By the Way. (1913)

The By The Way Column from the October 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

The “Daily News” (28.8.13) once again tells us how old people taking their 5s. portion of “rare and refreshing fruit,” reduce the wages of those with whom they live. It says :

“A family of seven . . . five of whom are in receipt of old age pensions, are living near Redhill. . . . With the 25s. a week received from the State, supplemented by the earnings of the younger men, the family are able to lead a happy and comfortable life.”

So the cunningly schemed old age pensions relieve the rates at the expense of the “earnings of the younger men.”

* * *

Whilst the anti-Socialist is fond of mouthing the old drivel that Socialism will break up the family life, the following is worthy of notice. Perhaps it is because of the frequency of the smashing of homes and breaking up of families under capitalism that the anti-Socialist prophesies it for the future :

“John Littlewood, 59, was charged with begging. He was standing in the gutter playing a whistle. Addressing the magistrate he declared that wherever he applied for employment he was always met with the reply : “You are too old.”

“I have a very good certificate here from Chatham Dockyard. I was 18 years there. . . I had a good little home, but I had to part with it bit by bit.” (“Reynolds’s,” 31.8.13.)

Too old at 58, says the employer ; too young by eleven years, says Mr. Lloyd George. This was evidently a case for the magistrate—or the undertaker.

The one, you see, can restore his “family life” for a month in the stone jug, while the other can put him into the way of having a nice little wooden hut all to himself, which he would be allowed to hold in peaceful possession until landlords are no more and bum-bailiffs cease from troubling.

* * *

The Right Hon. David Lloyd George made a speech a short time since dealing with the arma­ment question. Of course he had to refer to “social reform,” and then he informed the capitalists how they would benefit by it.

“When they came to social reform and improved the conditions of the people they improved their health and their efficiency, purely as means for the production of wealth. . . It was no good saying they were spending 20 millions on insurance and old age pensions. They had got to look at the other side of the ledger, and that was worth a good deal more than 20 millions a year.”

It is interesting to note the utterances of this oily-tongued hypocrite, for when he is addressing his paymasters he specially emphasises the benefit that will accrue to the capitalist class as a result of Liberal “social reform”—”purely as means for the production of wealth.” Yet this is the man who, a few years ago, told us that “No one can really honestly defend the present system.”

* * *

In a leading article in “Reynolds’s” (24.8.13) devoted to the increase in the prices of food and and other commodities, the writer showed the hopelessness and futility of the workers clinging to the gospel of Liberalism as a medium for their salvation. Let me quote two passages.

“In no other country has there been the same press of social reform measures ; in no other country has there been the same effort made to grapple with poverty.”

And again :

“In spite of all our social reform agitation, in spite of Compensation Acts, Wages Boards, Old-Age Pensions, and National Insurance, powerful forces have been at work to keep a vast mass of our people from getting away from the edge of the precipice of starvation.”

What an admission of failure ! Could any indictment of mine be stronger ? After seven years of Liberal rule and unparalleled trade boom, a large mass are on the verge of starvation ! Were we not told by a leading light of the Liberal party 1908 that they were going to “strike starvation for ever from the dark category of evils with which honest men and women are beset” ? Liberalism has been tried and found wanting. Socialism alone contains the remedy.

* * *

The ”Christian Commonwealth” for August 27th contains an article from the pen of Philip Snowden, M.P., dealing with the Chesterfield election, and once more is the attitude taken up by the Socialist Party justified. Under a subheading “A Myth Exploded,” he tells us that :

“The result of the election has shown that the late member was in no sense an independent Labour member. It has shown that the claim that the Labour Party in the House of Commons represents electors who have been alienated from Liberalism and Toryism, and who believe in a Labour Party independent of both, is a myth. To try to keep that myth alive is neither possible nor honest. It is perfectly true that there is in the constituencies a very great volume of opinion which is in favour of independent Labour representation. In the industrial constituencies it probably represents 25 per cent of the voters. But the Labour Party in the House of Commons has not been returned solely by that section of the electorate. Its members sit in Parliament because in four-fifths of the cases some understanding or arrangement has been made with the Liberals. Under such circumstances it is ridiculous to expect that Labour members will quarrel seriously with the party by whose goodwill they hold their seats.”

Mr. Snowden goes on :

“Over anxiety to get its nominees into Parliament has led to compromise and bargaining in the constituencies, and anxiety to keep in Parliament has prevented the carrying out of a fighting policy.”

Such is the confession of this leading light of the “Independent” Labour Party. It shows once more that these fakirs are nothing more than office seekers, trading on the ignorance and mal-education of the workers,

* * *

It would be interesting to know the object of the visit paid by the Rev. C. F. Blyth to the flat kept by a young woman. Was he desirous of seeing her about her “spiritual welfare” ?

* * *

“Birds of a feather flock together.” Mr. J. Ramsay MacDonald, now that he is temporarily released from his arduous labours in Parliament and India, has been enjoying a game of golf with Mr. Asquith, of Featherstone fame.

* * *

In view of the recent railway disaster at Ais Gill, all new readers of this journal should procure the issues from June and read the articles “Public Safety v. Railway Profits.” It will be seen from these that such accidents are bound to result from the cheeseparing policy of the companies, and that the only object of the Board of Trade enquiries is to blind the public to the fact that their lives are placed in the keeping of overworked and underpaid men, operating rotten engines, and supplied with bad coal.

The Scout

“The Naked Savage”. (1913)

From the October 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hard and monotonous toil, sordid and dirty surroundings, poor and adulterated food, shoddy, slop-made clothing, jerry-built houses or tenement slum-dwellings, dull and colourless environment, close association with penury and hard-fisted “thrift,” miserliness unmannerliness, uncouth companionship, endless worry and turmoil about petty things—such is the lot of the bulk of the workers within the capitalist system of society.

And what should be their lot ? Do they not deserve more ? To the workers in the past society owes all that it has. All the comforts and joys of modern civilisation are the result of the energy and toil of the worker past and present. It is the worker who makes possible the comforts of the idler, the pleasures of the rich. It is the worker who, with brain-directed hand, fashions the tool, the machine, and the finished food product. He it is who erects the palace for the king and the slum-hovel for himself ; who toils in the drab factory, sinks the mine shaft and cajoles mother earth to part with her treasures. The worker it is who in laboratory and office wrestles with the problems of how and why. It is, in short, the wage-slave of today who directs and controls all the operations of the actual work of producing and distributing wealth.

The most gigantic task is not too great for organised Labour. Labour spans rivers and crosses seas ; captures the wind and the light­ning for her puposes, and has harnessed the torrent and the stream.

For long ages man has struggled with nature for mastery—at first ignorantly superstitious, stumbling along with but a blind understanding. But one by one the secrets of nature have been learnt and mastered.

In the infancy of the human race primitive man dwelt in forests or caves, depending for subsistence upon wild roots, nuts, and berries. Naked and shivering ; without either the means for, or the knowledge of the art of, producing fire; without the means of communication with his fellows, surrounded by unknown dangers, he began to think and invent.

Discovery followed discovery until to-day it is seen that man in his struggle with nature for a livelihood has triumphed and his subsistence is secure.

Frightened by the fire from the heavens, primitive man worships it, and then controls it, using his god to cook his dinner. The enemy of man—the larger beast of prey—has been conquered and exterminated. Other animals have been tamed and domesticated. Beginning with the stick and the unpolished stone, man has gradually added to his store of implements and tools. He sharpened the stone to an axe-head, and fixed it to a shaft. The discovery of the bow and arrow, and the working of soft metals, followed by the knowledge of smelting, gave the rising race enormous power. Iron tools gave man the ship ; the iron ploughshare pushed forward agriculture, and gave rise to architecture and art.

The invention of writing, permitting ideas to be passed down, discoveries to be recorded, and a wider communication between man and man, was responsible for enormous progress, and finally the discovery of a mechanical motive power capable of turning the wheel and wielding the hammer gave the means of producing wealth in abundance with very little exertion on the part of the descendent of the naked savage.

The descendent of the naked savage—who is he ? With all our advancement, all our marvellous powers and possibilities, we have still the naked savage with us. We have worse. The powers of wealth production are lying idle and in the midst of plenty the people are starving and naked. The modern worker not only hungers, but he hungers with succulent dainties all around him, and sees his children wither amid a plethora of good things—good food, good clothing, and good houses of his making, but denied to him and his though they perish of want and exposure.

Like Tantalus of the fable, the modern worker stands up to his chin in good things which elude his lips the moment he attempts to enjoy them, and all around him grows the fruit of his labour that he is not allowed to touch.

How foolish and absurd it is ! How would our savage ancestor stare. Starvation he understood ; he knew, also, what it was to be cold. But to lie down hungry beside a good dinner would be a proceeding entirely beyond his comprehension, and only to be ascribed to witchcraft and devils.

