Letters: Religion and Socialism (1946)

Letters to the Editors from the March 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

Religion and Socialism 

Radlett, Herts.

To the Editor of the Socialist Standard.

Dear Editor,

The article in your December number, under the title “Religion, Ethics, and Socialism,’' seems to me to involve some contradictions. You appear to throw doubt on the attitude of Secularists or Rationalists, who have claimed that the freeing of the human mind from the thraldom of religious superstition is a part of man’s necessary development. Yet, at the same time, you criticise the Church for trying to combine religion with ethics.

I hold that to destroy the religious basis of belief (still unconsciously held by many of those who have no part in the work of orthodox churches) is necessary. As it stands, religion is a valuable instrument of those whose motto is “divide and rule." For examples, see Ireland, India, and Palestine. If some people tend to concentrate on that aspect of the freeing of mankind, why criticise them? There is room in this troubled world for all who assist, in any way, towards the light.

Yours fraternally,

John Rowland.

Reply.

Surely no contradiction is involved in exposing the fallacies of both clergy and secularists, notwithstanding they are in mutual opposition. In the article our correspondent refers to, we show that in general the ethics practised in a period correspond to the social conditions prevalent; while the Church clajins them as part of the gospel and uses them to bolster up its superstitious beliefs, the secularists, on the other hand, accept the ethics, but deny the beliefs

They not only accept the ethics, they accept also the conditions that determine them. The class ownership of the means of life and the resulting poverty and enslavement of the working class.

If our correspondent reads the article more carefully he will find it difficult to substantiate his statement that we appear to throw doubt on the necessity to free the human mind from the thraldom of religion. On the contrary, we combat religion whenever it cuts across our path. The article he complains of is proof of this, and our criticism of the secularists is that they claim that Socialism can make no headway with the workers until religion has been eradicated from their minds. We deny this claim completely. The bulk of the workers are quite capable of understanding Socialism when it is clearly explained to them. Being indifferent to religion, it follows that they are not influenced by it when considering economic questions. If they have a basis of religious belief “unconsciously" held, why should they be jerked out of it only to be dragged into the futile and endless controversy on the question: God or no God?

Our correspondent's example of ruling-class policy "divide and rule’’ is typical of the secularist attitude. One section of the ruling class dominating less powerful sections of the same class is, to them, an outrage. But if the workers of those countries understood Socialism they could not be dragged into a conflict over the interests of their respective masters.

Our correspondent may chose to concentrate on freeing mankind from religion, as others concentrate on intemperance, gambling, or even Fascism, but this “troubled world” will remain troubled and confused until the workers understand Socialism. The need for this understanding becomes daily more urgent. The terrific struggle for markets that is on the way, and the threat of atomic warfare stresses the urgency.

Because it is urgent, because it is the only way, those who already ”see the light” should ignore the carrots dangled under their noses, or the red herrings drawn across their path, and get on with the Job of making Socialists.

F. Foan

"Wellwisher."

We are grateful for some useful suggestions on the leaflet, but your suggested improvements of the wording of the Declaration of Principles would seriously distort the meaning.

Ed. Comm.

"Nationalisation or Socialism?" (1946)

Party News the March 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

This pamphlet is doubly important now that the programme of the Labour Government has been announced. Is nationalisation a Socialist measure? Is it in the interest of the workers? If not, who will benefit by it? These questions are answered, and the Socialist alternative to nationalisation explained.

Order from Smith's Bookstalls, 68 pages, price 6d., or 7d. post free, from the Socialist Party of Gt. Britain, 2, Rugby Street, London, W.C.l.

SPGB Meetings (1946)

Party News the March 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

Life & Times: Road rage (2025)

The Life and Times column from the March 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

In this column not long ago I wrote about the ever-increasing number of vehicles on the road and how that was causing ever-increasing difficulty in finding places to park them. I pointed out that this was a function of the capitalist system’s relentless quest for ‘growth’ – growth of all goods and services and at all levels. I also pointed out that people having more or even better things doesn’t in itself lead to satisfaction or happiness and doesn’t have the power to tame or overcome all the negative factors that may arise from the instability and unpredictability of the system we live under (job reorganisation, unemployment, recession, poverty, war, etc., etc). All ‘growth’ does is to satisfy the system’s built-in quest for profit that never stops regardless of social need or long-term consequences.

Angry and not so angry

What has all this got to do with ‘road rage’? Well, journalist Sophie Gallagher recently wrote an article in the i newspaper entitled ‘I was a victim of road rage – it is everywhere and getting worse’. She explained how a driver wanting to overtake her ‘exploded with rage’ when he couldn’t and then tailed her for several minutes, managing to box her in and then getting out of his car and approaching her threateningly before she was able to pull away. This brought a considerable response from readers agreeing with her and recounting their own experiences of other angry road users. Her article also happened to coincide with an incident I was involved in myself when sitting in my parked car in a local shopping centre behind a large van. The van suddenly started to back up and it worried me that the driver might not have seen the car behind him and would back into me. I hooted in warning – just in case. The driver then stopped his van, got out and walked towards me. When he got to my car, though he did not threaten me, the look on his face told me he was angry, and there was a hint of intimidation in his voice as he told me that, yes, he’d seen me and that his van had ‘loads of cameras’. As he walked way, got back into his van and drove off, I thought I should have replied that I’d hooted ‘just to be on the safe side’. Hindsight is a fine thing.

But, on reflecting afterwards, I also thought how rarely this kind of thing actually happens – and what that says about ‘human nature’ considering how stressful driving is these days and how often awkward situations arise involving more than one vehicle. The fact is that on the road most people most of the time are extremely patient and even go out of their way to be considerate, civil and helpful to others – whether drivers or pedestrians. And that is the general expectation, so that, when something untoward does happen (ie, when another driver behaves in an unkind, inconsiderate, or angry way), we’re taken by surprise, and that may loom inappropriately large in our overall mental picture of what driving a car is like.

News, bad and good

This would go some way towards explaining the journalist’s generalising conclusion that, because she has experienced anger or threatening behaviour a couple of times when driving, ‘it is everywhere and getting worse’, and for her then casting around for ‘evidence’ of this from newspaper reports, insurance companies and various academic ‘experts’. Not surprising either that her article also brought considerable feedback from readers, announcing that they’d had similar bad experiences on the road and thereby ‘confirming’ the journalist’s conclusions. Yet, turning this on its head, is it not also worth asking the question how effective her article would have been if she had stated the opposite reality, ie, that very few people indeed experience road rage from other drivers and that ‘road kindness’ rather than ‘road rage’ was motorists’ predominant experience? The fact is that, for the media, news overwhelmingly means ‘bad news’.

One of the academics consulted by Sophie Gallagher is quoted as saying that ‘driving is dangerous and anxiety-provoking’ – something most people would agree with. That being the case, is not the most noteworthy thing that relatively rarely do drivers manifest anger, or even irritation, towards others road users, even when they find themselves in untoward situations or where someone else’s manoeuvre or decision clearly leaves something to be desired. On the whole, we live and let live – and usually help and cooperate if we can – just as human beings do in most daily interactions, even when these are manifestly stressful.

Everyday socialism?

And in fact, regardless of the ‘bad news’ that the news media tend to focus on, people do also like ‘good’ news, as shown by the countless examples posted every day on social media which show people coming together to help members of their community and generally to assist others in difficult circumstances. So, when socialists put forward the idea of a whole society organised this way (ie, on the basis of voluntary cooperation and from each according to ability to each according to need), it can be hard for us to understand that people should scoff, as they sometimes do, and say things such as that it is against ‘human nature’. As the sometimes mundane but countless day-to-day examples, on and off the road, of what has been labelled ‘everyday communism’ (perhaps we should call it ‘everyday socialism’) show, such a society could work – but only when a majority of workers across the world have developed the consciousness and understanding to bring it into being and to organise production and distribution of everything that people need according to socialist principles.

