Answer to Correspondent: Equal Rewards to Unequal Persons (1937)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

Equal Rewards to Unequal Persons

H. W. Henderson (Glasgow).—The assumption on which your questions rest is not correct. Socialists do not claim that “the worker is entitled to the full product of his labour." With cooperation in production and the sub-division of labour it is seldom that we can know what is the full product of a worker's labour. Even if it were possible to know, the worker could not have the full product of his labour if the means of production are to be replaced and extended. It is quite true that the capacities of individuals vary, but if it is “unjust" for the man with big output to have no greater reward than the man with small output this may be due to physique and health. Would you call it "just’’ that the small and weak should be penalised because they cannot keep up with their more fortunate fellows? You say that some superior capacities are the result of self-development through years of effort. Leaving aside for the present the knotty question of the claim of such individuals to be rewarded, how are you going to get over the practical difficulty of distinguishing between the man whose large output comes without effort and the man whose large output comes only with great effort. Surely it would be "unjust" on your argument to reward them equally?

It is for these and other reasons that Socialists stand by the principle "From each according to his abilities: to each according to his needs," but we have never supposed that it could be applied in Russia or anywhere else where the productive forces were insufficiently developed and where the population was still saturated with capitalist prejudices.

We will return to this subject in the near future and deal with your points more fully.

Ed. Comm.

Answer to Correspondent: Distribution Under Socialism, Why Money Will Not Be Needed (1937)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

Distribution Under Socialism, Why Money Will Not Be Needed

P. P. M. (W.1).—See article “This Money Business," " S.S.," February, 1934, and reply to question "Socialism and Motor Cars," October, 1934. In the near future we will have something more on this question. Ed. Comm.

SPGB Meetings (1937)

Party News from the October 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

It's interesting to note that a C. Umpleby was listed as a SPGB contact in Leeds during this period. I'm sure there was a Dave Umpleby who was active in the SPGB in South Yorkshire during the 1990s and 2000s. I wonder if they were related? Umpleby can't be that common a name.

East Ham Outdoor Propaganda (1937)

Party News from the October 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

'Edkins' was George Edkins, who joined the West Ham Branch of the SPGB in January 1928 and was a member of the SPGB for over fifty years. According to his obituary from the November 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard, he was known to be active at indoor and outdoor meetings during this period.

General Open Air Propaganda (1937)

Party News from the October 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

Unlike the SPGB Lecture Lists from the pre-WW1 era, this speaking list unfortunately doesn't carry the speakers' forename initials, so it is too difficult to work out who the more obscure speakers are. 

For example, down the decades there's been quite a few Walkers in the SPGB, so I can't be sure who this Walker is who is listed. 'Otto' was most likely a pseudonym and I don't have any info on 'Nesbit', but they must have been viewed as an able Party speaker if they were speaking on the party platform in Hyde Park on a Sunday. That platform always drew the mass crowds. 'Reginald' was the party name of Augustus Snellgrove.

'Banks' was probably Jimmy Banks, who was an SPGBer active in South London, and Rushcroft Road was a speaking pitch in Brixton. He originally joined the Battersea Branch of the SPGB during World War One, and passed away in late 1966. His obituary appeared in the February 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard.

Voice From The Back: A young worker speaks (2004)

The Voice From The Back Column from the October 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

A young worker speaks

“To Prime Minister Tony Blair, My name is Maxine Gentle and I am 14 years old. I am the sister of Fusilier Gordon Gentle who died in the war in Iraq on the 28th June 2004. I want my thoughts and feelings to be heard and known. My feelings are that I think you are rubbish at your job. You don’t care about the British public, armed forces or anybody in fact. My big brother died at the age of 19 and what for? A war over oil and money, that’s what I think the war is all about . . . It is okay for you sitting there with all your money and power, ruining people’s lives by the decisions YOU make . . . All you and your new best friend care about is Iraq’s oil . . .” (Independent, 20 August). Maxine is a young worker who has seen through a lot of capitalism’s propaganda, but she is wrong about Tony Blair. He is not rubbish at his job, he is very good at it. His job is to support capitalism and to convince wage slaves that it is in their interests to support it too. Gordon and his family are victims of this deception.

The dignity of labour (1)

The recent British Airways industrial dispute about sick leave highlighted how some firms interviewed staff who had been on sick leave to discover if they were genuine or not. The worst example of this degrading practice we have come across was reported in the City Diary column in the Times (25 August). “A reader tells me that Sainsbury’s has put his 60 year old mother-in-law through a return-to-work interview three times in the past year, after her absence for a hip replacement, cancer tests and the removal of part of a breast. The lady in question is understandably perturbed, especially as she has worked at the checkout for 20 years with an unblemished record.”  This could be your mother, are you happy with this set up?

The dignity of labour (2)

The journalist Sarah Ryle reports on another charming practice that our master’s have dreamed up for us. “Lidl, the German discount retailer with UK stores, ordered its Czech female workers to wear arm bands during menstruation (there’s no nice way of putting that). According to an August edition of German trade retail magazine Lebensmittelzeitung, local managers decided it was the only way to be sure that women were not taking unnecessary loo breaks. Women with arm bands could go as often as they liked, instead of waiting for the official breaks . . .” (Observer, 5 September).  The capitalist class, who rule our lives, now want to regulate our bladders. Wake up, fellow workers. 

Back in the USA

There is no doubt that the USA is the most developed capitalist country in the world today, but that doesn’t stop many of its citizens living miserable, poverty stricken lives, as the following figures from official US government sources show. “The Census Bureau announced that the number of people living in poverty – individuals earning $9,573 or families of four living on $18,660 or less – had risen to 35.8 million, or 12.5 percent, up from 34.5 million or 12.1 percent in 2002” (Times, 27 August).

Water scandal

It says much for the insanity of capitalism that at the same time as a bottle of water in a St. Tropez club can sell for £16 a bottle (see August Socialist Standard) a charity called WaterAID can launch a TV ad appealing for £2 a month to deal with the problem of children dying from lack of clean water According to them: “Every 15 seconds a child dies from lack of clean water . . . by the time this ad is over another 6 children will have died” (ITV Advertisement, 3 September). Inside world socialism such obscenities will be impossible.

Editorial: The European Social Forum (2004)

Editorial from the October 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the middle of this month several tens of thousands of people will assemble in London for the 3rd European Social Forum (ESF). They will come from all over Europe, and perhaps further afield, to discuss how to make the world a better place and how to achieve “global social justice for all”. In a series of workshops and seminars they will talk about a different world and how to bring it about. With the help of hundreds of volunteer translators and interpreters it will be a truly multilingual and multinational gathering. But will it really be a success and will it accomplish what the organisers and participants want?