And perhaps he would not be far wrong. The working class are certainly bewitched. With the brain and muscle to produce wealth they stand idly by and allow the masters to take what they have produced. Not only so—they cringingly beg for a share and wait meekly upon the idler’s pleasure. They give him their daughters to enjoy, and take up arms to defend him against his enemy—themselves.

Astonished indeed would the savage be, for he would see winged chariots manufactured by the workers and driven by them, yet used solely for the pleasure of the drones. He would see those who work the hardest rewarded with the worst accommodation, and the laziest loafer with crowds of busy men and women waiting upon him. And he would wonder, as the Socialist wonders, and wait for the toiler to end the farce—or shall we say tragedy ?—by awaking from his trance.

The awakening seems long deferred, but awaken he must. Entranced as he is by the conception of private property, events will eventually force him to see how utterly foolish he is, and how easily imposed upon.

When the awakening comes there will be nothing in the way of the toiler’s enjoyment. Relieved of the vast amount of unnecessary labour that the idlers compel him to perform, freed from the restrictions that capitalism places in the way, no longer compelled to ask : “Will it profit my master ?” the worker will go on doing that which will add to the comfort and pleasure of the community and sweep away poverty, misery, vice, crime, and all the evils that arise, directly and indirectly, from the private ownership by a class of the means by which the people obtain their livelihood.

Twel.

The Malthusian League. Have they a Remedy for Poverty?. (1913)

From the October 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Non quantitas sed qiialitas” is the motto of the Malthusian League.

“It is questionable whether we shall be able to retain our position among the nations if the decrease in the population continues,” said the Bishop of London.

“It ought to be considered immoral for a wo­man to have less than four children,” said the Bishop of Ripon.

Here we have two sides of a popular question, and we may well ask where any consideration for the working class comes in. As we might expect from a parasite class that only legislates in its own interests, and upholds its supremacy by brute force, the only question considered is the buttressing of the State or the stocking of the labour market.

Say the priests to the ruling class, “it is numbers you want,” while the Malthusian claims that more attention should be paid to the quality of the slaves. Both sides agree that the working class should remain a slave class ; both sides are therefore the enemies of the working class.

The means of life are owned by the master class, but are useless to them without workers to operate them. So long as their profits remain unaffected it matters little to them whether their country is thickly or thinly populated. It is no doubt a question worthy of discussion by the capitalist whether his class interest is best served by a working class sufficiently prolific to overstock every section of the labour market, or a working class that consciously and obligingly regulates its numbers to suit his requirements.

The individual worker may debate within his mind as to the prospects of inflicting his progeny on future generations—whether is is better to give one or two children the best possible equipment under the circumstances, or to breed a round dozen or so and let them take their chance. It may seem best to him to limit his family, and thereby reduce his responsibilities, retain a slight degree of comfort, and escape some of the anxiety incidental to bringing up a family. He may even weigh the chances of a large family being better able to support him in his old age. But all these questions are merely for the individual who, through ignorance, regards the present social system as fixed and unalterable, and who accepts the anarchy and poverty imposed upon the working class as inevitable. They are questions on a par with the questions of drink and gambling, purely individual in character, and having no political bearing whatever.

The limitation of the family has little or no effect on the general conditions of the working class, even when extensively practised. A limited population—other things being equal—involves a limited production, with fewer employed and a capitalist class with less surplus-value to spend in various ways. Capitalism adapts itself to large or small populations. The poverty of the worker was just as deep in the days of Malthus, when the population was only nine millions, as it is to day, when it exceeds forty-five.

Neither by logic nor yet by example can the Malthusians prove that theirs is any remedy for poverty. They quote the black death of 1348, which killed off a large number of workers. “How food was plentiful and wages went up, despite the efforts of Parliament to stop them.” This, however, is a case that has no bearing on modern conditions, because the people had not at that time been driven off the land. The majority of those in the towns were not wage slaves, but members of the guilds, and as such, either owned or expected to own, the tools with which they worked and the product of their labour.

France and Ireland are classic instances of the failure of Malthusian principles, yet with characteristic audacity the Malthusian League claims them as successful examples. The population of Ireland has been reduced by nearly one half in fifty years, but still the tide of emigration goes on at the rate of thirty thousand per annum, because working-class conditions there, as everywhere else, are growing worse.

The claim that “agricultural labourers’ wages seem recently to have fully kept up with prices” falls flat when we read that many of them receive in actual cash from five to eight shillings per week, the average, including allowances, being between twelve and thirteen shillings per week. The towns of Ireland, we know by repute, rival in slums and sweating dens anything in England or on the Continent. The linen industry for example, is notorious for its low wages.

For France it is claimed that real wages have gone up six per cent. in the last ten years. Whether this be true or not—and the league give no authority for their statement—French wages may still compare unfavourably with English or German in actual purchasing power.

Wages in England have risen during the last ten years, according to Government figures, but the rise has not kept pace with the rise in prices, we are told. The same applies to France. If it were not so, how are we to account for the discontent of the French workers, for the numerous strikes and demonstrations against rising prices, and for, what is even more conclusive, the consumption of horse and dog flesh by the poor ?

We are informed by the alarmists of the Malthusian League that “our excess of births over deaths is one thousand per day ; that the population of the United States has increased so that it is now consuming all its own wheat, and that Russia is having a famine of its own. That supply is getting more difficult and our demand and that of other countries, becoming greater, is it any wonder that prices rise?”

The Malthusians are not the only ones that sound alarm in this direction. Malthus himself wrote of the time when every available acre of land would be under cultivation and human beings would scarcely have standing room on the earth. Professor H. N. Dickson, president of the geographical section at the recent science association, says : “We are already making serious inroads upon the resources of the whole earth.” Such an admission, however, only reveals the inability of the ruling class to regulate their exploitation. The earth is being denuded of its wealth-giving properties for the sake of profits—to build up wealth for a parasite class—to protect and pamper that class.

The only useful class in society—the working class—even if its modest requirements were doubled, would not tax the world’s resources in ten years to the extent that capitalist anarchy does in one.

To say, as the Malthusians do, that supply is getting more difficult, is the reverse of the truth. The production, and consequently the supply, of wheat—or in fact of any commodity—is easier to-day than ever it was. Machine invention and new methods have, during the last century, multiplied man’s productiveness by hundreds. With bonanza farms miles in extent, requiring but few workers, and machines that traverse the “fields of waving corn,” performing all the operations short of actual grinding, how can anyone possibly claim that supply is getting more difficult ? Would the Malthusians claim that there are not sufficient able-bodied men to cultivate the soil ? Would they have the courage to assert that all the available land is under cultivation ?

All these alarmist theories are absurd and unscientific. There are no physical difficulties that prevent mankind from satisfying all their needs. What difficulties exist to-day are entirely social in character. They are due to the fact that the land together with all the other means of life are owned by a small class in society, who only allow production to go on for profit.

The Malthusian League support this system. The ruling class, in their eyes, can do no wrong. If there is poverty, according to them it is because of the improvidence of the workers. They ignore the anti-social actions of the capitalists—how they have burned wheat, cotton, and coffee, and allowed other commodities to rot, in order to maintain a maximum price—how manufacturers have closed their mills by common agreement for weeks on end, in order to create an artificial famine.

Trusts and combines, financiers and company promotors, are anti-social in character ; sabotage and ca-canny are practised by market riggers to an extent that would make trade unionists turn green with envy if they were but class-conscious and could realise it.

Capitalists invest their capital where they will obtain the highest dividends. They do not study the needs of the people either of this or future generations. Capital is wealth that is used for exploitation ; and every capitalist being actuated by greed, is utterly regardless of the havoc wrought in his interest, either on the earth itself or on the working class, or, for that matter, in the fortunes of his competitors. The means of life under such a system are not used to the advantage of those who operate them, but in the interest of those who own them. The one fact that emerges, clear and unchallenged, out of the chaos of competing interests that constitutes the mechanism of capitalist exploitation is that man, to-day, can satisfy all his needs, live up to a high standard of comfort, and enjoy more leisure than ever before in history—if it were not for capitalism.

The Malthusian League offer the capitalist restriction of the family as a panacea for labour “unrest,” and show their contempt for the working class in the suggestion that they should be taught to practise it—at least that larger section of the working class whose wages are twenty-five shillings a week and under.

“In Holland,” they say, “the poor have been taught to limit their families by a large, State-recognised society ; the death rate has fallen more rapidly than in any other country in the world, and there seems to be practically no labour unrest.” Holland must be a paradise for the capitalist—the wonder is that they do not flock there with their capital from all parts of the world.