Howard Moss

Pathfinders: Panic attacks (2025)

The Pathfinders Column from the March 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The last ripples seem to have faded away from what in January was widely viewed as an extinction-level asteroid impact on the US AI industry. Frantic stock-market gamblers fled in response to what one prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalist described as AI’s Sputnik moment.

Chinese AI firm DeepSeek certainly threw a big rock in the investor pond by approximating US-backed generative-AI capability at a tenth of the usual cost and, what’s more, using old chips and comparatively little training data to do it. Chipmaker Nvidia, formerly rated as the world’s most valuable company, suddenly didn’t look quite so mission-critical, neither did its bleeding-edge and extortionately priced chips, and neither did the AI companies relying on them.

But a few days later the story had sunk like the proverbial stone, as it became clear that the world hadn’t ended. Was the DeepSeek system even as good as early news reports made it out to be? Never mind that it refused to answer questions about Tiananmen Square or make assessments of Xi Jinping’s qualities as leader, a rather churlish objection given that no Chinese AI was ever going to do that. According to counter-misinformation website NewsGuard, DeepSeek was the second-worst performer in a test of 11 chatbots, with a false-claim rate of 30 percent and an unsatisfactory-answer rate of 53 percent (Reuters, 29 January).

Even so, the panic was almost palpable. Tech pundits had pretty much written off Chinese AI after OpenAI’s ChatGPT launched in November 2022. Even as late as 2024, most thought the Chinese were, if not decades, then probably years behind in AI, partly thanks to a rigidly enforced US government export ban on new chips to China. But in December, when DeepSeek released their V3 Gen-AI version, it became obvious that Chinese firms were perhaps only weeks behind. Then on 20 January, not accidentally the same day Trump took office, DeepSeek dropped their free R1 chatbot, a new generation ‘reasoning’ module that self-checks for accuracy. In just seven days this became the most downloaded free mobile app in the US, surpassing ChatGPT and sending Nvidia stocks into freefall.

But the AI dinosaurs survived the experience. Elon Musk, taking time out from his frenzied rampage through the US government civil service to ‘delete entire agencies’, still had enough confidence in, or fear of, OpenAI in February to offer to buy it out for nearly $100bn (that’s billion). You don’t front that kind of dosh for an obsolete company. Unfazed, OpenAI boss Sam Altman tartly responded by offering to buy Twitter off Musk for a tenth of the price.

One other group of people who must have been panicking at the DeepSeek R1 release were the Taiwanese, at least those of them not keen on being invaded by the totalitarian regime currently brow-beating them from across the Straits. As the near-monopoly of global chip production in Taipei is the only thing keeping US interests locked in, it is also the only thing keeping China from invading.

Before DeepSeek, serious questions were already being asked about AI, not least the eye-watering expense, and the environmental cost in terms of increasing carbon emissions. A 2024-5 FT TechTonic podcast series explored the possibility that the AI fizz was about to fizzle out because the sector was overhyped and overpriced and there were no obvious game-changing real-world applications for it beyond mundane and low-paid customer service roles, with the result that Silicon Valley venture capitalists were becoming increasingly skittish at the prospect of yet another AI ‘winter’.

Deepseek has impacted a landscape that was already convulsing for other reasons. Trump’s new (dis)order is ripping up the ‘Green new scam’, in turn provoking a tidal wave of carbon-pledge-breaking by governments and fossil-fuel companies who always knew their climate targets were unachievable and are now keen to downgrade or dump them entirely, and get back to the real business of making money. The Net-Zero Banking Alliance has collapsed after exits by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and four other major US banks. One of the world’s largest climate investor initiatives, Net Zero Asset Managers, has abandoned their net-zero investment plans. And the big AI firms are also ditching their net-zero targets as they find themselves locked in a death-race to develop the app to kill all killer apps, Artificial General Intelligence (tinyurl.com/3z5fbuf7).

Whether AGI is even possible is highly debatable, given there’s no consensus on what intelligence actually is. But AI firms can’t worry about that. What they worry about is being left behind, especially by the Chinese, and hang the carbon consequences. In the words of Hany Farid, digital forensics expert at UC, Berkeley: ‘Somebody asked me the other day if I’m scared of AI, and I said no, but I am scared of capitalism… I think capitalism is going to do what capitalism does, which is burn the place to the ground in order to win’ (FT TechTonic: The Trouble with Deepfakes).

With the speed of development even scaring AI ‘godfathers’ like Geoffrey Hinton, many believe a Douglas Adams’ style thinking machine cannot be far away, with unknowable consequences for humanity’s future. A chorus of demands has arisen for AI regulation, but last month’s summit on AI in Paris ended with US vice-president Vance rejecting ‘excessive regulation’, and even the UK refusing to sign the regulatory declaration.

In the unlikely event AGI ever does become a real thing, one wonders what conclusion it would draw from a global system that threatens to destroy its host planet for the gratification of a tiny minority of super-rich individuals. What course of action might it suggest to reverse this unsustainable, obscene and suicidal trajectory? If it did conclude that humans would be better off abolishing the capitalist system of production and stewarding the Earth’s resources in cooperative common ownership, we can be pretty sure its proprietors would have a panic attack and pull the plug. Unluckily for them, they can’t pull the plug on the working class.

Paddy Shannon

Letter: The polarisation of politics (2025)

Letter to the Editors from the March 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The polarisation of politics

The dialectic taking place among political opponents at the present time is that there is a polarisation and a narrowing of political thought taking place in the UK. Put simply, we are seeing a decrease in compromise and increased partisanship. Will this lead to a more tribalised political system as some political commentators have suggested?

In the UK since Brexit there has no doubt taken place a fragmentation of politics and right wing populist views taking charge of the narrative.

Mr Farage has been the main proponent of a populist free market economy encouraging the idea that we should engage in a society of competitive individuals vying for a higher proportion of the goods available in the land. Some kind of anarchic free for all society that ignores the welfare of the people and encourages fierce competition with no moral arbiters.

With the rise of marginal parties that, in my view only offer a very short lifespan, it is a grim foreboding for the future. Socialism seems to have taken a back seat at the present time. With the arrival of revisionist Keir Starmer, the Labour party lacks the bravery to attack free enterprise head on. Public ownership is still very fragmented and piecemeal.

Farage and his cohorts continue to feed the electorate with misinformation, racial prejudice and bigotry. They continue to foster the political agenda with an attack on the use of rules in a free market economy as it, in their opinion limits among other things the freedom of speech. Ignoring the facts that rules act as a protective cocoon for the collective and limit greedy individuals from appropriating all that is available.

There is also a view from liberal commentators that there is an oligarchy taking shape. And this oligarchy with all its wealth, power and influence will eventually threaten democracy.

Is this however just another example of pop up populist fear mongering? I think so. In the UK Nigel Farage, the so called ‘Man of the People,’ the messiah in waiting is without doubt a dangerous opponent of socialism. Although a racist and fear monger, he is no political slouch. An educated raconteur with plenty of political muscle. He is very persuasive in that ‘boyish’ tone of innocence he portrays to the gallery.

But his reform party in my view is an enigma. It will not last the distance. It has no real substance. It can be viewed as some kind of short fix that will only satisfy the electorate for a short while.

The impulse will stutter and die out. It just does not have the bedrock of support to be a lasting political party. It is no tour de force.

But having said that, they are perversely a real and present danger. The narrative in the political cauldron at the moment is change and not for the better. The right wing is attempting to batter doors

down.

The rich and powerful would have us believe that ruthless competition is the way forward. Jim Ratcliffe, a part shareholder in Manchester United in is search for that ultra-competitive spirit is tearing the club apart by ignoring the needs of the workforce. Socialism needs to be more aggressive in its defence of equality and fairness.

