Notes by the Way: “Forward’s” Views on War and Socialism (1938)

The Notes by the Way Column from the September 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Forward’s” Views on War and Socialism

In its issue of August 6th, the Scottish Labour weekly, Forward, reproduced from the July issue of The Socialist Standard our reply to a correspondent who wanted to know what the workers should do if Hitler and Mussolini attacked Great Britain. Nothing to complain of in that, and we are only too pleased to help any of our foggy-minded contemporaries with a little clear thinking. But though the point of view put in our statement is very nearly the same as that held on this question by some of the people responsible for Forward, the Editor of the latter thought fit to accompany the statement with some irrelevant comment of his own, intended to discredit the S.P.G.B.; the usual jibes about our small membership—as if that has anything to do with the soundness of our position. The most charitable explanation is that one person decided to reproduce our statement because he agreed with it, and some other person could not resist the temptation to add a little spiteful paragraph in the good cause of inducing the readers not to examine the statement on it merits. Then person number one appears to have had his turn again at the end of the column, where the bouquet was handed out to us that some of the passages in the statement showed that serious thought had been given to them, and that they might have been written by Mr. George Bernard Shaw. It may seem ungenerous to refuse a bouquet, but since when has that clever but often very muddle-headed gentleman been an authority on Socialism? That is the trouble with the writers for Forward. They know how to produce an attractive and well-informed journal, but they ought to give up sitting at the feet of Mr. Shaw and others of his kind and do some solid thinking for themselves, about Socialism.

Mr. Shaw and Mr. MacDonald

Mr. G. B. Shaw has recently been accused of favouring dictatorship. He replied in Reynolds Illustrated News that he had been misunderstood. His object, he says, is to make democracy effective. As evidence of the inadequacy of British democratic institutions he pointed out that it was democracy which made possible the career of the late J. R. MacDonald.

Quite a telling point if it were not for the fact that, throughout MacDonald’s career, one of the very clever gentlemen who told the workers to go on putting their trust in MacDonald was Mr. G. B. Shaw. Now if Mr. Shaw had listened to the S.P.G.B. from its formation, 34 years ago, and had used his powers to give publicity to our warnings against MacDonald (and against the whole idea of leadership), the workers would have had a better chance of escaping the disasters that fell on them through following the MacDonald policy. So before Mr. Shaw sets up as a teacher of others he should explain how he came to be so consistently wrong on this issue.

The Basis of International Politics. Profit Not Sentiment

While prejudice and patriotic feeling will sometimes blind the capitalists to their own interests, such factors will not, in the long run, stand up against the pull of profit. In this the capitalist sets an example that the workers would do well to follow. Instead, we find many of the workers still ready to believe their rulers when the latter pretend to be guided by noble sentiments of religion or patriotism. Just now the German, Italian and Japanese rulers are supposed to be sworn to common action against what they call “ Bolshevism," a claim that will not stand a moment’s examination. It was Mussolini who, from the first, entered into the closest and most friendly relations with the Russian Government.

A pact of friendship is still nominally in force, and until quite recently, if not at the present moment, Russia supplied oil to Italy (used to bomb the the Abyssinians) and had warships built in Italian naval yards. In the ten years from 1918 onwards, Germany and Russia were for most of the time in the closest possible relationships in their joint resistance to pressure from France and Britain, and there is not the least doubt that Russia secretly assisted in German re-armament. After Hitler come to power the German-Russian treaty was renewed “in order to further the collaboration between the two countries in the interests of peace." (These are the words used in the “ U.S.S.R. Handbook," page 94, published by Victor Gollancz, Ltd., 1936.) During Hitler’s five years of power he has done nothing to interfere with trade relationships with the home of the Bolshevism he pretends to hate so much.

The Japanese Government claims to be saving China from Bolshevism by getting rid of Chiang Kai-Shek's Government, ignoring the fact that the latter for years campaigned to destroy the same alleged Bolshevist elements.