Again we are told by the worshippers of Malthus that there are 960,000 adult men workers who get wages less than twenty shillings per week, and 1,600,000 who get between twenty and twenty-five shillings ; and further, that the only effective remedy for their quite natural discontent, is that they should only have one child. These self-appointed tutors of docility and submission should join hand with housing reformers and advocate more spacious homes for the working class. If the only remedy is limitation of the family, then it is not the capitalists who need separate bedrooms, but the workers. They might, at the same time, advocate the free supply by the State of certain rubber goods, as, by their own showing, those who need them most cannot afford to buy them.

Neither can they afford to have children, Malthus might have replied. Neither can they struggle against the desires of the flesh : they have not the stamina. As Mr. Lloyd George said of them : “Their wages do not suffice to replace the energy they use up in their daily toil.” In his “White Slaves of England” Robert Sherard says the workers in the “sweated industries”—men and women alike—have but one pleasure, and many of them swear it is the only thing worth living for. This, however, does not apply to the so-called sweated industries alone ; the vast majority of the workers are in the same position.

Imprisoned in a factory hell by day ; relegated to a slum for the night—a life of such days and nights with a dollar pension or the workhouse at the end—such is the worker’s prospect. All his senses fed on filth, on what is ugly incon­gruous, is it any wonder that the worker turns to the merely animal functions within his reach and makes them his pleasures ?

In sheer desperation the lower animals, when deprived of food, try to stave off extinction by excessive breeding. Man, after all, is but animal, and has not lived on a pinnacle of intelligence long enough to shed any of the fundamental instincts common to animal life ; and when social conditions rob him of his means of life and thrust him deep into the morass of poverty and wretchedness, the instinct of the brute comes to the top.

Science supports this explanation. Scientists in support of capitalism may deny it. Not all of them do so, however. The late Professor Huxley, greater in the world of science than a whole regiment of modern time-servers, said of the environment of the working class :

“It is a condition in which the food, warmth, and clothing necessary for the maintenance of the body cannot be maintained, in which the pleasures within reach are reduced to brutality and drunkenness; in which the pains of starvation, stunted development, and moral degradation accumulate ; in which the prospect of even steady and honest industry is a life of unsuccessful battling with hunger rounded by a pauper’s grave.”

“The pleasures within reach are reduced to brutality and drunkenness.” Is it necessary to say more ? Man desires recreation and enjoyment. When he has learned to appreciate intellectual pleasures he will turn less frequently to the merely animal. Under capitalism the workers are denied the time and the means for intellectual recreation, hence their debasement.

Socialism alone, because it will give to the workers the fruits of their labour, can give them the leisure, means, and opportunities for genuine happiness and enjoyment. And even if it could be proved that under Socialism the human race would breed in swarms, still the robbery of the working class by the capitalist class would not be justified.

F. Foan

The Return of God. (1913)

From the October 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

The materialism of a former generation of scientists is in the melting pot, and a reversion to the metaphysical idealism is becoming very popular and common. Philosophically we can understand and sympathise, though we may not agree with, the distinction, between the idea and the thing, and the logical processes between them. Scientifically, however, we can neither understand nor sympathise with the confusion between the matter of the thing and the force or energy it manifests.

Yet it seems to be the purpose of prominent scientists to restate the scientific proposition in terms of a very much qualified materialism. The outcome of the materialistic hypothesis is too revolutionary for our masters, and its disquietening effects have to be scotched at the fountain head.

The immortality of the soul having been shown to be incompatible with a materialistic and evolutionary explanation of life, the power of the Church as a soporific for the under dogs of this world has waned. That power can be revived only by a scientific sanction of the ideas on which the Church rests, even though the whole gamut of the Church’s creed is not included. So at the British Association, the President, Sir Oliver Lodge, promulgated the opinion that the individual consciousness survived death, and was able to communicate with the living.

The phenomena of spiritualism is thus homologated, and the materialist who has insisted that the mind was of the brain, which was a purely physical organ whose functions, however complicated and obscure, were no more incapable of being understood and explained than is the process of digestion, the circulation of the blood, or any other functions performed by the various organs or collections of organs, of the body.

We do not know whether the discarnate spirit still experiences, over yonder, the inconveniences of, say, a faulty stomach or a gouty toe ; neither does Sir Oliver say that the spirit persists for ever, and is therefore immortal in the theological sense.

But of even more importance than the question of survival after death is the reference to the transcendental god as the ruler of the universe. Thus the teleology of the early Victorian era is restated with all the authority of twentieth century science. We had thought God and the ghosts were laid long since, and our spirit that was ordained either to everlastingly burn, or to perpetually twang the celestial harp in the clouds, had passed into the limbo of forgotten puerilities along with our belief in these mythical places.

For science had laid bare the majestic sweep of evolution from the star-dust of the nebula, through the material earth stage, with its atmosphere and water complete, to the burnt out cinder stage, like the moon ; had traced animal life from the amoeba to man ; and generally unravelled the whole cosmic scheme. Evolution is accepted as a fact by all the scientists and most laymen, to such an extent that even the Church has adopted it and interpreted it to fit its own theories, while active opposition to the principles of evolution is practically extinct.

If evolution means anything ; if the data of paleontology and of embryology teach anything ; it is surely the unbroken succession of changes from the lower to the higher, culminating in man. There was a great dispute as to whether man was not a special edition by himself, equipped with something different—not in degree but in kind—from any other living being. That dispute was settled by Huxley by his brilliant and conclusive contribution, “Man’s Place in Nature,” in which the reasons for placing man in a group with the “Primates,” and not in a class alone, are given.

At what stage, then, does the immortal soul appear ? Does the personality of the gorilla survive death, or does the Tasmanian aborigine start the immortals ? Or is it something between these ? In any case, what a fearful—almost hellish—confusion must reign “over there” if the souls of the millions of men and women, for the hundreds of thousands of years men have been on this planet keep on accumulating !

The Ruler of the Universe who made all that therein is, who “shaped the suns and marked their ways upon the ancient deep,” and who finally “created man in His own image,” has hitherto found no justification in science. Rather on the contrary has it been found that man in his different stages of knowledge, has created for himself a god or gods in the image of his knowledge—or want of it. And so to-day, when Sir Oliver Lodge creates for himself a god, He will be in a somewhat different image naturally from that of the Hebrew wise men emerging from the later stage of barbarism, but will have all the indications of being the embodiment of what we do not yet know. For that is what “God” has invariably represented. Backward as far as we may push the limits of our knowledge, as much as we may discover, if the workings of nature, there ever remain the doubts and questionings of the enquiring mind, and that ignorance is covered by attributing the unknown to “God.” At, best it is a begging of the question.

The fact remains that we who are of the earth earthy, are satisfied that sufficient is known to make a vast difference to our life here—the life of which we are certain and which we know most about the life of which we have tried to picture, and make practicable the realisation of, the possibilities.

It is an attempt of our masters to divert our attention to an imaginary life elsewhere in order to cover up and minimise the shortcomings of our life here. We doubt whether at this time of day the eyes of the working class can again be directed heavenward. For centuries they looked that way, and nothing came of it. “No Saviour from on high delivers” us from our slavery here ; it is to ourselves and our fellow mortals we have to look for deliverance. Science has provided us with sufficient material to afford a solution, and it now requires but the co-operation of the workers in making use of that information to solve once and for ever the social problem, through the overthrow of capitalism, and the construction of a Socialist co­-operative commonwealth out of the materials collected by capitalism in its ruthless course.

D. K.

The Forum: Socialism versus Secularism. (1913)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

[To the editor.]

Sir,—While agreeing with a good deal in the article under the above heading in your August issue, there are some points in it which seem to me to require criticism.

To start with, the title is misleading. Socialism cannot be versus Secularism. It is Secularism. Your point should be that it is the only Secularism. This would then place you in your true relationship with the N.S.S. The writer objects that Atheism is anything more than anti-Theism—the negation of the God idea. He will find that that is all it is. You cannot saddle Atheism with all or any of the theories of origin which do not come within the conception of the God-origin of the Cosmos. On the contrary, it is only Atheism that is capable of analysing scientific ideas properly.

Neither is Atheism committed to the ridiculous position about the inconceivability of infinity. Atheists may be so committed. Atheism is not a red-herring. The need for your excellent pamphlet, “Socialism and Religion,” proves this. The only virtue or utility in Atheism is (and Atheism loses nothing by confessing it), that, properly conceived, it frees the mind to enter the analysis of Socialism and sociology with the impartiality and right thinking which religion prevents. Religion distorts the mind, therefore Socialism stands no chance of being understood.

That all the Atheists are not supporting the Socialist theories is no more the fault of Atheism than it is the fault of Socialism that some “Socialists” turn bourgeois in ideas when they become bourgeois in the manner of getting their living.

You may answer that these “Socialists” are not Socialists. I offer a similar reply re J. M. Robertson, M.P., etc. Their Atheism has done them no good. The other matter raised in Mr. Le Cart’s article I thoroughly endorse.