I would take Thomas Moore’s pragmatic view of socialism which would be based on the practical considerations of socialism and as Marx stated, with the rise of technological development’s the modes of production change over time creating new and revolutionary structures.

In the UK we have a truly diverse culture and I would hope that this will produce a profound cultural shift and a more progressive society which will see the disappearance of class divisions. As a last thought could AI have a dramatic effect on the conditions of our social relations.

Barry Watts, 

Dover

Reply:

You make a lot of separate points so we can’t really address all of them. It’s undoubtedly true that in the US and Europe the political pendulum has swung towards the right in recent years, as rocketing prices and unaffordable housing have put a squeeze on workers, which together with wars and climate change don’t offer young people much hope for the future.

In such dire times, it’s common to think less about progressive ideas and more about loss aversion, and never mind other problems. Ably assisted by social media, the right has amplified the general unease into a clickbait hysteria of xenophobia, anti-wokism and conspiracy yarns which drowns out adult debate and promotes gleeful mediocrities like Farage who know how to exploit it. They don’t need arguments as long as they get attention. And having no coherent political or ideological theory is not a weakness but an advantage for such ‘pop-up populists’, because it means they can rebrand any time they like.

The left is in a state of despair and disrepair. Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn were unable to turn back the capitalist clock with their supposedly radical state-ownership programmes. Anti or post-capitalists, overlooked since Occupy, fail to be heard above the noise.

But the right is also fragmented and confused. Some hanker for a ruthless, stateless Adam Smith parody that never could feasibly exist. Many want a return to 19th century protectionism. Trump meanwhile is going in contradictory directions with new isolationist tariffs combined with expansionist rhetoric, prompting dark forebodings of a future global war.

Is the new oligarchy threatening democracy, you ask, as if ‘democracy’ is what we’ve got? The rich do seem to be enjoying a new Gilded Age, but just look how they bend the knee to Trump, to Putin, to Xi. That’s not the act of invincible plutocrats. They fear the state’s power to break them if it chooses. And they need the state’s power to maintain order, without which they can’t continue to profit.

Is all this bad for socialism’s prospects? The barrage of soundbite and counter-soundbite is certainly a source of general confusion, but workers’ collective interest remains crystal clear for anyone to see. You hint that future technology might create new structures through which to challenge the system. Possibly so, but it doesn’t take technology to make a revolution. Only we workers can do that. – Editors.

Cooking the Books: Who benefits from tariffs? (2025)

The Cooking The Books column from the March 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Tariff’, Trump has repeated many times with typical exaggeration, ‘is the most beautiful word in the dictionary’. He seems to see it as a cure-all that will Make American capitalist manufacturing industry Great Again. This may just have been crude vote-catching but this illusion evidently caught the votes of quite a few workers.

A tariff is a tax on imported goods and is usually introduced to protect the profits of domestic producers of the same goods. These will have been complaining of being out-competed by ‘cheap imports’ and ‘unfair competition’ and will have lobbied politicians to do something about this. The tariff is paid by the businesses that import and sell the goods in question (it is not paid by the country from which the goods are imported, as Trump sometimes implies). In the first instance it is the importers who will be impacted. Because they will be making a smaller profit, they will import less and, in accordance with the law of supply and demand, the price of the good on which the tariff has been imposed will go up, whether imported or produced domestically. This will make domestic producers more competitive and so enable them to maintain or restore their profits.

This is obviously something that will appeal to the domestic producers concerned but what about other sections of the capitalist class? If the tariff-hit goods are sold to capitalist firms as materials or components for what they produce and sell, these firms will not be so happy as this will increase their costs. If they are consumer goods sold to workers this will increase the pressure on employers generally to pay higher wages (not to increase living standards, but simply to maintain them). If the consumer good is part of the basket of goods used to compile the consumer prices index, whose increase is regarded as a measure of ‘inflation’, then inflation in this sense will go up.

In terms of employment, the workers in the protected industry will keep their jobs for a little longer before automation catches up with them. On the other hand, some workers in other industries will lose theirs.

The overall effect of imposing a tariff will be to raise some prices and not just of the goods on which the tariff is levied. The main beneficiaries will be the domestic producers of the goods in question. Their profits will be ‘protected’.

However, there are other considerations. To be effective in protecting the profits of a particular sector, a tariff needs to be imposed not just on the good coming from one country but on it coming from any country; otherwise the importers of the good could still import it. Which will be why Trump has talked of imposing a tariff on some goods (steel and aluminium) wherever they come from. Another complication is that the country singled out will likely impose counter-tariffs which would harm sectors producing for export. The EU and China will be tougher nuts to crack than Canada or Mexico.

Although Trump gave the impression on the campaign trail that American manufacturing industry will expand and thrive behind protective tariff walls, his first use of tariffs has been as a bargaining tactic. To impose them and then open negotiations with the other capitalist state about what it needs to do to get them removed.

Tariff protection has unintended side-effects and, in any event, does not benefit all sections of capitalist business in the country imposing the tariffs. The working class of the country as a whole is not affected much either way, if only because their wages are tied to the cost of living and tend to go up or down as it does. It is not a working-class issue.

Computer says ‘SPGB’ (2025)

From the March 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following is the result of an AI experiment, as it happened, with no edits.

QUESTION: Which organisation is the most orthodox Marxist in the U.K?

CHATGPT: The most orthodox Marxist organization in the UK is generally considered to be the Communist Party of Britain (CPB). It adheres closely to traditional Marxist-Leninist principles, emphasizing class struggle, the establishment of a proletarian dictatorship, and the eventual goal of achieving socialism through revolution. The CPB does not adopt the more modern or revisionist approaches seen in other left-wing groups, and it remains committed to the teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin. Other groups with a similar orientation include Workers’ Party of Britain (WPB) and certain factions within the Communist Party of Great Britain (Provisional Central Committee), but the CPB is typically seen as the most prominent and consistently orthodox in terms of Marxist ideology.

QUESTION: Isn’t it Leninist?

CHATGPT: Yes, you’re absolutely right! The Communist Party of Britain (CPB) is indeed more accurately described as Marxist-Leninist rather than just Marxist. Marxism-Leninism refers to the application and adaptation of Marxist theory by Lenin, particularly focusing on the role of the vanguard party, the importance of proletarian revolution, and the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat as a precursor to socialism and communism. The CPB embraces these Leninist concepts, as well as the idea of centralized, disciplined party leadership in the struggle for revolution. In summary, while the CPB is rooted in orthodox Marxism, it also incorporates the key elements of Lenin’s thought, making it more accurately classified as a Marxist-Leninist organization.

QUESTION: But if Marx said that ‘the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself’ doesn’t this contradict Lenin’s notion of a vanguard of ‘professional revolutionaries’?

CHATGPT: You’re right to point out that there’s a potential tension between Marx’s emphasis on the working class emancipating itself and Lenin’s concept of a vanguard party led by professional revolutionaries. This has been a point of significant debate among Marxist theorists and revolutionaries.

Marx’s vision of emancipation: Marx famously wrote in The Communist Manifesto that ‘the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself’.” This suggests that workers must be the active agents of their own liberation, which implies a democratic, self-organized process of revolution led by the working class itself. Marx was critical of any attempts to impose revolution from above or to replace the class struggle with a leadership-driven project.

Lenin’s vanguard party: Lenin, in contrast, argued that the working class, on its own, would not necessarily develop the class consciousness required to overthrow capitalism. He believed that, due to the oppression and alienation inherent in capitalism, the workers could be bogged down by trade union consciousness, which focuses on immediate economic struggles rather than revolutionary transformation. Hence, Lenin proposed the need for a vanguard party—a highly disciplined, centralized group of professional revolutionaries who would guide the proletariat towards revolutionary consciousness and lead the struggle for a socialist revolution. Lenin argued that such a party would be essential to navigate the complexities of revolution and maintain the direction of the struggle, which he felt the working class on its own might not be able to do effectively.

