Are Politicians Honest? (1960)

From the July 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Does anybody expect politicians and other leaders to be honest? To keep their promises? To admit their mistakes and if necessary make way for somebody who can do better than they? The history of capitalism is crowded with examples of leaders who have never done anything of the kind. Of men who have persisted in policies and actions which were obviously harmful—and have lied to justify their mistakes.

Older people will remember the stubbornness of the European politicians in the 1914-18 war, who persisted in futile campaigns which were often costing thousands of lives every day, without achieving even the objects which the generals had set out for them. There as a story that, when the terrible battle at Passchendaele was at last over, a high ranking British officer went up to the battlefield and wept at what he saw there. But Douglas Haig, the man who had planned and defended the whole campaign, did not weep. He was given an earldom. None of the politicians suggested that the war was one great, bitter futility. None of them, when it was over, balanced the dead against what was settled at the so-called peace conferences. They simply rearranged the frontiers of Europe, threw the Germans out of Africa and waited for the next war to start. And when that happened, one of the excuses for it was a dispute over a part of the post-1918 settlement — the Polish Corridor. The treaties of 1945 have had the same effect—they have not pacified, but have irritated and provoked more sore spots in the world.

These are only some of the instances when, although direct and vital human interests were at stake, the leaders of capitalism have been less than honest .They are still at the same game. Last March, President Eisenhower spoke to some American-Chilean organisations in Santiago de Chile. He had this to say:

The suggestion that America supports dictators is ridiculous. Surely no nation loves liberty more. . . . We repudiate dictatorship in any form right or left. Our role . . . stands as a beacon to all who love freedom.

Fine words. They ignore the fact that, in the past few years, the U.S.A. has supported, financially and militarily, dictators like Franco, Syngman Rhee, and Batista. And, of course, they have helped one of the most ruthless of the lot—Stalin, who was sustained in his pitiless rule by the aid which America poured into his country during the war. At the time, the American and Russian ruling classes had common cause against Germany—and when capitalist interests are at stake, principles of freedom and human rights are left to take care of themselves.

Nearer home, we find other examples of political inconsistency. The Manchester Guardian of 15th June. 1959, reporting on the Whitehaven by-election, drew attention to two statements which had been made by the Conservative candidate. One, in February. 1950. when he was standing as a Liberal, called the Conservative Party ". . . a class party . . . which desires to keep power and privilege m the hands of a particular section of the community". The other, in October. 1951, when he had joined the Tories, described them as standing ". . . not for one section of the community, but for all.”

This latter can be a winning line. Most workers deny the existence of a class struggle and vote against a party which they think stands for the interests of any class. The majority of them harbour the delusion that everybody’s interests are the same—and woe betide the "rabble rouser" who talks about the class war. This goes down especially well with the hire-purchasers of television sets and the deferred buyers of cars. So, to win votes and influence people, a party must often claim that it is above class, and that its opponents dabble in the fields of narrow self-interest.

A lot of money can be spent to put over this sort of idea. The recently published The British General Election of 1959, by David Butler and Richard Rose, reveals that between July, 1957, and October, 1959, the Conservative Party lashed out £468,000 on press advertising and posters alone. All of this—and what was spent at the same time by the other parties and by the various industries threatened with nationalisation—to convince workers that capitalism could be better organised by one set of leaders rather than the other. Are the voters flattered? Apparently so; change as they might between Labour, Tory, Liberal or what have you, their support for capitalism is unwavering.

Here is the very centre of the whirlwind. They trust their leaders Field Marshal Lord Montgomery summed it up when he said, on the anniversary of D-Day:

. . . a way can be found by which the East and the West can live together in spite of different ideas and social systems, but the finding of that way is not for you and me—it is for our political leaders.

This surprisingly is not one of the Field Marshal's least sensible statements. The problems of capitalist society can be left to "our political leaders." But workers—the people who make and build, who manage and organise—and who die in capitalisms wars—have a different task. They must realise that the leaders themselves show the wretchedness and brutality of the system. That, even without the mistakes and dishonesty which we have seen, capitalism would still make one hell of a world. That the future is not in putting blind faith in leaders, but in widespread understanding and socially conscious action.

Ivan