Capitalism Cramps The Clipper (1943)

From the June 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

"The war is forcing great changes in the lives of people all over the earth . . ."

  "The greatest permanent change will result from the increasing use of air as a realm of transportation. Therefore unnumbered millions of persons are restudying geography. . . . Aeroplanes cancel the surface barriers and change the proximity of the places. Inevitably, as all peoples continue to become closer neighbours, they will have a more direct influence on each other. No phase of our lives will be immune to this new propinquity. . . . Air is one unit, boundless and universal . . . and is available alike to all inland and coastal places everywhere. Therefore we believe air is the dominant realm for transportation. We know that there will always be need for ships, trains and motor vehicles, but we believe that the relative value and effectiveness of all surface methods will be determined according to how well we use what only air transportation makes possible. . . . United States has the world’s greatest system of air lines. . . . Immediate development and expansion of America’s aviation is necessary also
   " . . . at the Peace Conference. Then either we will be dominant in the air or we will be dominated in the post-war air-world.”

The above is culled, not from a new preface to a 1943 edition of the Communist Manifesto, but from an advertisement of American Air Lines Incorporated, in the American magazine, United States News (January 8th, 1943), forwarded to us by the courtesy of our colleagues of the Workers' Socialist Party of America.

Meantime, the U.S. Government has organised Air Transport Command, which has already driven a new route across Africa, to the Near East, and the press has announced that the first licence has been granted to a civil U.S. Air Line to operate a new route from Boston to Moscow. It has been stated that the cost of a ticket will be slightly under one-third of the third-class steamship fare.

Perhaps this has some connection with the concern displayed by Mr. Walter Runciman and Lord Cowdray, who, with other shipowners, have recently resigned the directorship of British Airways Corporation.

The British Air Ministry has organised a British imitation of Air Transport Command on the American model, which put the fat in the fire in British Airways Corporation. Mr. Runciman said on March 9th in Bristol (Daily Telegraph, March 10th):

  On the one hand, the Americans are pushing on air transport to quite extraordinary lengths. We are told that they flew rather more than a ton of frozen strawberries to Africa so that their troops might have the minimum of discomfort on Thanksgiving Bay.
  On the other hand, the rather more austere British effort is confined to meeting, as far it can, the almost unlimited demand for space for wartime purposes.
  After the war, if care is not exercised, there will be air line competition between governments. If that happens, the Americans will have all the advantages, because they have the planes and the money. . . . Those who are going to put the world right, after the war, must see that there is an area in Europe, as free as the U.S., without rival aircraft factories; you have got to do it, if you are not going to have the Americana overrunning the whole of the European routes.

Thus the cynical millionaire-shipowner gives Churchill & Company ("those who are going to set the world right”) (sic) their orders to establish a British Air Transport Monopoly on the European Continent after the war. "You have got to do it,” etc., etc.

The House of Lords is most perturbed. Lord Londonderry declared in the House (Daily Telegraph, March 12th):

  What they desired most was to link the empire by air . . . this matter must be considered now. There is danger in delay. It is highly important that countries like America should be fully aware of our plans, so that there should be no misunderstanding.

While Earl Stanhope pertinently asked:

  How were we going to prevent Germany from building aircraft, nominally for civilian purposes, but actually as heavy bombers, or so-called sports engines as fighters?

In fairness to Lord Londonderry and colleagues, we must admit that the Americans are making no bones about it.

Congresswoman Clare Booth Luce, the playwright wife of the editor of the most popular U.S. magazine, Time, declared in Congress:

   We ought not to risk competition from the British, but rather get everything we can grab during the war, and then hang on to it fiercely.
   The Wall Street Journal Correspondent says:
  One leading plan is to convert Lend-Lease into a gigantic lever to make bargains in America’s favour. She would be the only nation in the world permitted to manufacture civil and military aircraft.
   Senator Brewster, of Maine, said:
   The British used sea power to become the most powerful nation in the world. America will take world leadership with air power. . . . The past belonged to ships and the past belonged to Britain. But the future lies in the air, and that is America’s future. . . . We have got the whip hand and we are going to keep it. (Tribune, April 2nd, 1943).

The American correspondent of the News Chronicle reports that Clare Luce’s speech “produced an obviously approving reaction among a large proportion of her fellow-congressmen” (News Chronicle, February 15th). A technical committee has been set up here to enquire into the types of planes needed after the war.

As far as can be judged, it seems that the scales are weighted heavily in America’s favour, though startling new technical developments will probably appear. In any case, if America has the planes, Britain still has control of the territory of potential air-fields.

In addition to removing boards of directors. Sir Stafford Cripps, on behalf of the Government, has stepped in and taken over Short Bros., lock, stock and barrel, causing consternation among more backward sections of the Capitalist class. Over one hundred M.P.s tabled a "prayer" as to the probity of this action in the House of Commons.