   

Previous forums have been held in Florence and Paris, growing out of the World Social Forum held originally in Porto Alegre, Brazil. In 2001 the WSF adopted a Charter of Principles, parts of which are not bad. The first principle, for instance, states that the WSF is for organisations which “are opposed to neoliberalism and to domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism, and are committed to building a global society of fruitful relationships among human beings and between humans and the Earth”. Much of the rest, however, is couched in very general terms – a kind of ‘all things to all people’ approach. The ESF has adopted a similar stand, and describes itself “a giant gathering for everyone opposed to war, racism and corporate power, everyone who wants to see global justice, workers’ rights and a sustainable society”.

   

No doubt many, perhaps most, of those who attend the ESF see themselves as coming within this so-called anti-capitalist framework, opposing globalisation, the power of the US and the WTO, and wars whether for oil or other reasons. Of course there is nothing wrong with discussing such issues with people from different countries and varying political backgrounds. But there will also be participants who have a particular party line to sell. As at the WSF, political parties are excluded from participation (as are military organisations). But this will not stop the usual lefty crowd from attending, under the cover of various ‘front’ groups. Another controversial issue has been the role of the Greater London Authority, which is partially funding the event, and of London mayor Ken Livingstone – some of the left think he has had far too much influence on the arrangements.

   

Opposition to capitalist oppression and the inequalities and brutalities of the present world set-up is fine, but that it needs to be combined with understanding in two further ways. Firstly, an appreciation that the root cause is the capitalist system of production and the ownership of the world’s resources by a small class of parasites. That is to say, it is not free trade or the neo-liberal Washington consensus or the spread of privatisation or the inequalities among nations that are the underlying problem and that therefore need to be addressed. Rather it is the system within which such nasty manifestations can arise. Linked to this is the second point, that the solution is not a fairer or nicer or less malevolent form of capitalism, and certainly not a state-run form of capitalism, but a revolutionary change to an entirely different social system. One that is not built around money, wages and trade and exchange but relies instead on co-operation, democracy and equality – a society without classes, nations or governments, where production is for use not profit.

   

Among the broad principles of the ESF are ideas that can be built on in showing that a socialist society is not only possible but is also the answer to the problems people experience under capitalism. The volunteer interpreters are just one small example of how people will undertake work because they feel it makes a useful contribution rather than because they will get paid for it. The general rejection of leadership and the insistence on participatory democracy are in keeping with the idea of a society where humans are in charge of their own lives, and with the view that such a society can only be brought about by the deliberate and conscious action of ordinary people, not by some self-appointed vanguard or elite. Ideas of decentralisation and local production are also important. But without an overreaching concept of a new society, these ideas lead nowhere, since capitalism cannot deliver them. The slogan ‘another world is possible’ needs to be complemented by some real ideas about this other world if it is to be anything more than an empty catchphrase.

The US presidential elections (2004)

From the October 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

In November the American people will elect a new President to lead the United States for the next four years. The US Presidency embodies the roles of chief executive, “chief legislator”, head of state, commander-in-chief, and party leader. But the Office also embraces two additional roles, seldom discussed in the media or noted in the textbooks. The first is as guardian of US capitalism, a role fulfilled by advancing the wealth and power of giant US corporations and their wealthy investors. The second is that of protector of the wider economic system based on private ownership and profit, a role acquired after the second world war when, as Gerald Haines, former diplomat and senior historian of the CIA put it, the United States “assumed, out of self-interest, responsibility for the welfare of the world capitalist system”.

   

So what difference will the victory of one candidate over another in the presidential election really make to the ordinary American? The short answer must be very little. In practice the election is little more than a public relations exercise where American people are given their ‘sixty seconds of democracy’ to select an emissary of the owning class to safeguard and, if possible, to expand its class interests over the next four years. Since the function will be to represent the owning class, the victor and his government will have to pursue policies that ‘stimulate’ profit regardless of the hardships this may cause the wider population. At the same time they must appear to represent the interest and welfare that wider population.  This profit imperative is not because the election is being held in America but because the world’s dominant economic system is the profit system (capitalism) and any election to government in society as presently constituted involves choosing one of the political parties that embrace the ideology of capitalism.

   

In present-day society government has a class nature. Government is not the even-handed arbiter between business and ordinary working people, as many would wish us to believe, but the champion of the owning class with its overarching legal right to exploit ordinary working people. The function of government is to defend the property rights of this owning class and to perpetuate their mastery over society. As far back as 1776 Adam Smith, a great advocate and defender of capitalism, was frank about this: “The necessity of civil government grows up with the acquisition of valuable property . . . Till there be property there can be no government, the very end of which is to is to secure wealth, and to defend the rich from the poor.”

   

The capitalist class, by virtue of its monopolistic ownership of society’s means of production and distribution, dominates society politically and has shaped all institutions, customs and social behaviour to give expression to its own interests and safeguard its continuing mastery over the world and its people. Under these conditions the meaning of ‘democracy’ has mutated from a process commonly understood to mean the ‘rule of the people’ into a device that does no more than elect a ‘safe pair of hands’ to protect private property and control social and political life to perpetuate this class domination. It functions through the pretence that government represents ordinary working people while actually following an agenda diametrically opposed to their interests.  We have the right of consent, but nothing more.

In the quest to preserve this pretence, control of public opinion is crucial. So the media functions to peddle distortions and untruths that blur this reality, to keep public opinion placid and render ordinary working people isolated and ineffective, so leaving the interests of the ruling class unchallenged and supreme. The US media add credence to the myth that the Presidential election carries real choice by eagerly analysing every minute perceived difference between the candidates, bombarding the electorate with patriotic rhetoric and fine sounding ‘promises’ while enthusiastically expounding the lie that the candidates share a common interest with ordinary working people. Their propaganda is heavily loaded with corporate and business ideology and praise for the virtues of the ‘free-market system,’ designed to perpetuate the fallacy that capitalism and democracy are inextricably linked, indeed synonymous. Whether the American electorate will choose George W. Bush or John Kerry is at this stage difficult to determine.  What is incontestable is that the outcome will not be of benefit to the America’s (or the world’s) wage and salary earning class over the next four years. 

   

In the US, in fact, all the signs are that things will get worse. In the first 18 months of George W. Bush’s presidential term, unemployment increased by 33 percent and the US median income for families returned to where it was in 1989, which is below what it was in the 1970s. In addition 1.5 million more Americans were added to those already without health insurance, bringing the total to 41 million.  After the forthcoming elections, what is likely, whoever takes power, is a further dismantling of welfare mechanisms for the poorest, a weakening of organised labour and healthcare provisions and a loosening of regulations to control pollution. American business interests will certainly demand the elimination of everything that interferes with capitalism’s domination of US society and its ruthless pursuit of profit. This will inevitably lead to increased labour ‘flexibility’ (i.e. worker insecurity), a lessening of already minimal employment rights, an abolition of all remaining ‘not-for-profit’ services and a rise in poverty levels triggering a further widening in social and economic inequality. When profitable corporations will continue to export their operations to other countries where they will ruthlessly exploit cheap labour to reduce costs. David Roderick, then still president of US Steel, neatly underscored the truth that profit has no allegiance to people or country, when he declared in 1984: “Our primary objective is not to make steel but to make steel profitably” (interview in film Business of America).

