Editorial: Capitalist “Socialism”—The Great Swindle of the Age (1943)

Editorial from the August 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

Future historians, looking back at the corrupt final decades of dying capitalist society, will be struck by the systematic attempt to prolong the life of hated institutions by giving them new and fancy names. They will notice, too, how the practitioners among the ruling class have been aided and abetted in this deception by the muddle-headed reformers, and how wholesale hypocrisy has been raised to an art. In our own times we have seen naked annexation of territory renamed “League of Nations Mandate”—though a cynical Japanese delegate at the League was reported to have said that it was clearly understood to be only a new way of spelling the old word. League acts of war became known more politely as “sanctions.” “Coalition,” a word with unhappy associations, is now known as National Government, and conscription is known as National Service. “Pauper,” “Poor Law,” and “workhouse” have given way to Public Assistance and Public Institution, without any real change in their nature. In the field of industry the once detested capitalist monopoly has been reborn with the sweeter name Public Utility Corporation, with the blessing of many labour leaders. Elsewhere in this issue is an article on the attempt to represent war-time industrial conscription as having in it features of a Socialist character !

In the field of political propaganda it was the reformers who paved the way for the astute capitalist politicians. It was the Labour and I.L.P. reformers who imagined that State intervention in capitalist concerns is Socialism, but it was arch-swindler Hitler who brazenly turned it back on them by labelling totalitarianism “National Socialism.”

While the labour leaders denounce the Hitler system, they are still playing into the hands of the capitalist class by their absurd propaganda, which affects to see Socialism in war-time controls and restrictions. So insidious is this idea that we have supposedly well-informed self-styled Socialists deceiving themselves and others with the belief that the capitalist class are introducing Socialism for us. At the Annual Conference of the Labour Party in June last, Mr. Attlee put forward the preposterous idea that the capitalist politicians have been forced by events to adopt Socialist policies, and that Socialists are winning the fight for Socialism without knowing it! Dealing with schemes for world economic planning, he said: —

“The logic of the facts has made responsible people agree with us. I doubt if we recognise sufficiently the progress our ideas have made. The British never know when they are beaten—and British Socialists seldom know when they have won.” (Daily Herald, June 15th 1943.)

He also asserted that “in organising this country for war, we are increasingly adopting Socialist principles.”

Mr. Attlee should remember that he is only repeating about this war what some of his Fabian and Labour Party colleagues said of the last war. What has happened now to the “Socialism” which they then affirmed had stolen on us unaware, like a thief in the night? Some 20 years ago, Mr. Sidney Webb made a statement just like Mr. Attlee’s : —

“The process of Socialisation has been going on for a whole generation in National and Local Government without our realising it.”

In his book, A Constitution for the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain (July, 1920), he claimed that every industrialised country had in the early years of the twentieth century found itself “increasingly driven to measures of Socialist character,” and that “over a large part of Europe definitely Socialist administrators are actually in office, and the principles of Socialism are avowedly accepted as the basis of social and economic reconstruction.”

At about the same period, in the early twenties, the I.L.P. were selling by the thousand pamphlets with the titles “Socialism in Practice” and “Socialism in Queensland,” telling the workers of Britain that the administration of capitalism by Labour Governments in Queensland and other Australian States was Socialism !

If this had been true, we would be compelled to admit that Socialism has been tried out in Australia, and “over a large part of Europe”—and has failed. It was not true, and to pretend that it was hindered the Socialist movement. Likewise, Mr. Attlee’s action in giving the label “Socialism” to present war-time capitalism helps nobody but the capitalist class. Having bestowed the Socialist blessing on it, he is compelled to defend every iniquitous detail.

At the present time it is Russia which attracts widespread attention owing to the falsehood disseminated by Communists that the social system there is Socialism. Once having hitched their propaganda to the myth of Socialist Russia, the Communists in their attitude to Russia are in the same situation as the British labour leaders in their attitude to war-time capitalism—they are compelled to defend whatever takes place in Russia.

When Lenin was alive the Communists defended his view that the growth of inequality in Russia was a retrograde step, forced on them by regrettable necessity. Now they defend with equal zeal the present official policy which encourages inequality. The Daily Worker (July 13th, 1943) has the following disingenuous defence of the recently disclosed rapidly growing wealth of some Russian farmers on collective farms : —

“First, a rouble millionaire is very far from being a sterling millionaire. Secondly, the accumulations of a Soviet millionaire have been gathered together entirely without exploitation of any kind, solely as a result of personal labour, or, more probably, the joint labours of a family over many years. . . . The emergence of millionaire collective farm families is an indication that that pledge [Stalin’s pledge in 1933 to make collective farmers prosperous] is on the way to being fulfilled.”

According to the Economist (July 3rd, 1943), one of the main reasons for this growing wealth is that the farmers can sell the produce of their own private allotments for their own benefit, and many of them choose to sell in the uncontrolled market where prices are very high. (In the controlled markets prices are lower, but the farmer who sells in the controlled market can then use the proceeds to buy other goods—if available—at controlled prices. If he sells in uncontrolled markets he can only buy other goods at uncontrolled and correspondingly high prices.)

The Daily Worker’s defence turns mainly on the fact that the farmer is selling goods produced by the personal labour of himself or his family. What a multitude of sins that defence can cover. The low-graded bottom ranks of the Russian factory workers are likewise giving their “personal labour” 12 hours a day, but their war-time earnings are labour about 3,600 roubles a year (Economist, July 3rd), so even if they saved 1,000 roubles, or more than a quarter of their earnings, it would take them 1,000 years to reach millionaire prosperity. The Economist states that the present earnings of some higher paid workers range up to about 34,400 roubles a year, while “Stakhanovites” may be getting 48,000, and the salaries of technical staffs may be as much as 72,000.

What has happened to Lenin’s declaration that’ what the Bolsheviks aimed to achieve was the policy “of reducing high salaries to the standard wages of the average worker” ? (Soviets at Work, Lenin, 1918.)

And what has any of this system got to do with Socialism? The Communists claim to be Marxists. Why do they not proclaim with Marx :—

“Instead of the Conservative motto, ‘A fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work’ they (the trade unions) ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, ‘Abolition of the wages system.'” (Value,Price and Profit, Marx.)

Imagine a Russian worker asking for the abolition of the wages system on the ground that the existing propaganda for “a fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work” is conservative !

Then we notice the Daily Worker’s defence of the Russian system of giving substantial prizes (but no interest) to individual investors in War Loan who happen to draw lucky lottery numbers—

“Those terms appeal to Soviet millionaires. They would not be likely to do so to the barons of Wall Street or the City of London.” (Daily Worker, July 13th).

Since when, may we ask, has the principle of prizes to holders of lucky numbers been regarded as a feature of Socialist society?

In conclusion, to return to the original point about the prevailing cult of retaining the evils but giving them different names, we place on record the following earth-shaking proposal of a prominent employer: —

“Mr. E. G. Tarran, a Hull industrialist, suggests the abolition of five words from the English language—capital, labour, rich, poor, and foreigner.” (Daily Mail, July 15th, 1943.)