding into history. They were indeed anxious, perilous days for them—days during which their whole economy was ruthlessly transformed and moulded, their wealth and material resources made subordinate to the needs of a struggle, the stake of which they realised, almost too late, was their very existence as major capitalist powers.

The fortunes of battle have turned. Optimism over the prospects of winning out in the struggle has given way to confidence. No longer immersed in the arduous struggle for self-preservation, they have begun to devote more of their attention to matters much more pleasing to their hearts— and, incidentally, to their pockets.

As a contrast to the airy nature of their promises of Atlantic Charters and Four Year Plans, their statements on this subject have not been marked by any lack of frankness. Recrimination and accusation have been equally indulged in by both sides. In industry after industry, particularly during this last year, has this conflict of interest made itself manifest. Some months ago controversy arose between Britain and the U.S.A. over post-war air transport. Hardly had this died down when mutual denunciation ensued over natural and the question of natural and synthetic rubber. Even more recently many hard words have been said by both parties over petroleum supplies during and after the war. On the subject of this increasing friction between the interests of British and American capitalism, the United States News (October 22nd, 1943) says the following : —

“Nationalistic suspicions are putting a new strain upon the relations between the U.S. and its British and Russian allies. They break out at every turn—over oil, bases, rubber, lend-lease supplies, shipping.”

In no industry has there been more mutual suspicion and ill-will aroused than that of shipping.

To British capitalism, a large and efficient merchant marine is an absolute and vital necessity. During the nineteenth century, when she was the “workshop of the world,” she possessed a virtual monopoly of the world’s shipping tonnage. Since 1900 that supremacy has been gradually whittled down until the proportion now owned by British shipowners amounts to but 26 per cent. of the world total.

The history of American shipping has followed a much different course. Although the end of the First Great War saw the U.S. emerge as the possessor of a large merchant fleet, the passing of high tariff laws, almost always fatal to the development of a large home shipping industry, caused the tonnage to decline rapidly. Playing in this war the same role she played in the last—that of the arsenal of her Allies—she has again been compelled to develop a large merchant marine. There is evidence, however, to show that after this war is over, she intends to maintain her maritime supremacy. It is evident that there are other motives at work besides philanthropic ones in this concern of hers for a strong mercantile marine. She sees the prospect that the conclusion of this war will witness the emergence of the U.S.A. as the dominant capitalist power of the world. From the speeches of her statesmen and businessmen, she appears to make her economic influence felt throughout the whole five continents. Already she has in some cases backed up those speeches with action—e.g., the building of air and sea bases. To the American capitalist class it is obvious that their plans to “muscle in” in the economic sphere will be far from watertight without the possession of a large merchant fleet to carry their commodities at reasonable rates. It would be economic suicide for them to produce goods to flood the markets of the world, only to find themselves held to ransom, by exorbitant freight charges in foreign vessels. They have made their intentions in the matter quite clear, witness Time (October 18th, 1943) : —

“A hoarse warning bellow tore through the fog of post-war shipping plans last week, set Britons tooting nervously. Back in Washington from a three-week visit to London, U.S. Maritime Commission’s Rear-Admiral Howard L. Vickery announced that he had told the British the U.S. ‘had become a maritime nation and intended to remain one; that we would do it by cooperation if they wanted to, but if they didn’t want to, we were going to do it anyway’. . . .”

And further :—

“The U.S. merchant fleet will be responsible almost completely for the distribution of the world’s goods immediately after, the war.” (Frank Taylor, President, American Merchant Marine Institute, Sunday Pictorial, November 21st, 1943.)

The significance of these remarks has not been lost upon British shipowners, who are themselves naturally very much concerned with their own post-war prospects and problems. The Stock Exchange Gazette (November 27th, 1943, page 1291) says, for instance: —

“Meanwhile shipowners have been able, through the General Council of British Shipping, to get down to some very important national problems, and, in this respect, will be more fitted to come to grips with actualities when the end of the war quickens the pace.”

The General Council had itself something to say in reply to Vickery’s challenging statements (Time, October 18th, 1943) : —

“Shippers have sufficient faith in American realism to believe that it will be recognised that, however important the possession of an adequate merchant marine may be to the U.S., to Britain it is a vital necessity.”

Neither British nor American representatives appear very happy about the position, however. Oscar R. Hobson, City Editor of the News Chronicle, says in this connection (October 19th, 1943) :—.

“The policy of the U.S. is to remain one of the dominant maritime powers of the world. Admiral Land, discussing the relations between the U.S. and the other maritime powers hoped that a policy of collaboration would be followed, but admitted that it would not be easy to achieve. He suggested that all the nations concerned would want a larger share of the shipping trade than the others would be willing to concede to them. Everybody, he said, wants to cut the pie, but no one wants to take a small piece. His suggestion was one which will commend itself to all right-thinking people: ‘I recommend that we bake a bigger pie.’”

In one respect, however, British and American capitalists and their economic experts are at one—neither party can put forward any solution to the problem convincing enough to bear even superficial scrutiny. The only solution which Admiral Land can advocate is “that we bake a bigger pie,” which is an argument he himself has already demolished in his own previous remarks. Whatever the size of the pie, everybody, as he himself says, wants to cut it, and no one wants a small piece.

