Storm over Shipping (1944)

From the April 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

The most critical period of World War 2 is now but a painful memory to the members of the British and American capitalist class. The dark days of Dunkirk, of Singapore, of Pearl Harbour, are to them fast receding into history. They were indeed anxious, perilous days for them—days during which their whole economy was ruthlessly transformed and moulded, their wealth and material resources made subordinate to the needs of a struggle, the stake of which they realised, almost too late, was their very existence as major capitalist powers.

The fortunes of battle have turned. Optimism over the prospects of winning out in the struggle has given way to confidence. No longer immersed in the arduous struggle for self-preservation, they have begun to devote more of their attention to matters much more pleasing to their hearts— and, incidentally, to their pockets.

As a contrast to the airy nature of their promises of Atlantic Charters and Four Year Plans, their statements on this subject have not been marked by any lack of frankness. Recrimination and accusation have been equally indulged in by both sides. In industry after industry, particularly during this last year, has this conflict of interest made itself manifest. Some months ago controversy arose between Britain and the U.S.A. over post-war air transport. Hardly had this died down when mutual denunciation ensued over natural and the question of natural and synthetic rubber. Even more recently many hard words have been said by both parties over petroleum supplies during and after the war. On the subject of this increasing friction between the interests of British and American capitalism, the United States News (October 22nd, 1943) says the following : —

“Nationalistic suspicions are putting a new strain upon the relations between the U.S. and its British and Russian allies. They break out at every turn—over oil, bases, rubber, lend-lease supplies, shipping.”

In no industry has there been more mutual suspicion and ill-will aroused than that of shipping.

To British capitalism, a large and efficient merchant marine is an absolute and vital necessity. During the nineteenth century, when she was the “workshop of the world,” she possessed a virtual monopoly of the world’s shipping tonnage. Since 1900 that supremacy has been gradually whittled down until the proportion now owned by British shipowners amounts to but 26 per cent. of the world total.

The history of American shipping has followed a much different course. Although the end of the First Great War saw the U.S. emerge as the possessor of a large merchant fleet, the passing of high tariff laws, almost always fatal to the development of a large home shipping industry, caused the tonnage to decline rapidly. Playing in this war the same role she played in the last—that of the arsenal of her Allies—she has again been compelled to develop a large merchant marine. There is evidence, however, to show that after this war is over, she intends to maintain her maritime supremacy. It is evident that there are other motives at work besides philanthropic ones in this concern of hers for a strong mercantile marine. She sees the prospect that the conclusion of this war will witness the emergence of the U.S.A. as the dominant capitalist power of the world. From the speeches of her statesmen and businessmen, she appears to make her economic influence felt throughout the whole five continents. Already she has in some cases backed up those speeches with action—e.g., the building of air and sea bases. To the American capitalist class it is obvious that their plans to “muscle in” in the economic sphere will be far from watertight without the possession of a large merchant fleet to carry their commodities at reasonable rates. It would be economic suicide for them to produce goods to flood the markets of the world, only to find themselves held to ransom, by exorbitant freight charges in foreign vessels. They have made their intentions in the matter quite clear, witness Time (October 18th, 1943) : —

“A hoarse warning bellow tore through the fog of post-war shipping plans last week, set Britons tooting nervously. Back in Washington from a three-week visit to London, U.S. Maritime Commission’s Rear-Admiral Howard L. Vickery announced that he had told the British the U.S. ‘had become a maritime nation and intended to remain one; that we would do it by cooperation if they wanted to, but if they didn’t want to, we were going to do it anyway’. . . .”

And further :—

“The U.S. merchant fleet will be responsible almost completely for the distribution of the world’s goods immediately after, the war.” (Frank Taylor, President, American Merchant Marine Institute, Sunday Pictorial, November 21st, 1943.)

The significance of these remarks has not been lost upon British shipowners, who are themselves naturally very much concerned with their own post-war prospects and problems. The Stock Exchange Gazette (November 27th, 1943, page 1291) says, for instance: —

“Meanwhile shipowners have been able, through the General Council of British Shipping, to get down to some very important national problems, and, in this respect, will be more fitted to come to grips with actualities when the end of the war quickens the pace.”

The General Council had itself something to say in reply to Vickery’s challenging statements (Time, October 18th, 1943) : —

“Shippers have sufficient faith in American realism to believe that it will be recognised that, however important the possession of an adequate merchant marine may be to the U.S., to Britain it is a vital necessity.”

Neither British nor American representatives appear very happy about the position, however. Oscar R. Hobson, City Editor of the News Chronicle, says in this connection (October 19th, 1943) :—.

“The policy of the U.S. is to remain one of the dominant maritime powers of the world. Admiral Land, discussing the relations between the U.S. and the other maritime powers hoped that a policy of collaboration would be followed, but admitted that it would not be easy to achieve. He suggested that all the nations concerned would want a larger share of the shipping trade than the others would be willing to concede to them. Everybody, he said, wants to cut the pie, but no one wants to take a small piece. His suggestion was one which will commend itself to all right-thinking people: ‘I recommend that we bake a bigger pie.’”

In one respect, however, British and American capitalists and their economic experts are at one—neither party can put forward any solution to the problem convincing enough to bear even superficial scrutiny. The only solution which Admiral Land can advocate is “that we bake a bigger pie,” which is an argument he himself has already demolished in his own previous remarks. Whatever the size of the pie, everybody, as he himself says, wants to cut it, and no one wants a small piece.

The Stock Exchange Gazette (November 27th, 1943) is even more pessimistic : —

“It is easy, with sufficient State aid (and sufficiently complacent taxpayers) to build a mercantile marine up to any size. It is another thing to be able to use that mercantile marine, not necessarily profitably but at all, except by sailing the ships round the world in ballast. Otherwise they must be tied up at the buoys, as the unfortunate American ships were in the Hudson River and elsewhere after the last war because they were the wrong ships for such scanty post-war employment as was available.”

There it is in black and white. After the last war. the spectacle was seen of dozens—nay, hundreds—of ships lying idle in rivers, docks and other waterways, lying idle not only in the Hudson river, but in the Clyde, Mersey and Tyne; lying idle not only in Britain and the U.S.A., but in. every country possessing a merchant marine worthy of the name; hundreds of vessels rusting and rotting for lack of profitable cargoes, whilst millions of the world’s inhabitants went hungry, cold and comfortless, and this at a time when—crowning, tragic irony of all—foodstuffs were being burnt, raw materials destroyed, machines deliberately scrapped or rendered idle, and millions of human beings the whole world over, who could have set to and produced the means of human satisfaction were wasting their miserable lives away in poverty and idleness.

The stresses and strains manifest now in shipping are but the reflection of forces at work throughout the whole of industry. The struggles for economic advantage now taking place are paralleled in oil, rubber, textiles, steel, air transport; these struggles, heated and violent as they are now whilst the war is still being waged, will be nothing to the conflicts set in motion after the war has been won.

Whatever group of capitalists wins out in this economic struggle, the conditions the workers experienced before the war they will suffer again in a more aggravated form after it. Socialism still remains the only solution to their problems. Their task is still before them : to organise consciously and politically for the abolition of capitalism and all that it entails, and in its place to establish Socialism, a system in which all the world’s resources will be utilised to the full, in which production will be made subordinate, not to the will for profit of a few, but to the needs of all its inhabitants.

Stan Hampson