   

In foreign policy the President will defend the overseas investments and interests of US corporations and the ‘world global order’ of capital accumulation. Where corporations see a further opportunity to expand their profit base into another country, US government influence will be exerted to transform that country’s economy, culture and political life in order to integrate its productive structures into the international system of capital accumulation. If the indigenous people cannot be peacefully persuaded to open up their country to outside exploitation, pretexts will be found for military intervention – something that has occurred time and time again since the second world war. 

   

Meanwhile, ordinary working people in the United States will be subjected to a campaign designed to induce fear over ‘terrorism’ or any other conveniently intimidating bogeyman. The US is well practised in this method of social control. As early as 1957 none other than General Douglas MacArthur had warned against this propaganda. “Our government,” he said, “keeps us in a perpetual state of fear – keeps us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervour – with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil . . . to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant funds demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.”

   

So the outcome of the US Presidential election is essentially irrelevant to American working people. Indeed, every election is irrelevant to working people when the electorate is confronted with the conventional political parties whose policies do no more than perpetuate the mastery of the capitalist class.

   

But while these elections may be irrelevant, that is not to say that ordinary working people in America, or elsewhere, should turn their back on the electoral system as such. Once the world’s working people demand socialism, the electoral system can be utilised to effect the revolutionary act of abolishing capitalism by signalling that a majority of ordinary people fully understand and want to effect that change. So we should not be fooled by the myth that there is no alternative to capitalism, that it will always be with us. It will not, it is true, simply collapse.  But its structure rests primarily on the effective control of public thought aimed at persuading people that the society that exists is ‘good’ and works in their interest.  Yet, ultimately, force is always on the side of those who are governed and when ordinary people decided to end the misery and change society the numerical superiority of ordinary working people will make their demands unstoppable.

   

It is only in socialism, a classless society without privilege or distinction, where the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth are commonly owned and controlled by a genuine democracy of ordinary people that we will foster real social harmony and nurture individual self-fulfilment. Production, no longer tied to profit, will have but one objective: to satisfy people’s needs, and since exchange will be replaced by free access to the necessities of life, money and wage slavery will become obsolete in a world that can sustain an abundance. Free from servitude, insecurity and the corrosive influence of material interests, men and women will finally embrace real liberty to develop their limitless creativity and exercise equal participation in society’s welfare.

   

A socialist society will have no place for leaders or government. The periodic election of Presidents, Prime Ministers and other representatives to governments, whose function is to protect class interest of wealth and privilege and perpetuate our servitude will disappear.  The socialist message to the American people is that they should think long and hard about what their new President will represent before casting their vote.

Steve Trott

An Uninformed Dismissal of Marx (2004)

Book Review from the October 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism has not failed, it has never been tried – this is a standard response to anyone who claims that socialism might be a nice idea but has not worked in practice. Recently, however, George Monbiot, in his The Age of Consent (Harper Perennial 2004), has argued that this reply is not valid, on the grounds that the Communist Manifesto “contains, in theoretical form, all the oppressions which were later visited on the people of communist nations”. The politics of Mao and Stalin were, he continues, rigid applications of Karl Marx’s own prescriptions in the Manifesto. Marxism, therefore, has indeed been tried, and has been a disaster for those forced to experience it.

   

The case for Socialism does not depend on every dot and comma of what Marx wrote, but, especially since Monbiot is a writer who enjoys some reputation as a ‘radical’, we feel we should respond to his reasons for dismissing socialist ideas. His discussion in fact contains more mistakes than pages. He refers to dialectical materialism, a phrase never used by Marx, and he wrongly believes that the proletariat consists of just industrial labourers. He thinks Marx was wrong to argue that peasants, shopkeepers, etc. would disappear under capitalism, but surely developments since the Manifesto was written have shown that these social groups do indeed dwindle and individuals in them become wage-workers. According to Monbiot, Marx appointed people like himself to look after workers’ interests, but what he actually wrote was that “in the movement of the present, they [Communists] also represent and take care of the future of that movement”, which is not very clear but certainly cannot bear the interpretation he places on it. He also overlooks another statement in the Manifesto: “The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority.” The dictatorship of the proletariat (an expression not found in the Manifesto or in any of Marx’s works written for publication) would become the dictatorship of a bureaucracy, he claims. Centralising the means of production in the hands of the state would give the new government unprecedented powers – but these centralising proposals were out of date in Marx’s lifetime and are not advocated by socialists now. With the triumph of the proletariat, supposedly, Marx unrealistically envisaged all conflict coming to an end, but in fact this is in no way implied by the description of “an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all”.

   

And here is Monbiot’s conclusion:

“his [Marx’s] political programme, as formulated in the Manifesto, was a dead end. It stands at odds with everything we in the global justice movement claim to value: human freedom, accountability, diversity.”

Besides misinterpreting what the Manifesto says, he ignores the fact that it was written in 1848, before Marx and Engels had been able to learn from the political experiences of the working-class movement. Engels’s preface to the 1888 edition of the Manifesto noted that its principles were still applicable even if some of the points made were outdated. Monbiot’s denunciation of Marx is of a piece with the milk-and-water nature of the proposals in his book (democratising the UN, enforcing ‘fair trade’ and so on). He does get one thing right, though:

“The world possesses sufficient resources, if carefully managed and properly distributed, to meet the needs of all its people, possibly for as long as the species persists.”

Paul Bennett

Letter: Socialist activities in Australia (2004)

Letter to the Editors from the October 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialist activities in Australia

In the centenary year of the founding of the SPGB, it is appropriate that the Socialist Standard should publish material on the spread of socialist ideas outside the UK and on the development and role of the companion parties in that process. In this context, Peter E Newell’s article (August Socialist Standard) on the various manifestations of “socialism” in Australia is welcome.  However, there are a number of errors in his account.

   

The party he refers to as being formed in Melbourne in 1906 was not the “self-proclaimed Socialist Party of Australia”, but the Victorian Socialist Party which was the largest and most influential party of its type at the time.  Because it was based only in Victoria it is not surprising that almost all its members resided in Melbourne.  In 1907, the Victorian party, plus another six “socialist” groups of various names and persuasions, came together in a loose federal organisation calling itself the Socialist Federation of Australia. Tom Mann was a major figure of influence in the formation of both the Victorian Party and the new Federation. In 1910, the same year Mann returned to England, the Federation changed its name to the Australian Socialist Party. During the First World War, along with all other “socialist” groups and most of the Labor Party, the ASP was active in the major political struggle of the time – the anti-conscription campaigns. It is misleading to say that the ASP “faded away” by 1920. What happened was that the majority of its branches reconstituted themselves as branches of the newly formed Communist Party of Australia in 1920 (similar to the dissolution of the British Socialist Party into the CPGB in the same year).

