Stupidus and Sapiens (1940)

From the July 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Reprinted from the Western Clarion, Official Organ of the Socialist Party of Canada, July-August; 1925.)

The vista opened out by the patient research of the archaeologist, the ethnologist, and the biologist in the attempt to unravel the unwritten history of man is one in which the most exuberant fancy can revel endlessly. Gradually there has been unfolded to us picture after picture until we see, far in the past, beyond even the earliest tradition, man first emerging from the forest gloom of primeval days. Low of brow, long of arm, short legged, huge muscled, grim of aspect, the direct forbear of the human race, yet lacking all vestige of aught we are accustomed to associate with humanity. Dwelling as the beasts of the forest, wandering through the day in search of food, grubbing for roots, climbing for fruits or nuts, crouching at night in a cave or on the limb of a tree; mating as the beast. A beast in all things, naked and unashamed. Where do we find in him any of that human nature we speak of so glibly? Where any conception of good, or evil, of decency, of morality, of faith, hope and charity? Where the soul that has been the source of so much anxiety to his posterity? Where the habits and customs, where the laws, human and “ divine”?

As says our Haji:

“What reck'd he, say, of Good or Ill,
Who in the hill hole made his lair;
The blood-fed rav’ning beast of prey,
Wilder than wildest wolf or bear?
“How long in man's pre-Adamite days
To feed and swill, to sleep and breed,
Where the Brute-biped's only life,
A perfect life sans code or creed.”

Yet, this is man, blood of our blood, bone of our bone. Our relationship to him is undeniable, and its closeness a mere matter of a few hundred thousand years. A long time? Not it! A mere turn of the glass compared to the ages between that ancestor of ours and his far-away forbear, the slimy, formless amoeba.

That man, urged onward by the same mute irresistible forces that have brought him to the threshold of manhood, passes over that threshold, and, generation by generation, approaches us of to-day, just as we are pressed onward to the morrow we know not. At the stern mandate of necessity he adapts himself to new conditions, devises new means of gaining his livelihood, creates tools and weapons, and ever improves upon them.

“Yet, as long ages rolled he learned
From beaver, ape and ant to build
Shelter for sire and dam and brood,
From blast, and blaze that hurt and killed.”

Age by age we can trace the march of our fathers towards us, ever, as they come, proving painfully and slowly by the accumulated experience of past generations; growing in knowledge, growing greater in brain and less brutish in body. Ever impelled by the stern necessity of obtaining a better hold upon the means of life. Improving their dwellings, their boats, their clothing, their tools and weapons. Discarding the rough stone weapon for the polished, that for the flint, thence to copper, to bronze, to iron. 

Free, wandering, warring, hunting, lawless, propertyless, “ignorant” savages. Living thus for nigh three hundred thousand years before the first dawn of barbarism even. Then, finding a new source of food supply in the cultivation of the soil, swinging open the gates of Eden and passing out on the way that led to labour and to slavery, to progress and to civilisation.

That ancient forbear of ours, the child of the man-ape, the scientists call “homo-stupidus”— stupid man. Us they call “homo-sapiens”—wise man. Oh, fond conceit! Wise man! We who revere the antiquity of a civilisation barely ten thousand years old, and that with lapses. Who invest with a halo of heaven-born sanctity a mushroom system of property of little better than a century’s growth. Who bow before the altars of “eternal” deities discovered but yesterday. Who crystalise our miserable modern characteristics as “human nature”—as it was in the beginning and always shall be. Who elevate to the ludicrous dignity of divine law an upstart moral code coeval with shopkeeping. Who conceitedly plume ourselves upon the possession of a higher ethical sense than our rude forbears, and daily and habitually stoop to practises which the most untutored savage would abhor. Who lie, and cheat, and thieve, and prey upon one another. Who rob, ravish and oppress the weak and cringe before the strong; who pander to lust and prostitute for a pittance; who traffic, traffic, traffic in all things— in manly “honour,” in womanly "virtue,” in childish defencelessness, in the flesh and blood of kith and kin, in the holiest of holies or in the abomination of abominations; who crown our achievements by pouring over the festering heap of our iniquities the leprous, foetid slime of hypocrisy.

