A Socialist Survey. (1911)

From the November 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

Under the heading “Protection against Socialism” the “Globe” prints the following :

“The management of the Essen Railway, in order to counteract the attempts of Socialists to convert to their cause the employees on the system, have submitted to every man in their service a written communication, warning them that the introduction of Socialistic literature into the places where they work will be punished be dismissal.”

* * *

The capitalist class realise the danger of the spread of Socialism, but such methods of repression will not avail. The “Labour” leader can be dealt with. The trade unions can be silenced through their officials. But the Socialist propaganda and the Socialist Press, insignificant though they may appear, are a growing force that non-plus the “captains of Industry.” They will find that all their lying and suppression will but recoil upon themselves, for what is it we are told about that infinitesimal portion of the “Old Adam” present in each human breast that sets up an insatiable longing for the fruit which is forbidden ?

* * *

At “Labour” leaders the representatives of Capital can readily scoff, because their critisism contains a grain of truth. The following from the “Standard” (24.8.11) can be readily endorsed by the Socialist.

“The Labour Party are great talkers and a due regard to the supply of workmen’s pennies calls for an occasional advertisement of their independence. But a little reflection will probably help the hurt that Labour honour feels, and two months hence Mr. Hardie and his friends will be tamely trooping into the lobby with the men they have described as murderous hirelings of capitalism. Gratitude has little part in the politics of labour, but fear and cupidity have full sway, and even Mr. Churchill’s crimes may be condoned if the Government continues to allow some of the golden shower of patronage to fall upon the flower of the Party.”

* * *

Andrew Carnegie, library purveyor, has offered £15,000 for the building of branch libraries at Cottonopolis, and certain labourists have protested against taking assistance from a man who, as head of the American Steel Trust in in 1892, was responsible for the murder of the strikers at Homestead. Whereat Andrew, writing from Skibo Castle to the Mayor of Manchester, says :

“May I ask you to inform your citizens that I was coaching in the far north of Scotland when the deplorable outbreak at Homestead occurred and did not hear of it for two days after. I received the following cable :

” ‘Kind master, tell us what to do and we will do it for you. Workmen’s Committee.’

“It was too late. Two City Guards had been shot, and the Governor of the State had cald out troops and was in possession of the works. Into the merits of the question we need not enter, tho I must say I found, on my return, that my partners had offered most generous terms.

“The workers of Pittsburg never refused the Libraries and Halls I personally bilt for them at the Carnegie Works, nor others I bilt for the city, nor would the workers of Manchester if they enquired into my relations with labor for 20 odd years during which I was in control.”

* * *

Now we all know Andrew. He has forced himself upon our notice as a philanthropist of the most rabid type, as an economist of a very doubtful order, and as an authority upon morality and “simplified” spelling. But I, for one, did not think he would rush into print with such an absurdity.

A correspondent of the “Manchester Guardian” (12.9.11) writes:

“With respect to the personal responsibility of Mr. Carnegie for the strike at Homestead, of which the Pinkerton riots were the outcome, Mr. J. H. Bridge, at one time Mr. Carnegie’s secretary, reproduces in his book “The Inside History of the Carnegie Steel Company,” a draft of a notice to the Homestead employees written by Andrew Carnegie on April 4, 1892, and sent by him to Frick (a co-director) at Pittsburg. This notice stipulated that the Homestead Works should become non-union after the expiration of the contract then in force, which ran until June 30, 1892. In the same book there is a reproduction of a letter represented as from Mr. Carnegie and dated June 10, 1892, in which the advice is given that conferences should be refused, and that if the union should refuse the scale proposed by the Company the non-union notices should go up on June 25.”

* * *

As to the “kind master” cablegram and the “20 years relations with labor,” the same correspondent quotes Mr. J. A. Fitch, New York State Dept. of Labor, thus :

“In March (1888) the Knights of Labor sent a committee to New York to interview Mr. Carnegie, he received them, and proposed a reduction of 10 per cent. in the steel department and 8 per cent. in the other departments, together with a return to the twelve hour day. These terms were necessary, he told them, to enable the Edgar Thomson plant to compete with the Chicago rail mills, which were nearer the market and where a twelve hour day then prevailed.

“In April Carnegie went to Pittsburg and made a proposition of a sliding scale of wages based on the selling price of steel rails. A committee of working men were appointed who should inspect the books each month to determine the base of wages for the next month. At the same time he announced that the plant would start non-union and the men must sign an agreement not to join nor remain members of any labour union. In May Carnegie refused to meet a committee or hold any further conference, and about the middle of the month, after being out all winter long, the men accepted the terms and went back to work. Thus ended unionism in the Edgar Thomson plant.”

* * *

With all his “gentle Jesus” cant, Saint Andrew is about as clumsy a liar as can be found even among his less pious brethren, and it is rather amusing to note that the champion of “directive ability,” in order to escape from an awkward position, will confess that the workers of America can turn out wealth for him while he is “coaching in the far north of Scotland.”

Twel.

“Blessed are the meek”. (1911)

From the November 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

Really, when the matter is considered, perhaps one of the strangest and most paradoxical phenomena in the present strange and paradoxical social system is the excessive and irritating humility that pervades the majority of the workers. Here you have a numerous army of men and women engaged in producing all the wealth of society—everything that is necessary to mankind, every article of use, aye, and of luxury, emanates from the working class. And yet, instead of insisting upon reaping the fruits of their sowing, the workers meekly allow a small section in society calmly to appropriate to itself all that is produced; further, meekly; allow themselves to be insulted, mocked and jeered at by the very people in whose interest and for whose benefit they work day after day, year after year, through, a life-time of degrading toil and hopelessness. All their lives through they meet with nothing but covert or open insult.

Take the following instance :

A Labourer, we will say, applies at a mill or factory for a job. He is seen by the manager or some other functionary of capitalism (himself usually a working man, but in this case standing as the embodiment of the employer), and something like the following dialogue ensues :

Manager : Well ?

Labourer : I’ve just called, sir, to see if you’ve got anything for me.

Manager : What’s your name ?

Labourer : John Smith.

Manager : Age ?

Labourer : Forty-two.

Manager : Umph ! You’re rather old for our class of work. We want young, strong men.

Labourer : I’m strong enough, sir. Not afraid of work.

Manager (sceptically) : You don’t look very strong. Married, I suppose?

Labourer : Yes, sir. Any family ? Three children.

Manager : How long have you been out of work?

Labourer : About three months

Manager : What have you been doing in the meantime ? Living with relatives or what ?

Labourer : Well, my wife has done a bit of work and my eldest boy brings in a shilling or two a week.

Manager: I suppose your hands are pretty soft by now ?

The Labourer, without speaking, holds out his hands, palms upwards, and they are looked at critically by the manager.

His references are then examined, and if it is found that he has been honest, sober, industrious, and has left his previous situation through no fault of his own, his name and address are probably taken down. The dialogue ends :

Manager : If we find there is an opening, we will let you know.

Labourer : Thank you, sir. Good morning, sir

Manager : Good day.

An impartial onlooker might perhaps think that the above colloquy would be likely to touch, however softly, some hidden spring of self-respect in the workman. But such, seldom seems to be the case. The treatment meted out to the workers on their applying for situations appears usually to be accepted by them as quite natural and inevitable. For generations past the priest, the politician, and the pressman have done their best—and their best has been wonderfully successful—to instil a self-abasement and a slavish humility into the working-class mind. The brutal and impertinent questions asked are taken as being “all in the day’s work.”