   

As Peter Newell indicates, it was largely through the efforts of seamen who were members or sympathisers of the SPGB that the Socialist Party of Australia was founded in 1924. The history of the Party in the 1920s and 30s was directly shaped by the power struggles of the Seamen’s Union of Australia. Jacob Johnson was the union’s national secretary and he and the branch secretaries in Melbourne and Brisbane were all members of the SPA. In 1935 Johnson opposed a general stoppage led by militant rank and file members and was later replaced as national secretary and eventually expelled from membership in 1937. The strength and influence of the SPA declined thereafter.

   

Peter Newell makes only brief passing reference to the SPA in the 1940s, but says nothing about the 1950s even though this period saw a significant revival and growth of the Party’s activities in Sydney. This followed the arrival in 1955 of members of the SPGB who had left the UK for New Zealand (where they were active in the SPNZ) and later moved to Sydney. Regular and well-attended meetings were held in the Sydney Domain and eventually the Sydney Branch of the SPA was formally reconstituted in 1957. The only other Branch in Australia, in Melbourne, had been moribund for years. Amongst Sydney Branch members in the late 1950s were two of the leading figures in the Seamen’s Union and in the SPA of the 1920s and 30s, both mentioned by Peter Newell: Jacob Johnson and W J “Bill” Clarke. The SPA in Sydney held indoor and outdoor meetings, ran study classes, debated with other (mainly “left wing”) groups in various forums, and regularly sold copies of the Socialist Standard and all SPGB pamphlets. It was a very active Branch, known to many of the comrades in the SPGB Head Office in Clapham High Street at the time. By 1961 the Branch went into a decline, though individual members remained active in a variety of ways.

   

Peter Newell says that in 1962 the name “Socialist Party of Australia” was adopted by a group who left the Communist Party of Australia over the Sino-Soviet split. This is wrong. A pro-Peking group left the CPA in 1963 and a year later founded the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist). The split in the CPA which led to the formation of a pro-Moscow group calling itself the “Socialist Party of Australia” occurred in 1971 and followed from CPA opposition to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and the Party’s subsequent embrace of “Eurocommunism”. It is an irony of history that one of the principal founders of this so-called Socialist Party of Australia played a central role in the events leading to the expulsion of Jacob Johnson from the Seamen’s Union in 1936-37 and later went on to become the Union’s general secretary from 1941 to 1978.

   

The Eurocommunist CPA did not survive the collapse of communism in the early 1990s and it eventually dissolved itself. This left the way open for the so-called SPA to reclaim the name of the Communist Party of Australia and to re-badge itself accordingly. This it did in 1996. In 2003, the name “Socialist Party Australia”, being at that time unattached, was picked up by a Trotskyist conventicle describing itself as the “Australian Section of the Committee for a Workers’ International”.

Peter Bryant and Jim Thorburn, 

Sydney, Australia

Reply: 

We are happy to publish this correction and complement of information. We take this opportunity to correct the last line of the article which should have read: “At the moment there are only individual socialists in the WSPA active in different parts of Australia”. The words in italics somehow got lost in between us and the printers. Readers in Australia who want to contact the WSPA should write to: 8 Graelee Ct, Kingston, Tasmania 7050. – Editors.

Letter: Lenin’s not elitist? (2004)

Letters to the Editors from the October 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lenin’s not elitist?

Dear Editors,

The article ‘Lenin: a socialist analysis’ (January Socialist Standard) quotes from The Myth of Lenin’s Concept of the Party by Hal Draper, to support the assertion that Lenin was an elitist.

   

A reading of the full Draper essay reveals something completely different. Draper argues that Lenin did not hold to the view that only intellectuals forming a cadre of professional revolutionaries should make up a revolutionary organisation.

   

Lenin did indeed pick up the idea from Neue Zeit, dropped it into What is To be Done? and promptly neglected it unless the notion was resurrected by his political enemies when Lenin would “ . . . consistently and firmly repudiate it”.

   

What Lenin meant by professional revolutionary is described by Draper as “a party activist who devoted most (preferably all) of his spare time to revolutionary work . . . He must work to earn a living, of course, but this is not his life”. Any member of the working class could fit into this description. It is not elitist at all.

   

It should even, dare I say it, describe the average member of the Socialist Party!

Armitage Bulstrode, 

Birmingham

Reply: 

The purpose of quoting from Draper’s The Myth of Lenin’s "Concept of the Party" was to show that Lenin’s concept of the party was essentially the same as Kautsky’s and the Second International generally.

   

According to Lenin’s more famous interpretation, the working class was incapable of self-emancipation. Some workers may join the ranks of the professional revolutionaries in the vanguard party, in Lenin’s view, but this does not affect his belief that emancipation had to be brought to the working class by a political organisation. Although Lenin went on to change some aspects of his concept of the party, this elitist position never changed and had catastrophic consequences when implemented in the Bolshevik revolution.

   

When the Socialist Party was formed in 1904 it repudiated leadership in any form. The Socialist Party’s history is a practical refutation of the role of leadership. Leninists often deceive themselves that they believe it, but the Socialist Party really does insist that the emancipation of the working class has to be the work of the working class itself.–Editors.

How anti-capitalist? (2004)

Book Review from the October 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anti-Capitalist Britain edited by John Carter and Dave Morland (New Clarion Press £12.95)

This is a collection of articles on the anti-capitalist/anti-globalisation movement as it exists in Britain. The quality and relevance vary, and one paper in particular (on the consequences of 9/11 for British Muslims) belongs in a different book.

   

Two main themes can be picked out. One is that the anti-capitalist movement (ACM) did not grow out of thin air but represents a continuation of earlier activities, such as 1970s free festivals, road protest camps and various environmental groups. All these movements supposedly share a propensity for direct action and a general hostility to leadership. Linked with this is the second theme, that of the predominant role of anarchism within the ACM. There are definitely positive aspects to this, including opposition to the tactics of vanguard groups like the SWP and rejection of leadership. The particular variant of anarchism that is singled out in a chapter by the editors is saddled with the name ‘post-structuralist anarchism’, a viewpoint which they do not explain at all clearly (but see, for instance, http://perspectives.anarchist-studies.org/8may.htm ). This claims that power and oppression are not confined to just the state and the workings of capitalism but can be found elsewhere too (as in misogyny or anti-gay prejudice). But it downplays the crucial role of capitalism as the underlying cause of oppression.