Wise man! Wonderful creature! Lord of creation! Hub of the universe! For whose uses all things, the quick and the dead, were especially created; the stars and the planets, the sun by day and the moon by night to light him; the earth, the seasons, the wind, the rain, the waters, the lightning, the metals, the mountains, the plains, the valleys, the forests, the fruits, the beasts, the birds, the fishes, the fleas and the flies—and corned beef and cabbage.

D. G. McKenzie, S.P.C.

Federal Europe or Internationalism (1940)

Editorial from the August 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

One direction in which change is likely after the war is in the relationship of the small and big Powers in Europe—and indeed in the whole world. While the American Federal Union propagandists are urging the immediate Union of U.S.A. and the British Empire, another group favour the idea of Anglo-French Union (already offered to France by the British Government just before the French collapse), and still a third group are attracted by the old idea of a United States of Europe. Last of all it is stated by the Manchester Guardian (July 19th) that Nazi propaganda in France is popularising the idea of a Continental Union under German domination on the plea that “Europe is too small to be divided into small nations.”

The argument behind such a plea is a specious one, for the problem is not fundamentally one of size. Size counts if we are contemplating a world in which four or five big Powers stand armed and powerful, waging economic war in peace time, and ready for war of armaments at any moment; but in a world of a different kind size is not the issue. Indeed it is possible to say that even "from the point of view of peacetime trading relationships in a capitalist world the arguments about the alleged necessity for bigger aggregations of territory have been carried to false extremes. On the one hand it is not necessary, for example, that Europe should be under one central domination in order to organise industry and transport as well as they can be organised on a capitalist basis—Czechoslovakia was at least as practicable a unit as some of its larger neighbours—and on the other hand modern routes of trade are increasingly international. Even if industry inside Europe were to be integrated on some plan or other the forces of international trade and competition would be at work with ever increasing force, and would show such integration to be no more stable and self-contained than the Europe of the post-war days. Consequently all such solutions would be only partial and temporary, and would be subject to just the same international disturbing influences as in the past.

The true line of development is the international one, on a Socialist basis. Then there would no longer be the choice, blandly placed before us by Mussolini’s mouthpiece in a recent article, of the vanquished being “reduced to the state of Chinese coolies compelled to toil for others ” (Observer, July 21st). Socialists intend to build a world in which there will be neither exploiters nor exploited. Like Signor Ansaldo, we are interested in the “resources of the whole world,” but unlike him, we want them to be used for the benefit of all mankind “without distinction of race.”

Notes by the Way: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (1940)

The Notes by the Way column from the September 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity

"One thing which has struck deeply on English and American imagination in connection with the French "revolution of Vichy” is the disappearance of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity ” from the “motto" of the French Government. But what is the origin of those words? It is generally supposed that they were invented for the first French Revolution of 1789, but this does not seem to be the case. Bodley, in a note to his “ France," points out that the words seem to have come from London, not Paris, and from Montesquieu, not from the revolutionaries. Montesquieu wrote from England in 1729, sixty years before the Revolution, “A Londres Liberté et Egalité."

The next step is the coat-of-arms of the Museum of Bordeaux engraved in 1783, also before the Revolution, in which the “Liberté, Egalité" are engraved, in honour, it is conjectured, of Montesquieu. The only word of the three belonging entirely to the Revolution was Fraternity, and that came late, during the Terror.”—(Manchester Guardian, July 13th, 1940.)

* * * * *

Mr. Herbert Morrison

(From a speech at the National Trade Union Club, July 25th.)

"What he hoped we might be beginning to shape upon the anvil of war was our own particular British form of co-operative society, a free partnership of freely active groups in which there was no room for mutual attempts at exploitation or for sharply differing levels of social and economic opportunity Such an ideal would be found practicable if the spirit of unity, the sense of common purpose bred in us by our common danger and by the stimulus of war, could be continued in our approach to the tasks of reconstruction and re-creation which await us later on.
They might say: “This is all very fine and Utopian, but are you not mistaking a set of wartime expedients for the beginnings of a new social order?” He thought not. During the past three or four years the British people had been through a crammer’s course in political education both at home and abroad, and he did not think it likely that they could forget lessons learned so bitterly and under such intense pressure. He believed the great majority of people know that to allow ourselves to drift back into the sort of world out of which this war sprang would mean defeat even if it followed upon a show of military victory.”— (Times, July 26th, 1940.)

