It is likely that more nonsense has been talked and written about the class-struggle than about any other part of the Socialist case. Propagandists of the parties which support the capitalist system always refer to the class-struggle as if it were something which Marx invented and which Socialists are in favour of, just as, for example, the Liberal Party is in favour of Proportional Representation. Tories accuse the Labour Party of fostering antagonism between classes. Is it possible, asks Captain Gammans, Conservative M.P. for Hornsey, for the Labour Party “ to maintain itself solely on a policy of class hatred?” (Everybody's, 25-3-50). The Labour Party indignantly rebuts the charge that it believes in the class-struggle, and claims itself to be a party of the nation as a whole, devoted to furthering the interests of every section of the population. The Liberal and Conservative Parties say that they, too, want harmony among classes. Everybody's (leading article, 11-3-50) thinks that if Britain were “rid of extremists, all classes could work together in tolerance.” One of the most explicit of articles putting this view which have appeared recently is “ How to Lick Class Struggle ’ by W. W. Cenerazzo, in the Reader's Digest for October, 1949. Here is a quotation.
“ I like to call the American system ‘ Co-operative Capitalism.’ To me this means investor, management and labour working together for these objectives: to make the company as prosperous as possible so that the investor can obtain a fair return on his money, management can obtain adequate payment for supplying direction, and labour can obtain a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work with the accompanying job security and pension plan that a prosperous company can guarantee.”
The idea that the Socialists are the originators and sole supporters of the class-struggle is of course entirely wrong. Marx did not invent it; he diagnosed it. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels wrote: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” The various classes in society, they said, have carried on “an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open, fight; a fight that each time ended in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.” They did not say that history ought to have been the record of class struggles; they said that it was the record of class struggles. Socialists do not support the class-struggle any more than they support war; but they realise that both are inevitable so long as the economic basis of society remains unchanged.
The present productive system is based upon the exploitation of the people who work by the people who own the land, the factories, the mines, and all the other instruments of production. It is worth reiterating this fact, because it is the reason for the existence of the class struggle. Goods are made by workers, operating machines constructed by workers, in factories built by workers. Other workers—managers and technicians— organise production and plan ahead. If at any time an owner takes part in the process of production (for example, the owner of a factory who manages it himself) he does it as a worker, not as an owner. Owners as such contribute nothing to the processes of production. Why then can they live, if they do not work? They can live, and live well, because they are able to hold the rest of the community to ransom if they do not receive a sufficient amount of rent, interest and profit. If a factory owner is not making enough profit, he closes his factory; and however much the workers want to operate the machines in the factory and produce the goods they need, they cannot force him to open it. In the long run, no goods are made or transported unless someone makes a profit out of it. This is true of every industry, whether the board of directors is appointed privately or by the state. Owners live, then, by exploiting (“robbing” is a more familiar term, and just as accurate) the workers. Only Socialists realise this; the Labour, Liberal, and Conservative parties think that “a fair profit” is justifiable. They remind one of the French lawyer who wanted crime to be reduced, but not abolished entirely. The Stalinists also think that dividends are not fundamentally wrong, provided that they can control the system which produces the dividends, as they do in Soviet Russia.
In this way capitalism divides society into two classes, one of which is made up of workers and the other of exploiters. Each class has its own interests, which are at variance with those of the other. By strikes and by lockouts, by the setting up or overthrow of political superstructures, the struggle among the classes proceeds. While the workers are being exploited, they have to fight against their exploiters as best they can, by forming unions on the industrial front, and by forming parties on the political front. Socialists join the fight on the industrial front, but they realise, and try to get their fellow-workers to realise, that the working-class can only permanently improve its position by the creation of a Socialist society.
Propagandists of the capitalist parties avoid admitting the existence of the class-struggle in one of two ways. Some of them deny that the workers are exploited, and thus argue, like Mr. Cenerazzo, that there is no great division of interest between owners and workers. Mr. T. Wilson, judging from his article in the Manchester Guardian (13-2-50) is one of these. It would be as well, he thinks, “to abandon all talk of 'class war,”’ since large incomes derived from the ownership of property form “too small a part of the total to matter much.” Only 20 per cent. of the owning classes have incomes of more than £2,000 a year, he reports; four-fifths of them have to make do with a gross income of £40 a week or less. He adds vaguely that of these incomes “ part will usually be earned ” without condescending to give facts and figures as to the amount and manner of the “ earning.” One seems to smell directors’ fees. But this evidence of poverty among the class who live on the fruits of other people’s labour, interesting though it is, will not convert Socialists.