Contradiction or development?

While at first glance these two perspectives seem contradictory, Lenin viewed his ideas as a necessary development of Marx’s theory in response to the historical and social conditions of his time. Lenin’s view is that in a period of imperialism and complex state power, workers needed not just to rise up spontaneously but to be led by a well-organized, politically aware, and disciplined party to successfully seize power.

Critics of Lenin’s approach argue that it undermines the Marxist idea of workers’ self-emancipation and could potentially lead to a bureaucratic, top-down system that alienates the masses (as they believe happened in the Soviet Union). On the other hand, Leninists argue that a vanguard party is necessary to channel the spontaneous energies of the working class into a coherent revolutionary force.

Conclusion: In short, the tension you’ve identified is a key point of divergence between orthodox Marxism (focused on working-class self-emancipation) and Marxist-Leninism (which emphasizes the role of a vanguard party). Lenin’s theory of revolution was intended to address what he saw as the practical challenges of organizing for revolution in a more complex and repressive capitalist society, but it is indeed a departure from Marx’s emphasis on working-class self-liberation.

QUESTION: With that in mind shouldn’t the answer to my first question be the SPGB?

CHATGPT: Yes, you raise a very valid point. The Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB) could indeed be considered one of the most orthodox Marxist organizations in the UK, particularly in the sense of adhering to the principles that Marx articulated, especially the idea of working-class self-emancipation.

SPGB’s approach: The SPGB, founded in 1904, explicitly rejects the idea of a vanguard party and the Leninist approach of professional revolutionaries. The SPGB maintains a Marxist stance that the working class must achieve socialism through its own efforts, emphasizing the necessity of democratic control, self-emancipation, and conscious political action. It stands by the view that the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself, which aligns closely with Marx’s original vision, rather than a top-down leadership model.

The SPGB rejects any form of dictatorship of the proletariat or the centralization of power within a vanguard party. Instead, it focuses on the need for a majority of the working class to develop socialist consciousness and democratically take control of the means of production.

Contrast with Leninism: In this sense, the SPGB is indeed much closer to the orthodox Marxist position that you mentioned earlier, as it emphasizes that revolutionary action must arise from the working class itself rather than being led by a professional revolutionary elite, which is a hallmark of Leninist thought.

Conclusion: Given that the CPB (Communist Party of Britain) embraces Marxist-Leninist principles, it places itself more in line with Lenin’s ideas about the role of a vanguard party. Meanwhile, the SPGB adheres strictly to Marx’s original notion of working-class self-emancipation, without the leadership of a vanguard party, making it a more orthodox Marxist organization in terms of the original ideas put forward by Marx. So, in that sense, the SPGB would be a more accurate answer to your question.

QUESTION: Also Lenin believed that a state run wages system was the same as socialism but Marx believe in the abolition of the state and the wages system, didn’t he?

CHATGPT: Yes, you’re absolutely right again in pointing out a fundamental difference between Marx and Lenin on the nature of socialism, particularly regarding the state and the wages system. These differences are crucial in understanding the divergence between orthodox Marxism and Marxist-Leninism.

Marx on the state and the wages system: Marx believed that the ultimate goal of socialism was the abolition of both the state and the wages system. He argued that the state, under capitalism, was a tool of class oppression, serving the interests of the ruling capitalist class. In his vision, after a proletarian revolution, the state would gradually ‘wither away’ as class distinctions disappear and a truly classless society emerges. In a communist society, there would no longer be a need for the state as a coercive apparatus because the working class would have collectively taken control of the means of production, and the social relations of production would be radically transformed.

Regarding the wages system, Marx saw it as an essential part of capitalist exploitation, where workers sell their labour power for a wage, which is less than the value they create. In a socialist society, he envisioned the abolition of the wages system and the creation of a system based on communal ownership and the distribution of goods according to need, rather than labour performed.

Lenin on the state and the wages system: Lenin, in contrast, believed that the state would play a central role even under socialism, particularly in the early stages following the revolution. He argued that, initially, the state would need to be used to consolidate power, defend the revolution, and suppress counter-revolutionary elements. For Lenin, the state was a necessary instrument during the transition from capitalism to socialism—what he called the dictatorship of the proletariat—and that it would eventually wither away once class distinctions were fully abolished.

As for the wages system, Lenin and the Bolsheviks viewed the establishment of state control over industry and wages as a necessary step in the transition to socialism. While they aimed to move away from capitalist private ownership, they still believed in maintaining a state-run economy with wages and a system of production, particularly in the immediate aftermath of the revolution. In other words, they didn’t abolish wages in the early Soviet Union but rather reorganized the system under state control.

Lenin’s view was that the ‘state socialism’ (state-controlled means of production and distribution) implemented by the Bolsheviks was a form of socialism, even though it did not immediately meet Marx’s ultimate vision of a stateless, classless, and wage-less society. Lenin saw this as a necessary transitional phase, where the workers’ state would manage the economy and prepare the ground for the eventual realization of full communism.

The core difference:

• Marx: Aims for the abolition of the state and the wages system as part of the realization of communism, where society is based on cooperation, voluntary labour, and the fulfilment of human needs.
• Lenin: Sees the state as necessary during the transitional phase from capitalism to socialism, and views the wages system as a feature that would still exist in the early stages of socialism, but under state control.

Conclusion: So, while Marx envisioned a stateless, wage-less society as the final stage of socialism, Lenin believed that the state and wages would play a role in the early stages of socialism before ultimately transitioning toward full communism. Lenin’s perspective on the state and the wages system marks a significant departure from Marx’s more revolutionary and radical vision for the future of socialism. This difference is one of the key points of contention between Marxist-Leninist thought and orthodox Marxism.

QUESTION: So what is the most orthodox Marxist political party in the U.K?

CHATGPT: Given the distinctions you’ve highlighted between Marxism and Marxism-Leninism, and the critiques of Lenin’s approach to the state and the wages system, the most orthodox Marxist political party in the UK would indeed be the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB).

Why the SPGB is the most orthodox Marxist party:

1. Commitment to Marx’s vision of the abolition of the state: The SPGB explicitly rejects Lenin’s idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the need for a transitional state. It adheres to Marx’s vision of a stateless, classless society that emerges after the working class takes control of the means of production. The SPGB believes that the state is an instrument of class oppression and must be abolished rather than used as a tool for governance by the proletariat.
2. Opposition to the wages system: The SPGB is also firmly opposed to the wages system as part of the capitalist exploitation that Marx sought to abolish. The party believes that socialism can only be achieved when production is based on human need, not on profit, and when the wages system is replaced by a system of free access to goods and services, according to need.
3. Focus on working-class self-emancipation: Unlike Marxist-Leninist organizations that advocate for a vanguard party of professional revolutionaries, the SPGB holds that the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself. It is a democratic socialist organization that prioritizes education, spreading socialist ideas, and organizing the working class to take control of the economy and political system.
4. Opposition to state socialism: The SPGB critiques any form of state socialism that retains the apparatus of the state and the wages system. It rejects the idea of a transitional period where a state or vanguard party would manage the economy on behalf of the working class, as is typical in Marxist-Leninist thought.

Conclusion: In the context of the UK, where various parties and organizations claim to be socialist, the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB) is the most orthodox in terms of adhering to Marx’s original vision of socialism. Its rejection of Leninist strategies, including the dictatorship of the proletariat and the centralization of power in a vanguard party, sets it apart as a party that seeks to follow Marx’s ideas as closely as possible in today’s political climate.

A reasonable journey (2025)

From the March 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Richard Headicar describes how his socialist viewpoint on the world developed, and some of the people he met along the way.