But what would happen, one wonders, if the tables were suddenly turned and the workman began to ask similar questions of potential employers—such, for instance, as to the financial stability of the firm, the social standing and the domestic affairs of the shareholder or owners of the company, or as to whether the morals of the chairman of the board (if, as is now generally the case, the company should be a joint stock company) were as irreproachable as his linen.

It is not, however, only within the actual industrial portion of capitalism that this kind of thing obtains. All over our present vicious system there is this same contempt on the one hand and humility on the other. Take the following instance, chosen at random :

Dr. Jansen, of the Charity Hospital in Stockholm, reported as follows on the 12th of May, 1891, in a lecture to the Medical Society at Stockholm :

“When I began my experiments with black small-pox, I should, perhaps, have chosen animals for the purpose. But the most fit subjects, calves, were obtainable only at a considerable cost. There was, besides, the cost of their keep, so I concluded to make my experiments upon the children of the Foundlings’ House, and obtained, kind permission to do so from the head physician, Professor Medin.

“I selected fourteen children, who were inoculated day after day. Afterwards I discontinued them and used calves. … I did not continue my experiments on calves long, once because I despaired of gaining my ends within a limited period, and again because the calves were so expensive. I intend, however, to go back to my experiments in the Foundling Asylum at some future time.”

Any working man or woman of a mathematical turn of mind, who happens to be a father or a mother, may perhaps from, the above be able to calculate the value of his or her children—in the eyes of the kindly Dr. Jensen and his confreres—in comparison with the calves, which “were obtainable only at a considerable cost.”

Or take the case of the notorious Dr. Neisser. This distinguished member of the medical profession, who in June of this year was invited by the West London Medico-Cherurgical Society to deliver the Cavendish Lecture on the Evolution of the Modern Treatment of Syphilis, at Kenington Town Hall, London, and presented with the gold medal of the society for “distinguished work in medical science,” has openly boasted of the fact that at the University Hospital of Breslau, he has frequently experimented upon children with the virus of syphilis. Several young girls of the poorer class were inoculated under his instructions, some of whom were admittedly known to have contracted this loathsome disease in consequence. Neither the parents nor the patients themselves were aware that they were being experimented upon. But even had they known, would they have dared to raise a protest ?

In a certain book very much in vogue among theologians we are told that: “Blessed are the meek : for they shall inherit the earth.” But so far from this being true, so far from any blessings accruing by reason of the exercise of this Christian virtue, the workers, if anyone, should know by now that their lot under capitalism is not the inheritance of the earth, or any portion of it, but rather of life-long toil and degradation and suffering. The above aphorism might very well, from a working-class standpoint, be revised to read: “Blessed are the strong and those who have pride in the realisation of their strength, for they shall inherit all the glorious intellectual and physical possibilities of life which only freedom from wage-slavery can give.”

F. J. Webb

Asked & Answered. (1911)

Letters to the Editors from the November 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

Answer to Tom Grew.

Marx says : “Commodities are sold at their real values.” Now that being so, why is it that in countries where the productivity of labour is high, gold has not so great a buying power as in countries where labour is not so productive ? Take America and England. America is the highest of all, I think, yet commodities exchange for more gold there than in England. This cannot be due to protection as Germany shows.

Tom Grew.

________________________________

Marx says prices deviate from values for varying periods and various reasons.

Thus monopolies are often able to push up and hold up prices above values for a considerable time, while cutthroat competition will sometimes drive prices down below values.

The high stage of trust development in America is one of the factors behind the high prices ruling there.

But this statement needs an important qualification. Many factory products—where the productivity of labour-power is greatest—are cheaper there than here, and it is mostly in foodstuffs that the high prices reign.

The reason is not far to seek. Agriculture lags far behind manufacture in economic development. The soft soils suitable for agriculture do not lend themselves to the easy manipulation of ponderous machinery and prime movers, so that at present a limit in their application has been reached.

Moreover, the farmer if burdened with the monopolist charges of Railway and Elevator Companies, and this fact finds some reflection in higher prices. The result is to retard the spread of agriculture, so that it is not expanding, either extensively or intensively, at the same rate as the population. Hence the relative demand for the farmer’s products is increasing, adding another factor to those given above in maintaining high prices.

J. F.

Answers to Correspondents. (1911)

Letters to the Editors from the November 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

Will the correspondent signing himself “A Reader of Your Paper” (Philadelphia) send his name and address ?

D. Conroy (London, N.)—You give your whole case away when you assert that “the workers have already sufficient legal power do whatever they will. The law points the way, but the law cannot give them the intelligence to accomplish their emancipation.” Whatever you might have urged in support of your other points, the illegality of any attack upon private property is quite beyond dispute.

A Fifth Edition. (1911)

Party News from the November 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have to announce the publication of the Fifth Edition of the Party Manifesto. The Manifesto itself remains unchanged, but the preface has been brought up to date necessitating the enlargement of the brochure to 24 pages. The price is still 1s., post free 1½d.

Blogger's Note:

Unfortunately, the fifth edition - with the expanded preface - is not on the SPGB website but the first and sixth editions are online.

S.P.G.B. Lecture List For November, 1911. T. W. Allen

A brief interlude. 

I've been here before with Frederick S. Leigh and A. Barker, and now it's the turn of another SPGB founder member, T. W. Allen. Just looking at the SPGB Lecture List for November 1911, Allen's name appears on SEVEN separate occasions. And that was back in the day when platform speakers would speak for hours at a time. For example, on the 5th November he was speaking in the morning at Ridley Road in Dalston and, then, later that same day, he was scheduled to speak early evening at the Wood Green Corner speaking pitch in Tottenham.

The details below about T. W. Allen are from Keith Scholey's unpublished document 'The Founding Members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain'.

Allen, TW

   Paddington (later Islington) branch.  TW Allen was a very active early member, both as a propagandist, speaking for the party throughout the pre-war era, and as an administrator, being on the EC from 1904 to 1906 and from 1908 to 1912. At a local level he was briefly secretary of the Paddington branch in 1904. In the SDF he had been secretary of the Marylebone branch in 1901-2. Like many early members his activity ceased during the First World War although he was again on the EC briefly in 1922-3. By the time of the outbreak of the Second World War Allen was in Islington branch, many of whose members, including Allen, had adopted a pro-war stance regarding it as a war for democracy. In accordance with this TW Allen resigned on 1st January 1941. 

S.P.G.B. Lecture List For November. (London District) (1911)

Party News from the November 1911 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:

• T. W. Allen. See this separate post.
• A. Barker. See this previous post.
• 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.
• J. Halls was John H. Halls, who joined Paddington Branch of the SPGB in June 1907 (a Mrs Eleanor B. Halls joined Paddington Branch in July 1907). A regular writer and translator for the Socialist Standard in the Edwardian period, he eventually resigned his membership when he moved abroad (Paris).
• J. Holmes. See this separate post.
• 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.
• C. Parker was a member of West Ham Branch. They joined the SPGB in May 1906, and was lapsed from membership in October 1929.
• 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."

Gunboats Off Guiana (1953)

From the November 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

In his biography of the late Earl Baldwin, Mr. G. M. Young recalls the ageing Prime Minister, weary of the eternal rounds of diplomacy, crying out for the days when the sight of a British gunboat was enough to quell any disturbance in a foreign land. One wonders what Baldwin would have said of the events in British Guiana which have aroused such interest over the past few weeks, and where not a gunboat but a cruiser, two frigates, an aircraft-carrier and over seven hundred troops are involved.