* * * * *

Early Use of the Word Socialism 

The Manchester Guardian (August 3rd, 1940) reproduces a passage from the Liverpool Mail of 100 years earlier (August 1st, 1840): —

  At the present moment the sick lion of England is kicked most courageously by every foreign and homebred jackass; while his keeper, in a fit of drunkenness, or dancing with the Socialists, is utterly incapable of rendering the noble animal the slightest assistance.

According to Thomas Kirkup (“A History of Socialism" (1920, page 3) ) “the word ‘Socialism’ appears to have been first used in The Poor Man's Guardian in 1833. In 1835 a society, which received the grandiloquent name of the Association of all Classes of all Nations, was founded under the auspices of Robert Owen; and the words socialist and socialism became current during the discussions which arose in connection with it.”

* * * * *

Red Braid

It was announced in Moscow yesterday, says Reuter, that Soviet generals are to wear braid and gold buttons “in order to increase the effectiveness of the Red Army."—(Sunday Express, July 21st, 1940.)

* * * * *

Pro-Fit

“A powerful group of German industrialists is in the Argentine planning to resume commercial relations as soon as the war is over. The group is prepared to be pro-Nazi or anti-Nazi whichever is appropriate when the time comes.—Sunday Express, May 12th, 1940.) "

* * * * *

Thinner Bus Tickets

Owing to the war-time scarcity of paper and the need to conserve supplies the London Passenger Transport Board thought of the idea of asking travellers to take care of their tickets, refrain from screwing them up or tearing them, and deposit them in the box at the back of the bus so that they could be used again for the manufacture of paper. After a few weeks they thought of a more ingenious scheme. They decided to save nearly 500 tons of paper a year by cutting the tickets thinner.

As we live in a world where money is the medium to express relationships between buyer and seller and the L.P.T.B. is a profit-making organisation, it did not occur to them that if there is a dire shortage of paper the direct and simple way of saving paper would have been to dispense with tickets altogether. We invite the Board to think it over.

* * * * *

The Cap that Doesn't Fit, or What Price Independence?

(A reader sends us the following passages, all from articles in the same issue of “World News and Views," No. 31, August 3rd, 1940. The title of the article and the name of the writer is given at the end of each quotation.)

  “The task to-day is to mobilize and build up, to give organisation and leadership to the mass awakening and developing mass movement, such as can alone enable it to realise its aims. For this task of leadership the Communist Party is indispensable. The rapid strengthening of the Communist Party is imperative.
   “ ‘For the proletariat to be strong enough to conquer on the day of decision, it is necessary, and this view Marx and I have upheld since 1847, that it should form its own party, separated from all others and opposed to them, a class-conscious class-party.'

 “(Engels to Trier, December 18th, 1889.)” 

  (Twentieth Anniversary of the Communist Party of Great Britain.—R. Palme Dutt.)

  “On looking back over these last twenty years, it is really impressive to note the sincere and systematic efforts which the Communist Party has made in endeavouring to secure an understanding with the Labour Party. Not only in regard to repeated applications for affiliation of the Communist Party to the Labour Party, but in the suggestions and proposals for forms of united action and co-operation during every one of the important political situations and crises that have taken place in these last twenty years."

(The Communist Party and the Labour Party. —Harry Pollitt.)

  (Incidentally! “The path of the Labour Party is revealed as a false path, leading to misery, massacre and enslavement"—Twentieth Anniversary, etc.—R. Palme Dutt) 

   “In almost every statement of our Party policy, at every Congress of the Party, the burning need for uniting the forces of all who were for peace and against war, reaction and Fascism has occupied a foremost place." (The Communist Party and Peace.—William Gallacher, M.P.)

   “Saklatvala was elected to Parliament on two occasions—in 1922 and 1924—when he stood as a Labour Candidate with the support of the North Battersea Labour Party and the Battersea Trades and Labour Council." (The Communist Party and Parliament.—William Rust.)

* * * * * 

The “Daily Worker ” writes about its Former Hero

There was a time when the British Communists were showing towards Trotsky the blind and extravagant hero worship they now bestow on Stalin. Even as late as 1925 when Trotsky was already on the blacklist (having just resigned from his post as chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Russian Government) the Workers’ Weekly, was still able to refrain from the worst extremes of prejudice in its estimate of his work. In its issue of January 23rd, 1925, it published an article containing the following:—

  "Trotsky entered the Party in July, 1917, and went through the November Revolution side by side with Lenin. During the next three years he made a great name for himself in history, and did splendid service to the Revolution as organiser and inspirer of the Red Army."