The Stock Exchange Gazette (November 27th, 1943) is even more pessimistic : —

“It is easy, with sufficient State aid (and sufficiently complacent taxpayers) to build a mercantile marine up to any size. It is another thing to be able to use that mercantile marine, not necessarily profitably but at all, except by sailing the ships round the world in ballast. Otherwise they must be tied up at the buoys, as the unfortunate American ships were in the Hudson River and elsewhere after the last war because they were the wrong ships for such scanty post-war employment as was available.”

There it is in black and white. After the last war. the spectacle was seen of dozens—nay, hundreds—of ships lying idle in rivers, docks and other waterways, lying idle not only in the Hudson river, but in the Clyde, Mersey and Tyne; lying idle not only in Britain and the U.S.A., but in. every country possessing a merchant marine worthy of the name; hundreds of vessels rusting and rotting for lack of profitable cargoes, whilst millions of the world’s inhabitants went hungry, cold and comfortless, and this at a time when—crowning, tragic irony of all—foodstuffs were being burnt, raw materials destroyed, machines deliberately scrapped or rendered idle, and millions of human beings the whole world over, who could have set to and produced the means of human satisfaction were wasting their miserable lives away in poverty and idleness.

The stresses and strains manifest now in shipping are but the reflection of forces at work throughout the whole of industry. The struggles for economic advantage now taking place are paralleled in oil, rubber, textiles, steel, air transport; these struggles, heated and violent as they are now whilst the war is still being waged, will be nothing to the conflicts set in motion after the war has been won.

Whatever group of capitalists wins out in this economic struggle, the conditions the workers experienced before the war they will suffer again in a more aggravated form after it. Socialism still remains the only solution to their problems. Their task is still before them : to organise consciously and politically for the abolition of capitalism and all that it entails, and in its place to establish Socialism, a system in which all the world’s resources will be utilised to the full, in which production will be made subordinate, not to the will for profit of a few, but to the needs of all its inhabitants.

Stan Hampson

Compromise leads to Catastrophe (1944)

From the April 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nothing that has occurred in working-class history has weakened our view that the most important task to-day is that of making Socialists. We cannot have Socialism until a majority of the workers are Socialists, also as Socialist knowledge animates large numbers of the workers, so will recede the possibility of dictatorship and war. The alternative task to propagating Socialism is that of advocating reformist policies and getting support from workers on the basis of those reforms. Having obtained support, the reformist parties have the task of administering capitalism, a task which immediately brings them into conflict with working-class interests, however sincere their efforts. The Labour Governments of 1924 and 1929 discovered this, but they “heeded not the warning,” and in 1940 some of their leaders joined the Government at the invitation of the ruling class. Inevitably disputes have arisen over reforms, and during many recent debates Labour M.P.s have criticised the seemingly complacent or compromising attitude of these leaders. Mr. Morrison, for example, was described as a “backstair, Tammany-Hall politician” during the debate on Workmen’s Compensation.

Mr. Woodburn, Labour M.P., is seldom amongst the critics. His articles appear in “Forward” defending the Labour Party chiefly on the grounds that they are engaging in the practical politics of to-day and they are obtaining some improvements for workers; and if some of the concessions are smaller than Mr. Woodburn would like them to be, he still supports them because of “quarter of a loaf being better than none.” So is the proverbial crumb. A dispute in “Forward” finished with Mr. Woodburn chiding those whom he calls “the romantic school of Socialists,” who “people the world with villains called capitalists and heroic martyrs called workers.” Actually, and we are indebted to Mr. Woodburn for reviving this profound truth, “there are good and bad in all classes” (“Forward,” October 9, 1943). We are not following him into the ethics of the social classes: we are faced with a serious problem. How can the working-class establish Socialism ? Let us first glance at the economic division in society.

The people in the world are divided into two classes : the capitalist class, who own the means of producing wealth, and who live on the surplus value derived from this ownership; and the working class, who are compelled, in order to live, to sell their energies to the owners for wages. Between these classes there is a class struggle which manifests itself both on the industrial and political fields. Politically it is a struggle over the ownership of the means of wealth production. This is a revolutionary struggle. When Woodburn commends the work of Bevin, Morrison and “others under Clem Attlee” for “creating new methods of running social life” as though these new methods were a development towards Socialism, and infers (without definitely saying so) that the alternative to these activities is catastrophic change, he is merely supporting popular misconceptions of Socialism and revolution. He states : “Socialism is not a catastrophic change from capitalism, but a development out of and on the basis of capitalism. Capitalism is indeed the mother of Socialism. . . . Socialism is approaching us every day in economic development.” (“Forward,” October 9, 1943). In the same issue he commends working with those who are Liberals and Tories—we are not to spurn them because of their label as “our aim is to make Socialists not enemies of our opponents.”

The Labour leaders are not in the Cabinet to establish Socialism; they were allowed in to help in the work of prosecuting the war. Their help in the task of conscripting workers is invaluable to the capitalists; Conservative ministers would have been unable to put into operation so easily such measures as the Essential Work Order and other restrictive orders. These are new methods of coercing the worker, methods of tieing him to his job—in short, they are new methods of running capitalism. They have brought a degree of security to the worker—convict security. Mr. Woodburn, of course, knows that. Where are the Socialist measures or achievements of the Labour leaders? There have been various reforms, approved by a Cabinet predominantly Conservative, such as the Catering Bill and the Pensions Bill and other measures which will alleviate some distress. They are reforms considered to be necessary for the smooth running of capitalism. They have effected no general improvement in working-class life; the capitalism that we knew in 1939, with its slums, poverty, miserable pensions and doles, still persists.