One recent example of the relative importance to the capitalist of sentiment and profit is given by Mexico. The Mexican Government, hard-pressed for money, decided to expropriate the foreign oil companies, and offered what they regard as very inadequate compensation. Here, surely, was one of those wicked Bolshevist actions which would horrify Hitler! But Germany needs oil, and the Government saw the opportunity of getting it cheaply. So while Britain, the U.S.A. and Holland denounce the Mexican Government as robbers, Field-Marshall Goering, for the German Government, pats the Mexican robbers on the back. The following report is taken from the Daily Telegraph (July 23rd, 1938):

An article in the “Four-Year Plan,” the official organ of Field-Marshal Goering, Commissioner for the Plan, defends the Mexican Government’s action in seizing British and United States oil concessions.

The article explains that the Mexican Government, although popular in character, cannot be termed “Bolshevik,” and represents “a peasant and middle-class policy.” Foreign capital in Mexico, it adds, had clearly abused its powerful position.

These opinions are of interest in view of recent purchases of Mexican oil made by the German Government through the medium of an American agent. 

When the Spanish Popular Front Government, broadly similar to that in Mexico, tried to enforce its social reform programme. Hitler and Mussolini, being interested in controlling Spanish mineral wealth and in using Spain to strengthen their naval and military position, found that they were “Bolshevists,” and used that as screen for waging war against them, yet only a few years ago Italy was backing the same “Bolshevists” in Catalonia in their opposition to the Madrid Government.

There is only one safe rule to be followed by the working-class in their effort to understand capitalist politics, whether at home or on the international field. If capitalist governments proclaim their adherence to some noble-sounding ideal or principal, disbelieve them. Seek, instead, for the real motive, one related directly or indirectly to capitalist wealth and capitalist power.

There are Birds at the Bottom of Adolf's Garden

The ways of advertisement are manifold, but there is no essential difference between the publisher who sells literary tripe by the appeal of the highly coloured “blurb” on the cover, the patent medicine vendor who shows pictures of the imaginary patient “ before ” and “after,” and the politician who kisses the babies of potential voters. In each case the advertisement has little or nothing to do with the merits of the article. The extreme case is the military adventurer who covers up his bloodthirsty actions with press puffs and pictures of his passionate love for the little children, or the birds, the beasts and the flowers. Hitler's speciality is birds. The aged military man, Sir Ian Hamilton, recently visited Hitler in his home (and was given a tooth-brush! isn’t that wonderful!). This is what he told the Sunday Express (August 7th, 1938): —

He has a bird sanctuary there.' There are eight thousand nests in it, and they are not nests, as some might think, for eagles, vultures and owls. They are for nightingales and other nice birds that do not prey on their kind.

Perhaps Hitler does not keep vultures because they might give him prickings of conscience. But why didn’t he have some bats for Hamilton’s belfry ?

Senegalese Troops Used Against French Strikers

The old principle of “Divide and Rule” is used as much by the democratic governments as by the dictatorships. While the French Popular Front Government protests against Hitler’s policy of setting the non-Jewish workers against the Jewish, it has no objection to using Senegalese troops against white workers. At Marseilles, on August 21st, Senegalese troops and French navy men were used to unload ships and thus help the employers against the dockers who were on strike (Daily Herald, August 22nd, 1938). Not that the use of black troops is any worse than the use of white naval ratings, but governments know that it is appreciably more difficult to get locally recruited soldiers and sailors to act against their fellow-workers. Men brought from a distant province or another continent — unless they fully appreciate the common interest of the workers against the capitalist class — are more easily induced to act against the workers.

The Prime Minister, M. Daladier, who was responsible for this, also, according to the Daily Herald (August 22nd), gave a broadcast address the same night, in which he made “an amazing attack on the 40-hour week, leading achievement of the French Popular Front to which he belongs."

“The 40-hour week," he said, "must be made more elastic. As long as the international situation remains as delicate as it is, it must be possible to work more than 40 hours and up to 48 hours a week in concerns working for national defence." 