Few, if any, of the guests at my 21st birthday party in 1954 would ever have imagined that their cheerful host – then a chauvinistic, Tory-supporting Christian monarchist – might someday become a member of the SPGB. Indeed, I would myself have dismissed such a proposition as utterly delusional. Yet while some may consider such a comprehensive transition remarkable, I simply regard it as nothing more than the consequence of a number of eminently reasonable decisions taken in the light of changing circumstances.

In fact, although I was blissfully unaware of it, the first seed of change had already been planted. It had been surreptitiously sown a week previously by Dr Donald Soper on my very first visit to Speakers’ Corner in London’s Hyde Park. Soper was one of three brilliant Methodist preachers who had held me spellbound from the age of 14 by their outstanding oratory (the others were Dr Leslie Weatherhead and Dr William Sangster, then the doyen of Westminster Central Hall and the grandmaster of the craft of homiletics). What Donald Soper said that day about the use of atomic bombs against Japan completely shocked me. He cast doubt upon the official version of events offered in justification: that doing so averted the need for an invasion, thereby saving millions of lives. So profound was my disbelief that I departed the park firmly resolved to prove him mistaken. Surely, I thought, governments – well, Western governments anyway – would never countenance such an extreme act without incontrovertible reasons. My shock was much greater, however, on discovering that not only was everything Soper said absolutely true, but there was so much more that he had omitted to say. For several years I became immersed in trying to learn all that I could about the real situation, following a trail from Gottingen (where research into nuclear physics had been carried out) to Los Alamos (in California where the first atomic bombs were developed) through to the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Needless to say, I had not the faintest notion of where this newly-acquired knowledge would lead me, never for a moment thinking that it would affect my political allegiance. Very soon, however, a series of events occurred that were to have a significant impact in that respect.

The first of these was the Suez crisis in 1956. Out of curiosity, I joined a march from Speakers’ Corner to Trafalgar Square where a massive anti-war rally was taking place. All I knew about Egypt was that it had pyramids and that according to headlines dominating the popular press, a scheming Egyptian politician named Nasser was causing trouble. Also that the British Prime Minister, Sir Anthony Eden, seemed to be changing his mind every week about what he should do. But, once again, my political complacency was challenged when I learned of the dubious motives of the Western powers, centred on the protection of their substantial economic interests in the Middle East. One of the speakers that day was Anuerin Bevan, another compelling orator, and the passionate humanity of his words persuaded me that perhaps the Labour Party was the place to be in order to restore my faith in our political leaders…

Over the ensuing years, as a result of my ongoing investigations into the labyrinthine deceptions surrounding the manufacture and use of the first atomic bombs, I developed a particular concern regarding the rapid escalation of the arms race, especially in relation to nuclear weapons. My next reasonable step seemed only logical: on 7 February 1958, I attended the inaugural public meeting of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). Appropriately enough, given my wavering but just about extant Methodist beliefs, the meeting was convened at Westminster Central Hall.

The promising news that over 70 Labour MPs had pledged their support to the cause provided precisely the nudge I needed to join the Labour Party. At its 1960 conference in Scarborough, a unilateralist motion proposed by Frank Cousins, the leader of the Transport and General Workers Union (T&GWU) succeeded in winning a narrow majority. It was countered immediately by Labour Party leader Hugh Gaitskell with his oft-quoted, highly emotional avowal to ‘fight and fight and fight again to save the party we love’. Amazingly, it was at this point in the Labour Party’s long history that a group of MPs came to the realisation that the use of the ‘block vote’ was ‘undemocratic’. This was something the left-wing minority had been pointing out for many years, but obviously such a belated recognition of their previously disregarded submission was in no way related to the fact that, on this occasion, it had worked against the Executive Committee. Bill Rodgers, aided and abetted by four other ‘moderate’ MPs – Dick Taverne, Anthony Crosland, Douglas Jay and Roy Jenkins – wasted little time in forming the Campaign for Democratic Socialism (CDS). These fervent supporters of democracy, however, appeared determined to devote most of their energy in a concerted effort to portray CND as a haven for ‘communists’.

A deliciously ironic confirmation that my initial optimism about the Labour Party might have been misplaced occurred on the publication of the Tory government’s 1961 Statement on the Defence Estimates about military budgets. Five Labour Party MPs, including future leader Michael Foot, had the whip withdrawn (basically, expelled) for voting against the government. I was not altogether surprised, therefore, when at Labour’s Blackpool conference, the combination of a dodgy ‘compromise’ proposal, more skulduggery and blatant vote fiddling, by which certain Unions were permitted to reverse their original mandate, ensured that the 1960 unilateralist resolution was duly overturned. In his excellent pamphlet Nuclear Disarmament and the Labour Party, Tony Southall comments ‘one important effect of the new events in 1960-1 was that a whole generation of CND activists shunned the party’.

So far as I was concerned, fully awakened at least to the routine misappropriation of the word ‘democracy’ in pursuit of political expediency, I left the Labour Party, never to return. It was a disappointment to me that so many of my unilateralist comrades chose to remain. By now thoroughly despairing of party politics and sadly disillusioned with the efficacy of ‘democracy’, I was increasingly drawn to the philosophy of anarchism. Nevertheless, I remained firmly wedded to the unilateralist cause while undergoing a number of shifts and slides in my personal evaluation of the official CND position. I found it too narrow and confining and much preferred the intellectually stimulating atmosphere of the divergent attitudes I encountered in the Committee of 100 direct action group. Although broadly supportive of CND’s work, it remained absolutely independent and welcomed other speakers who presented the anti-war case in varying styles and from an individual perspective.

For some time I had been running a platform every Saturday and Sunday at Speakers’ Corner centred around CND. I also participated regularly in acts of civil disobedience and eventually ended up in jail for protesting at the Soviet embassy. I was sentenced in October 1961, a day or so after the Labour Party’s infamous Blackpool conference. Coincidentally, I was due to take part in a much-anticipated debate with an eloquent SPGB representative, Melvin Harris, but was prevented from doing so at Her Majesty’s pleasure. I often wonder whether had I not been so inconsiderately detained, my SPGB membership would have been more expeditious? A much-missed friend and comrade, Edmund ‘Eddie’ Grant, relished relating his own version of my non-appearance, that I simply got cold feet at the last moment and deliberately chose prison as a means of avoiding the superior reasoning of the SPGB.

During the years I spent speaking in Hyde Park on behalf of CND, I’m afraid that I regarded the SPGB as an arrogant bunch who found it almost impossible to see merit in anyone but themselves. In relation to CND, although the SPGB’s criticism of it was correct, the unengaging, predominantly negative manner in which it was presented was decidedly counter-productive. Eddie Grant was one of only three members with whom I enjoyed regular dialogue in a friendly and non-judgemental manner then. Eddie, especially, was a welcome visitor to my platform and in his deceptively disarming way invariably raised thought-provoking questions.

An excellent example of Eddie’s method of patient, albeit politely persistent interpolation is the imaginative ruse he employed to breach my unyielding refusal to entertain the possibility of a society devoid of money or markets. The apparent immutability of both had been deeply ingrained in my psyche from a very early age. Following the publication in 1962 of Rachel Carson’s pioneering book Silent Spring, Eddie had listened to me orating passionately on the disastrous effect on the environment resulting from military activity and developments. On the next occasion we met he presented me with a piece of paper on which he had copied a quote from William Morris:

‘Is there money to be gathered? Cut down the pleasant trees among the houses, pull down the ancient and venerable buildings for the money that a few square yards of London dirt will fetch; blacken rivers, hide the sun and poison the air with smoke or worse, and it’s nobody’s business to see it or mend it: that is all that modern commerce, the counting house forgetful of the workshop, will do for us herein’ (The Lesser Arts) .