But by 1940, writing on Trotsky's assassination the Daily Worker (August 23rd, 1940) can descend to publishing an article with the title “A Counter Revolutionary Gangster Passes," written by J. R. Campbell. The article manages to sketch Trotsky's life without ever mentioning his work in the Russian Government.

According to the Star (August 24th, 1940) the Moscow “Pravda" delivered itself of the following:—

  Under the heading “Death of an International Spy," "Pravda," organ of the Russian Communist party, to-day discloses to its readers the "inglorious end" of Trotsky.
  Trotsky is accused of having planned the assassination of Lenin and Stalin as early as 1918 and organised the murder of Gorki, Kuibyshev and Kirov.
   Trotsky, adds "Pravda," finally fell a victim to his own weapon.
  Finally, "Pravda" alleges that Trotsky was a paid agent of the British, French, German and Japanese secret services. 

“Great men " do not make history but some little men certainly know how to write, (and rewrite), it.

* * * * *

Fares in London and Fares in Glasgow

While numerous trade union and labour bodies, including the Labour-controlled London County Council are protesting in London against the proposed 7½% increase of railway fares the Labour-controlled Council in Glasgow is again raising the fares on the Corporation Buses—which just shows the tangle Labour organisations get themselves into when they try to administer the capitalist system. The Glasgow Forward (August 10th, 1940) publishes an article explaining and defending the increase of bus fares. It contains a startling argument that deserves to be placed on record. The writer of the article ("Knight Watchman") explains that costs, including wage costs, have been rising but income from fares has not kept pace.

He continues :—

  "Some months ago a new schedule of fares was established to take care of the deficit that was then at £800,000 and still mounting higher.
  At that time I thought the advances were too modest and would merely compel the Corporation to come back again for more. As a political tactic to take two bites at the unpopular cherry of fare increases is the worst possible."

After pointing out that the present increase will still probably not be the last he makes the following observations:—

  "Why the transport committee cannot submit to the public a schedule of fares that will meet all the costs of running the service, without those annoying slight increases every so often, I can’t imagine. Socialists have never stood for a cheap service in transport or anything else.
   We have always stood for an adequate service, properly manned on decent wage levels with track and rolling stock in good serviceable condition, paying its way by levying charges that would cover all the costs.
    These pettifogging annoyances of periodical increases ought to stop."

The above needs no further comment except the obvious one that someday “Knight Watchman" will stumble on the astounding truth that Socialists do not stand for cheap capitalism or dear capitalism but for Socialism. Let us hope that the shock will not be too much for him.

* * * * *

“Communism” at 4%

The following is from the Manchester Guardian (July 2nd, 1940).

  "A Soviet Government loan of 8,000,000,000 roubles 'for financing economic and cultural construction under the third Five-year Plan and for strengthening the defences of the Soviet Union’ was launched in Moscow yesterday. The loan will be for twenty years and will carry 4 per cent, interest."

Edgar Hardcastle

A Whiff of Cliff (2017)

Book Review from the November 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

'October: The Story of the Russian Revolution'. By China Mieville (Verso, 2017)

This is the latest book by China Mieville, a founding editor of Salvage magazine and an award-winning author.

It is structured with a chapter for each month and covers a lot of ground. However October is the last narrative chapter so it feels like a long time coming. The writing is exciting and events proceed with a lively pace. Insofar as a book of some 300 pages can manage there is much detail on what happened – but little room is left for analysis of why.

For example, ‘Lenin was referring to his supporters as hard, and his opponents as soft, and the distinction will generally remain glossed in such terms . . .  though this is not to deny the substantial range and evolution of opinions on each side.’ Analysis also occasionally tends towards the binary ‘hard’, ‘soft’, ‘right’, ‘left’, ‘legal Marxists’, etc.

He writes of Lenin that ‘to his enemies he is a cold mass-murdering monster, to his worshippers a god-like genius, to his comrades and friends – a shy quick-laughing lover of children and cats.’