   

The anarchist influence is seen as partly a reflection of the decline of the traditional Bolshevik left. As Carter and Moreland say, “The death of the old authoritarian Soviet anti-capitalism has cleared the way for more radical and vibrant ways of fighting money and all of its works.” This perspective is partly balanced by Derek Wall’s chapter, which refers to the Social Democratic Federation and William Morris, and notes that at the end of the 19th century, “Marxism looked pretty green”.

   

But along with the anarchism are some ‘fair trade’ and ‘deep green’ ideas which are hardly radical at all. For instance, one chapter advocates, as the opposite of globalisation, localisation, which means a country should produce as much as possible of what it needs within its own borders. Now, it is quite likely that in socialism there will be far less transport of goods from their place of production to place of consumption, as there will be no need to seek out the cheapest and most profitable place to make things. But national borders, which won’t exist in socialism, are an irrelevance here, and the argument assumes the continuance of trade (and hence of money, wages, etc.).

   

A chapter by Green Party member Molly Scott Cato argues that greens are anti-capitalist, even if many deny this. Rather than a revolution, she advocates a gradual green undermining of capitalism, by means of Local Exchange Trading Schemes (LETS) and co-operatives. Her ways to challenge capitalism include such gems as ‘Switch all your bank accounts to the Nationwide or another mutual building society.’

   

Actually it would be unfair to let trivia like this condemn the volume as a whole. It certainly offers a different perspective on aspects of the ACM. And if the book lacks a clear single view of the movement or of what should replace capitalism, then it merely reflects the anti-capitalist movement, after all.

Paul Bennett

Ninepence for Fourpence. (1912)

From the October 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Everyone does not appreciate deep economic arguments, but every workman can appreciate between getting 9d. and 4d.”

Thus spake Mr. Lloyd George—beg pardon, Lord Limehouse, the (rare and refreshing) fruit merchant, addressing a “Labour” deputation on June 20, 1911.

Mr. McKenna, not to be outdone by the load-line raiser, said : “The fundamental fact is that the workman contributes 4d. and gets 9d.”

* * *

 

You are to get 9d. But turn from the official report of the aforementioned deputation (Cd. 5869.) to leaflet 2393 of the National Liberal Federation, which says :—

“Of course, this does not mean that for every 4d. paid the insured person always gets 9d. Back.”

I hope every workman “can appreciate” that. You get 9d.—but not always. A kind of three card trick. Find, the 9d. among Lloyd George’s knaves.

* * *

 

It isn’t an employers’ Bill, oh, no ! Look, however, at Lloyd George’s speech to the deputation from the Chambers of Commerce (30.6.11), introduced by Lord Brassey :—

“Under the Compensation Act the workmen malinger at the expense of the employer, but under this Bill they will malinger at their own expense. If a man malingers he cannot draw more money from the State, he cannot draw more from the employer. He will have to find the deficiency out of his own pocket.” (Same report.)

* * *

 

“That is a very important point for the protection of the employer which I am surprised you have overlooked. … I quite agree with Mr. Parkes [Tory M.P. for Birmingham] that the doctor is perhaps the most important and essential person in this connection, and it is also very important that he should be put in an independent position, and that is why, as far as I am concerned, I should be very glad if the House of Commons took the responsibility of placing the doctors under the local Health Committees, because, after all, the local Health Committees will be independent bodies. I have no doubt there will be employers there because there are far more employers than workmen on the county councils of the country ; the proportion of workmen is not very high.”

The workmen cannot malinger—Lloyd George has seen to that. But what about the employers ? Ever heard of masters malingering, David ? Announce that grouse shooting commences on August 12th and see how they run ! The Liberals won’t stop them malingering. A lot depends upon the doctor, says David. Workingmen with experience of the London County Council doctor in compensation cases, for instance, will agree with him. Therefore Lloyd George urged employers to get upon the Councils “because membership of the Council means lower rates.” And he went on, “he would, if he gave the benefit of his business administration to the local authority, cut down the rates and lighten enormously the charges which fell upon himself.”

To a “Labour” deputation the Chancellor preaches one tale, but to this deputation from the employers and merchants he preaches another. Listen to this :—

“I would invite the attention of employers to the way in which, we have framed this Bill, because it is framed in a way to completely protect them.” (Cd. 5869.)

This appeal to Property is equal to the one in the National Liberal Federation’s leaflet (No. 2422), which says of the employer :—

“He will be repaid partly in the increased efficiency of his workers. In good health and with a mind freed from financial worry, a man will do better work though working no harder than now. Then, again, men will be saved from the workhouse and the relieving officer, and so tho employer will have less to pay in Poor Rates.”

The “Manchester Evening News” (Liberal) of 7.8.12 reported the Clerk to the South Manchester Guardians thus :—

“The National Insurance Act will do more to prevent and eventually to eradicate pauperism than all the Poor Law Acts on the Statute Book.”

Being notified of this Mr. Lloyd George wrote:—

“I have always felt confident that its operation must have the effect of relieving the rates. . . . I was informed the other day by the Local Government Board that consumption alone costs the rates about a million and a half per annum. . . . Mr. Bloomfield is therefore perfectly right in assuming that the operation of this Act must necessarily have the direct effect of relieving taxpayers of a large proportion of the burdens which sickness now casts on their shoulders. . . . The maintenance provided in days of sickness by the Insurance Act and the institutions set up and subsidised out of its funds will be offered to the workingman as substitutes for the workhouse and workhouse infirmary—substitutes which will be consistent with ‘the honour and dignity of Labour.'”

* * *

 

When this glorious Bill was introduced, Liberals pointed jubilantly to Clause 51. “There is the worker’s clause,” they declared. “Under it no landlord can levy distress for the whole period any person receives sickness benefit.” But—”there’s many a dip twixt the cup and the lip.” The Employers’ Parliamentary Council waited upon the Chancellor of the Exchequer and a spokesman of the Farmers’ Federation said :—

“The great bulk of our workmen are housed in cottages belonging to us, and if those cottages are not at our disposal when the workman leaves off work the whole work of the farm is stopped at once.”

To this Mr. Lloyd George replied :

“If the clause were confined to cases where life would be imperilled by the process would that satisfy you ?”

Farmers’ Representative: “Yes, I should say so.”

Mr. Lloyd George : “Then I propose doing it. I am with you entirely. I think the clause as it stands is far too wide and malingerers might take advantage of it.”

So at the behest of landlords he altered the clause, which now states that if in the opinion of a doctor the person receiving sick benefit is likely to die if distress is levied, it shall not be done. The doctor’s certificate is to be issued for a week only, but may be renewed each week up to a month by the doctor, unless the landlord has applied to the Registrar of a County Court, whose decision must be accepted without appeal.