The first hint of the recent trouble in the colony appeared in the newspapers of Sunday, 4th October, which reported the movement of the cruiser H.M.S. Superb and connected it with the events in British Guiana. After the usual denials the Colonial Office admitted that the cruiser, carrying five hundred troops, was bound for Georgetown and that the expedition was planned as a result of the activities of the People’s Progressive Party (P.P.P.) —an organisation with alleged Communist Party sympathies—which had easily won the elections in April of this year. These elections were the first to be held under the colony’s new constitution, which gave the right of universal suffrage whilst leaving the Governor, Sir Alfred Savage, a large measure of reserve powers. But the roots of the trouble go deeper than any electoral victory.

South America, the Caribbean and the West Indies have for a long time been a source of frustration to British commerce. Up to the beginning of the 20th century the area was virtually under the control of Great Britain: since then, British power and influence have steadily declined. Markets which were once dominated by British goods are now largely exploited by American, French, German, Japanese, Dutch and other interests, British investment has fallen away seriously.

In many South American countries independent capitalist groups have arisen to gain freedom from foreign domination. There is a demand for capital, as opposed to consumer, goods. The resultant native industries are producing commodities which compete with, and finally close the markets to, those from overseas. In South America this process has been assisted by stern import tariffs.

This situation has caused concern to many British governments. In May of this year a government commission reported on the development of economic independence in Latin America. The Queen’s speech to the opening of Parliament in November, 1952, had already promised measures to strengthen economic ties with the area.

Thus British Guiana, as the only British colony in South America, and one containing rich sources of sugar, bauxite (aluminium ore), gold and silver, assumes a considerable importance in the efforts of British industry to re-establish itself in an area in which it was once pre-dominant.

But with its economic development, and particularly with the industrialisation which has accompanied the exploiting of the bauxite deposits, there has arisen in British Guiana the familiar demand for independence from British rule. The return to power of the P.P.P. with their programme aimed at ultimately making British Guiana a republic was a triumph for them that has proved short-lived.

In pursuance of this policy and in opposition to the traditional ruling class of sugar planters and business men the P.P.P. took up the cause of the recognition of the Guiana Industrial Workers’ Union. A strike was called, with the support of the P.P.P. After a period of negotiation and attempted appeasement of the P.P.P., the colony’s economy was deemed to be seriously threatened by the stoppage. Then it was that the British government acted: troops were landed and the constitution of British Guiana was suspended. In amongst Whitehall's allegations of disturbance and violence the colony’s inhabitants went happily to watch the cricket match against Trinidad.

The suspension of the constitution seems to have been rather hasty and has met some opposition— already the Manchester Guardian and (before the event) the Economist have expressed doubts on the wisdom of such a policy. The commission of inquiry which is to be sent out with instructions to frame a new constitution can, presumably, only recommend a form which will exclude the possibility of the P.P.P.—or any similar party—again achieving power: the British government is apparently determined that only administrations of which it approves will be allowed in the colonies. Mr. Oliver Lyttelton, the Colonial Secretary, has said (Manchester Guardian, 10/10/53) that “ Her Majesty’s Government are not going to allow a Communist State to be organised within the British Commonwealth. Our friends can take that as a definite statement, and our enemies can attach to it all the importance that I think they should.” Thus it seems that, if further elections are allowed to take place in British Guiana, they will be rigged to ensure a result favourable to British interests. This, together with the expulsion from the colony of the correspondent of the Daily Worker shows the outlook of the British ruling class when their interests are threatened.

It is little wonder that the workers of British Guiana, poorly paid and wretchedly housed, have no love for British rule and have fallen for the appeal of the P.P.P. The case for independence must seem overwhelming to them. Doubtless they are unimpressed by the attack made on the P.P.P., that it has failed in six months to carry out reforms of living conditions which the British administration has neglected for over 150 years. But the experience of Eire, India and other countries should have had its lesson for them. National independence will not abolish workers’ poverty.

The P.P.P., as the expression of the desire of a potential British Guianese capitalist class to exploit for itself the mineral wealth and workers of the colony, free from British interference, follows a familiar pattern. Its methods, such as the playing upon the sugar workers’ grievances, the extremes of poverty and wealth and other causes of discontent, are also well known. Certainly the British Guianese workers have nothing to gain by supporting the P.P.P. in its struggle to replace one set of masters by another.

But whatever the outcome of this struggle, it seems fairly certain that more trouble is in store for the sunny lands of the Caribbean. The neighbouring country of Venezuela has for some time claimed British Guiana for its own: a wartime agreement entitles the U.S.A. to keep an aeroplane and seaplane base in the colony: and much capital investment will be needed soon, as the Guianese industry finds its feet. This conflict of interests could, as in so many other cases, cause British Guiana to become yet another sore spot in a sick world.

Ivan.

The Passing Show: British Guiana (1953)

The Passing Show Column from the November 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

British Guiana

Recent events in British Guiana have shown us how feeble is our rulers’ real attachment to democracy. The Guianese workers are not to be allowed to support a party which might try to end the present dependance of Guianese capitalism on British capitalism, and to make Guiana instead an associate of the Soviet Union—that is to say, a party which might try to take Guiana out of one capitalist bloc and into another. There is no question at present, unfortunately, of a struggle in British Guiana between Capitalism and Socialism. According to reports from the colony, the “People’s Progressive Party,” the leaders of which have been dismissed from their positions as ministers by the Governor, is, in the terms of British politics, a cross between the Labour Party and the Communist Party; and neither of these parties is a supporter of Socialism. The policy of the “People’s Progressive Party” is the usual ragbag of reforms and improvements in capitalism: it promises better wages and housing, and is known to favour some measure of state-control over the sugar estates. Nothing in its propaganda, its policies or its activities gives it any claim to be a Socialist Party.

Reforms

Now if the “People’s Progressive Party” had kept to its reforms, it would probably have been left alone. British capitalism, and the subsidiary capitalist systems in the colonial empire, will tolerate a limited amount of reformism; in fact they work all the better for a few reforms. In the Gold Coast the Convention People’s Party is in office, in the eastern region of Nigeria the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons, and in the western region the Action Group. The People’s Progressive Party differs from these simply in the Communist affiliations of some of its leaders.

Risk of Bloodshed

It has been alleged that the action of the British Government in sending troops and warships to British Guiana, and suspending the Constitution, were prompted by a danger to life and limb within the colony. For example, the statement issued by the Colonial Office on October 6th said that there was a “risk of bloodshed” (The Times 7-10-53; following quotations are also from The Times unless otherwise stated). But this seems to be highly improbable. On October 5th, just before the troops were sent, the Times correspondent reported not the beginning but the end of a crisis; he said “the threatened constitutional crisis ended last week when the House of Assembly met . . . Elected ministers who had previously walked out from the House returned after consultation between the leader of the House, the Speaker, and the Governor.” (5-10-53). Two days later the correspondent was even more emphatic:

“Georgetown is perfectly normal and quiet to-day, and the excitement in London and elsewhere is not comprehended. There are no signs of impending crisis such as would justify a revocation of the constitution, nor of any disorder necessitating additional troops. An influx of newspaper correspondents is expected in the next few days, but they are likely to be disappointed at the absence of colourful events" (7-10-53).

The Times correspondent was even afraid that the sending of troops into a peaceful colony might alienate “moderate” opinion:

“Thoughtful observers feel that, unless the show of force is justified by the subsequent revelation of an imminent plot, it may well alienate public opinion that was turning from the P.P.P.” (8-10-53).