He also recommended two books: Morris’s News From Nowhere and Robert Tressell’s The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists. Unfortunately, my reading at the time continued to be dominated by the tedious and complex tomes concerned with weapons and ‘defence’ strategies. I was also becoming increasingly interested in the ideas propounded by various philosophers. Consequently, some 20 years elapsed before I finally read Robert Tressell’s heart-breaking but inspiring masterpiece and grasped that the rational implications of the William Morris quotation spoke of the necessity for a change far more fundamental than environmental intervention. It was only many years after I joined the SPGB that I finally got round to reading News From Nowhere, prior to a talk I gave at Fircroft on ‘The Stateless Society’. With Eddie very much in mind, I included the quote he had handed me all those years previously.

It was at Speakers’ Corner also that I met the Hungarian philosopher Alfred Reynolds (Reinhold), who was to prove by far the greatest influence in my life. He somehow managed to transform my thinking and attitudes without once telling me I was ‘wrong’ but instead patiently explaining his points of disagreement without once claiming they were ‘right’. Two areas in which he shared valuable insights were the danger of ‘group thinking’ and the ‘nature of truth’. He held much respect, even affinity, for the SPGB and claimed that at some point in the 1930s he was briefly a member, though for reasons that I recount in a brief biography I have just completed, it would have been under an assumed name that he joined.

In the mid-1980s, when I gave a talk for the Islington branch of the SPGB (prior to becoming a member myself), a telling contribution from Eddie Grant, challenging my rejection of the democratic process, removed the final obstacle to SPGB membership. I became a member of the Party in 1988 and Eddie’s lucid rebuttal of my contention that the right to vote was meaningless was instrumental in that decision. Given my many conversations with him during the preceding years, my protracted journey to membership should have been much shorter. Alas, I had been too preoccupied with saving the world from perceived nuclear annihilation to pay proper attention to his wise illuminations.

In the process of change, interspersed with landmark episodes, there are countless subtle and often subconscious influences too complex and personal to properly record, and some are perhaps destined to remain unfathomable. I frequently ponder upon my own readiness to take the reasonable steps that led me to my eventual destination.

Was I born with a predisposition to more readily embrace ‘logical’ development? How much importance should be given to the impact the Methodist preachers had and the early lessons they conveyed to me about listening, constructing and delivering an argument and the use of humour? Would I ever have moved on at all if I had not been confronted with those dramatic political events? How much does the chance of circumstance play? Meeting with such exceptional individuals as Eddie and Alfred was most assuredly not pre-ordained.

Are we simply the products of our personal, social and political environments? If this is so, why are we not ‘behaviourists’ like B F Skinner? Is becoming a socialist the result of a conscious choice, and what do we mean by this? If choice is assumed, can we ever be sure it is not merely the result of circumstance? In presenting the case for socialism, should more consideration than at present be given to the philosophical and psychological implications?

Richard Headicar

Blogger's Note:

Richard's obituary appeared in the same issue of the Socialist Standard.

Obituary: Richard Headicar (2025)

Obituary from the March 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

In January, we received the sad news that our very popular, long-standing member, Richard Headicar had died shortly after Christmas, aged 91, having been in ill-health for some time. Years ago, he had been diagnosed with throat cancer. After treatment, his voice was considerably weaker, which unfortunately curtailed his public speaking activities that he performed so well. Nevertheless, he remained cheerful and positive, as always.

I first met Richard in the mid-1980s when he gave a talk as a non-member at a public meeting of the old Islington Branch. At that meeting, although he spoke as a critical visitor, he continued the friendly and non-judgemental dialogue with several members at his regular platform at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park. Richard continued to attend our meetings to discuss his evolving political ideas and he joined the Party in 1988. He subsequently represented us with great oratorical skill, passion and humour at many indoor and outdoor meetings. He was particularly experienced and adept at dealing with hecklers at public meetings. He was a regular and committed attendee of Islington Branch and stood as the Party’s candidate in the Holborn & St Pancras constituency for the 1992 General Election. His friendly and engaging manner and persuasive ability helped the branch thrive in terms of making new members, talks, debates and social events. He was very sociable and always keen to continue the discussion/debate in the pub after meetings. At Head Office, he served on the Executive Committee for a few years and ran classes for new speakers, passing on to members the benefit of his long and valuable experience.

Speaking at Hyde Park in the 1980s.

Richard and I soon discovered that we shared an interest in football and tennis. This led to regular games of tennis, and we were often joined on court by a number of members and friends. With his wicked sense of humour, he loved to wind people up on various subjects. Knowing that I dislike and don’t celebrate Christmas because of its awful mix of intense commercialism, nonsensical religion and tiresome clichés, he would gleefully wind me up by sending me ghastly Christmas cards every year with a personal message cheekily explaining that he’d deliberately chosen the worst-taste card he could find, with a picture of angels, a snowy scene with Santa Claus or maybe a cute-looking robin.

He had become a vegetarian in 1960, when there were very few veggie restaurants in London. He enjoyed good food, beer and wine (especially a good Rioja) and often invited friends and comrades to his philosophy-focused dinner parties. His wide-ranging interests included philosophy, environmentalism, music, sport, politics, literature, music and perhaps more bizarrely, watching ‘B’ movies; he was also fond of board and other games, e.g the classic table football game Subbuteo (way back, he’d taken on the inventor, P.A. Adolph, and proudly told me he’d only narrowly lost 2-1).

He was a bit of a technophobe and a critical observer of certain modern social trends, particularly the growing obsession with computers and mobile phones. We had a good laugh when he told me about several cities introducing a ’texting lane’ on pavements in an attempt to prevent collisions between pedestrians.

Later in life, he retired to Hethersett near Norwich where he lived in a sheltered housing complex. Ever the activist, and as a champion of social housing, he worked hard to support the residents and further their interests. He also participated in diverse village groups such as dementia support, pensioners’ rights, bereavement and bowls.

Across his life Richard had been greatly influenced by the Hungarian philosopher Alfred Reynolds, so much so that in recent years he wrote a biography of him that was reviewed in the March 2024 Socialist Standard. Without doubt, all those who met him will recognise that Richard was a real character and he will be greatly missed by the party and all who knew him. Our condolences go to his family and friends.

Chris Dufton

Blogger's Note:

The accompanying pictures of Richard are not from this month's Socialist Standard but are from this piece on Richard from the Sounds of the Park website. (Credit to Sophie Polyviou for the more recent picture.)

I had the good fortune to be in the same London branch as Richard in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and I can only echo Chris's fine sentiments in his obituary. An engaging and kind comrade, Richard had time for everyone, and had a particular skill in conveying socialist ideas in a unique manner. (None of my blood and thunder class war cliches.) The SPGB were lucky to have him in our ranks.

Editorial: On the Cause of War. (1908)

Editorial from the October 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the Cause of War.

A few years ago the Sociological Society published some papers by J. S. Stuart-Glennie on “Some General Historical Laws,” designed to establish, among other things, that a “periodic law” operated to bring into inevitable conflict the East and the West, the Mongol races and the Aryan races at intervals of half a millennium. The Russo-Japanese War seems to have happened most opportunely for the purposes of the argument, and was hailed by our author as a palpable fulfilment of his prophecy: “Thus as, long years ago, I predicted from this periodic law, there has occurred in this twentieth century another of those great European-Asian conflicts which, at intervals of approximately half-a-millennium, have marked the age since the upbreak of the truly ancient civilisations in the sixth century B.C.”

The order of the events which culminated in this last upheaval are given thus: “The first epoch opened the Graeco-Roman half-millennium which culminated in the world conquest of Alexander . . . and of Aristotle. The second, that of Julius and Augustus Caesar and the establishment of Christianism by Constantine. The third, that of Mohammed and the first conquests of Islam, opened the Medieval half-millennium of the Byzantine empire and the barbarous Western anarchy only temporarily abated by Charlemagne. The fourth, the Asiatic conquests of the Turks and the first Crusades opened the Feudal half-millennium. The fifth opened the modern Industrial half-millennium of access to and attack on Further Asia, and the establishment of the Crescent for the Cross in Asiatic Europe.” The sixth epoch was punctuated by the Russo-Japanese War and—there you are ! The Russo-Japanese War was clearly ordained by the Fates about the time the crust of the earth was solidifying, and couldn’t have been otherwise.