Merely to state that Socialism is approaching, without any clue as to the nature of the change to Socialism, except that it is not catastrophic, is valueless; it conveys nothing to the reader. Two of the necessary conditions for Socialism are a socially-operated, highly-developed industrial system and a working-class capable of controlling and running the system. In this sense, in every country in the world, including Nazi Germany, we are approaching Socialism, but the change to Socialism requires something more than that. It requires a working-class that understands and desires Socialism, and organises politically for the conquest of political power in order to establish Socialism. Having gained political power, they will effect a change in the basis of society from private to common ownership of the means of producing wealth. This is not catastrophic, but it is not simply a progressive economic development from capitalism; it is a revolutionary change in the basis of society.

Past experience has shown that the danger of catastrophe arises from collaborating with the representatives of the ruling class. Bewildered by the broken promises of the Labour parties and their changes in policy, workers have been swept into support of reactionary movements. In 1931, after two and a half years of Labour Government, millions of workers registered their opposition to what they falsely imagined to be Socialism, and voted into power a Government that openly advocated severe wage-cuts and economies. In Germany the Social Democrats had held power or participated in coalition governments for 15 years. In 1933 the Nazis and their allies were voted into power; the reformist efforts of the Social Democrats had the effect of making Nazis. The considered opinion of a small group of German workers, who in 1933 secretly published a book, “Neu Beginnen,” is worth recording: —

“The disappointment of the workers in their own organisations is the fundamental cause of their indifference and inactivity in face of the Fascist advance and even of the partial sympathy which they show towards it.” (Page 36, “Socialism’s New Start,” N.C.L.C. Translation.)

Compromise and reforms had brought, not Socialism, but “National Socialism.” Working with the German counterparts to our Liberals and Tories had not made them Socialists, it had not even brought lasting support from their own members. Bitter experience had shown these workers the truth, that “repeated and disgraceful failures of these parties (the Socialist Labour organisations),” had led to indifference and even opposition to Socialist ideas. These failures were inevitable—capitalism cannot be run in the interest of the workers—but the opposition to Socialist ideas is not inevitable.

The contrasts of wealth and poverty impress workers and make them ready to discuss and accept the Socialist solution. We claim that in order to make them Socialists it is necessary to show most clearly the difference between reforms of capitalism and revolution. History has shown that our claim is true. Workers ignore the class struggle at their peril; no compromise should be their guide in the difficult situations that war and peace have yet to bring.

L. J.

Malthus to Hitler—or Marx (1944)

From the April 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Socialist View of Population Theories

The Government is very worried and has appointed a Commission of sixteen members on Population. “Their main task will be to examine the present population trends in Britain, investigate their causes and consider their probable consequences, and recommend measures to influence the future trend of population.” (News Chronicle, March 3rd.)

The newspapers are solemnly featuring splash stories of the number of children various members of the Commission have, like the News Chronicle, which gives the list of members complete with size of family.

Thus the Earl of Cranbrook qualifies with five children, although why the mother of the Heanor quads has not been asked to serve, we can’t think !

After all, she’s only just started, and got four already; while the father of the quads is surely more qualified than Lady Dollan, who is quite mature and only has one child.

There is actually a “Biological” Sub-committee presided over by a professor—to investigate the reason for the poor response to the Government’s population appeals.

The Evening Standard (March 1st), in an editorial, “From Malthus to Hitler,” declares that “population statistics are notoriously the most uncertain and dangerous field of economic study.”

After summarily dismissing the Reverend Malthus, who, in his notorious “Principles of Population,” reached the conclusion that the only solution was continence by the working class, the editor of the Evening Standard goes on to consider the findings of Mr. Berle, of the U.S. State Department.

“He foresees the future of the nations in terms of rising and falling populations.”

Germany will decline from 69 millions to 64. Britain from 46 millions to 42. U.S.A., with 135,000,000, will slowly increase. Brazil has doubled her population, and “has every chance to become a great nation.” “Russia’s population is likely to rise to 222,000,000.”

“The advantage from these calculations,” says our Editor, “lies heavily on the side of the United Nations.” We have an idea that is the main reason they were made.

But even the Evening Standard smells a rat. “We cannot be content, . . . the economists should be set to work until they have produced a set and recognisable theory.”

There is no need to set “economists” (?) to work. One great economist has already said all that need be said on the subject.

The first point is that there is no such thing as a general abstract law of population—”every special historic mode of production has its own special laws of population, historically valid within its limits alone.” (“Capital,” K. Marx. Kerr Edition, Vol. I, p. 693.)

What we are concerned with therefore is the law of population of the capitalist system. This is a rather complicated business, as everyone who has read Marx’s exposition in “Capital” knows. It depends very largely on the organic composition of capital—or, in other words, on the proportion of machinery to human labour. Thus, in highly developed industries, the. proportion of human labour is low, the amount of machinery high.