He admitted that the 40-hour law already permits longer hours to be worked, but he “wants the extra hours to be worked not at prohibitive overtime rates, as they must to-day, but with increases which should not go beyond 10 per cent." 

How long the international situation will remain “as delicate as it is" he did not say, nor did he round-off his speech by announcing that Cabinet Ministers had decided to reduce their own pay to the level of a workman’s wages. In war and peace, Cabinet Ministers habitually prefer to preach sacrifice to others rather than set an example themselves.

Why Some Workers Like Prison

A retired judge, Sir Holman Gregory, is writing articles on crime for the Sunday Dispatch. In the issue dated August 21st, 1938, he admits that some workers commit crimes because their lives when at “liberty ” are worse than in prison: —

Their lives when free are so drab and cheerless that a few months’ imprisonment with regular food, under the care of a medical officer, is a relief.

Mussolini Grabs the Money of the Jews

There was a time when Mussolini used to scoff at Hitler’s anti-Semitism, and he scored a neat hit at his young German imitator by pointing out that the Nazi gospel of the superiority of the Nordics was an idea invented by the Jews in the form of the “Chosen Race.” Why, then, has Mussolini suddenly decided to go in for a milder form of Jew-baiting himself? The reason is to be found in the financial difficulties of the Italian Government. Seeing how Hitler plundered the wealthy Jews in Germany arid Austria, Mussolini is doing likewise. The Rome correspondent of the Daily Telegraph (August 6th, 1938) writes as follows: —

Most of the Jews in the country are well-to-do. A small minority is extremely rich. Their influence in banking, insurance, public works contracts, the law. medicine, and retail trades is avowedly out of all proportion to their numbers.

Those with most to lose fear that some form of capital tax may be levied on their possessions. There is no question of exporting capital, because this has been prohibited to all Italians for several years.

It has also been pointed out that the attack on the Jews in Italy will help Mussolini in his propaganda campaign as protector of the Arabs and the Mohammedans generally.

A correspondent in The Times (August 2nd, 1938) recalls that as recently as 1932 Mussolini was telling Emil Ludwig that "there are no pure races left; not even the Jews have kept their blood unmingled. . . . Race! It is a feeling, not a reality. . . ."

National pride has no need of the delirium of race. Anti-Semitism does not exist in Italy.

Are the Jews a Race

It is useful to have Professor Griffith Taylor at the British Association confirming the absurdity of Nazi race theories. He is Professor of Geography in the University of Toronto and spoke on the way the social sciences are being challenged by “the forces of reaction."

About the Nazis and the Jews he said (The Times, August 19th, 1938):—

We are surely all agreed that the term Aryan can only be applied to speech; and that Nordic indicates a “breed ” and can only be applied to race. But few folk realise that the term “Jew” should only be used in connection with religion. We need a new term to express a group linked by purely cultural characters such as language or religion. For such groups I have been extending the use of the word “cult." For instance, in Canada we have in reality no French race, since Frenchmen may belong to one of three distinct races, but only a French cult, linked by common language and religion. So also we should learn to speak of a Jewish cult, since this large group is linked closely by religion and to a lesser degree by language. The Jews, like the Germans, are of two different races. If they come from Poland they belong to the Alpine race; if from Spain they are of Mediterranean race, like all the original Jews of Palestine:

The logical linguistic divisions in Europe, Professor Taylor showed with the aid of diagrams, were undoubtedly Aryan and Altaic. The race divisions were Nordic, Alpine, and Mediterranean. The German nation, he said, was half Nordic and half Alpine. The Jew belonged to a “cult,” but the dominant Jews in Europe, including about three-quarters of the whole body, were broad-headed Alpines like the rest of the mid-European peoples.

The most logical explanation was that the Polish Jews were the result of the widespread conversions carried on by the Jews in Eastern Europe. A year or two ago the German authorities were specifically excluding the German Jews as of “non-Aryan” race. Racially, of course, they were Alpines like the South Germans, and their language was best called Judeo-German. (The Times, August 19th, 1988.)

Edgar Hardcastle