On this point we had an item in “Reynolds’s Newspaper” (2.7.11) headed “Master of Elibank Reassures Landlords re Clause 51.” It ran as follows :—

“The Master of Elibank has written to Sir Robert Aske at Hull with reference to the Insurance Bill. In the course of his remarks he says : ‘it should not be overlooked that the provision of sick pay is likely to make the payment of rent by the working classes during sickness very much more regular than it has hitherto been, and Mr. Lloyd George has no doubt that this will far more than compensate the owners of small houses for any loss that may be suffered in the rare cases where Clause 51 becomes operative.'”

This is “rare and refreshing fruit,” indeed— for the landlords. In fact, the striking unanimity of Liberal and Tory, landlord and factory-lord, over this Bill, should convince the toiler of its fraud, The “wicked House of Lords” passed it without a murmur. The Tory party largely supported its Second Reading, and refused to vote against the Third Reading. Mr. Lloyd George eulogised prominent Tories for their support of the Bill—Mr, Charles Bathurst, Lord Henry Bentinck, and Mr. William Waldorf Astor ! The latter, a large property owner, objected to postponing the operation of the Act, and explained the large saving of rates that would result, remarking, “We must make the ratepayer realise it.”

“We are going,” said Mr. Lloyd George at Queen’s Hall, on December 31,1909, “to provide adequate insurance against unemployment to prevent the starvation of the wife and children of the man who is out of work perforce.” Under the Insurance Act the “adequate” insurance becomes seven whole bob a week. But should he be unemployed “perforce” because his Liberal or Tory employer has locked him out, then the starvation will take place through the deliberate provisions of the Insurance Act, which say that in case of a lock-out no money shall be paid to the men. if the toilers should be goaded into striking by a Liberal Devonport or a Tory Penrhyn, then, also, they get—nothing. They may have paid in pounds, but they can starve. If, also, a toiler fails to make application for benefit “in the proper form,” if he fails to come at the “required time” to the “required place” to sign on, he draws—nothing. Should he, in the eyes of the Jacks-in-office, leave work “without sufficient cause,” or lose his job through what his boss calls “misconduct,” then he gets the figure which multiplied by itself is the same. Again, should he be in arrears in his contributions through lack of work, he may look in vain for the Welsh rarebit’s “rare and refreshing fruit.”

* * *

 

This idea of what is “adequate” provision seems to vary with the recipient. Baron Robson, late Sir William Robson, applied in July to the Ministry for “adequate” assistance as he waa retiring. He had been Solicitor-General at £6,000 per annum, and after a year or two became Attorney-General at £7.000 a year. Both these jobs carried with them “fees” which would be a good deal more than the salary itself. The next job Robby got was Judge of the High Court at £10,000 per annum. He stuck that for a year or two, without “malingering” more than half the time, and then retired—of course, with “just cause.” So David’s Government presented him with a pension “for the term of his natural life,” of a dollar a week—no, beg pardon, three thousand, seven hundred arid fifty pounds a year. £72 a week is “adequate” for this lawyer to malinger upon, but the sick working man is adequately provided for with seven bob.

* * *

 

Every Insurance Commissioner draws twenty pounds a week, while the Chairman of Commissions gets twice that sum. Where do these huge salaries come from ?

Mr. Lloyd George won’t say. But talking to the Merchants and Bankers of the City of London just after the Bill was brought in (July, 1911; he said :

“It would be a great satisfaction to them to know that in his judgment the Insurance Bill would not add a single farthing to the taxation which had already been imposed in this country.”

They don’t come out of taxes, so where are they coming from ? The employers say they won’t come from them in any other way.

Listen to Sir Adolph Tuck, presiding at a meeting of Raphael Tuck & Sons (23.7.12) :

“I am of the firm opinion that this expenditure (on Insurance contributions) will, in the long run, prove one of the best investments which the company has been called upon to make.”

A few days previous to this Lord Ashton, the employer of 6,000 men at his Lancaster carpet and other works, said : “It is one of the grandest Acts ever passed.” On July 7th Mr. F. D. Acland (a member of the Government) told the people of St. Albans that “in Germany they could not find a big employer who would go back to the days before the Insurance Act there.” 

* * *

 

As a last quotation let me give Mr. Lloyd George’s speech to the deputation from the National Farmers’ Union of England on July 4 1911 (Cd. 5869) : —

“I want the farmers to remember this, that this is going to be a tremendous relief to the Poor Law, and the casual labourer is the man who gets on the rates. It would be an enormous relief to the poor rates. Our real economic trouble is the casual labourer. We want, somehow or other, to make provision for him, and I think it is worth our while, and it is certainly worth the farmers’ while, to do so ; because the poor rate is their heavy burden, and to get the casual labourer off the rates would be a benefit to you, if you could get him off. I am very loth to keep the casual out if I can possibly help it. That is the most helpless class in the country and they become a burden on the community. IT IS FAR BETTER TO GET FOURPENCE OUT OF HIM, BECAUSE NOW YOU ARE BEARING THE WHOLE OF THE EXPENSE.”

Does this, set alongside his emphatic statement that the workers are to get “9d. for 4d.,” sufficiently prove how much of the liar and the cheat lies hidden in the unblushing hide of this little Welsh lawyer ?

Adolph Kohn

Bill in the Chair. (1912)

From the October 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Trade Union Congress has met, passed resolutions on things that do not matter, listened to innumerable speeches, attended many functions, “seen the sights” of Newport, assisted in prayer at .the Labour sermon, and having run its respectable course, over much the same ground that other congresses have before it, has respectably passed away.

Labour is none the wiser for their deliberations ; none the more free for all their wordy resolutions ; none the fatter or happier for all the merry feasting and expensive junketting of their “Parliament.”

As usual, the Congress was larger than ever before, and its president, blushing Bill, showed an “example of straight speaking and clear thinking which might well be copied by some of our brilliant speakers and debaters at Westminster.” (“Daily Herald.”)

After a few preliminary remarks anent “the largest and most important congress yet held” (omitting to state that the increased membership was due in the main to a blind rush to join “approved societies” in conformity with the National Insurance Act) Bill proceeds to show his ignorance.

He tells us that “the outcome of the coal strike would take them one step nearer to the nationalisation of the mines . . . which, will be of a lasting benefit to the nation.” (“Daily Herald.”)

This is distinctly good for Bill, who time and time again has stated that the Government workers are worse off than those employed outside. Further on in this illuminating address he tells us that “9,000 employees of the late National Telephone Co. now enjoy the same conditions as the Post Office workers, which, brought them under the eight hours system.”

The result of the eight hours system and Government control has been “an increase of £175,000 per year in wages, increased holidays, a larger staff, and pensions amounting to an expenditure of £201,000 per annum,” according to our worthy president.