With every technical improvement this proportion increases, so that—

“The labouring population therefore produces, along with the accumulation of capital produced by it, the means by which itself is made relatively superfluous, is turned into a relative surplus population; and it does this to an always increasing extent. This is a law of population peculiar to the capitalist mode of production.” (“Capital,” Vol. 1. Kerr Edition, p. 692.)

Marx exploded the fallacy that population rises and falls with wages, showing by the example of England from 1849 to 1859 how a rise in agricultural wages, accompanied by a fall in the price of corn (consequent upon the construction of railroads, war, and the exodus of agricultural population to the new factories), placed the farmers in a difficult position.

“What did the farmers do now ? Did they wait until, in consequence of this brilliant remuneration, the agricultural labourers had so increased and multiplied that their wages must fall again, as prescribed by the dogmatic economic brain ? They introduced more machinery, and in a moment the labourers were redundant again in a proportion satisfactory even to the farmers. There was now ‘more capital’ laid out in agriculture than before, and in a more productive form. With this the demand for labour fell, not only relatively, but absolutely.” (“Capital,” p. 700, Vol. I.)

The same applied on a national scale to the United States of America.

The important point to remember, therefore, is that capitalists can always compensate shortage of labour by increasing machinery.

If Mr. Berle had anything, China would be the ruling nation of the earth, with India a close second.

What is important is the degree of development of the constant capital (machinery) to variable (human labour), which is highest in the United States, Britain and Germany.

“Capital works on both sides at the same time. If its accumulation, on the one hand, increases the demand for labour, it increases on the other the supply of labourers by the setting free of them, whilst at the same time the pressure of the unemployed compels those that are employed to furnish more labour, and therefore makes the supply of labour, to a certain extent, independent of the supply of labourers.” (“Capital,” Vol. I., p. 702.)

“But … as soon as (in the colonies, e.g.), adverse circumstances prevent the creation of an industrial reserve army, and with it the absolute dependence of the working class on the capitalist class, capital, along with its common place Sancho Panza, rebels against the ‘sacred’ law of supply and demand, and tries to check its inconvenient action by forcible means and State interference.” (“Capital,” Vol. I., p. 703.)

Horatio

“The Transition From War to Peace” (1944)

Book Review from the April 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Transition From War to Peace by A. G Pigou. (Oxford University Press, 6d.)

We have received the above for review. Professor Pigou deals almost solely with the post-war problem of the difficulty in finding employment for large masses of workers, who will find themselves out of a job when peace arrives. In various parts of the pamphlet he records accurately the facts and figures of the labour market after the last war, and on page 6 says:—

“The transition from war to peace, throwing as it must do, vast numbers of men and women out of direct and indirect forms of war work, is bound to create, as it did create in 1919, an assembly of persons, less vast indeed, but nevertheless large, for the moment deprived of employment and anxiously seeking after it in one or another civilian occupation.”

With regard to the immediate post-war situation, he remarks that “a vast process of re-stocking will be called for.” During this time—six months or so after the war, he estimates—it is probable that the problems will arise in the transfer of workers from one job to another and not in the actual finding of work.

He makes an important point with regard to this “period of transfer and adjustment” on page 9 when he says:-—

“With the large number of persons that must be then suddenly thrown on the labour market, there is a risk that wage earners, at all events in some occupations, will find themselves at a disadvantage in bargaining and so may be forced to accept large reductions in. rates of pay.”

To obviate this after the last war the Government passed Temporary Wage Regulation Acts in 1918 which were extended to 1920. He mentions that it would be sound policy for the Government to do this again after the present war—presumably for the same purpose of preventing unrest amongst the workers who come back from the battle fronts eagerly searching for the “Four Freedoms” or signs of the already moribund “Atlantic Charter.”

Manifesting in no uncertain fashion the character of post-war “reconstruction/’ the pamphlet continues (page 11) :

“The transition is bound to be a long drawn out affair, of which the first year or so of peace constitutes only the initial phase . . . Thus we should expect a second phase following the first—a phase of relatively contracted demand, in which a number of would-be workers may well find themselves without a job—a delayed post-war depression linked with and partly caused by the high activity of immediate post-war days.”

Here again he draws upon the history of the period following 1918 depicting clearly the catastrophic nature of the slump of 1920 and the years following, when prices came tumbling down, and wages following after.

Pigou (who, by the way, is a Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge) states, however, that “it is not inevitable that at the end of the present war these events should repeat themselves.” He says : “The moral of this history is fairly plain. After the war of 1914-18 money got out of hand.” (Page 17.) This is his explanation of the economic phenomena of slump and boom—his solution being that if money is kept in hand by the retention of certain war-time controls these things will not occur.

But the fact that slumps and booms can be controlled or abolished by controlling the movements of money is given the lie by Professor Pigou himself on page 15, where he points out that this boom broke in 1920, not as “a consequence of deflation by the banks, in the sense of a contraction of the quantity of money in existence.”

“It was a consequence of the decisions by business men not to use their money.” (Pigou’s emphasis.)