Thus it seems clear that there was no immediate fear of bloodshed; the ministers were sacked, the verdict of the Guianese voters was overturned, and the troops marched in solely because of the fear of the defection of the colony to another capitalist bloc.

Truth

The events in British Guiana have been instructive from another point of view. For many years "Truth” has been equalled as an object for lip-service in political speeches only by “Freedom" and “Democracy.” But to run a capitalist system without telling lies is to do the impossible. The sending of troops to British Guiana followed this approximate timetable:

October 2nd: The cruiser Superb left Bermuda for an 
undisclosed destination.

October 4th: The Sunday papers said that the cruiser was bound for British Guiana.

The Superb left Jamaica after taking on troops and refuelling. British Caribbean headquarters announced that it was to take part in manoeuvres off Jamaica on October 8th. Caribbean Area Forces headquarters denied the rumour that it had been diverted for emergency duty in the South Atlantic (6-10-53)—that is, that it had been sent to British Guiana. 

October 7th: The cruiser Superb arrived in British Guiana.

It might, of course, be said that it was impossible in the circumstances to reveal the destination of the cruiser in advance. But this is to admit the argument that the telling of lies is an essential part of the running of the capitalist system.

Trieste

In this connection, consider also the question of Trieste. The Western Powers—Britain, the United States and France—made a joint declaration in 1948 that the whole territory should go to Italy. Now, these Powers say that this declaration was made solely because of the difficulty in arranging to set up a Free Territory of Trieste, as agreed in the Italian peace-treaty (14-10-53). But this is very far from the truth, and is alleged only to conceal the history of opportunism which lies behind the attitude of the Western Powers to the whole Trieste question. At the Italian peace-treaty, the already strained relations between the West and the Soviet bloc ruled out the possibility of the West agreeing to hand over the whole disputed area to Yugoslavia, then a member of that bloc. The solution found was to create a Free Territory, with its own Governor. But shortly after the 1948 Declaration, Tito broke with the Cominform. This put the Western powers in a quandary. For while they have insisted all along that their intention was merely to do justice to all parties and to do what was best for the people of Trieste, in fact their attitude has always been ruled by expediency. They were not concerned with any minute advantages one way or the other which might accrue to the workers of Trieste by their being exploited by Italian or by Yugoslav capitalism; they wished to award the prize of the strategic and economic advantages which lay in the port of Trieste and its environs in such a way as to secure maximum advantage for themselves. Since 1948 this attitude has led them into much difficulty, since both Italy and Yugoslavia are either allies or potential allies of the Western bloc, and either would take great offence if the whole area were not given to it.

Opportunism

The attitude of the Soviet Union has been equally opportunist. When Yugoslavia was apparently firmly fixed in its alliance with Russia, the latter made every effort to secure Trieste for its protege; but since Tito’s break with the Cominform, Russia has strongly supported making the area a free territory, thus preventing the access of strength which would come to either country if it were given Trieste.

In such a game of power politics, with each great Power fighting unashamedly for its own hand, the interests of the Triestine workers are ignored. Both Italy and Yugoslavia seem to be prepared to go to war over Trieste, with all that that would entail in suffering to the people of both countries and of Trieste itself, rather than let the other country obtain undisputed control of Trieste and its immediate hinterland.

The Socialist Party’s position is clear. In a Socialist system of society such a situation could not arise. National boundaries would disappear, since they are only maintained by the necessities of a property-owning system. No States would wrangle and threaten over Trieste, since States would have dissolved along with the property system of society which alone gives rise to and maintains them.

Negotiate from Strength

The Labour Government initiated a large programme of rearmament, and the Conservative Government has continued it, under the slogan of “negotiating from strength.” The workers were assured that, although it might be thought that heavy re-armament would probably lead to a third world war, this was not so; peace would best be secured by piling up the munitions of war, until this country and its allies were so strong that its potential enemies would not dare to attack it. In advocating this solution, our politicians showed that they were still hankering after the conditions of the mid-nineteenth century; then, because Britain had embarked upon its Industrial Revolution decades before any other country, it was by far the strongest country in the world. There were no “big” or long-lasting wars because no other country could for long dispute the supremacy of Britain. But this was merely an ephemeral phase, a phase which could only arise where there was one giant and a number of pigmies; in the modern world, where there are a number of giants, to hope to restore the conditions of a hundred years ago is to be doomed to disappointment.

Increased Strength—on both sides

What has now happened to the "Negotiating from strength” argument? The Western bloc thought that if it had the atomic bomb it would be secure from attack; but then Russian scientists also evolved the atom bomb. The Western bloc thought that if it had the hydrogen bomb it would be secure from attack; but now Russia has exploded the hydrogen bomb also.

As President Eisenhower said on October 8th:

“The Soviets now have the capability of atomic attack on us, and such capability will increase with the passage of time . . , The Soviets now possess a stockpile of atomic weapons of conventional types and we must furthermore conclude that the powerful explosion of August 12 last was produced by a weapon, or the forerunner of a weapon, of power far in excess of conventional type ” (9-10-53).

So where do we go from here?

The march to war

The moral is simple. In a capitalist world there is no security against war. If one state tries to build up such a strength in armaments that other states would not dare to attack her, the other states will be afraid that the first country plans aggression, and will in their turn build up armaments. And although an armaments race does not make war inevitable, it creates an atmosphere of fear and suspicion in which the unavoidable disputes between capitalist states can more easily cause war. Thus a heavy armament programme adopted in an effort to find security by one capitalist state among many, in fact leads not to security but to a greater likelihood of war.

Alwyn Edgar

Blogger's Note:

The Declassified UK website gives more background on events in British Guiana in 1953.

Socialism and the class struggle (1953)

From the November 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

The object of the S.P.G.B. is Socialism, a definition of which is given in every issue of the Socialist Standard, together with a Declaration of Principles, which show how society is constituted and how the working class must organise to overthrow the capitalist system and introduce Socialism.

As shown in the Declaration of Principles, the class struggle originates out of economic conditions; all workers take part in the class struggle, whether they are conscious of it or not and whether they like it or not

It is always necessary to remember that the class struggle is two-sided, that it is not only the workers who organise to try and maintain and improve their position, but the capitalist class at all times do likewise and so far they have done it more successfully than the working class. W. Liebknecht, in his pamphlet, “No Compromise,” recognised the class struggle carried on by the capitalists when he wrote: “The class struggle which the proletariat carries on is only a counter struggle in self-defence to resist the class struggle of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat; and the end of this struggle by the victory of the proletariat will be the abolition of the class struggle in every form.”

Victory over capitalism will never be attained by being on the defensive; the class struggle carried on by non-Socialist workers on the economic field in Trade Unions, etc., will never lead to Socialism, indeed, that is not the aim of non-Socialists. They struggle to maintain and improve their conditions under capitalism and the capitalist class struggle to maintain and improve theirs, but history has proved that on the economic field the capitalist class has most of the advantages.

Socialists, by taking political action against the capitalist class, switch from the defensive to the offensive. The class struggle is both industrial and political, the latter its revolutionary form. On the political field the workers of all countries have but one interest, and that involves winning political power and dispossessing the master class. Tie supreme conflict with that class leaves no room for sectional antagonisms between workers.

The Declaration of Principles of the Socialist Party were drafted by Socialists with a great deal of thought and knowledge of the development of society. The Declaration of Principles allow for no compromise with the capitalist class, and offers no reforms for improving capitalism.