Yours truly,

Thomas Reynolls

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The above criticism clearly indicates that the person responsible for it is wholly ignorant of Socialism and consequently associates it with all sorts of concepts which are, in reality, quite foreign to it.

Our correspondent holds that Secularism properly understood is synonymous with Socialism. Not only is that statement delightfully ridiculous in view of the confusion that exists among Secularists in regard to the political aspect of society, but it is untrue.

Secularism merely represents the opinions of people whose observations have been narrowed down to one single aspect of society, viz., the religious one. It stands for “this-worldism” in opposition to the belief in the existence of another world.

Religious ideas, however, being shaped and determined by social conditions, only exist as a product of the particular social system in which they are manifested, and as such are not based at all on the existence of another world. Secularism, therefore, is essentially nothing but a futile negation; it mistakes a shadow for the thing that casts it and, at its best, only comes to the level of other organisations which are out to secure certain reforms while leaving untouched the cause that produces the very evil they profess to eradicate. Thus our correspondent’s attempt to justify atheistic Secularism on the ground that “religion distorts the mind” falls to pieces, for Secularism is itself guilty of inaccurate mental vision. An examination of the written objects of Secularism as it appears in its organised and concrete form clearly shows that it attacks certain superstitions only to replace them with others just as bad and just as reactionary from the point of view of the working class. Nor is there any excuse in the paltry suggestion that it is misunderstood and ill-used by its adherents, for if it leaves room for misunderstanding and ill-usage it stands condemned as a proper means of education and enlightenment.

Now, the reply to the “step-by-step and wait and see” policy of our critic, who says that Socialism stands no chance of being understood while religious influence lasts, is obvious. We submit to him that if it is possible to free the mind from religious ideas without destroying the cause that produces them, then it is even more possible to make that mind at once understand the cause of the trouble and the remedy for it. Success in the first instance would be nothing short of a miracle; in the second it is the result of a clear and simple process of education.

Unlike Secularism, Socialism is not governed by appearances, but explains them. Its policy is the outcome of an analysis of the economic forces which always lie at the base of all social structures, so that it reaches the root from which not only springs the world of ideas, but in which is also to be found the cause of all evil. These economic forces create an antagonism of interests between the few and the many, and it naturally follows that the minds of the many must be misguided if the few are to survive—hence the need for and the use of religious influence so long as that antagonism lasts. The object of Socialism is to destroy this antagonism by substituting common for private ownership of the means of life, and this transformation alone will sound the death-knell of religious influence, for the robbery of the working class will have ceased, and with it the need to subject the mind to misguidance.

Thus Socialism is anti-religious, but to say that it is the logical outcome of Atheism and Secularism is as silly as to expect a mouse to give birth to a mountain.

M. J. Le Cart.

[Rich and Poor]. (1913)

From the October 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists are poor men and women. The opponents of Socialism usually are the rich. Do you not think the men and women of your own class, who must be poor while you are poor, may be as well worth listening to as those who can be rich only so long as you are poor ?

Legal Murder. (1913)

From the October 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

Not so long ago that section of the Press that professes to be democratic and which is generally engaged in whitewashing the Liberal Government, was pretending to be horrified because once again the troops had been used in defence of the sacred property of the bosses on the Rand, Their leader writers were “astounded” that a Liberal Government could countenance the massacre of working men. They “demanded” an “impartial” enquiry into affairs “which caused every decent Britisher to blush with shame at the deeds perpetrated under the British flag.”

And now we have the diabolical outrage repeated—this time nearer home. Not quite so near as Featherstone or Llanelli, Liverpool or London—all of which have been the scenes of events that have no doubt conveniently slipped from the memories of the leader writers—but at Dublin, the green city.

 

* * *

It is not proposed here to reprint the tales of horror which have found such wide publicity through other channels and which must still be fresh in the public mind—the tales of brutal bludgeoning of women and children, and of the murder of unarmed men. Suffice it to say, in the words of a Government supporter :

”Hundreds of people were injured by the police and two men died as a result of injuries received. Women returning from Mass with prayer books in their hands were grossly assaulted by the police; little girls were thrashed by the police; one girl in her teens was dragged through the streets by the hair of her head and beaten by the police; women were dragged out of their beds and beaten while lying nearly naked, by the police. All these charges have been made and repeated by reliable people.”

The “Times” says: “The police deliberately waited for runaways and clubbed them as they ran,” and that “the whole proceedings were monstrous and unnecessary.”

 

* * *

Reliable witnesses testify that no violence was offered by the crowd and that Nolan, one of the murdered men, was trying to get away when he was struck to the ground by a policeman. “As he fell five Dublin Metropolitan police and two Royal Irish Constabulary struck him. When he tried to get on his knees he was beaten again.” A supporter of “law and order”—one who rushed to defend H. H. Asquith, the assassin of Featherstone—Mr. Handel Booth, M.P., says that the police, with pitiless brutality, charged the crowd, which was a perfectly peaceful one.

 

* * *

Radical, ragtime “Reynolds’s” is horrified. “Someone should be charged with murder for this,” it screeched. How innocent! Someone should have been charged with murder on the Rand, and at Featherstone! At Mitchelstown in 1887 the coroner’s jury returned a verdict of wilful murder against the county inspector and three constables. But what happened? The same as will happen in Dublin and at St. Austell in Cornwall; the same as happened at Featherstone.

An enquiry was held into the affair which has made the last mentioned place notorious, which whitewashed all concerned, and—nothing was done. No action was taken by the Government to attach blame to any of its officers.

 

* * *

The explanation is simple. Those in charge are quite prepared to admit that a mistake has been made, but the mistake is not that the people have been slaughtered. Oh, no!—that happens every day in the pursuit of profit. The blunder is that the workers have been suppressed in such a way as to arouse suspicion and distrust.

The workers have been told that the police are out to “keep the ring,” and that the law is for rich and poor alike; but these “incidents” tend to show that the police are maintained to protect private property and the interests of the shareholders of private concerns.

If all that is said is true, those in charge of affairs in Dublin have something to answer for besides which the Marconi ministers’ little deal pales into insignificance. Yet we are still waiting to hear a denial of the statements made by a trade union official, Mr. P. T. Daly, that the magistrate, E. G. Swifte, and chief prosecutor, Sir Patrick Coll, are shareholders in the Dublin United Tramways Company, and are therefore directly concerned in smashing the strike.

 

* * *

These narrow-minded tradesmen and petty officials are always as putty in the hands of the lords and masters of the land, but when their own petty interests are directly at stake, there is nothing too degrading and brutal for them to do. If it be true that the magistrate who proclaimed the meeting and who tried Larkin, together with the Chief Prosecutor for the Crown and the wife of the Under Secretary for Ireland, to say nothing of certain of the Irish Constabulary, are shareholders in the Dublin United Tramway Company; if it be true that any or all of these were directly concerned in the company against which the men were striking, then the “blunder” is easily understood. Their precious dividends were at stake, and they would risk all their hopes of a front seat in heaven for a few dirty pieces of gold.

In any case the position is clear. As in Africa the workers, struggling against adverse circumstances, faced with worsening conditions, strike for some improvement in their miserable lot, and call a public meeting to discuss these matters. “Under the British flag” both these courses are supposed to be legal. The “right” of free speech is, of course, well known. Yet in Dublin as in Africa, these meetings are proclaimed, in the one case by an interested party, and in the other case by a government under the control of the Randlords. Upon the workers attempting to exercise the right they are popularly supposed to possess, a gang of hooligans, trained to murder, are let loose upon them with baton and bullet.

 

* * *

“The proceedings were monstrous and unnecessary.” What a confession! Is it true that they could be monstrous and necessary?

The capitalists exist to exploit. Their only concern with the worker is to rob them. They dabble in company shares to get dividends and dividends they must have at all costs; the toilers are not looked upon as aught else than wealth producers, and immediately they threaten to stop producing profit they must be coerced. Why dodge the fact?

 

* * *

We are in the midst of a class war, of a bitter struggle that can know no cessation until the master class are overthrown. Brute force is the last resort, and to brute force the capitalists turn, knowing full well that they hold the master card in the game. The Socialist did not make the struggle, neither does he desire it. But he does appeal to the toilers to take a lesson from these facts and to remember Dublin and Johannesburg, Peterloo and Mitchelstown, Tonypandy and Featherstone, when next they invited to throw up their caps for the Liberals or any other such murderous crew.

Twel.

Editorial: Socialist face of democracy (1985)

Editorial from the October 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is more — or perhaps we should say less — to the annual conferences of the capitalist political parties than is dreamed of in the razzamatazz of their speeches, orations. voting, receptions and banquets. More — or less — than is to be found in the toadying reports of the media, which insist that what goes on in those seaside halls has some special significance for the working class.