Why didn’t the capitalists wish to use their money and keep production going? Or, to put the question another way, why from 1918-20 did the capitalists want to use their money to the greatest possible extent, but not afterwards? Obviously we must seek the solution not in the movements of money but in the factors that cause capitalists at one period to wish to use their money in production, and at some other period not to do so. In other words, we must have recourse to the motive of capitalists in engaging in production. Knowing that, under capitalism, goods are produced with the intention of their being sold at a profit, it is easily seen that when the prospects of profit are great the capitalist will jump in on production and when the prospects of profit are very doubtful he will jump out again.

Applying this to the situation in 1918 it is clear that the capitalists fell over themselves to get in first during the “re-stocking” period when demand exceeded supply, prices were high and profits good. As soon as the markets by about 1920 had readjusted themselves (by means of the “healthy competition of private enterprise”) and the normal chaos of capitalist production had its effect, numerous industries were faced with declining demand for their products. Prices slumped, and the prospects of profit disappeared. Then the capitalists were forced to think more than twice about putting their money into further production.

This pamphlet, like others in the series of “Oxford Pamphlets on Home Affairs,” offers a good deal of sound factual information, but fails to offer a correct explanation or adequate solution of the problem with which it deals.

So long as capitalism exists with its private ownership of the means of production and its scramble for markets, so long will exist the economic phenomena of crises and booms, together with all the other problems which face the working-class, such as poverty, mass unemployment and wars.

No! The solution does not lie in the control of movements of money, but in the abolition of a system of society based on private ownership with its consequent need of money and the establishment of a system of society based on the common ownership of the means of wealth production where the need for money will disappear.

N. S.

World Trade Plans (1944)

From the April 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

Under this heading the Manchester Guardian for February 8th, 1944, does some rather effective debunking of the scheme sponsored by Sir Edgar Jones, known as the World Trade Alliance.

We suppose it is a good sign when an influential organ like the “M.G.” saves us Socialists the trouble of proving that capitalist production for an unknown arbitrary market cannot be “planned.”

Briefly, the idea of the “World Trade Alliance,” which has received the blessing of the Council of the Trades Union Congress, and the sympathy of the Federation of British Industries, is “that the producers of the world’s chief export commodities should form production committees to fix prices and agree on the quantities which each national group should export.”

“A Central Clearing Bureau is expected to see to it that each country balances its exports and imports, and a World Development Commission would provide additional outlets for ‘surplus’ production by placing it cheaply or gratis in needy parts of the world.”

After pointing out that something like this has actually been tried in the “World Wheat Agreement,” the Guardian goes on to say : —

“What is proposed is that the market mechanism should be entirely replaced by quantitative regulation . . . the principle itself is based on a fallacy. . . Sir Edgar Jones speaks highly of the pre-war cartels for aluminium, rubber, tin and other raw materials. . . . Now, some of these schemes had all the restrictive vices of the textbook monopoly. . . . Few trades hold a monopoly for long and few agreements between producers survive large changes in relative costs. This scheme could work only in a world where costs of production did not change. . . . The danger lies in holding out the promise of stability to an economy like ours, which, more than almost any other in the world, must change or decay. . . . But in a moving world we can no more stop demand from changing than we can stop a tree from growing, or. at any rate, only by the same means.”

What the Guardian does NOT say is that this not merely applies to the World Trade Alliance, but also to the Atlantic Charter and the “brave new post-war world.”

Horatio.

The Beveridge Plan—for Saving Capitalism (1944)

From the April 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Why the Churchill Government did not immediately seize upon the Beveridge Report as a gift from the gods and as a splendid idea for saving and insuring the capitalist system and giving some reality to stand for national unity will probably puzzle future historians of our time.” (From “Forward,” 25th December, 1943.)

“It can be said, however, that Beveridge has performed a competent piece of work for the capitalists, and that he has shown them how the complex problems of distributing the very barest necessities to the more unfortunate members of the working-class can be organised in accordance with the best modern methods of business efficiency.“ (From “Beveridge Reorganises Poverty “ S.P.G.B., 3d. Post free 4d.)

SPGB Outdoor Meetings (1944)

Party News from the April 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

A "Done & Dusted" catch up special

The things you end up getting around to doing when your eldest son insists on watching Charles' coronation on the 'Big TV'. The last "Done & Dusted" post dates from November of last year, so here  follows a list of completed Socialist Standards that have been put on the blog in the intervening period.

Hopefully, I'll be a bit more up to speed in the future.

November 2022's "Done & Dusted"

October 1929

November 1929

December 1929

January 1930

February 1930

November 1959

November 2009

October 2022

December 2022's "Done & Dusted"

November 2022

February 2023's "Done & Dusted"

February 1931

February 1945

February 1973

January 2023

March 2023's "Done & Dusted"

February 1905

March 1905

October 1943

March 2001

March 2004

February 2023

March 2023

April 2023's "Done & Dusted"

April 1905

April 1908

April 1911

April 1913

April 1930

June 1930

April 1931

November 1943

December 1943

March 1944

April 1953

April 1956

April 1965

May 1973

April 1995

April 2002

April 2003

Our Conference. (1905)

From the May 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

We should be less than human if we did not congratulate ourselves upon the success which has attended the holding of our First Annual Conference, and the vigour and promise displayed thereat.

When, in June of last year, those of us who felt compelled to secede from the S.D.F., on account of its inconsistent and compromising policy, decided, after very careful consideration, to found a new party, whose aim it should be to raise the Standard of Revolutionary Socialism out of the capitalist mire in which it was being dragged, we fully recognised the seriousness of the step we were taking and the difficulties we should have to encounter.