The strength of the Socialist Party rests on acceptance of the class struggle, that the working class is exploited and oppressed by the capitalist class, and that within capitalist society effectual reforms which will put an end to class government and class exploitation are impossible. As Marx so correctly stated, “When the class struggle is pushed on one side as a disagreeable 'crude’ phenomenon, nothing remains as a basis for Socialism but ‘true love of humanity' and empty phraseology about 'justice',"  Pity for poverty, enthusiasm for equality and freedom, recognition of social injustice and a desire to remove it, are not Socialism.

The basis of society to-day is the class ownership of the land, factories and other means of living. The central point of our attack is this social base, the class ownership of the means of life. The possessors must be dispossessed.

To Socialists, political action is the action aimed at getting control of the governmental machinery for the purpose of introducing Socialism. In other words, the prosecution of the class struggle in a revolutionary way.

D.W. Lock

Women's weekly magazines (1953)

From the November 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

“ Avaunt this vile abuse of pictured page!

. . . Heaven save us from a lower stage.”

Thus the aged Wordsworth on illustrated books and newspapers. His tetchy complaint was uttered in 1846, when developments in printing technology and the growth of railway travel were creating both the demand and the technical means for cheap, bright periodicals. W. H. Smith opened his first bookstall in 1848; “light reading” became the popular—and, after the Education Acts, the universal—means of passing time. Wordsworth saw only the beginning of it all.

Something like nine hundred magazines are published in this country at the present time. The most popular is “Reveille,” which is bought every week-end by three and a half million people; next are “Woman” and “Woman’s Own,” each with over two million readers, and there are half a dozen other weeklies with circulations of more than a million.

Fashions in popular reading change from generation to generation. The most successful and the most ephemeral magazine is the one which measures most accurately what the general public wants; you can please quite a lot of the people for quite a lot of the time, but you must be prepared for a drop in circulation when the nature of public consciousness alters. On the other hand, the longest-lived magazines are those with restricted appeal; “The Countryman,” “The Sporting and Dramatic News” and “The Spectator” are examples. Women’s magazines have the best of both worlds. Their appeal is limited, but limited to half the community; they have the certainty of a known field of interest, and the field is large enough to necessitate the devices and techniques that make for mammoth circulation.

There are nineteen weekly magazines for women. “Home Notes,” the oldest, first appeared in 1894, and the foundation dates of the others are fairly evenly spread between then and 1937, when “Woman” was first published. Looking at them over the years—or even at their predecessors of Wordsworth’s day—one is mildly surprised at how little they have altered. Here is “Woman’s Weekly,” 1912, price a penny: “Great New Year’s Gift Number,” with a Gibson girl on the cover. Patterns; a powerful new serial by Annie S. Swan; readers’ best recipes; lace work; home nursing; . health and beauty page; Dainty Cupid Leap Year Charm given free to subscribers; “Ethel” replying to girls’ problems and my-dearing them for all she is worth.

The difference between the weekly and the monthly magazines is chiefly of pretentiousness and price. If any feature can be said to mark the frontiers, however, it is the “help page.” The monthlies try to do without it; to the weeklies, it is life’s blood. A lot of people believe that the problems are made up by the magazine’s editorial staff. In fact, “human problems” is the busiest of all the advice services—legal, child-care, beauty and furnishing are others—which are offered by the women’s magazines. A weekly of average popularity receives anything up to two hundred letters a week; most are answered by post, and only a selection is printed. The confidantes are all homely women with homely-sounding names; Mrs. Jim, Mary Grant, Evelyn Home. It is easy enough to snigger at the help page with its jealousies and frustrations and frailties, its girls in trouble, possessive mothers and lonely virgins. The problems are real enough to those who have them, and the answers, for the most part, are sensible and to the point.

Every magazine devotes at least one other page to letters. Readers write about their romances, their hobbies, their families, their jobs, their favourite food, their hopes and ambitions. Half-a-guinea or a guinea is paid for each published letter; as a link with readers' consciousness, they are probably cheap at the price—they may even explain why a women’s magazine seldom goes out of business.

It is on this pabulum of everyday life that the stories thrive. The “Garden of Allah” type of escape- story, best-selling between the wars, was never really the stuff for women’s magazines, though occasionally it appeared. The great bulk of the stories have workaday and domestic life as their settings. There is no obvious fantasy, no escapism into past, future or distant worlds, and the harshest realities of this world—war and unemployment—come in as often as they are topical. It takes some time to realize that this realism is an illusion; that the ordinary life of the stories is not ordinary at all, that the hard facts are not hard at all, and that the whole is a fantasy-world into which most of its readers can easily project themselves.

The domestic life of these stories is life on the fifteen-pounds-a-week level—what most people consider to be “middle-class” life. Nice houses with bathrooms and telephones, plenty of good clothes, tasteful furniture and the rest. True, the heroines sometimes are shop assistants or married to clerks; the only possible conclusion is that they are living above their incomes. Nobody wears Marks-and-Spencer dresses, lives with shoddy furniture, lacks elementary education or becomes unattractive from continual child-bearing. It is the daydream world of “if-only"; if only we won a few thousand on the pools, if only Henry’s firm promoted him, etc.

Unemployment and war never really make much difference. The most terrible thing about unemployment in real life is that the wolf does not just howl at the door, but comes right in and stays; in the women’s magazine story, Henry always finds another job and a new day dawns bright and clear. War puts the hero in uniform as a pilot or a commando officer (never a private in the Pay Corps); coming home wounded, he leans on a stick or has one arm in a sling. The atmosphere is that of a fancy-dress party where the guests have nothing to declare but their ingenuousness.

The world of women’s magazine stories can be summarized as something like this. You are an attractive, smartly-dressed woman of your own age, sitting in the lounge of a sizeable semi-detached house. There are flowers on the sideboard and “Vogue” on the coffee table. If you are single, in a little while you will bath and put on your new evening frock because a handsome young man in well-cut clothes and a Jaguar is going to call to take you out to the theatre. If you are married, your two nicely-spoken children are playing hide-and-seek in the garden; Henry—tender, wise and patient—will soon be home from the City; you will never become a worn-out drudge because your home has all the labour-saving gadgets advertized in the women’s magazines.

That is approximately the nature of the make-believe. There are two things which must be noted about it. The first is that it is a mistake to assume, as many people do, that the writers who create and populate this world are bad writers. Actually, theirs is one of the most highly skilled branches of journalism in the world; it is a trade, not an art, and they are first-class practitioners of it. The second thing is that the make-believe obviously feeds a real and continuous hunger. A well-to-do person in urban society has access to variety of experience, a member of a healthy primitive community has depth of experience; a working-class woman usually knows neither. The craving for romance is the craving for either or both of those filings. James Joyce’s “Ulysses” contains a remarkable passage in which a working girl named Gerty MacDowell has a romantic daydream; the dream is a series of images and phrases straight from the pages of innumerable women’s stories.