Which is all bosh, as has been shown by many of Bill’s pals who have the misfortune to” enjoy” the jobs he refers to. Among others, one “in the engineering branch of the service” who states in the “Daily Herald” (6.9.12) that “a 50½ hour week” is worked, goes on : “I shall be pleased for Mr. Thorne to understand that the increase in wages is only in theory, as no employee is receiving any increase ; also that a large number of the men have not had an increase of pay for the last two or three years and in consequence of the transfer will not receive any now, Where the late Company’s employees’ hours have been reduced they have suffered a corresponding reduction in wages, but where working hours have been extended no recompence has been given.”

At the Annual Meeting of the Government Workers’ Federation at Enfield on June 4, 1912, Bill’s benevolent boss was described as “the greatest enemy we have got,” and a delegate said : “They [the Government] are the worst set of employers I have come into contact with in my life. They are wicked ; they rob the maimed, the blind, the widow and the labourer. In fact, they take everything we let them take.” (“Daily News,” 4.6.12.)

At the same meeting a resolution was passed condemning the Government for refusing to put the “fair wages” agreement, in operation, and calling upon them to grant a miniinutn wage of 25s. 6d. to workers engaged in War Office and Admiralty departments.

Mr. W. Cheeseman, secretary of the Fawcett Association, said that the Government were forcing them to strike, and delegates from the Royal Parks stated that “for a wage of 23s. many of the man put in a seven day weak.”

This eulogy of the Government on the part of our “honest” chairman, who has “graduated with high honours in the school of Labour,” denoted a sudden change of front. In the House of Commons, March 4, 1912, Mr. William Thorne (South West Ham) :

“moved as an amendment to leave out from the word “That” to the end of the Question in order to add instead thereof the words :

‘in the opinion of this House the conditions of service of Government employees should be in every respect at least equal to those observed by the best private employer or by local public authorities doing similar work.’ (‘Parliamentary Debates’ Vol. 35, No. 14, p. 83.)

This amendment was defeated by the Labour men who abstained from voting for their own amendment in order to save the Government from possible defeat.

In support of his amendment Thorne and others give some very interesting facts. Bill said: —

“There are a number of leading storehouse men at Pimlico receiving 20s. per week, while in the factories adjacent to Pimlico it is found that the average for a similar class of employment worked out at 25s. 6d. Crane men start at 27s. per week and go up to 32s., while a similar class of men working outside for ordinary contractors can command 35s. and 40s. per week.” Barge loaders and van men working for the Government “get 24s. per week without any chance of promotion, These men are doing a similar class of work to that for which in the docks and on the wharves of the river 8d. per hour is paid, with 1s. per hour for overtime.”

“At the Army Ordnance Department at Woolwich,” said Mr. Tyson Wilson, “the men presented a petition asking for a minimum of 28s. per week. Some of these men are ‘promoted’ to foremen without having their wages increased. At Waltham Abbey things have improved, and the minimum is now 24s. per week. But the work is very injurious. The materials get into the system, affecting the heart, particularly the nitro-glycerine, and that is not work at which men live long. At Weedon,” went on Mr. Wilson, “the skilled labourers get 19s. per week and 2d. per day extra duty pay. At Enfield . . the minimum is 23s. 6d. The local employers of labour pay 6½d. and 7d. per hour.

Some very glaring cases of sweating were given with regard to firms contracting for the Government. At Stepney at Clark’s biscuit factory men are working 60 hours per week for 19s. 6d., while at MacNeill’s Patent Felt works 14s. is paid for 56½ hours work.

According to Mr. Wilson there are “cases of hosiery firms who are supplying the War Department for the wear of soldiers and other servants, and some of these firms have said themselves that they do not intend to pay the standard wages.”

So much for the pet scheme of nationalisation. Bill should know (and probably does know) that nationalisation means greater poverty and insecurity for the worker, and that the Government as an employer is better only in so much that it can grind the hardest and sweat the most.

Bill also seemed to believe that the miners during the year had won a victory, for he is reported by the “Daily Herald” as saying :—

“The main reason for the miners leaving work was to establish a minimum wage. . . . The Government made every effort to bring about a settlement without legislation but failed, and the Minimum Wage Bill was passed. In many districts a substantial increase has been brought about.”

Anent this we print the following from the “South Wales Daily News” (9.9.12) : —

“Mr. Hubert Jenkins, miners’ agent, has just issued a circular to the workmen at the Llanbradach Collieries stating that the relations between the men and the management have become very strained, and that it requires some courage under the circumstances for men to dare to assert their right to the minimum wage under the Minimum Wage award. He alleges that when the man fail to get clearance and claim to be paid, they are being stopped and kept idle or sent to work by night, which means the revival of the system of sponging.

“This treatment (he proceeds) is being meted out to a few at a time with the result that no man is safe ; this must cone to an end. The committee are blamed, the miners’ agent also, because of the delay in getting grievances dealt with. The time has come when the whole of the men employed at the Llanbradach collieries must voice their protest in a determined manner, or be prepared to to sacrifice their freedom and liberty completely.

“Men, he further alleges, have been going home with starvation wages since the resumption of work at the end of the national strike.”

Our brilliant Gas-worker next shone upon the question of the eight hours day. After pointing out that the Congress had been passing the resolution since 1890 without effect, he asked them to pass it again. “If time had permitted” he “could speak at length on the benefits an eight hours day would bring to the wage-earners in increasing leisure and decreasing unemployment.” Which again shows how little knowledge this paragon of presidents possesses.

A reprint from the “Daily News” (27.8.09), reporting the speech of Professor Chapman in his address to the Economic Science and Statistical Section, of the British Association, Winnipeg, may interest and instruct.

“The character of much of the world’s work, said Professor Chapman, has changed, and with that change has come a difference in the demands made upon leisure. These changes all tended to specialisation and concentration, both in working and in leisure, and to constant demands for the curtailment of the working hours of the day. In the course of long investigations he had found no instance in which an abbreviation of hours had resulted in a proportionate curtailment of output. There was, indeed, every reason to suppose that the production in the shorter seldom fell short of the longer hours, and in some cases the output or its value had been augmented.”

As the miners and others have discovered, an eight hours day means greater speeding up rendered possible by the greater amount of leisure, and, as has beea shown, in many cases a greater output with the same or a smaller number of employees. The introduction of the eight hours day, like the adoption of nationalisation, means more unemployment and more poverty for the workers, and no amount of claptrap from the President of the Trade Union Congress will prove the contrary.

After a sly lift to the Home Rule Bill and other Liberal measures the President passed to the Insurance Act and endeavoured to draw attention from the fraudulent nature of that measure by attacking the Prudential. The “Pru,” it seems, have been business-like, and have captured all the ninepences, at which the Unions are wrath. In their desire to get members the latter care little whether or not such members are trade unionists, and clearly show that what we have said all along is true, namely, that the sick and benefit side of the unions has long since absorbed all trace of the fighting organisations they may once have been.