But the result has exceeded our most sanguine expectations. With one or two exceptions, where personal ambition has been stronger than the desire to act loyally to the Party, the original members have worked strenuously and harmoniously to maintain our “clear and unmistakable principles, interpreted in plain and unequivocal tactics,” as the Chairman of the Conference so ably expressed it.

Not the least notable of the achievements of our Party since its formation less than twelve months ago, has been the inauguration of the Socialist Standard, which occupies an unique position amongst journals claiming to speak on behalf of Socialism or Labour, in that it is neither the private property of individuals nor owned by any limited liability company. It is owned and controlled by our Party,—hence its fearless advocacy of our principles and its unflinching criticism of all who stand in the path of Socialist progress.

Ours has been termed a position of “splendid isolation.” It is, and we look hopefully to the future to justify us, recalling the words of our comrade Wilhelm Liebknecht: “This separation of our party from all other parties—this essential difference—is our pride and our strength.”

The First Annual Conference of The Socialist Party of Great Britain was opened on Thursday, April 20th, at 7.45 p.m., at the Communist Club, London. Twenty-one delegates attended, representing thirteen branches.

E. J. B. Allen was unanimously elected Chairman, R. H. Kent and L. Boyne, Stewards, and W. St. John Dillon, W. Gifford and J. H. Crump, Standing Orders Committee.

The Executive report, printed copies of which had been distributed among the delegates, was adopted after a few points had been raised. H. C. Phillips and H. W. Belsey questioned the right of the E.C. to include in their report suggestions for the alteration of rules which had not been submitted to the branches. Phillips asked whether the unemployed members of the Party were included in the number reported as lapsed. The General Secretary stated that all were counted as lapsed for whom cards for the current year had not been applied, and if Branch Secretaries did not renew the membership cards of their unemployed members, the Central Office could only assume that these members had lapsed. Belsey criticised the action of the E.C. in publishing a certain article by a non-member of the Party in the Official Organ, and Dumenil raised the question as to the propriety of selling at Party propaganda meetings pamphlets with S.D.F. advertisements on them. Pearson enquired why the E.C. had not decided to hold a meeting on the 1st of May, and it was pointed out that the Party was not yet strong enough numerically to hold a successful demonstration.

Belsey and Dumenil moved :

“That any article appearing in the Socialist Standard which has been contributed by a non-member of the Party be prefaced by a statement to the effect that the writer is a non-member and that the Party does not necessarily endorse the opinions therein expressed.”

This was defeated by 14 to 3.

C. Lehane and A. J. M. Gray were declared elected General Secretary and Treasurer respectively, and H. Neumann and D. R. Newlands were elected auditors. The Conference then adjourned.

The Conference resumed at 10.30 a.m. on Friday. The chairman, E. J. B. Allen, stated that many questions of importance would be discussed, and he felt assured that they would be dealt with in a manner becoming the delegates to the First Annual Conference of the Party. That Conference represented practically the beginning of the modern revolutionary movement in England. Capitalism had developed to an extent previously unknown. All the inventions that Science had been able to bring forth, every fresh extension of the domain of man over nature, had under the prevailing conditions only increased the army of the property-less workers and thinned the ranks of the exploiting class. Side by side with this development there was a ripening of the workers to full class-consciousness, and the establishment of the British wing of the International Socialist Party was an event fraught with a great and glorious significance. The Socialist Party of Great Britain stood on the revolutionary principle, and was the only party of the workers in this country. It rested on clear and unmistakable principles interpreted in plain and unequivocal tactics.

The Stewards reported the votes for the Executive Committee as follows: Elected—J. Kent, 98 ; A. Anderson, 94 ; J. Fitzgerald, 88 ; E. J. B. Allen, 86; H. Neumann, 82 ; F. C. Watts, 81; T. A. Jackson, 72 ; T. W. Allen, 57 ; J. Crump, 57 ; A. Jones, 52; F. S. Leigh, 47 ; H. C. Phillips, 42. Not elected —R. H. Kent, 40; A. Barker, 37 ; Kate Hawkins, 36; A. W. Pearson, 32 ; R. Kenny, 31; L. Boyne, 28; W. Gifford, 26 ; H. T. Davey, 21; J. J. Humphrey, 20 ; A. V. Sparks, 10.

The amendments to rules were next considered, including the recommendations of the E.C. regarding some technical alterations they thought necessary. Phillips and Belsey moved:

“Whereas the alterations to the rules as proposed by the E.C. have not appeared on the final Agenda, and taking into consideration the exceptional circumstances, resolved that the discussion of such alterations shall not be taken as a precedent at any future Conference.”

Carried nem. con. The proposals of the E.C. were then adopted, with the exception that the E.C’s. definition of the method of taking a referendum of the Party was referred to the Branches, and that the establishment of relations with the Socialist Parties of other countries shall continue as one of the functions of the E.C.

The Party's attitude on Trade Unions.

E. J. B. Allen moved :

“That whereas in the struggle for existence it is essential that the working-class be organised on the economic field, but whereas Trade Union organisations unless based on Socialist principles are a snare to the workers : resolved, that The Socialist Party of Great Britain does not recommend its members to belong to any Trade Union unless such Union is organised on definite Socialist lines with the Social Revolution as its object, and this Conference hereby pledges the Party on attaining a 5,000 membership to organise Socialist Trade Unions where necessary.”