Roughly one-sixth of the space in an average magazine is taken up by stories. Advertisements cover something like half the total space, and most of the remainder is occupied by articles on female and domestic affairs—cookery, dress-making, health and beauty, fashion, make-do-and-mend, child care, plus one or two items such as a sentimental verse and a horoscope ("Your financial position will improve about next Friday”). Reading these columns of advice on how to bring up baby, how to stay good-looking and what to cook for supper, one sees how vastly public consciousness has altered in the past half-century. The outsize family, with its yearly childbirth, its unkempt, fagged-out mother and its bread-and-jam diet is nearly non-existent today in Britain (except in areas with large Catholic populations, where ignorance and fear keep it going). Most people nowadays really care about their standard of living and really want to bring up their children well; the findings of nutrition experts and child psychologists make their way to, and to some degree are acted upon by, working people. The convention of “what was good enough for my father is good enough for me” has largely disappeared. In 1903, women’s magazines offered cheap patterns for dust-caps and aprons; in 1953, they explain how to make dresses which, from a short distance and for a short time, look as if they came from Norman Hartnell. A great deal of ignorance and dirt and superstition (in spite of the horoscopes) has disappeared; people of all ages are more humane, more responsible, and more conscious of their environment.

Popular reading matter always has a good deal to tell us about the social life and attitudes of its time. What springs most irresistibly from a study of women’s magazines is how unchanged are the basic concerns of life for working-class women. In spite of suffrage, admission to almost every career and profession, and the consequent thirty-year clamour over equality of the sexes, the fundamentals are still the same: finding husbands, rearing children and managing homes. Going to work is not an exchange for these concerns, it is an addition to them, and married women who go to work do so mostly to help finance their homes. “Woman’s place is in the home,” which is usually put forward as an arguable proposition, is really nothing of the sort, but a simple statement of fact.

Living in a working-class home means being involved in the perennial problem of insufficient money. For the single woman, it limits severely the probable area for finding a husband; for the married woman, it means having to make the money go round, and leading an extremely flat and unvaried life in the process. It is this economic blockade from the real world of experience that leads to escape into a fantasy-world, where domesticity is bliss, every cloud has a silver lining and there is true romance for all except the bad girls.

The moral obviously is not to pooh-pooh or condemn women’s magazines as purveyors of baby talk and life-by-proxy. They pass on fairly necessary information and advice about domestic matters, and have probably been influential in spreading more responsible social attitudes. Most people of today want things to be better; “good enough for the likes of us” is a sentiment that no longer has much share in working-class consciousness. As for the stories, possibly they are bilge. That does not, however, answer the question why the majority of working-class women need to have a fantasy-world created for them, and a large number need to have decisions on the management of their lives made for them by a completely unknown Mrs. Jim or Evelyn Home. The truth obviously is that there is something fundamentally wrong with a society in which such needs are so widespread.

Robert Barltrop

Letter: Terror and culture in Africa (1953)

Letter to the Editors from the November 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

Terror and culture in Africa

London,

S.W.1.

The Editor,

Sir,

One of your readers has sent me your paper. I am at a loss to understand why, but I am appalled at the ignorance displayed by your leading article: “Savagery, Black and White.” I am not a Socialist, but no doubt an intellectual case can be made for Socialism. Palliation of savage atrocity, however, is no part of Socialism—at least Socialism as I have always understood it. The Mau Mau you are presenting as a constitutional nationalist movement to your readers (who mostly have no first-hand knowledge of Africa), is a terrorist organisation directed as much against Africans, and indeed against their fellow tribesmen, as against Europeans. Do you really suggest that ripping a child from its mother’s womb and cutting off babies’ heads and drinking their blood is reminiscent of the ceremonies of Free Masonry?

I realise that this silliness is not due to any ill-will but simply from a lack of knowledge.

The statement that the Kenya African is far behind his brother on the West Coast is strictly accurate. The Africans on the East Coast fifty years’ ago when the Europeans first went there had no knowledge of the wheel or of the fulcrum. Their social organisation was extremely simple. Indeed they were primitive people in the true sense. On the contrary, the West Coast African can be described as barbarian in the technical sense, but not primitive. The Ashanti kingdom, for example, may have been bloodstained, but it was a complicated organisation approximating to the Lombard kingdom, which, savage though it may have been, has after all left us an imperishable legend. The Kikuyu have no art, whereas the West African sculptured heads (of which examples can be seen in the British Museum), are universally regarded as masterpieces. From whence arises these differences between the East and West African? Not, of course, from any inherent difference in ability, but from the fact that the West Coast has been in contact with Western civilization from at least the Sixteenth Century, and Portuguese influence is obvious in their art and techniques. It is, after all, the contact of cultures which makes civilization. What would have been the civilization of these islands if we had had no contact with the Celts, Romans, Saxons, Danes or Normans, but had remained completely isolated and inhabited by the aborigines of these islands, whether they were Picts or Britons?

Before the war many good Socialists and honest men were seriously misled about the state of Europe by insisting on regarding every human being as a good trade unionist with a hundred years of industrial organisation and two hundred years of chapel-going behind him. Many present-day Socialists are made to look foolish when they insist on regarding savage and barbarian peoples in the same way as their predecessors did the Nazi and Communist movements. Hodgkin's “Italy and Her Invaders’’—incidentally a most fascinating book—is a much better preparation for the understanding of present-day Africa than are the publications of the Fabian Society.

I remain,

          Your obedient servant,

Diana Spearman.

Reply to Miss Spearman 

In her criticism of the article “Savagery, Black and White” which appeared in the Socialist Standard for last December, Miss Spearman reads into the article statements that are not there. The Mau Mau is not presented as a constitutional nationalist movement nor does the article palliate “savage atrocit". The key to the article is contained in the last sentence: “Thus imperialist chickens come home to roost!” The Africans in the past have been treated with ruthless savagery by the whites; is it surprising that some of them remember and try to repay in kind?

To explain the source of violence and cruelty is not to palliate it. We condemn all violence and cruelty, civilised and uncivilised, and we are advocating a world in which they will have no place. Miss Spearman, however, is prepared to condone some cruelty and violence because it leaves behind a legacy of culture!

Miss Spearman says “I am appalled at the ignorance displayed in your leading article.” But she does not give any examples of the alleged ignorance. The article takes conflicting statements from authoritative sources and points out the contradictions. Is that ignorance? Miss Spearman has allowed her emotions to obscure her critical faculties and reads into the article what was never even suggested. The writer of the article quoted from The Times a description of the Mau Mau oath-taking and then points out that this account is reminiscent of the secret oath-taking ceremonies of the Freemasons. There was nothing in this ceremony about ripping a child from its mother's womb. Are we to understand that Miss Spearman has “firsthand knowledge” of this? If so we would be interested to learn how she witnessed it! Since she is on this subject may we remind her of a hideous civilized ceremony of Holy Communion in which the body and blood of Christ is consumed in token form.

Then we are told by inference that we must not worry about the bloodstained Ashanti kingdom because, like the Lombard kingdom, it left an imperishable legend of culture behind. Under those circumstances, apparently, the cutting off of babies heads is palliated! But Miss Spearman does not go back far enough in her description of the West African culture. Genuine West African culture was destroyed by the slave traders who visited Nigeria and the adjacent districts in the 16th and 17th centuries. Over 80 per cent. of the negro slaves came from this area and what were they like? According to anthropologists they “came from the economically most advanced, artistic, and socially complex areas of Negroid Africa. The economic, organizational, and aesthetic levels of these districts were in general comparable to the slave empires of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome." (Page 72 “Outline of Anthropology," by Jacobs and Stein, 1948.)