One function of the conferences is to be exercises in public relations (although they have been known to backfire on this score) with speeches timed and measured so as to get maximum coverage in the newspapers and on television. Sometimes the exercise is helped along by a stroke of luck, like Labour's in 1963 when the blatant Tory infighting over the succession to the ailing and battered Macmillan was followed by their own conference posture as the party too busy planning a great future for the British people to immerse themselves in such petty squabbling. Last year, the Tories had the luck when the Brighton bomb, intended to wipe out much of the Cabinet, actually helped revive the government's flagging popularity.

So what are these conferences about? The Tories offer no illusions: their gatherings have only an advisory role and whatever resolutions they carry, the leadership which at present, of course, is the British government — do not need to take any account of them. Naturally, the leadership is happier if the conference avoids embarrassing them and if the impression is given of a warm unity but in any case they rarely have much difficulty in snuffing out any glimmers of dissent. Conservatives seem happy with this, for each year they travel to their conferences in full expectation of participating in numerous standing ovations, for even the most commonplace of speeches, as if prolonged applause is a duty they owe the party. The conferences are also used for publicity-catching statements of policy, or bold defiance of the realities of capitalism. Thatcher's speeches, with their newsworthy slogans, are one example of this-, another was Leon Brittan's promise in 1983 to effectively lengthen the sentences of prisoners who have been convicted of certain types of offences. This speech was rapturously received by the party's hangers and floggers, who left the hall positively flushed with the excitement of an assuaged punishment-lust.

The Labour Party have to pretend that their conferences are different. Many of their members may actually believe (if we are to judge from the excitement they evince at the results of their votes) that their decisions carry some weight and are able to change things. To give just one recent example: a conference vote in favour of unilateral nuclear disarmament convinces the delegates that a Labour government will throw away the British bomb. There is no evidence to support this notion. Even the constitutional changes the Labour Party made a few years ago did not alter the fact that a Labour government of the future will have to act just like those in the past — they will run British capitalism in the interests of its ruling class and. therefore, to the despair of many members of the Labour Party.

The reasons for this are plain. Members of the capitalist parties are not socialists. Some in the Labour Party may describe themselves as socialist but under the thinnest of political skins they are in fact supporters of capitalism. Faced with the socialist proposition of a moneyless society of common ownership in the means of production, of free access to wealth and equal social standing, they may agree that this is a desirable object — but only in the very, very long term. Meanwhile, they must devote their efforts to the futile task of reforming capitalism — which includes passing seductive, meaningless resolutions at their conference.

The membership of the capitalist parties are firmly in support of the leadership principle; they believe their party must be run by a group of people who have a privileged access to information which is concealed from the majority and who hand down decisions and policies for the rest to carry out. Devotion to reformism means support for expediency, of opportunistic response to day-by-day events.

In contrast, the socialist movement presents a comprehensively valid analysis of society. Socialist parties are different because, most importantly, they consist exclusively of workers who have seen exposed, and who have rejected, the futility of reformism and the leadership principle. A socialist party is made up of conscious socialists, who understand capitalism and how socialism will remove the problems of present-day society. They know that nothing less than a democratic socialist revolution will do. Such political consciousness is the death-knell of leadership, for leaders are redundant in the presence of workers who are politically alive.

This gives the conferences of socialist parties an unusual character. First of all, they are fully democratic; from the earliest call for items to be discussed to the final vote the conferences express the wishes of the party membership. The business of our conferences is carried out by members who are strictly mandated by the branches and whose work is subjected to a rigorous vigilance. Unlike the other parties who claim to be socialist, there is no confusion among us about the nature of socialism, nor about the urgent need for an immediate revolution. These facts give our conferences a distinct flavour; they are not occasions for a dominating clique of leaders, or a dictatorial platform. Any worker who doubts these facts can come to a socialist conference to see for themselves.

Which brings us to our final point, our final distinction. All socialist conferences, and all our meetings of whatever kind, are completely open to anyone who wants to attend. We do not know the practice of withdrawing into a secret session to discuss some issue which we are afraid to let see the light of day. We know that an organisation which has secrets, which reserves some of its information to an exclusive élite , cannot be democratic and cannot therefore be socialist.

So any worker who is concerned about the perilous condition of human society and who is weary and disillusioned with the remedies offered by the capitalist parties should consider the alternative of the socialist movement. We are free and democratic and our members stand as equals because that is how it will be in the socialist society which we are organised to bring into being

Running Commentary: Death throes? (1985)

The Running Commentary column from the October 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Death throes?

As the killings in South Africa continue, the question must be — is this apartheid's last spasm of life?

Prime Minister Botha is faced with a massive problem. On the one hand the system of racial discrimination which his government is pledged to maintain and to develop into the establishment of separate states for blacks and whites is clearly in conflict with the demands of South Africa's expanding capitalist economy. A recent report by a quasi-governmental body condemned apartheid as obsolete and warned of the need for the government to act positively in the matter in the near future. According to some reports. Botha himself is aware that this is true.

This reality is slowly being accepted among even sections of the Afrikaaner population, which is a developing section of the capitalist class, impatient with the obstacles which apartheid must place in the way of profitability. Concessions have already been made and more must follow soon; in particular the government may recognise the need for an authentic negotiator for the Africans.

But the very concession of reforms, such as the recognition of black trade unions, the abolition of the ban on inter-racial marriage and sex and the plans to give South African citizenship to the blacks, can itself be a weakening factor for the government. This is all too obvious to some National Party supporters, who view Botha's attempted appeasement of the protest movement with angry contempt and who may turn their support to even more extreme racist policies in an effort to stem the tide of reform. So Botha is trying to ride a tiger — the ferocious animal of racist bigotry which his party whipped into action in the first place.

The situation now is that, paradoxically, many South African capitalists have political views described as to the "left" of the government. For the South African white workers. this is a time for decisions which their bigotry promises to make extremely painful for them. If or perhaps it should be when the black movement wins, a new sort of reality will emerge which in many ways will be as difficult as the present. There will be yet another rising capitalist state in Africa where the ruling class is dominantly black. The workers, whatever their skin colour, will have exchanged one set of exploiters for another.

Vultures

As if they had not suffered enough already, the survivors of the Manchester airport disaster were immediately subjected to the additional stress of the vulture-like attention of eminent persons such as Prince Charles (trying to prove that the royal family are a useful, caring influence in society); Margaret Thatcher (trying to win. or perhaps recover, some votes); and Manchester's Chief Constable James Anderton (of whom the less said the better).

These migrants were soon followed by another species, also seeking to prey on the victims' distress, as lawyers descended on Manchester and set up shop in the hope of handling claims against the airlines. From Philadelphia came Jim Pearce, countered by Manchester's own Rodger Pannone. Generous Malcolm Mason put an advertisement in a Sheffield newspaper inviting reverse-charge calls from anyone willing to let his New York firm handle their claims for damages. Naturally, the lawyers asserted that they were all acting in the victims' best interests; money, they reason, does not bring back the dead but it does an awful lot to soothe the grief of the bereaved. In the form of commission on a successful law suit, it also injects a healthy blush into a balance sheet.

But these were not the only vultures involved in this tragedy. Holiday charter aircraft are crammed with passengers; if this were not so, the operators say, the business would not be profitable — and the trade is savagely competitive. The extra seats mean narrower aisles in the aircraft, which means a more difficult, slower exit in an emergency.

British Airways (the World's Favourite Airline, say Saatchi and Saatchi) have taken the matter further than this. They have blocked some of the exits on some of their aircraft to make way for more seats. Then there is the matter of the materials used in the seating, which in most cases is little better than deadly in a fire. There is a flame-retardant covering available but this at present costs quite a bit more than the present stuff, which brings the airlines up against the demands of profit again.

Finally, the aircraft themselves are worked to their limits, to schedules designed to extract the maximum of profit from them. Servicing intervals must be crammed into these demands. Even after the disaster at Manchester, a representative of the Federal Aviation Administration announced that checks on the suspect engines would have to . . coincide with airline maintenance and flying schedules".

It might be some consolation to the people who died in the fire, and to their families and friends, to know that they died to keep a schedule, to protect the profits of the airlines and the holiday operators. The drive for profit allows no peace for human beings, alive or dead.

On the rampage

It is by now an established routine that after each inner-city riot, such as that last month in Handsworth, the experts run amok brandishing their theories, explanations and remedies.

Some Labour politicians attribute the riots to the effects of unemployment and therefore, by implication, to Thatcher's policies. The left wing put the blame onto heavy-handed police techniques and argue that the remedy is a democratically accountable police force, ignoring the fact that the police are already accountable to the class whose interests they exist to protect — the capitalists.

Blacks are certain that it is all caused by racial discrimination and offer the policy of "smashing" racism, which usually means substituting one type of repression for another, with little to choose between them. The police — and most Tories — insist that the riots are matters of simple criminality, of the perverse drive of a minority to disrupt what is called civilised life. Their remedy, pronounced with varying degrees of ghoulish thrill, is harsher punishment and more of it.