The Mover said that the political aspect of the Trade Union question was dealt with in the Declaration of Principles of the Party, but these organisations must be dealt with quite apart from the political position. The existing Unions were, without doubt, a stumbling block to the progress of Socialism, because they did not unite the workers—on the contrary, in their capacity as job trusts they divided them,—and because they were used as tools in the hands of the master-class. While fully agreeing that industrial unionism should be an essential feature of working-class organisation, he held that the Unions as they knew them to-day were useless and a source of danger to the revolutionary movement.

The motion not being seconded fell through.

Phillips and Belsey moved :

“That any resolution adopted by the Conference be sent round the Branches as only the expression of the opinion of the Conference.”

Carried nem. con.

Belsey and Dillon moved:

“Members of the S.P.G.B. shall not voluntarily participate in the political action (i.e. action in relation to or dealing with social and economic problems) of any other party or organisation to which, by the unavoidable compulsion of obtaining or retaining employment, or other necessity arising out of capitalist conditions, they may belong: the payment of a compulsory inclusive contribution to any such organisation, part of which is devoted to political purposes, shall not be regarded as participation in such political action, but no member shall seek or accept office in any party or organisation which takes political action.”

Belsey said that attempts had been made to draw a distinction between economic and political action, but in his opinion there was no economic action that was not also political. All working-class action taken outside The Socialist Party of Great Britain was absolutely void, and while members may belong to Trade Unions when compelled by the force of circumstances, he thought it would be well if they were prohibited from taking any office in Trade Unions under any condition. This, he held, was the only logical position.

F. C. Watts moved the following amendment:

“Whereas the Trade Unions, while being essentially economic organisations, are nevertheless in many instances taking political action either to safeguard their economic existence or for other purposes and,

Whereas any basis of working-class political action other than that laid down in the Declaration of Principles of The Socialist Party of Great Britain must lead the workers into the bog of confusion and disappointment; be it therefore

Resolved that this Conference of The Socialist Party of Great Britain recommends that all members of the Party, within Trade Unions, be instructed to actively oppose all action of the Unions that is not based on the principles held by this Party.”

Watts said that up to the present nothing had been done in the Unions to reveal to their members the true basis of working-class action. The members of the party were few, but they must actively resist all unsound political action on the part of the Unions. It was impossible to form Socialist Unions at present, but the better way was to give the Party members in the Unions a definite lead, and in doing this the Conference would be doing all that was expected from it. G. R. Harris seconded,

H. Neumann said that it was impossible to separate economic from political action, for economic action was a thing of the past and the Unions were to-day taking political action. The Trades Councils and the local Labour Representation Committees were trying to get members into the local bodies and into Parliament, and the economic action of the Trade Unions was subordinate to the political. The Party could not say to its members “do not belong to the Trade Unions,” because a man to get a living must very often belong to a Union ; but there was a vast difference between compulsion for the sake of a livelihood and voluntarily going and helping the Unions in their unsound political action. All the political actions of the Trade Unions resulted only in the support of the capitalist-class. Our Declaration of Principles was not sufficient to cover the activity of Party members in Trade Unions, and when they were called upon to take part in the work of the Unions they should be compelled to refuse, whether the office was paid or not. The Party should prevent its members from going astray by laying it down definitely that they shall not take office nor do anything to help the Unions in their unsound position.

Watts denied that the Unions were primarily political organisations, or that the economic action was subordinate to the political. Economic action took place in the workshop, not at the ballot box.

J. Fitzgerald said that if it were true that there was no difference between political and economic action, then it was equally true that there was no difference between the animal and the vegetable kingdoms, no difference between the solid and the liquid. A thing should always be judged by its essential features, and this was the safe and scientific method, If there was no difference between political and economic action, why had it been discussed? An economic organisation fights on the industrial field alone. A political organisation concerns itself with the political or governmental machinery of the country. These were the essential features of economic and political aotion, and these two fields were separate and distinct notwithstanding the fact that there existed a borderland where they intermingled. There was not a Trade Union in the country that paid a tenth or a twentieth of the money towards political purposes that it did for economic action. The miners, for instance, will spend more in one strike than they will spend for generations in political action—sending representatives to Parliament. The very conditions of capitalism forced the workers to form Unions. The duty of the members of the Party was to fight against the unsound position of the Unions to-day. Craft divisions would have to be broken down, skilled and unskilled, brain and manual workers, have to join hands. The tendency of economic evolution should be pointed out, and the changes rendered necessary in the economic organisation. Trade organisation must exist to bring about Socialism, and industrial organisation would be necessary under Socialism itself. Let the members of the Party put their shoulders into the Trade Unions and carry on their work of educating straight and uncompromisingly. In this way better work could be done than by remaining outside.

The amendment was carried by 11 to 3.

Upon being put as a substantive motion, Phillips moved the following amendment:—

“Delete all after ‘Resolved’ and substitute ‘that this Conference recommends that no member of the Party shall hold any official position whatsoever in the Trade Union movement, and moreover recommends that all members of the Party within Trade Unions be instructed to actively oppose all action of Trade Unions that is not based on the principles held by this Party.’”