The Portuguese and other civilized ruffians destroyed these cultured communities, branded their cultured members with irons and herded them into slave ships to undergo long voyages packed in stifling holds. So many died of their sufferings on the voyages that many of the ships had to jettison a large part of their human cargo on the way. The following extract from Sir Alan Burns' “History of Nigeria ” (1942) will give a little idea of what these negroes suffered:

“The cruelties practised by white men in this trade are almost unbelievable. The condition of the crowded hold of a slave-ship during the long 'middle passage’ in tropical weather across the Atlantic would explain the reason why scores of slaves died on every voyage, and why others would, when the opportunity offered, leap overboard to escape sufferings worse than death. Men and women were flogged to compel them to eat, and hot irons were occasionally used to force them to open their mouths and swallow the food which they were too sick at heart to eat willingly. They were flogged again to make them dance and sing in order that they should not brood over their misfortunes. Unbounded licence was given to the officers and crews of slavers as regards the women; the men slaves were fastened together in pairs by handcuffs and leg-irons, and frequently were stowed so close together as to admit of no other posture than lying on their sides. The height between decks was sometimes only 18 inches, so that the slaves could not turn round or even lie on their sides. In about the year 1785 one ship took on board 700 slaves, who were 'so crowded that they were obliged to lie one upon another. This occasioned such a mortality among them that, without meeting with unusual bad weather, or having a longer voyage than common, nearly one-half of them died before the ship arrived in the West Indies’ ” (pages 78-79).

Against this record of misery Miss Spearman sets the Portuguese influence upon the art of the Benin people! If she can shed civilized hypocrisy for a moment let her compare the thousands upon thousands of negroes from West Africa—men, women and children—who were torn apart and suffered the miseries of the slave ships and after, with the atrocities which are placed at the door of the Mau-Mau and she must admit that, bad as the latter are, they are puny in comparison with the atrocities of the civilized. But she need not even go back so far. Whatever the Mau-Mau may have done to babies and women is trifling in comparison to what was done to Japanese women and children at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and at other places during the Great War and in Korea.

Since Miss Spearman is so worked up over Mau-Mau ferocity let us call her attention to another example of civilized ferocity from a different part of the world.

Sir Francis Head was Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada during the first half of last century. After his experiences there he wrote a “Memorandum on the Aborigines of North America" which he included in his book “A Narrative” published by John Murray—London, 1839. From this memorandum we take the following extracts:

"The fate of the red inhabitants of America, the real proprietors of its soil, is, without any exception, the most sinful story recorded in the history of the human race; and when one reflects upon the anguish they have suffered from our hands, and the cruelties and injustice they have endured, the mind, accustomed to its own vices, is lost in utter astonishment at finding that in the red man’s heart there exists no sentiment of animosity against us, no feeling of revenge;”

"So long as we were obtaining possession of their country by open violence, the fatal result of the unequal conquest was but too clearly understood; but now that we nave succeeded in exterminating their race from vast regions of land, where nothing in the present day remains of the poor Indian but the unnoticed bones of his ancestors, it seems inexplicable how it should happen that, even where their race barely lingers in existence, it should still continue to wither, droop, and vanish before us like grass on the progress of the forest in flames.”

Sir Francis Head’s memorandum was sent to the Government of the day but nothing happened, the interests involved were too powerful. He wrote his book when he returned to England to call attention to the plight of the red men but it was wasted effort, the red men continued to be harried until in despair they retaliated, as best they could, in the seventies and eighties, providing writers with material for “Westerns” but doing themselves no good in the end. They were up against the civilized lust for wealth and it was too much for them. Is Miss Spearman prepared to overlook the violent and cruel wiping out of the red men on account of American culture?

Miss Spearman tells us easily that the social organisation of the Kenya African was extremely simple. E. E. Evans-Pritchard, in his introduction to Peristiany’s “The Social Institutions of the Kipsigis” (published in 1929), by no means supports this view:

"Anthropology in Kenya has been left to the initiative of individuals. Our knowledge of the peoples is not a good advertisement for scientific laisser-faire. Although Europeans have been settled in Kenya for about half a century we know very little about the social structure of its peoples,” page xix.

Peristiany’s book, the record of first-hand observation, reveals that the social organisation was anything but “extremely simple.”

Before Miss Spearman goes out of her way to tell us we are silly she should delve more deeply into the subject herself.

We may add that “a much better preparation for the understanding of present-day Africa” is neither Hodgkin nor the publications of the Fabian society but a study of white imperialism in Africa and books by such investigators of native life as Junod, Hobley, Rattray, Peristiany, Schapora and the like

Finally, if Miss Spearman is genuinely concerned about atrocities today let her attack the father of them all—Capitalism with its insatiable lust for profit.

Gilmac.

Savagery—Black and White Sidelights on the Mau Mau (1952)

From the December 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

The doctrine of the universality of truth has been taking some hard knocks lately in the Press and in Parliament. A striking example arises in connection with the troubles in Kenya. The Mau Mau killings there would indicate to the unprejudiced observer that the Kikuyu are dissatisfied with British rule: but British politicians, intentionally blind to the obvious, have taken them to show merely that the African is still “a savage,” not ready for the benefits of modern political democracy. Lord Milverton, in the Lords on October 29th, talked of “races who only yesterday emerged.from savagery” and said “you cannot swallow 2,000 years of progress in the course of a generation or so without suffering from severe indigestion.” Five days earlier Mr. Louw, the South African Minister of Economic Affairs, had said that “the overwhelming majority of Africans were as yet hardly civilised, and in any case had the outlook of uncivilised persons.” And on October 24th The Times' Nairobi Correspondent remarked that “ the cruel outrages of Mau Mau are a reminder of how abort a time half a century can be in so old a place as Africa.”

Now let us change the scene to Malaya, where Africans are fighting for. not against, British capitalism. Same Empire, same Africans. But what a transformation has taken place! On the troopship voyage from Africa to South-East Asia, the two thousand years of progress which were worrying Lord Milverton have apparently been swallowed as easily as an afternoon snack. Contrary to all previously known fact, the donning of uniform, the army discipline, the careful lessons in killing, have not brutalised these Africans; the schooling in butchery they have undergone has actually made them more humane. And it has become seditious to suggest that it has not. “At first” said The Times' Singapore Correspondent sadly, “the Africans were plagued by Communist propagandists who said that they were savages with sharpened appetites for Malay and Chinese babies ” (29-10-52). But he goes on to remark on the “magnificent bearing,” the “good behaviour and grinning cheerfulness” of the African, and soon the whole idea of the savagery of Africans becomes so ludicrous to him that he is tempted into harmless witticism—”it was soon discovered that they have only an undeniable desire for posho (an African dish), which is not dangerous to the rising population of Malaya.”

Sweeping allegations about the savagery of the African are also made suspect by statements like this: “The Kenya African is far behind his brother on the West coast, although he is advancing rapidly ” (The Times, 30-10-52). According to this, the West coast African must be far ahead of his East African brother. It seems that half a century in so old a place as the Gold Coast is not so long as half a century in so old a place as Kenya. But the real reason the West African is said to be so far ahead of the Kikuyu is the same reason which makes it necessary to depict the African in Malaya as so curiously un-savage: the needs of British ruling-class propaganda. For in the Gold Coast, where there are no white settlers to be supported against the blacks, the natives have been given virtual dominion status. British capitalism decided that it would be just as profitable, and less expensive, to give the Africans the apparatus of democracy, and allow them to believe (as the British workers believe) that they are governing themselves. Since this was done, British politicians have been able to forget about the alleged "savagery" of the Gold Coast African. But they cannot do the same in Kenya because of the fears of the whites that they would be overwhelmed at the polls.