All of these are agreed on one thing. There must be An Enquiry To Get To The Bottom Of It. When the Enquiry has reported and all the experts have read the report we shall be able to re-organise things so that it never happens again.

It is all as if history never happened, as if Handsworth has not already suffered a riot, as if St. Pauls, Brixton, Toxteth are places where peace has reigned undisturbed. Is it really necessary to go through all this agony, just to get a visit from a cabinet minister and the promise of a few new buildings, a few square yards of grassland, a few trees planted?

The flaw which is shared by all the arguments of the "experts" is that they are based on a superficial view of society and its problems. All of them presume that a social system based on the class ownership of the means of life is logical, efficient and pretty well eternal. This might be all very well except that this system must throw up social ailments which will come to some very nasty crises.

Capitalism separates the majority of people from access to the means of life except as employees, workers for a wage. It denies them access to wealth except as buyers; however much we need it we can't get hold of anything without in some way paying for it.

One result of this is that the majority of people are in a state of alienation — from their employment, from their environment, from their human prospects. This alienation is at its most acute where poverty is deepest, in the grimmer places of working-class life such as inner city areas whose grime, slums and apathy are material expressions of frustration.

Capitalism cannot be a society of harmony.

Blogger's Note:

The November 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard carried an article by Ron Cook on the recent riots in Handsworth and, also, his memories of growing up in Handsworth in the 1930s.

Labour's bloody war record (1985)

From the October 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

War is mass murder, made glorious by legality and respectable by morality. Our century has seen more deaths from war than any other; it has witnessed the sophistication of the instruments of mass destruction to a point where total human annihilation is not a deranged fear, but a prospect ever more probable. Surrounded by the wounded of past battles and the cries of the present victims of military competition, workers in 1985 look towards the future in the knowledge that the next big war could be the last one. Clichéd an observation as it has become, we are on the brink of destruction.

The urgent task before us is to avoid another war not just a nuclear war or a world war. but any war. The only way to make war impossible is to destroy its cause: the system of society in which production is for sale on the market with a view to profit and in which the endless competition between companies and nations over markets, trade routes and raw materials inevitably breaks out into violent conflict. It is the worldwide profit system which makes war necessary and that hideous necessity will never be eradicated while capitalism is left intact. That is why the only genuine anti-war party is the Socialist Party; and why all parties which stand for capitalism are pro-war parties.

Does Labour stand for war?

Certainly, the Labour Party did not set out to become a pro-war party. When it was formed in 1906 its founders, like many Labourites today, thought the Labour Party possessed the moral strength and reforming zeal required to make wars impossible under Labour governments. It was to be the party of peace and many doubtlessly sincere workers gave it their support, having witnessed the miserable slaughter which British militarism had inflicted on the working class in the nineteenth century. Here was to be a party which, when elected to form a government, would refuse to support the old imperial policies. The Tories and the Liberals had led the workers to the trenches for the sake of enriching the capitalists; Labour was for peace. "The Army and Navy do not exist to defend working people" stated Labour MP. Philip Snowden, in the House of Commons in June 1913. Ten years later the ILP’s Socialist Programme was adopted, stating that as soon as there was a Labour government it would "take the initiative in making positive proposals for immediate universal disarmament" According to Snowden, this would be achieved by a Labour government negotiating "a general reduction of armaments. leading to universal disarmament". (If Labour Rules, 1923.)

Within a year of those promises the Labour Party was elected to office as a minority government. At last it had the chance to show workers what it meant by peace policies.

Labour and the Great War

Before turning to the war record of the first Labour government. let us recall the role of the Labour Party in 1914 when British workers were called to sacrifice themselves in a war which even most modern historians recognise to have been over nothing but capitalist economic interests. As a party which was "for peace" did Labour urge workers not to fight? On the contrary, no sooner had the war been declared than the Labour Party placed itself "at the disposal of the Government in their recruiting campaign' (Labour Leader, 3 September 1914.) Later in the war. in an interview with the Manchester Guardian, W.F. Purdy declared that

As Chairman of the EC of the Labour Party I am not going to meet or sit in conference with the representatives of the enemy countries while we are at war. I mean to carry out the policy of British Labour as laid down by our representative gathering. That policy is to pursue the war to a successful termination, which means to a complete victory over the enemy. (7 June 1917.)

That was the policy of the so-called peace party when its credentials were put to the test: it wanted the war to be won by the capitalists of Britain at the cost of the lives of the fighting workers. And Labour's leaders lost no time in recruiting workers to the cause of killing other members of their class. Arthur Henderson, the Labour member of the war-time government, contributed an article to The Times Recruiting Supplement in which he wrote:

A clarion call has been sounded, the nation's imperative and essential need has been proclaimed. and under the leadership of the Sovereign the young manhood of our country is generously responding and volunteering for national service ... (3 November 1915.)

Keir Hardie not only addressed meetings to recruit workers to the killing organisation, but urged workers at home to work with a greater sense of dedication to the country:

A nation at war must be united . . With the boom of the enemy's guns within earshot the lads who have gone forth to fight their country's battles must not be disheartened by any discordant note at home (Merthyr Pioneer, 14 August 1914.)

George Lansbury, who made a great noise about being a pacifist before the war began, refused to print any anti war letters or resolutions in the Daily Herald. And Ramsay MacDonald who was described in a recent public debate by Richard Balfe MEP as the leading Labourite to oppose the First World War. wrote a letter to the Mayor of Leicester stating that

Should an opportunity arise to enable me to appeal to the pure love of country which I know is a precious sentiment in all our hearts I shall gladly take that opportunity. If need be I shall make it for myself. 1 want the serious men of the Trade Union, the Brotherhood, and similar movements to face their duty To such men it is enough to say "England has need of you". (Daily Chronicle. 14 August 1914.)

Which is not quite the same as saying "Workers of all lands unite ". In 1914 the Labour Party acquired its first bloodstain. Those who recruit workers to kill and die are no less culpable for the consequences of such action than the most dedicated warmonger-. at least the red. white and blue Tory nationalists did not pretend to be advocates of peace and socialism.

The first Labour government

Before forming a government, the Labour Party adhered vaguely to the contention that war could only be abolished by ending the social system which is its cause. In The Labour Leader of 14 December 1916 Ramsay MacDonald wrote that an "order from which war issues as an inevitable offspring has to be destroyed before we have satisfactory guarantee of peace". But MacDonald and his party did not understand the nature of the order which necessitates war (capitalism) and therefore ended up running it. MacDonald appointed Lord Thomson as Air Minister and. so successful was his work as organiser of British militarism, that his Tory successor, Sir Samuel Hoare, made a speech six days after the defeat of the Labour government in which he could state:

The citizens of London can rest assured that the air defence of these shores is substantially better than it was twelve months ago. (Speech at London Guildhall, 10 November 1924.)

It has been argued by apologists for the Labour Party that those first two governments were not real Labour governments because they only had a minority in the Commons. Having a minority of MPs is no excuse whatsoever for doing the dirty work of running capitalism's war machine. Supposing for one moment that the minority of Labour MPs had been socialists, it would have been quite possible for them to refuse to vote in favour of any military expenditure to disrupt in every way possible any parliamentary efforts to strengthen or preserve the war machine. This is what a minority of socialist MPs would no doubt do if they found themselves elected to parliament before a majority of workers have opted for socialism. But the Labour Party’s opportunism led them to abandon their verbal commitment to peace and to administer that "order from which war issues as an inevitable offspring".

World War Two and after

In 1939 Britain went to war, not for democracy or to save the Jews from persecution by the Nazis (if the former was the reason it was odd that Britain’s ally was Stalinist Russia. and if the latter it is strange that the British government had been so willing to tolerate Nazism for six years), but to protect British markets, trade routes and raw materials against expansion by the Fascist powers. Speaking in the House of Commons on 9 June 1939, Labour MP Manny Shinwell stated the real reason for the war cry:

Clearly the Government must make up their minds what is their objective in relation to foreign trade. Is it to capture our lost markets, no matter where they are . . . or are we to allow Germany . . to prevent this country from re-establishing herself in foreign markets?

It was an economic war over who got what that is to say, which set of national capitalists. For workers the war was unworthy of support. But, like in 1914, the Labour leaders were ever ready to act as recruiting sergeants for British capitalism.

After the war had wasted the lives of millions of workers who owned and controlled no markets, contrary to Shinwell's possessive adjectives, a Labour government was elected with Clement Attlee as Prime Minister. In the Daily Herald on 19 May 1945 Attlee was reported as stating that "We can prevent war; we can abolish poverty". The claim that the Labour government could abolish poverty has been shown to be ridiculous. But what of its promise to prevent war?