Other propagandists ignore entirely the fact that some people live on rent, interest and profit. To quote Everybody's leader-writer again (11/3/50): “Planners may argue and the London School of Economics produce figures to prove topsy-turvydom, but when all is said, the only solution to our problems is hard work. Hard work never killed anyone. . ; . Longer hours and efficiency should have their just reward. Fair shares, when one man works harder than another, is ridiculous." The best comment on this is what Mr. Churchill once said. “Men sometimes stumble on the truth, but most of them get up and hurry away as if nothing had happened." It is not clear whether Mr. Churchill regards himself as one of those who hurried away, or just as one of those who never stumbled; but it is obvious that the leader-writer has here hit upon something which is profoundly true. Fair shares, when one man works harder than another, is certainly ridiculous according to the ideals which capitalist apologists proclaim, the ideals of a “fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work." More ridiculous still is fair shares when one man works hard, and another doesn’t work at all. Most ridiculous of all is the system we have now, when the man who does no work, provided he owns enough property, gets a lot more for it than the man who works hard. But the leader-writer is not concerned with getting shareholders and landlords to take jobs in a factory or in a coalmine; he is merely exhorting those who already work to work harder. In this way he takes sides in the class-struggle without admitting its existence.
To say that classes fight for their own interests is not, however, the same thing as saying that classes always recognise exactly where their own interests lie. At the present time, an atom-war, which would probably destroy civilisation or a large part of it, seems to be approaching. This alone would surely provide sufficient reason for the working class to overthrow the system which makes war inevitable. But when Socialists try to spread Socialist ideas, they are brought up against the fact that the great instruments of mass-propaganda, the press, the cinema, the radio, are controlled by people who have done very well out of this system, and who therefore are favourable to it. Very few workers are yet convinced of the necessity for a radical change in our way of living. The mass of workers still vote for the party which holds out the longest list of promises.
At present, the three big parties each derive their chief support from certain clearly-defined sections. In the elections of 1945 and 1950, the lower-paid sections of the working class generally voted Labour, especially those in the heavy industries such as coal-mining, shipbuilding, iron and steel. The exploiting class, the landlords, shareholders and entrepreneurs, voted Conservative; so did farmers and shopkeepers, part of whose income comes from the exploitation of the workers they employ. The professional and salaried workers observed how poor, ignorant and ill-housed were the lower ranks of the working class, and sought to put a barrier between themselves and the poorer workers, and to emphasise their own superior standard of living, by voting Conservative; in any case, they had benefited from the low price of goods and services under Tory rule between the wars. There were also Conservatives lower down the social scale. Wage-workers who attend to the wants of the wealthy—hotel-workers, for example, in fashionable towns like Leamington Spa, Bath and Bournemouth—often feel that their livings depend on the continued patronage of people who have large incomes to spend and leisure to spend them in. “ In Bournemouth it seems that over 50 per cent. of the voting population work for a weekly wage" (Picture Post, 11/2/50); yet in the last election, both Bournemouth constituencies returned Conservative M.P.s with majorities of some 15,000 votes. It is more difficult to distinguish which groups voted Liberal; but the strength of the party in North Wales and North Scotland, which are roughly also the areas where peasant farmers exist in relatively the strongest numbers, would indicate that they are the staunchest bulwark of Liberalism.
The “white-collar workers’’ who live in the suburbs and work in the offices of the big cities, especially London, ‘broke away from the Conservatives in 1945. Under the influence of the propaganda of the Common Wealth Party and the Gollancz yellow booklets, they voted Labour. The big question of the 1950 election was whether or not Labour could hold this group, since although it might not be in a majority in any one constituency, its vote could determine the allegiance of much of suburbia. In the list of seats that the Labour Party won in 1945, but lost in 1950, the names that stand out are those like Croydon, Romford, Harrow, Hendon, Ilford, Mitcham, Wembley. These results show that the Conservatives were successful this time in securing the support of the white-collar workers.
The Tories now want to win over the upper sections of the manual workmen themselves. Captain Gammans, in the article already quoted, says: “It is from the skilled craftsmen that the Conservative Party may strengthen its ranks if it plays its cards properly." In other words, the big political parties, while in theory denying the existence of the class-struggle, in practice recognise it and make their plans with it in mind.
The Socialist Party believes that the interests of everyone who works, white-collar or no-collar, manual or professional, are directly opposed to the interests of everyone who lives by owning property, and that the workers must combine and put an end to the system which rests upon their exploitation.
Alwyn Edgar
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