The Goal of the Class Conscious (1941)

From the June 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

The conflict now raging has now reached a more serious stage, and the working-class, compelled by circumstances to fight the enemy of their masters, are naturally somewhat anxious regarding the duration, even though they may, in Britain, at least, have no misgivings in regard to the outcome of the fighting.

There was a time, not so very long ago, when our masters were not so much concerned about Democracy as they appear to be at present. For instance, when the Social Democrats of Vienna were shot down by Dollfuss at the command of Mussolini; the deed received the blessing, tacitly, of the ruling class of both Britain and France. There was no protest except a pious, hypocritical gesture. Surely, if any group of men ever sacrificed their lives in the interests of Democracy it was those of the Karl Marx Flats. The Social Democrats were not revolutionaries, but they believed in liberty. They offered to give their support to Dollfuss on condition that he would restore the Democratic Constitution. He refused because Mussolini, whose tool he was, wanted to get control of Austria ahead of the Nazis. Hitler out-manoeuvred them both, and Dollfuss was assassinated.

The events now taking place in Crete and the Atlantic are so breath-absorbing that we are not very observant in regard to what is happening in the profit-making sphere. The war is as exciting as a circus, and it may be to our advantage if we look at the actions of some of the wire-pullers behind the scenes.

The United States is in the picture just now and has recently unearthed a few interesting things by means of certain investigations made by the U.S. Department of Justice.

These have been condensed in an article from the pen of Albert H. Jenkins, which appeared in the Federationist (Vancouver, May 1st): —

“War or no war, Big Business men of all nations do business with each other “as usual,” regardless of the results to their own countries. That was proved by shocking disclosures after the last World War. It is being revealed again by sensational grand jury probes now being conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice.

There are three of these investigations. First came the inquiry showing that the Mellon Aluminium Company of America’s tie-up with a German firm resulted in a serious shortage of aluminium and magnesium for aeroplanes and other defence needs of the country, while production of those strategic light metals went ahead by leaps and bounds in Germany.

Second is a probe of the drug industry, begun last July, and third, is an investigation of the chemical industry, begun this week by a grand jury in New York.

COMBINED AGAINST U.S.

The facts which are being brought out show how American and foreign corporations got together to limit production and fix prices of important products the world around, by means of patents and secret agreements, with results harmful to the interests of the United States. These international combines include many other foreign firms beside those in Germany, but the latter are particularly significant because of war and defence developments.

The latest action by the grand jury was to subpoena the books of five companies—General Aniline, Sterling Products, Winthrop Chemical, Sobering and the Swiss Bank Corporation. The subpoenas also require these companies to give the jury full information about their relations and dealings with 100 other big concerns in the United States, Germany, England, France, Italy, South America and other countries.

GIANTS UNDER FIRE.

Among these companies are such giants as duPont, Dow Chemical, American Cynamid, Lever Brothers, and practically all the other leading American and foreign drug and chemical corporations.

Grand juries do not disclose their findings until they make indictments, but some idea of what the Department of Justice officials are after can be obtained from their recent testimony before the Monopoly Committee and the House Appropriations and Patents Committees, where they were describing this probe and asking for more money to carry it on.

One of them, who was talking “off the record” and does not want his name mentioned, told the Appropriations Committee that “the German chemical trust has in this country eight affiliates, one of which is a $30,000,000 investment trust.”

UNCLE SAM IS “STOOGE.”

Since the war shut Germany off from South American markets, he said, the German chemical companies are having American companies fill their orders from South American customers. The American products are “packed in such a way that they look like German stuff.”

Thus the American companies are handling the South American markets for the German concerns, so the latter can take back those markets after the war, despite the Roosevelt administration’s attempt to expand the U.S. trade with South America.

Moreover, he continued, the American chemical companies pay “millions of dollars a year” in patent royalties to the German concerns. Some of this money is being sent secretly to Germany, and much of it is sent to South America, where the Germans use it for “penetration” of South American countries.

OTHER CONSPIRACIES PROBED

In addition to the aluminium, magnesium, drug and chemical probes, the Justice Department is acting against similar “conspiracies” involving other products which are vital to national defence.

The situation on several of these other products was described at the same House Committee hearings. One case is “an agreement between the General Electric Company of the United States and Krupp, a big German trust.”

This agreement, the witness said, covers “tungsten carbide, the key to the whole German machine-tool industry. It is harder than diamond.” Because of the agreement. “Germany produces 20 times as much tungsten carbide as the United States.”

Another interesting item in the same paper indicates that Uncle Sam is not in full sympathy with Democracy everywhere. The prosecution of the Social Democrats of Germany in Spain could be stopped if the United States made an appropriate gesture. The following is worth noting: —

“The Mexican Government has protested strongly to Vichy against the violation of the agreement that Spanish refugees were to be protected by the French Government and permitted to emigrate to Mexico.

Undoubtedly there has been connivery with Franco, who is unwilling to allow Loyalist leaders to escape, because he is afraid that one day they will return and lead a revolt against him, and is hoping that ultimately France will deliver them over to his vengeance. Progressive Americans point out that Washington could help by refusing to send foodships to Vichy or to Madrid, unless those ships could carry back the refugees to Mexico.

The fate of anti-Nazi German refugees in France is not less tragic. Recently two able German intellectuals of the Social-Democratic Party who held high office in the Weimar Republic, Breitsheid and Hilferding, were handed over to the Germans by the Vichy Government; by this time they may be dead. No one will bemoan the fate of the capitalist Thyssen, through whose money Hitler came to power and who recently was handed over by Vichy and died in a concentration camp. The betrayal of the anti-Fascist refugees to their enemies is the lowest act that Vichy has committed.”

The ruling class of this and all other countries will endeavour to do their utmost to make the world safe for capitalism after the war. Their great new world is a profit world. But there is one thing they cannot do, and that is reconcile the contradictions the present system produces. These will become ever more glaring and ever more irreconcilable.

War Savings Weeks are a means of lowering the real wages of the class to which we belong: real wages are food, clothing and shelter; these are declining in quantity and quality.

We are told that our savings will help us tide over the trying period that will follow the cessation of hostilities. This means when unemployment comes you will be able to exist on what you couldn’t buy during the war.

There is one thing, however, the ruling class forget, and that is the increased knowledge that is being imbibed by those who live by selling their labour power. The wage slaves are not all asleep. The conversations one overhears in cars, in restaurants, on the job, in fact wherever workers are gathered together, induces one to conclude they will not readily go back to the bread line after the war.

This is as it should be. The material conditions have reached the stage when the present system of production is a fetter on production. A sure harbinger of a new, and, let us hope, a better form of society, in which there will be neither wage-slave nor capitalist, nor private property in the means of life. The Socialist has heretofore lacked encouragement, but he has builded better than he realised. The issue between the capitalist-class and the working-class has been kept clear, and moving circumstance has now brought into being those conditions which make Socialism practical politics. It is the only policy that unquestionably offers peace and plenty to all mankind. It is the only policy that can be advocated honestly and without equivocation. It is true. Its triumph is inevitable. Whatever its enemies attempt in another direction will be exposed as inadequate and harmful. The common ownership of the means of life and production solely for use is our goal. Those who ask for less condone exploitation and betray the class to which we belong.

Charles Lestor