The Revelations of General Kuropatkin.

Clearly, therefore, General Kuropatkin’s idea that the whole cause of the trouble was merely a dirty financial deal in which the Russian Royal House was engaged, has not taken into account the whole of the case. The Russian Royal Family doubtless wanted the timber wealth of Manchuria and were quite prepared to ride rough-shod over all the undertakings ever made in the name of their country ; they were prepared to drench a continent in blood in order to put money into their own pockets, and, on the showing of Kuropatkin, did it. These, however, were mere accidental causes only. Actually, on the hypothesis of “periodic law,” the war was, like the salvation of the soul of the hard-shelled Baptist, foreordained before the foundation of the world.

We fear, however, few students of history will be able to subscribe to Mr. Stuart-Glennie’s thesis on the evidence adduced. They will be far more ready to accept Kuropatkin’s plain statement of the immediate causes of the war, the more particularly as all wars can, with a high degree of certainty, be connected with approximately similar causes. Mr. Stuart-Glennie’s “periodic law” could not apply unless the conditions, at the expiration of the half-millennium time limit, were favourable to war between the races concerned. If a forest fire had swept Manchuria free of timber a year or two before the outbreak between Russia and Japan, the “periodic law” would have been punctured, if, as Kuropatkin asserts on indisputable evidence, it was the fact that the timber land was the bone of financial contention. The “law” that depends upon so small and accidental a thing as a bonfire, is not one to base large calculations upon.

Some Cant and a Lesson.

Once again, then, it is established that wars are in general the outcome of conflict of economic interests. And once again we are brought up against the rant or the cant that the moralist newspaper gentlemen, who are pleased to do our thinking for us, and who are concerned to ascribe, as far as possible, other causes to wars in order that the truth may be obscured, retail for our consumption. Where, as in the case of the Russo-Japanese War, the “gaff has been blown” so thoroughly by a man in a position to speak with absolute authority as Kuropatkin, it is difficult to disguise the brutal, sordid facts. The only thing possible, therefore, is to speak as though the case were quite exceptional. At this sort of game the Daily News is always first class. In its leading article upon the subject it delivers itself thus : “We had known that a Royal Family’s greed played a considerable part in this horrible business ; we now know that it was the moving cause, and that, but for the greed of the St. Petersburg Court circle the war would never have occurred.” And again : “Deliberately to bring about one of the most terrific wars of history in order that a worthless set of royal relations, hanging about a court, may handle a little more gold than they had before, is a development that may suit a commercial age, but adds a new shame to the history of mankind.”

“New shame !” There is nothing new in it. It doesn’t make a difference in the “shame” because the persons standing to benefit are a royal gang of financiers and not a gang of professional bucket shop keepers, or capitalists in quest of new markets. It’s the old “shame,” as old as wars are old, and the only “moral” there is to it, is the lesson it offers for working-class learning, that the capitalist class control the State, because they dominate politics, and are prepared to use all the power of their control in their own interests, whether they lie in the direction of using the weaponed arm of the State for the purpose of cracking the heads of native workmen who manifest discontent, or in the direction of carrying on an aggressive policy abroad for the markets of the world and the benefit of their own banking accounts. In either case the remedy lies in the workers capturing political control in their own interest —the interest of the useful section of society.

Hell in the Clouds.

Discussing the further question of the development of aerial navigation and its possible relation to war, the organ of the “Prince of Peace” pursues its dull and melancholy way:—

“To drop various explosives down upon large objects like cities would not be difficult, but, after all, there are such things as Hague Conventions against the random destruction of private property.”

“Fool and slow of heart, who hath bewitched you?” Verily, the faith of the Daily News in Hague Conventions is of the brand that ought to move mountains. But faith never yet moved a mountain and there is no reason to suppose it will be more efficacious in the future than in the past—not even when the object to be moved is a mountain of stupidity or fraud such as the Hague Convention undoubtedly is. The question is, can the Hague Convention prevent the conflict of national commercial interests ? If it can, and when it does, it may stop wars which are, every one, the outcome of capitalist rapacity. But as it doesn’t try to stay the war of capitalist commerce, and could not effect it if it did, it follows that the interference of the Hague Conventions will stop wars when wars are impossible ! Just then.

But, say the peace-makers, the Hague Convention, we know, cannot stop wars, but it can by agreement, humanise them. It could, for example, rule out airships, or at any rate, prevent their use in the discharge of explosives from above and so on. Yes, it can—as it ruled out expanding bullets, and the inhuman practice of smoking out the enemy who had taken refuge in caves, and all the rest of it. But its ruling would not affect the matter worth tuppence for all that. It did not in South Africa.

The way of Peace.

You can’t humanise war. If you could it would not be war. While we have wars we must have inhumanity. And we must have wars until Socialism. Because even assuming the possibility of the present development of capitalism toward monopoly, reaching the universal trust stage, wars between sections of the working class and the dominant power would still continue, and probably be far more bloody than now. Even now we have our Right Honourable John Burnses and others of the “humanity-mongers” calling for the use of the deadliest weapons in industrial struggles.

The immediate object of war is to dispose of the opposing forces. To do that, if they won’t cave in, “you must kill ’em, and kill ’em, and kill ’em blooming dead” as somebody said somewhere. And you don’t kill ’em with humanity either. You use explosives and steel. The idea is to get as much explosive matter pumped in as possible in order that the opposition may be crumpled up the quicker. And that’s where the balloon may come in. If it can be used in that way to suit capitalist purposes it certainly will be; and would be the day after the signing of a Hague Convention, by all concerned, prohibiting it.

The only power that can stand between the people and the inhumanity of war is the organised working class of the world. The only hope that the intelligent peace-makers have against the possibility of serial machines dumping murder upon them from the clouds, is in the working class of the world organising themselves before the navigation of the air has reached the stage of the efficiently practical. Their only hope, that is, is Socialism. An for the peace-makers of the Daily News order, they merely howl “peace” when there is no peace— nor can be.

Editorial: Volume V. (1908)

Editorial from the September 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

With this issue THE SOCIALIST STANDARD enters upon its fifth volume, and each volume represents twelve issues containing more real information of Socialism and the Socialist Movement than any paper of whatever size appearing in this country. For four years THE SOCIALIST STANDARD has appeared with regularity each month, notwithstanding that our death as a party after three month’s existence was foretold by the quidnuncs; and notwithstanding the opposition of those who sought to silence us by the operation of the law of libel.

For four years the Party Organ has maintained consistently the attitude of hostility to all the forces seeking the maintenance of capitalism, palliated or otherwise; and for a like period the claims of Socialism as the one subject of real interest to the working class have been maintained against those who, on the one side, while persistently calling themselves Socialists, are busy following the will-o-the-wisp of the “practical” politicians into the bogs of reform, and against those who err on the other side and would sacrifice the Socialist Movement to their own horror of the temptations of political action, by relinquishing the strongest weapon the working class ever can have in its struggle for emancipation—the political weapon—because that weapon, corroded by its long connexion with the oppressing class, corrupts some of those who attempt to grasp it for their own selfish or misguided ends.

For a party such as ours, dependent entirely on the voluntary work of its members, without a single individual financially interested in either the Party or its Organ, the existence and the appearance of our paper is something of which the Party membership may well be proud. Written by workmen in the brief intervals between toil and sleep, its articles are always, we believe, easy of understanding by those who, like the writers, have first-hand experience of the conditions of the problem with which they treat.

