Leading Communist Arthur Horner, like the Jack Horner of old, has stuck his finger into the Trades Union pie, and pulled out a nice fat plum—the post of General Secretary to the National Union of Mineworkers. After the cheers of the C.P.G.B. have subsided, let us see if this appointment benefits the mineworkers, or the mine-owners.
Addressing a mass meeting of miners at Tonypandy, he said :—
“Production needs are so great that the time has come to apply the slogan “ If a man won’t work, neither shall he eat ” (Daily Express, 26/8/46).
Horner, of course, has learned this brutal slave-driving threat from the source of all Communist inspiration—Soviet Russia, and although this self-same slogan was incorporated in the first Russian Constitution of 1918 for the new “Socialist State,” it is difficult to understand why Horner shall proclaim it in Capitalist Britain, unless it is for the extraction of more surplus-value from the miners. Perhaps he, like the Daily Herald, imagines that Britain is now a “Socialist State” !
This wolf in Marxist clothing continues:—
“The present manpower cannot produce the coal that Britain needs to maintain full employment.”
With unemployment figures growing all round him, this so-called ”leader” of the proletariat dares to suggest that “full employment” is even possible under Capitalism, which demands a constant reserve army of unemployed to act as a lever against the struggles of employed workers, much less that it is actually in existence now.
The next “ gem ” (he certainly “went the whole hog” at Tonypandy !):—
“ A large increase of manpower for the pits is vital if there is to be a rapid restoration of coal exports.”
Instead of telling the miners about Marxism, or Communism, this “revolutionary” is forced, by the very nature of his position as ”Labour Tamer ” in the capitalist circus, to sidetrack and confuse the workers’ minds with that old, old capitalist motto, “ Export or die,” which is so necessary (for the capitalist class) at this stage to beat rival capitalist states in the race to hustle commodities into the markets of the world.
Impressively, Horner juggles with figures containing heaps of 000’s, concluding that :—
“If we can restore the 1939 position . . . we can .. . wipe out the American loan and the burden its commitments represent.”
For these few words of cheer the British Capitalist class (who bear the “burden”) will have cause to thank “Comrade” Horner, and perhaps arrange a knighthood for him—who knows? But the matter should not interest the working class of either America or Britain, whose “burden” under Capitalism has always been that of “ making both ends meet ’’—whose wages represent the cost of keeping them fit for reproducing their work and their class. It is absurd to suggest that the American loan is anything but a business arrangement between the master class of America and Britain, and the millions that Horner quotes are of no interest to the working class of either country.
Speaking of unemployment in Wales (having already talked about “maintaining full employment”), Horner, like a Stalin contemplating a “purge,” says:—
“ The cause of the failure must be traced and ruthlessly eradicated.”
For once we can agree, but as the only answer to the social evils of the day is the abolition of the system of society that Horner is supporting, and the institution of a system based on common ownership of the means of life instead of private or state ownership, the task is left to us Socialists to explain to the miners of Tonypandy and workers, wherever the Socialist message can penetrate, their position in society to-day.
Armed with sound Socialist knowledge, and the will to unite for victory, the working class will achieve its emancipation, in spite of the confusion and disillusion spread by office-seeking Communist opportunists.
Michael La Touche
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