Mieville also uses the translation ‘Russian Social Democratic Workers Party (RSDWP)’, rather than the more common ‘Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP)’. Surely it wouldn’t be to do with the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) that Mieville left in 2013, would it? The SWP were founded by Tony Cliff, who wrote a three volume biography of Lenin. In Mieville’s further reading he mentions this and calls the works by E. H. Carr and I. Deutscher as ‘magisterial’ and Trotsky as ‘towering, vivid, historically vital’. Orlando Figes’ work is credited but described as ‘unconvincing tragedianism for some lost liberal alternative.’ A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924 by Figes, first published in 1996 is award-winning, nearly a thousand pages and acts as a counter to Mieville’s book.

An interpretation too generous to Lenin is given to the 1903 Bolshevik-Menshevik dispute over membership criteria and Trotsky is more lauded than not, as ‘hard to love but impossible not to admire. He is at once charismatic and abrasive, brilliant and persuasive and divisive and difficult.’ Whereas Stalin is described as ‘the butcher, key architect of a grotesque and crushing despotic state.’ Surely Lenin was the key architect of this, with Trotsky as the butcher?

Some interpretations come over as Cliffite; ‘[Bolshevik activists] were more concerned to focus on the masses in the streets.’ and ‘[Moscow crowds in February 1917] were shouting ‘Down with the Tsar!’’ It’s worth pointing out the ‘streets’ and their ‘demonstrations’ were a violent liability for the working-class (often involving getting shot at), ‘anger’ and ‘rage’ often meant mob rule, and the ‘masses’ were neither socialist nor even supportive of the Bolsheviks for the most part. Decisions, such as the coup itself, were taken among small groups of Bolsheviks with support from the military seizing various centres of power to carry it out.

Mieville concludes ‘October is still ground zero for arguments about fundamental radical social change. Its degradation was not a given.’ By this he means degradation from the early Bolshevik party. But there was no substantive degradation. The early Bolshevik party before October was already degraded. October didn’t of itself lead to Stalin – Lenin and the underpinning ideology of Bolshevism did.

DJW

What They Say About Socialism (1940)

Editorial from the October 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

It might have been expected that the war would have helped to disabuse people’s minds of some of the grossest forms of ignorance concerning the nature of Socialism and its utter incompatibility with forms of dictatorship-capitalism such as those in Germany and Italy. Yet we still see writers who claim to be well- informed perpetrating the old falsehoods.

Miss Margaret Cole, writing in the Tribune (August 30th, 1940), about the modernising of Turkey under the late Kemal Ataturk, credits him with seeing the need “to establish the amount of ‘totalitarianism’ or 'Socialism’—call it what you will—which is imperative to the twentieth century." 

“This necessity,” she says, ‘‘has been demonstrated in Italy, Germany and Russia; under stress of war it is being demonstrated in this country and in France. . ."

Miss Cole claims to be a Socialist and the Tribune claims to be a Socialist journal, yet they can tell their readers that “totalitarianism” and “Socialism” are much alike, merely a matter of names!

Then in the Sunday Express (August 18th, 1940), an article on the Nazi Leader, Dr. Ley, says that if Germany won the war "Ley would go down in history as the greatest Socialist of the new and greater Germany.”

The Sunday Express's offence is rather less than that of the Tribune, for they do not pretend to be supporters of Socialism.

It was, of course, Mr. Bernard Shaw who set the fashion in recent years of calling Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin Socialists, though now in the Daily Express (September 24th, 1940), he is telling how to defeat the first two whom he describes as “upstart autocrats.” This is a far cry from his former praise of them.

The latest discovery is that the Germans in Guernsey have introduced “State Socialism” (whatever that term is supposed to mean) since they occupied it in June. “State Socialism,” says a Daily Mail reporter after interviewing Guernsey refugees, "was introduced in Guernsey from the start, and everybody was compelled to work.”— (Daily Mail, September 27th, 1940.)

  Earnings are restricted and are paid by the State. The normal pay for a single man is 30s. a week. A married man gets 38s., with a few shillings extra for each child.
  Foremen and employers of labour receive 2s. a week above the flat rates.

Of course what makes the Daily Mail reporter think this is “Socialism” is the fact that wages are all paid by the State. If he has been listening to Labour Party propaganda over a period of years he may be excused for his ignorance of what Socialism really is.

But let us say once more that Socialism does not mean that wages are paid by the State instead of by the employer. It means a system of society in which there is no wages system at all.

It is people like the Labour Party who have fostered these erroneous notions of Socialism. What they really mean is “State Capitalism.”