This was defeated by 9 to 2.

A. W. Pearson moved a further amendment:—

“That this Conference reaffirms the previous declaration of the Party.”

The Mover said that the position of the Party was very clear on the matter. If the Party were to oppose Trade Unions, it should also oppose the Co-operative Societies when they take political action. The Friendly Societies may also go in for political action, and then to be consistent the Party should not allow its members to join them.

F. Craske seconded the amendment, which was defeated by 8 to 6.

The resolution moved by Watts and Harris was then carried by 11 to 3.

Should the Party take part in municipal and parliamentary elections ? If so, upon what basis ?

Gifford was of the opinion that the elections were the best time for propaganda, because then the people took a greater interest in public questions than they did at any other time. He suggested that an electoral programme be drawn up by the E.C., explaining the position of the Party and criticising the reforms proposed by other parties.

Belsey and Dillon moved :—

“That the Party do not take part in any Parliamentary or municipal elections during the next twelve months.”

Allen thought that very little could be done either in Parliament or on local bodies until the Party had a majority of delegates on them. Meanwhile, however, the representatives of the Party on those bodies should do their best in the interests of the working-class.

Neumann said that it was entirely impracticable to mention any time within which the Party should not take political action. If in any constituency there were sufficient workers to demand a representative of class-conscious principles, the workers themselves would come forward and ask for such a representative. With regard to what the members of the Party should do when elected on governing bodies, this was shown in the Declaration of Principles, and they should support only the measures in accordance therewith. The principal thing was to get behind them a class-conscious proletariat, not Radical votes, and then their representative would be backed up in his action by those who elected him. They should be revolutionists all the time.

A. W. Pearson considered that it would take a long time before a Socialist Party man would be returned to Parliament or a local body, but when he got there he would know what to do. There were certain measures which a revolutionist could support, and he instanced the case of the Municipality of Brest which voted money to the strikers. Even when they did not put up a candidate themselves they could issue literature calling upon the workers not to vote.

Belsey explained that his resolution was not intended to prevent the issuing of literature, but aimed only at deferring direct political action by the Party for a period of one year.

Fitzgerald said that Parliament was the power that politically dominated the rest of society, and so long as it was a question of Parliamentary action there was no need for any programme at all. But it was different with regard to municipal action. The Party should contest municipal elections because it would be good propaganda, because during the elections the people took a greater interest in politics, and because the Party was out for the capture of the whole of the political machinery. The local bodies were very limited in their powers, and the Socialist position should be laid down clearly pointing out that even with a majority in power much could not be done. The capture of a municipality would, however, be a means of educating the other municipalities. Money should be voted for all possible purposes in the interests of the working-class, and the wages of municipal employes raised as high as possible, but no doubt the ruling authorities would come down on the municipality and some of its members would be imprisoned.

The resolution was defeated by 14 to 2.

The International Congress and representation thereat.

Jackson said that if they examined the British delegation to the Amsterdam Congress they would discover that it was the largest and was composed largely of non-Socialists. The I.L.P. voted for the class war resolution at the Amsterdam Congress, and afterwards scoffed at it as an obsolete Marxian dogma in their official organ.

Pearson was of opinion that the International Socialist Bureau was composed of persons opposed to the principles of this Party. The rule at the Congress was that each country must verify its own credentials, and if the delegates of the Party had refused to go into the British section they would not have been admitted to the Congress at all. They were in a minority and would have to present their credentials at Stuttgart in 1907 to the British Section.

Fitzgerald said the Conference was an International assembly composed of men of different nations, customs, and languages, and the difficulties surrounding such an assembly were very large indeed. Before it would be possible to break down the national system of representation a better education of the working-class of the world would be necessary. Different systems of representation could be adopted based upon (1) the number of members of Parliament, (2) the parties in a country, (3) the membership of the parties. The Bureau had decided that each nationality should have two votes, and when there was a dispute between two sections of the nationality they were to split the votes between them. When this was done another section in France claimed a third vote. Who is to decide and where is the question to be raised as to the rights of the parties to representation? The matter should be raised on the floor of the Congress itself. They should keep steadily fighting at the Congress for the principle that only Socialist parties should be admitted to the Congresses. When this had been done for two or three Congresses many of the other parties would adopt that view.

F. Sator thought that a manifesto ought to be issued to the Socialist Parties of the world explaining the Party’s position.

C. Lehane, General Secretary, submitted to the Conference the following questions : —

1. Shall the Party become affiliated to the International Socialist Bureau and pay subscriptions thereto?
2. Shall the Party demand its own delegate on the International Socialist Bureau?
3. Shall the Party demand independent representation at the International Socialist Congress and verify the credentials of its own delegates ?

On the motion of Phillips and Belsey it was resolved that the questions be sent round the Branches for a poll of the members. Phillips and Jones moved :

“That the E.G. be instructed to draw up a series of resolutions embodying the following points:

1.—That only Socialist organisations recognising the class war in theory and practice should be represented at the International Socialist Congress.

2.—That disputes between the various parties in each country as to the genuineness of their respective organisations be settled by the Congress itself.”

After a few remarks from the Chairman the Conference closed at 8 p.m. with the singing of the “International” and cheers for the Social Revolution.