In 1945 Attlee sent a Labour observer to the atomic bombing of Japan There is no evidence of any government effort to prevent this barbaric act. Attlee commented:

. . . the use of the atom bomb at Hiroshima brought the war to a sudden end. It was, of course, an immense relief. (As It Happened, p.150.)

Over 100,000 workers dead and the Labour Prime Minister felt "immense relief". Then Attlee’s government commenced work on producing a British atomic bomb. The British atomic/nuclear programme was not initiated by the wicked Tories, but by the "peace-loving" Labourites. How flattered the Labour MPs must have been when, on 24 October 1952, after the Tories had defeated Labour in a general election. Winston Churchill stated in the House of Commons:

All those concerned in the production of the first British atomic bomb are to be warmly congratulated on the successful outcome of an historic episode and I should no doubt pay my compliments to the Leader of the Opposition and the party opposite for initiating it. 

Every member of the Labour Party in 1985 should consider that compliment seriously.

The Labour government helped to set up the NATO alliance, which has since become one of the two major war organisations in the modern world (the other being the Warsaw Pact). In recent years, despite Labour Party pretensions to becoming a more peace-loving party, every time British participation in the NATO murder machine has been questioned at Labour Party conferences there has been an overwhelming majority in favour of retaining British membership.

In order to support its militarist policies the Attlee government increased armaments expenditure from £692 million in 1948 to over £1 billion in 1951. In 1938, in the heat of war preparations, there were 380,000 members of the armed forces; by 1951 there were over 700,000. If, as we have quoted Snowden as saying, "the army and navy do not exist to defend working people", it does not require much intelligence to see that Labour's increase in the cost and size of Britain's army and navy was in order to benefit the non-working class — the capitalists.

Far from preventing war, the Attlee government positively supported it. They gave military support to the Dutch capitalists in their war to retain possession of Indonesia. In the House of Commons on 18 February 1947, the Labour Minister of War, Fred Bellenger, stated:

Arms of the appropriate nature were provided for Dutch units in Indonesia on a normal basis for a force numbering 62,000. We are in the process of providing similar arms for a further 19,000 Dutch troops.

Similarly, the Attlee government played its full part in the Korean bloodbath, with Labour Minister Herbert Morrison, stating that entering the war "was the only way to preserve peace" (The Times, 3 July 1950). The same government was the first in Britain to impose peace-time conscription.

Unlike in 1924 and 1929. the 1945-51 Labour government could not fall back on the excuse that it was a minority government. They had a big majority and quite intentionally carried out their appalling war policies. By 1951 any worker in any doubt about Labour’s pro-war stance had nothing to blame but self-imposed historical blindness. Whatever other claims they might want to make, the Labour Party could no longer pretend to be any less bloody in the pursuit of capitalist competition than their Tory rivals. To blame but self-imposed historical blindness. Whatever other claims they might want to make, the Labour Party could no longer pretend to be any less bloody in the pursuit of capitalist competition than their Tory rivals.

Labour as an efficient party of war

We need not waste much space on the Wilson-Callaghan Labour governments (1964-70 and 1974-79). Even Labour's most naive idealists make few claims for the "socialist" nature of these governments. If in the 1920s Labour's war policies could be blamed on the government's minority status, and in the 1940s they could claim to be inexperienced, by the age of Harold Wilson the Labour Party had become no more or less than a party out to serve capitalism, but to serve it better than the Tories. By the 1960s Labourites were not shocked when their party initiated horrific war policies this is what they expected and anyone who refused to endorse war could have nothing to do with supporting the government. Many Labourites got into the habit of disowning Labour's war policy — they were for Labour, but "we don't support the nasty bits; we are working for a left-wing leadership which will make labour against war".

This is a wholly untenable position. Firstly, one cannot support actively the election of a government and then disown it when it gets its hands dirty with working-class blood. To do so is like collecting funds for the IRA and then disassociating oneself from the bombing of pubs full of workers. Those who feed the beast are culpable for those it slays. Secondly, there is no way that a so-called left-wing leadership of the Labour Party will be any different from previous ones. A party which is going to run the system, which means dancing to the tune of the British capitalists, cannot ignore the defence of their master s capital. That is why Michael Foot, veteran CNDer, became leader of the Labour Party, feeding thousands of Labour leftists with the hope that he would lead his party away from war and then proceeded to play down his party's semi-anti-nuclear policy and make endless statements during the 1983 general election about how a Labour government would be fully committed to NATO and all the old war policies. Again, that master of opportunist compromise. Neil Kinnock, has made it plain that all of his leftist posturing in the past will count for nothing if ever he is given the chance to serve the capitalist class as their Prime Minister.

The Wilson governments supported the American capitalists in their war in Vietnam. After the Pinkville Massacre George Brown, then Labour s deputy leader, declared that "the Americans should stop weeping and get on with the Vietnam war". (Evening Standard, 21 November 1969.) It was Callaghan. as a minister under Wilson, who intensified the war in Ireland by sending British troops there, thus giving sectarians the perfect reason to take up arms and recruit members to. the cause of violence. And it was the last Labour government which developed the British nuclear submarine programme — doing so without even taking the matter to parliament. Today Labour can be seen as an efficient party of war. Should it come to power again few generals will be contemplating the need for a military coup: the honoured killers of the British armed forces now know that Labour is a party with which they can work quite well. Indeed, it is an irony that the policy of the Labour Left is to expand the conventional armed forces — of the kind used during the Falkland war, which almost every Labour MP supported — and to attack the Tories for running down Britain’s military arsenal. For example, the Labour Party is pledged to expand the British navy; when the Chatham naval dockyards were closed down Labour MPs were attacking the Thatcher government for being traitors. This supports a comment made by an American political journalist in the New York Times in April 1963:

Labour's main point of difference with the Conservative government is a feeling that Britain is not making sufficient contribution to NATO in conventional terms.

Is it not at least possible that some of the millionaires who are making their profits out of armaments manufacture are hoping for another Labour government?

The hard fact which must be laced by Labourites is that they will never eradicate war and the grotesque preparations for it without making war unnecessary. While there is capitalism war is necessary and bombs will not be banned in response to the chants of the pious. The question which should be on the minds of all Labour Party supporters is: Is it worth supporting a party which has repeatedly participated in the killing business in the hope that its rhetoric will drown out experience, or is it urgent to throw aside the dogmas of Labourism for the sake of doing some serious, conscious organising to get rid of the system which will destroy us if we do not destroy it first?

Steve Coleman

Apartheid the background (1985)

From the October 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following article first appeared as a chapter in our pamphlet The Problem of Racism: A Socialist Analysis that we published in 1966. We republish it today not only because it outlines the historical background to the situation in South Africa but also because recent events there bear out our analysis that apartheid, far from being in the interests of the South African capitalist class, was an attempt to go against the logic of the capitalist system and so doomed to collapse sooner or later.

A number of changes — all in the same direction — have occurred since the article was written: the virtual disappearance of the industrial colour bar, the legalisation and recognition of African trade unions, the emergence of the Progressive Federal Party as the main white opposition party in place of the United Party, the admission of Coloureds and Indians to some, albeit a paltry, say in national political matters, the abolition of the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act. All these changes represent victories for the logic of capitalism — "the market is colour blind", or better "exploitation is colour blind" — over the system of apartheid. And now sections of the South African capitalist class are calling for negotiations with African nationalists to bring about political reform.

The present population of the Republic of South Africa are descendants of people who came from many parts of Africa. Europe and Asia. The latest census figures, those of 1960. show that out of a population of 16 million some 11 million (68 per cent) are Bantu or Africans. 3 million (19 per cent) Whites. 1 l/z million (10 per cent) Coloureds and nearly half a million (3 per cent) Asians, mainly Indians. The principal race problem arises over the relations between Whites and non-Whites, especially the Africans, though this is not the only race problem as the African anti-Indian riots in Durban in 1949 show.

White people first came to South Africa in 1652 when the Dutch East India Company established a post at the Cape. Settlers, mainly Dutch, came not long after. Within a few years slavery was also introduced. The original Hottentot people were not actually enslaved but were reduced to a servile status by various laws which forced them to work for the Whites. The slaves in South Africa came from many places: West and East Africa. Madagascar. India. Ceylon, Malaya. In the early days there was much intermarrying between Whites and Hottentots and slaves and eventually emerged the group now known as the Cape Coloureds. In the 150 years after the original settlement a pattern emerged: the whites were the masters and people of colour the servants. This colour division marked off groups that were almost castes, and the habit of thought became deeply rooted and still survives. In this period there was a self- sufficient pastoral economy with sheep and cattle farming, which required wide ranges of land and led to expansion inland. But as the White farmers or Boers moved inland they met Bantu tribes coming in from the north for much the same reasons. There were clashes, the first major one being that of 1779.