On the present occasion, although the Daily Mail, the Times and other papers agree in calling the Nazi scheme in Guernsey “State Socialism,” the Daily Herald refrains from giving it a name. It is rather late in the day for the Herald to repent its past misuse of the term Socialism.

Editorial: Blessings! (1940)

Editorial from the November 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

The main object of life is surely to be happy. Yet there are quite a number of people in the world to-day who forget this obvious fact or are so distorted in outlook that the mere being happy appears to them as a sign of weakness.

For instance, Dean Inge, in an article on the present war entitled “Blessing in Disguise" (Evening Standard, October 31st, 1940), opens up as follows: —

Every nation that has remained strong and healthy has been obliged periodically to light for its life. This is not an agreeable conclusion for a Pacifist, but such, I am afraid, must be the verdict of history. . . . The amiable but feckless Polynesians are descended from hardy mariners who performed the astonishing feat of crossing half the Pacific in open boats.

There is a fatal flaw in both of the above statements.

Let us, in the first place, glance at the nations that fought for their lives.

The Athenians, at the summit of their wealth and power, fought for their existence against the Spartans. They went down and never recovered. The Romans, at the time their frontiers were most extensive, found their existence challenged by the barbarians upon their borders. The latter over-ran the Empire and Rome went down never to rise again. The same story is true of the succeeding Empires of the Arabs and the Turks. France, under Napoleon, fought for its existence and went down, and in recent years Czechoslovakia and Finland have shared the same fate.

No, it is something else than lighting that is necessary to keep a nation permanently strong and healthy.

Turn now to the “feckless Polynesians." When first visited by the white man they were free of disease, long-lived, and healthy and happy. All travellers who visited them in the early days bear witness, without exception, to the fine physique, beauty, and happiness of the Polynesians. They have been described again and again as childlike in the joyousness of their lives, which were chiefly occupied with swimming and decking themselves out with flowers. It was the coming of the white man that altered all this, turning them into joyless beasts of burden, subject to the strange diseases that afflict the civilised white people all over the earth.

The Polynesian was happy because nature and the climate enabled them to get the means of life with little labour and he had plenty of leisure to be happy. Civilisation deprived him of his former leisure and compelled him to labour painfully to satisfy his needs. It did this because it brought a new idea into the simple life of the native, the idea of private ownership and the pursuit of profit. How the present native population of Polynesia must sigh for the good, old “feckless” days!

But even Dean Inge seems to be dubious about the strong and healthy result of fighting for our existence, for later on in the article he writes: —

  Those who prate about a better social order after the war are talking mischievous nonsense. However the war ends, we shall be an impoverished nation. We shall all have to work harder and spend less. 

What a future for the mass of the population who always have to work hard and have little to spend at the best of times. Better, perhaps, the life of the “feckless” Polynesian, which was full to the brim with happiness, though it lacked all the civilised adjuncts which have cost so much effort to acquire, and yet in the main give so little joy under the present social system.

To All Our Readers (1940)

Party News from the December 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

The other day I met an old friend who is a sympathiser of the Party. Although we had been out of touch for a considerable time owing to the conditions arising out of the “air blitz,” his first words were: “Blimey! have you got a Standard on you?—I haven’t seen a copy for two months! ” “Here, wait a minute,” said I. “ What about asking me how I’m getting on since its ages ago we last met? ”

“Oh, you? I can see you’re O.K.—it’s the Standard I’m worrying about. I say," he said with sudden anxiety, “the Standard hasn’t packed up?” and added that he had been bombed out of his home and that accounted for his ignorance of recent Party activity.

I was able to give him a current Standard and was delighted to confirm that I was still my old self by tapping him for a donation to Party funds.

Our many readers would doubtless be just as anxious as my friend if they thought that there was a danger of the Standard “packing up.”

Well, comrades and friends, there is no immediate danger of this happening, but rising costs of production, together with increasing difficulties of distribution, are causing not a little worry.

Therefore I am making this very special appeal to readers to contribute as much as they can spare to a Maintenance Fund that will ensure the future existence of the Standard.

Also I urge every reader to make a big effort to increase the circulation, as this would prove not only of propaganda value, but would assist financially too.

There is no need for me to dwell on the difficult conditions under which the Standard is produced these days. I leave that to your imagination, knowing that you will understand and respond speedily and generously.

H. G. Holt,

Party Funds Organiser.