Sir Hugh Dowding, ex-Air Marshal, one time chief of design at the Air Ministry, is alarmed. He has burst into print in the Evening Standard with an article entitled "The Red Light.” This sort of article has been regularly churned out by retired generals and admirals for centuries. They spend most of their enforced idleness seeing "Red Lights.” One thing must be said for the bluff old Marshal. He quite clearly appreciates the pious stupidity of the demands of the Tribune group for "International Aviation, Ltd.” The Tribune says:

  Complete international control is . . . the only practical . . . solution. . . . But not until vested interests have been ousted shall we be in a position to make International Airways a going concern. (Tribune, April 2nd, 1943.)

They evidently mean the nationalisation of Air Traffic. They need not worry; it is practically inevitable. But control by existing capitalist governments—equally inevitable so long as private property persists—can lead to only one thing, WAR.

Says Sir Hugh ;

  Our visionaries may argue that after the war there will be universal disarmament, and that no military aircraft will exist, except, those in the hands of the international police, so it won’t matter how inefficient they are . . .
  Well, I’m all in favour of beautiful dreams myself, but let us see whether the dream is coining true. (Evening Standard, April 8th.)

Very true, universal disarmament under Capitalism is "a beautiful dream.”

The one thing farthest from the thoughts of the Runcimans and Clare Luces—in the heat of their squabbles about air-domination, is a third alternative.

  The greatest permanent change (in the lives of the people) will result from an increasing use of air transport. (American Air Lines, Inc.)

National frontiers will be superseded, workers of different states will realise their identical economic interests as producers and operators of the mighty ships of the skies, while the quarrels of their masters will dwindle, in their estimation, to vanishing-point, in the same manner as human beings appear like ants from the air.

You cannot have “freedom of the air,” said Clare Luce, it's "globaloney", meaning that the U.S. capitalists must dominate the air. The workers will be enabled to see more clearly the paradoxical stupidity of a property-owning minority class, utilising ownership of the wonderful modern air liner to conserve privilege and obstruct progress.

Almost one hundred years ago Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, in the "Communist Manifesto,” described the historic process of the organisation, education, and centralisation of the modern wage-working class by the development of capitalist large scale methods of production and transport —especially the railways. In a few masterly strokes the whole course of development was revealed—how a national working-class evolved.

  The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. (Communist Manifesto, Reeves' Edition, p. 10.)
  But with the development of industry the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more. (p. 13.)
  And that union, to attain which the burghers of the Middle Agee, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletarians, thanks to railways,' achieve in a few years, (p. 14.)
  The revolution in the method of production in industry and agriculture, likewise necessitated a revolution in the general conditions of the social process of production, that is to say, in the means of communication and transport. (Capital, Marx. Allen & Unwin Edition. Vol I., p. 406.)

To-day, in 1943; we are indebted to the directors of American Air Lines, Inc., for the reminder that Marx's indefatigable engine of history is being driven at top speed by 4,000 h.p. motors across whole continents to establish a single homogeneous world's working class. Millions of workers are being transported all over the globe to fight and work, perforce acquiring a world outlook. William Liebknecht, in his well-known account of his long comradeship with Marx (re-published in “Karl Marx, 1818-1883,” Lawrence and Wishart; London, pp. 15), recounts how “Marx related to me, full of enthusiasm, that for the last few days there had been exhibited in Regent Street the model of an electrical machine which pulled a railway train.” “Now the problem has been solved, the consequences are unpredictable. The economic revolution must be followed by n political one, for the latter is only an expression of the former,” said Marx.

The third alternative to Miss Luce’s American domination of the uncontrollable air is common ownership of the means of wealth production—Socialism. The revolution in air transport will accelerate the growth of the Socialist mentality which, upon attaining social maturity, is a political revolution. It will hasten the dawn of Socialism.

Horatio.

After the above was written an article appeared in the Sunday Express (16 May) which indicates how some of the technical requirements of air transport may be met in the coming struggle between British and American interests. The following extracts deal with a plan for "floating islands” to serve as air bases.

  America, as part of the fight for the post-war control of world civil aviation, is rushing ahead with plans to build a chain of seadromes, or floating islands, across the Atlantic when peace comes.
  A powerful group of air lines has applied to the Civil Aviation Board or the necessary permission. It is backed by some of the biggest steel and icon companies in the States, including the U.S. Steel Corporation, the Sun Ship Building Company, Wirth Steel Company, and the Belmont Iron Works.
  But Britain need not leave such an important development as floating islands in the Atlantic to American enterprise. There is in existence a British invention, the pioneer of the kind which is available to us now. It is the invention of Mr. F. G. Creed, of Croydon, who is no mere visionary but the man who by his invention of the Creed telegraphic system revolutionised the speed of telegraphy. It was indeed that invention which gave birth to his floating island plan.
  “And still,” said Mr. Creed to the Sunday Express yesterday, "with this invention available to us we are apparently to sit and watch American air interests grab the control of the Atlantic from us when peace comes.”