A curious exception to this touting may be noted in a union which shouts about the “tactics” of the Prudential and at the same time have refused to accept into their “approved society” members of their own union. Thus the London Society of Compositors are forcing their own members into the insurance societies, while their delegates condemn the Prudential for taking them !

The Congress settled down to business and passed a resolution “that the question of secular education be eliminated from the questions for discussion at any future Congress.”

They have been discussing and passing resolutions about secular education for some forty years and made no progress, and so have decided not to waste time in passing any more. How much better would it have been if they had done the same with the rest of the motions ! None of them are of importance and nobody takes any notice of them.

There was much to do on the question of compulsory arbitration, and Mr. Ben Tillett, its champion, exchanged some complimentary remarks with Messrs. Brace and Havelock Wilson, but nothing important was said. The anti-political gentleman rightly said that the other side wore “political Mathuselahs who are capable of passing resolutions and nothing else,” while those in support of the motion favouring political action truly said that “the opponents of the motion were ex-members of Parliament; those who had tried to get into Parliament, and those who had abandoned all hope of getting there.” (“Daily Herald.”)

It is interesting to note that the Executive of the B.S.P., of which Tillett is a member, unanimously passed a resolution at its meeting on July 8th. condemning compulsory arbitration “as destructive of the independence (!) of the workers,” and recorded its “strong and convinced protest against the principle of compulsory arbitration in industrial disputes.” (“Socialist Record,” July, 1912.)

Evidently the rejection of his pet proposal annoyed Tillett, for, writing in the “Daily Herald” (9.9.12) he tells us that “there is little chance for most of the men attending Congress to even debate new theories, however common-sense they may appear to be. … the real powers and potentialities of Congress are stultified by the atrophy of customary narrowness in. thinking.”

The above sentiment is endorsed by Mr. Price, a member of the West Australian Parliament, who, to a representative of the “South Wales Argus” said : “I was struck with the lack of knowledge displayed, not only by the delegates, but by the Members of Parliament (did he mean Bill ?) . . . The difference between the Labour Party in the Antipodes and in Great Britain is that the former has a definite policy dealing with every phase of political economy, while in Great Britain the Labour Party has no definite policy or platform so far as I have been able to discover.”

The Congress got excited because of a certain circular issued by the Government re the transfer of members of an “approved society,” decided to call a special meeting, and generally spat forth fire at the action of the Government. But the Government need have no fear. The bribe given to the unions has caught them effectually, and though they may threaten to withdraw they will remain safely within the net in consideration of extra membership and extra dues, coupled with the influence brought to bear by one-time trade unionists who have been bought by Government jobs. To quote Ben Tillett: .

“All the expressions of opinion asking for action to be taken, either for amalgamation or joint trade union action, were sat upon, and the fighters of twenty years ago are the ruling politicians of to-day.”

Ah, yes ! the trade union movement has been sold time after time, and will remain as clay in the hands of those who are moulding it to suit their own purposes, just so long as the membership of those trade unions fail to understand their class position and the politics dictated by that position. Any action taken by any section of the trade unions will be side-tracked and outvoted by the bosses who are pulling the strings, and they in turn are led by those who have already been bought by the Government.

Twel.

S.P.G.B. Lecture List For October. (1912)

Party News from the October 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

Once again, I don't have enough room in the label section to include all the listed speakers, so some brief information on some of the speakers missing from the sidebar. Some of these names (and details) you have seen before:

• A. Barker. See this previous post.
• A. Bays is possibly the member listed as 'W. Bays' in the early Party membership records, who was a member of the Stoke Newington Branch of the SPGB. He joined the SPGB in May 1910. No date is given for when - or why - he left.
• D.B. Campbell. David Bruce Campbell joined the Tooting Branch of the SPGB in May 1911. He then went on to leave and rejoin the Tooting Branch on at least three separate occasions in the 1910s and 1920s, finally resigning from the Party in May 1929.
• H. Cooper was H.J. Cooper. He joined Earlsfield Branch of the SPGB in September 1908, and his membership was lapsed in December 1915.
• R. Fox was R. M. Fox. He joined the SPGB in Tottenham in September 1906. Better known after he left the SPGB, his 1937 autobiography, Smoky Crusade, sticks the boot into his old SPGB comrades. He should the offending excerpts from his book on the blog some time.
• C. Ginger: Another member of Tottenham Branch. Charles Ginger was one of those SPGB members who joined the Party more than once. There's a suggestion that C. Ginger could also be Frank Grainger, who had originally left the SPGB to join the Herald League. (See Ken Weller's book). Frank Grainger eventually rejoined the SPGB in the 1930s, and was actually selected as the Party's parliamentary candidate for the East Ham North constituency, which the Party was planning to contest at the probable 1940 General Election. (WW2 intervened.) According to Ken Weller, after he resigned from the SPGB, he later worked for the Economic League.
• A. Hoskyns was Ambrose Hoskyns. He joined the Islington Branch of the SPGB in August 1910. He was an occasional writer for the Socialist Standard in the Pre-War 1914 period. There are no details of when he left the SPGB. A flavour of his writing (and the early history of the SPGB) is contained within his April 1911 article, 'The Attempted Suppression of Free Speech in Islington'.
• A. Jacobs was Alf Jacobs. There is more detailed background on him in this feature which appeared in the September 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard.
• H. Joy was a member of the Tooting Branch of the SPGB. They joined the SPGB in October 1907.
• E. Lake. Ted Lake joined the Battersea Branch of the SPGB in February 1911. He remained a member of the SPGB for nigh on 66 years. His obituary appears in the February 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard.
• F. Leigh was Fred Leigh. See this previous post.
• W. Lewington was a member of the Tottenham Branch, originally joining the SPGB in March 1907. He resigned from the SPGB but no date is given for his resignation.
• J. E. Roe. Jonathan Roe's obituary appeared in the August 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard.
• F. J. Rourke was a member of the Tottenham Branch, originally joining the SPGB in June 1909. Their membership was lapsed in February 1914. ("Moved away".)
• F. W. Stearn was a member of the Tottenham Branch. There were actually two 'F. Stearn's in the branch at the time - possibly father and son - so I don't know which one was a listed speaker for this month.
• F. Vickers. Frank Vickers joined the SPGB in August 1911. There is no mention of when he left the Party. However, he is mentioned in this article from the February 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard. Harry Young encountered him in the Communist Party in the 1920s: ". . . At the Communists' 5th Congress there was an almost unique specimen—an SPGB-er who had joined the Communist Party, Frank Vickers from Tooting."
• B. Young was Byron Young. A member of the Walthamstow Branch, he was from a family of SPGBers. His father had been a member of the SDF, and his brother, Percy, was also a longstanding SPGBer. (His parents must have loved their poetry.) A prolific outdoor speaker for the Party, he emigrated to Australia after WW1. He is mentioned briefly in the Socialist Standard in his brother's obituary and in his nephew's obituary.