While, however, our paper is justifiably a source of pride, it is so, we would remind you, only because it is our paper, and being ours, we, the Party, are responsible for it. Let the Party, then, remember its responsibilities. Anything which can provide a point for the further explanation of Socialism, in anything they may be reading, members should make a note of, cut it out if possible, and send it to the Head Office clearly marked.

Our paper is a very important item in the work of the Party, and the energies of every member are needed to ensure its success. Everyone can do something, if it is only selling it, and if the members will remember the claims of their Party Organ, Volume V. will probably show them developments and improvements which will make it of even greater service than it has been in the past.

The first three volumes, bound together, had a good sale and are even yet obtainable from the Head Office. It may be that the four volumes now completed will be obtainable similarly bound together. If so, they will represent such a collection of Socialist literature as to provide a valuable addition to the bookshelves of the student of this important and interesting subject.

Editorial: The Eight Hour Day. (1908)

Editorial from the September 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Eight Hour Day.

The speeding up of the workman, the ever-growing intensity of the labour exacted from him, renders imperative a longer repose so that he may recuperate his working strength and maintain his maximum productivity. Hence flows the modern tendency toward shorter hours so that the profitableness of the worker to the capitalist may increase. It is the necessary and inevitable outcome of modern industrial conditions even from the capitalist point of view, and is by no means a sign of victory over the ruling class.

If the champions of the eight hour day were to confine themselves to stating the truth about their pet reform there would be little need to quarrel with them, but when they claim as one of the virtues of the eight hour day that it will abolish or greatly reduce unemployment, we join issue. It is rankest charlatanism to foist a piece of some necessary capitalistic patchwork upon the slow-minded as the remedy for the workers’ greatest ill, yet, unfortunately, it is the characteristic procedure of the labour leader.

In the present instance, if the reduction of working hours is to bring about more employment, it could only be by decreasing the output per man, and providing more work by causing the employment of more men to produce the same amount as before. But would it have any such effect ? So far as positive evidence goes it is directly against any presumption of a lessening of the output per man. Even past masters in the art of red-herring trailing give themselves away at times. Thus Sidney Webb and Harold Cox in their book, “The Eight Hour Day,” state in considering the result of a general reduction of the hours of labour in all trades that—

“The successive reductions of the hours of labour which this century has witnessed have been attended, after a very short interval, by a positive general increase in individual productivity. In many cases it has been found that the workers did more in ten hours than their predecessors in twelve. The effort to get more than a certain amount of work out of a man defeats itself.”

__________

The question that matters.

Instance after instance is given of the increase in efficiency and output that follows the reduction of the working day, showing how chimerical is the idea that a slight reduction in hours will put the unemployed in work.

Even as recently as the opening of the Mining Exhibition at Olympia on July 11th evidence was given of the normal result of a shortening of hours. Thus Lord Airedale of Gledhow: —

“In regard to the question of an Eight Hour Day, and of the consequent restriction of the hours of labour in mines, and the question of the increased cost that they were threatened with by mine owners, owing to the difficulties arising from the limitation of hours, he ventured to think that from what they saw that day of coal machinery, the mining engineers of that country would rise to the situation, and by the application of technical knowledge, he believed the threatened crisis would really not arise. It was cheering to note by such exhibitions that mechanical invention knew no end, and if it paid to use machinery when increased cost of labour came in, they might be assured that the difficulty would be successfully dealt with.”

It should be clear, then, that however necessary to capitalist development the reduction of the hours of labour may be, and however useful it may be in other respects, yet it most certainly is not the panacea for the great and growing evil of unemployment that its champions would have us believe. Besides, the question which overshadows all others in the eyes of the worker conscious of his position is not the paltry juggle with hours of labour, but rather the vital question of to whom shall the product of these working hours go ?

The workers, indeed, instead of wasting precious time and energy discussing and petitioning as to the particular sauce with which they are to be eaten, should at last awaken to the fact that it is not necessary that they should be eaten at all, and should take their stand with us accordingly.

Editorial: Exit Unrestricted Competition. (1908)

Editorial from the August 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Exit Unrestricted Competition. 

“The truth is that the assumption made by economists and by public opinion during the greater part of the last century, that unchecked competition would always secure the public the cheapest and most efficient service, is one which does not apply to railways, and which may be found in the future to be inapplicable to an increasing number of other businesses. The risks attending competition are too great.”—Morning Post.

Of course ! Unrestricted competition is a good thing, the thing upon which the greatness of the Empire has been built up and depended, the thing that made for stamina and fitness, that developed enterprise, and all the rest of it, until—until the risks became too great, until, that is, it ceased to pay. Now we drop the cant and go in for combines and the elimination of competitive waste, because that way lies the larger profit. If the maintenance of the ancient method spells the disintegration of the Empire —perish Empire ! Perish fitness, perish enterprise, perish everything, but leave us still our profits !

____________

Capitalist Concentration.

Some of the effects of this railway combine are already making themselves felt. In London the G.W.R. and the G.C.R. have managed to close eight town offices between them. Similar savings are being effected in other departments. A reduction of the Staff of the Railway Clearing House is rumoured and will inevitably occur. The L. & N.W.R. and the Midland Railway will find themselves in the position of being forced to take steps similar to those taken by the G.N.R. and G.C.R. (into which combination, by the way, the G.E.R. has now entered) and will take those steps gladly. Indeed, pooling arrangements have for a long period been in operation between the L. & N.W.R. and the Midland Railway, and a working agreement exists between the L. & N.W.R. and the L. & Y. Co.—a case of intelligent anticipation. Notwithstanding official denials, it is absolutely certain that an extension of this agreement is being arranged, and out will go more workers on to the labour market.

____________

The Struggle for Existence Intensifies.

Every economy means, as was pointed out in the last issue, displaced labour. Every move toward capitalist efficiency means a greater intensity of labour exploitation and a keener struggle for existence. The nationalisation of the railways offers no way of escape to the railway workers. As the capitalist Manchester Guardian points out in its article on Railway Alliances:—

“Prices on the Stock Exchange rise when such a scheme is announced and drop at the prospect of a continuance of present methods. We may expect, therefore, that when the time comes for the consideration of some larger scheme of national management our present railway proprietors and managers will be among the most convincing witnesses in favour of its economy and administrative advantages.”

Or, in other words, the capitalist class will itself be quite ready to appreciate the advantages of nationalisation because that means, under the present system, the conservation of their class interests. Better conditions for the workers, even for those the elimination of waste has spared employment, is a matter of very minor moment indeed, and then is conditional upon increased productivity.

____________

The Way Out.

No. Against the trend of commercial development toward concentration nothing can stand. No reform, no misnamed palliative, is of any avail to appreciably soften the grinding, crushing, devastating effect of its outworking upon the proletariat. There is no solution at all for the problem, no hope at all for the workers, outside Socialism. Only the Socialist Party has the message of good cheer. And the Socialist Party (that is, in England, the S.P.G.B.), while insisting upon the futility of any reform and the fatuity of the reformer, points out that capitalism, gorging itself to satiety with every increasing profit on the one hand, is perforce digging its own grave on the other. This concentration has effected the practical elimination of the capitalist himself from the sphere of actual production. The working class is in command of the workshop and the factory. The whole process of wealth creation is in the hands of wage earners. Socialism will give them the control of the product as capitalism has given them control of production. Only then will poverty cease to exist. Only then will the workers achieve their freedom. Meanwhile our business is to go forward, undeterred by the influences that astute capitalism has surrounded the Labour Leader with to his undoing, refusing to dabble with the pettifoggeries of the reform parties, that must spell no more than disappointment or apathy or both to the workers misguided enough to follow at the tail of such agitations,—to go forward with our work of preaching discontent, of explaining economic phenomena in the light of Socialist philosophy, of agitating, educating, and organising the working class until, recognising their position and their power, they accomplish the capture of political might in order that they may secure themselves in the possession of the means of living, and enjoy unmolested the product of their own toil.