A further complication was introduced in 1806 when the British government finally acquired control of the area from the Dutch. The new governors tried to introduce an efficient governmental machine by streamlining taxation, the law courts, land registration. etc. They also interfered with the traditional master-servant relationship. In 1828 the Coloureds were given the same legal status as Whites and, in 1834, the slaves were freed. In 1820 the first immigrants from Britain arrived. As a result of these measures many Boers, together with their servants, moved inland in the Great Trek and away from British rule setting up the two Republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. As the Boers advanced they came increasingly into conflict with the Bantu tribes, and generally, but not always, the Boers triumphed. In doing so they did not drive the Bantu back before them; these Africans were reduced to being landless squatters and labourers on European held land. Denied access to the land the Africans became entirely dependent on their Boer masters. In 1877 the British government intervened, annexing the Transvaal and setting up Native Reserves. After a revolt four years later the Boers achieved independence under British sovereignty. The Orange Free State was now also independent, the territory having been first annexed by the British in 1848 and abandoned six years later.

The Indians were introduced into South Africa in the 1860s as indentured labourers on the sugar plantations of Natal. When their contracts expired many stayed on while others came of their own accord.

In 1867 occurred the discovery of diamonds which was to transform the South African economy. It was not long before diamond mining fell into the hands of big capitalists like Cecil Rhodes. The independent diggers were reduced to wage-workers; skilled workers were introduced from Europe and America, while the unskilled work was done by Africans. When gold was discovered in the Transvaal 17 years later the same pattern emerged: whites got the skilled high-wage jobs and blacks the unskilled low-wage jobs. This was not purely a matter of discrimination as the whites were the more skilled but eventually the pattern became fixed. The caste division of the farm was introduced into industry.

The coming of capitalism to South Africa had a serious effect on the self-sufficient pastoral communities of the Boers. In the Transvaal under President Kruger they did all they could to prevent capitalism breaking up their way of life. In the end it came to war in 1899. This war, which lasted for three years, was a classic imperialist war with gold as the prize for British imperialism. Although the Boer Republics were incorporated on equal terms into the Union of South Africa in 1909, anti-British, anti-imperialist Afrikaner Nationalism survived.

The advent of capitalism not only had its effect on the Africans, turning many into urban wage-workers, but had a similar effect on the Boers. Many became landless themselves, reduced like the Africans to being squatters on European-held land. After the first world war many drifted to the towns creating a poor white’ problem. Unlike the workers who had been imported into the diamond and gold mines these Whites were unskilled and unused to industrial discipline; left to compete with Africans on equal terms they would have been reduced to the level of destitution of the Africans. The government adopted various measures to deal with this problem. One of these measures was the extension of the industrial Colour Bar. Some skilled and semi-skilled jobs were legally barred to Africans. Jobs were reserved for Whites in the State-run railways and public services.

Striking by Africans had been a criminal offence since 1911. The pass laws, the beginnings of residential segregation and other restrictions date from this period. In 1936 the African voters on the Cape Province electoral roll were removed to a separate roll. The various inter-war governments were, in effect, trying to protect white society’ from the effects of capitalism. In other words, the pre-industrial farm ideology of the Whites as masters and Blacks as servants was surviving and reacting on capitalism. At the time most of the capitalist class were prepared to go along with this policy as segregation and the colour bar were not pursued in a systematic fashion but were a series of patchwork measures not ruling out change in the future. Some did protest. They protested at State interference in the market. They pointed out how wasteful and unprofitable it was to deny Africans access to skilled jobs. They protested at having to pay wages on a colour basis rather than on the quality of the labour-power.

The capitalists and their economists took the same orthodox liberal line as does W.H. Hutt in his "The Economics of the Colour Bar’’, published in 1964. In a chapter entitled "The Market is Colour-Blind”. Hutt puts the capitalist case against colour and other forms of prejudice quite plainly.- "When we buy a product in the free market, we do not ask: What was the colour of the person who made it? Nor do we ask about the sex, race, nationality, religion or political opinions of the producer. All we are interested in is whether it is good value for money" (page 173).

The present Afrikaner Nationalist government was first elected in May 1948 with a race policy of preserving the domination of the white people come what may. The somewhat haphazard segregationist policies of previous governments was succeeded by a policy of ruthless apartheid, social and political. While previous governments had preferred mainly to rely on custom to separate the races’, the Nationalists believed in using the law and the full power of the State machine. In implementing their policies the Nationalist government, amid protests from the conservative opposition United Party, has shown scant regard for the traditional parliamentary procedure or for academic freedom or for established civil liberties. The so-called Communist Party was banned in 1950.

The names of the Acts passed since 1948 show the pattern of apartheid: Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, Population Registration Act, Group Areas Act. In 1956 the Coloureds were removed from the Cape Province electoral roll as the Africans had been 20 years previously. Other acts provided for a separate, inferior education for Africans, encouraged tribalism and restored the powers of the chiefs in the reserves. The Bantu Self-Government Act of 1959 provided for the establishment of so-called Bantustans. The first of these has been in the Transkei where elections took place in 1963.

The Nationalists have enforced their policy with a logic that is sometimes cruel and sometimes ridiculous, as in the reported case of the bleaching of two Chinese women before moving them to a White hospital ward — or perhaps not so ridiculous as when Japanese are classified as White so as not to embarrass visiting Japanese businessmen. Today the non-Whites live apart from the Whites; are provided with separate entrances, park benches, buses, railway compartments, schools, beaches, etc. The African is given an education which does not allow him to compete on equal terms with Whites in the labour market; he is forbidden to strike; his trade unions are not recognised; he has to carry a degrading pass and is always subject to the petty arrogance of the police. By and large the non-White, and especially the African, is inferior socially, economically and politically. This policy has not been enforced without resistance.

In 1952 a large-scale civil disobedience campaign ended in violent rioting — in 1956 began the notorious Treason Trials. In 1960 at an anti-pass laws demonstration at Sharpeville police opened fire on an unarmed crowd killing and wounding many. The provisions of the Suppression of Communism Acts have been freely applied against all advocates of racial equality. Other Acts, such as the Sabotage Act. have made great inroads into traditional civil liberties.

In South Africa a government deriving its inspiration and programme from the racial attitudes of a pre-industrial society is trying to force a policy of racial separation on an economy which is becoming increasingly dependent on non-European labour. Today it is no longer only a primary producer of diamonds and gold; it has also developed other secondary industries. In both mining and other industries the bulk of the workers are non-White, and these make up the majority of the population of most of the large cities. A permanent non-White urban factory proletariat has been created.

The tendency of capitalism everywhere is to reduce all previous social divisions to the one great division between owners and non-owners of the means of production and distribution. In South Africa it is working against the traditional white/non-white caste division. The Nationalist government is trying to prevent this effect of capitalism working itself out. The capitalist class itself appears to be perturbed at the restrictions that apartheid places on its profit-making activities; it wants to pay wages according to skills not skin colour; it wants to train Africans as skilled workers to meet the acute and ever-growing shortage of skilled labour in South Africa (indeed there is evidence that non-whites are already illegally doing jobs reserved for whites).

This appears to be happening also on the State-run railways and in the public services. The Times (23 November 1964), under the headlines 'Manpower shortage causes breach in apartheid: job reservation by colour unworkable', reported that as a result of shortages "and apparently with the tacit approval of the Cabinet — non-White labour is beginning to infiltrate into these public services. The railway colour bar has already been breached in Durban where non-Whites (mainly Indian) are being employed in semi-skilled work. They are to do rivet-heating and coach-washing, jobs formerly reserved for white staff'. Others "are already employed on shunting operations without either official approval or protest".

In 1959 a number of leading capitalists broke with the opposition United Party because of its ineffectual opposition to apartheid and formed their own Progressive Party with the slogan merit not colour'. Unfortunately for them the White, mainly Afrikaans, working class is solidly behind the Nationalists. Should the Progressives or the more radical Liberals triumph then the main effect would be to simplify the class situation in South Africa. Pre-industrial caste attitudes would be pushed aside and the working class (of all colours and races) would stand opposed to the capitalist class (of all colours and races). In this respect a class of wealthy Indians has long been in existence; wealthy Africans are also beginning to appear. Thus the ground would be cleared for the final struggle between these two classes.

The present policy is a bid to preserve the values and attitudes of the old agricultural order. Afrikaner Nationalism tried once before to hold back capitalism when gold was discovered in the Transvaal; they failed that time — and. soon or later — they will fail this time too. By trying to divide the Africans through tribalism, by building up vast internal security forces and by repressive legislation the Nationalists may ward off the inevitable for a time. But sooner or later apartheid will go; the question is when and how. Although the Progressives and Liberals still hope for a peaceful solution, many of the African Nationalists have come to accept that violence is the only way. In any event capitalism must triumph in South Africa, peacefully or violently.

Blogger's Note:

As mentioned previously on the blog, sadly, the text of this pamphlet is not on the SPGB website. I'm not sure what happened.