If we believed the official reason for the contrasting policies in East and West Africa, we should have to reject the traditional stories, which are still being assiduously peddled by British officialdom, about the “white man’s burden.” For if the Kenya African, who has lived for nearly fifty years in the same country as a numerous body of white settlers, is “far behind” the African on the West coast, where there are none, the only burden apparent in Kenya is that on the backs of the Negroes.

Further “evidence" of the savagery of the African comes in the accounts of the Mau Mau oath-taking. We are told that:

"Passing through an arch made of green twigs and leaves the initiates are put in charge of the small group who administer the oath. A circlet made of grass is placed on the victim's (i.e. the new member's) head or round the neck, and other loops on the wrists. A banana flower into which has been poured blood from a sacrificial pit, freshly killed, is passed round the heads of the initiates after some earth has been mixed with the blood. Then a stick which has been dipped with the mixture is held by each person as they take the oath." (The Times, 9-10-52).

It seems that rational understanding is as little required as when a new member joins any of the big British political parties. Of course, all this ritual is just so much symbolic nonsense; but where have we come across the same sort of thing before? The whole account is strongly reminiscent of the secret oath-taking ceremonies of the Freemasons—the dagger at the heart, the rope round the neck, the strange-sounding and mysterious names, concealed from all except initiates, and all under oaths of secrecy. And who belongs to the Freemasons? Allegedly savage Africans? No: leading members of the British bourgeosie, businessmen, bishops, judges, generals—usually with a member of Royalty filling the highest position. Does this prove how short a time half a century is in the West End of London (where the Freemasons have their headquarters)? It would be tempting to prove the savagery of Freemasons on these lines; but all it really shows is that newspaper correspondents like to employ phrases which sound portentous but mean nothing.

The last example of the diversity of truth as shown in Kenya needs no comment. This series of extracts from The Times speaks for itself. The first refers to a letter sent by the Western authorities to the Russians in Berlin:

The letter then passes to the “trials” in the Soviet zone. . . . “These 'courts* seem to have acquired the habit of describing as 'crimes' acts which in democratic countries are considered to be a normal part of daily life. For example, a person has only to express an opinion contrary to the Government in power, or to repeat a piece of news which is already known, but which the regime has an interest in suppressing, for him to be described as a 'spy' or ‘traitor.’ Such a perversion of the accepted meaning of words would be laughable were its consequences not so serious.” (4-11-52.)

“Two Kikuyus charged yesterday at Nyeri with publishing without official consent a story likely to cause alarm were sentenced, one to 12 months' and the other to 9 months' hard labour.” (25-10-52.)

“Police reserves, in another section, on the outskirts of Nairobi, broke up a meeting of 40 Africans and rounded up 22 for questioning. An African addressing the crowd was wounded in the arm by a bullet fired by the police. He disappeared, but was arrested 30 minutes later when he reported to a dispensary for treatment . . . Nine African newspapers, most of them in the Kikuyu language, were proscribed yesterday by the Nairobi district commissioner.” (27-10-52.)

Thus imperialist chickens come home to roost!

Alwyn Edgar

Stop this business! (1953)

From the November 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

A visitor from another world, or a really long-term Rip Van Winkle, knowing little of the complexities of Capitalism, might imagine that the problem of satisfying the needs of mankind is now as good as solved. Modern methods of production would appear to have made possible, if not a superabundance, then at least enough of the material things that most people would accept as a reasonable standard of living.

But, of course, our visitor would be mistaken. It is not enough to produce or to be able to produce toothbrushes and shoes and houses to ensure that those who need such things do get them. No, a socially useless, dehumanising, wasteful, cruel, unpredictable, man-made institution called a (world) market effectively stands in the way. Despite the fact that people are in need, for instance of shoes, if the supply is greater than the demand to buy, then some shoes will be sentenced to economic death—they might as well not have been produced at all.

In recent years the tendency has been towards a “buyers’ market,” as it always is after the devastation wrought by a major war has been patched up. The export drives are in full swing. In fact rival nations are taking so many swings at each other over who is to capture which markets that the result is a melée of no mean proportions.

One of the tricks used to cajole overseas buyers into placing their orders with British capitalists is the employment of hospitality. There is really no other word to use than “employment,” though it does sound strange when used in connection with something a£ apparently unbusinesslike as hospitality. This year the sellers of British goods are having to roll out their largest-ever red-white-and-blue carpet to keep pace with the hospitality offered by foreign rivals. They must entertain and throw parties on a lavish scale in order to get round buyers. The Daily Mirror (20.6.53) describes the general atmosphere of these parties:

“It’s exactly like entertaining a rich aunt . . . But like rich aunts these affairs are so often trying. Even when you’re not talking business, both you and your guest know perfectly well that the only reason you're together is that you want to get at his money."

Operating on a less ambitious scale, the commercial traveller is to be found peddling his employer’s goods from door to door. He, too, must preserve a friendly attitude towards his potential customer—not that he wouldn’t like their relationship to be a sincerely friendly one, but the nature of the business virtually precludes that. He must never argue and must never admit to the slightest blemish in his firm's product— his job is, in fact that of a professional prevaricator.

Each separate business deal is like an armistice in a perpetual war. Buyer and seller come together to agree on certain terms. Then they part to continue the struggle to gain advantage in the next deal. The trait of aggressiveness is prominent in those who aspire to get to the top of the ladder. Yet aggressiveness is condemned in such common remarks as "Don't push other people around,'' and those who behave in this way are usually hated by their colleagues. The individual is thus divided against himself, as the society of which he is part is divided against itself.

"Don't be selfish” is another common injunction, yet its opposite is also advocated: keep your own advantage in mind, and in so doing you will also be acting for the greatest advantage of all others. The idea that egotism is the basis of general welfare is one of the basic principles of competitive society, whose antagonisms of interest reach up and down to every aspect of life.

The ability to “put across” one's personality in competition with many others is the key to success in the business world. Erich Fromm gives a good account of this in “Man For Himself ”:

"If it were enough for the purpose of making a living to rely on what one knows and can do, one’s self-esteem would be in proportion to one’s capacities . . . but since success depends largely on how one sells one's personality, one experiences oneself as a commodity or rather simultaneously as the setter and the commodity to be sold. A person is not concerned with his life and happiness, but with becoming saleable."

One of the outstanding features of private property society is the fact that activities which are means to ends have usurped the position of ends, while the ends themselves have been lost sight of. People work in order to make money in order to enjoy the fruits of their labour. Without the money there are no fruits— yet in getting the money there is little time left in which to taste the fruits, which seem to have turned sour anyway.

Examples of the business approach to social affairs are found in the ideas of all the advocates of Capitalism and, despite their superficial differences, they form a united front in opposing the ideas of Socialism. Thus the Free Enterprise Campaigners will criticize countries in which  a few men at the top decide how everyone shall live,” yet their own alternative is nothing more colourful than to give you a chance “if you want to change jobs or start up on your own.” On the other hand, the T.U.C. will tell you (in their recently published report on Public Ownership, p5) that to leave industries in private hands means that decisions whether to invest, and what charges to make to consumers, may not conform to the public interest.

Socialism, by contrast, has nothing to do with changing your employer, or with who works out the best way of keeping you financially just alive. It is concerned with abolishing capitalism and with organising production and distribution solely and directly to meet people's needs. One of the most harmful effects of Capitalism upon men is that they become instruments for purposes outside themselves. They treat themselves and their fellows as commodities, with the result that they think they are as powerless to change society as the article on the shop counter is powerless to sell itself. They are not—as they will demonstrate when enough of them think as socialists do.

Stan Parker