The South African snake pit (1963)

From the June 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Repression and bloodshed are no strangers to Africa.. Even so, what is happening now in South Africa will make a black page in the history of that unhappy continent.

South Africa lives now under a cloud of fear, in resigned acceptance of the fact that widespread violence is inevitable in the near future. Both the Government and the Africans are ready. Both have done their share of violence. The record of the government is well enough known; now an African terrorist movement has emerged, and has already carried out its first “execution.”

Behind the political dispute there is the mass of everyday crime, the gang warfare, the murders (2,610 of them in 1961—twenty times many as in Britain, which has a population three times that of South Africa) and the intimidation. This is South Africa. It is a scene savage enough to belong to a distant, primitive society.

Yet in many ways the Republic is a modern country, with strongly developing industries and considerable natural wealth. It has mines which have turned out over £16 million worth of gold in one month. It has uranium—a by-product of the gold mines. It has silver, manganese, asbestos and diamonds.

Over the ten years 1952 to 1962, South Africa more than doubled the value of her exports, from £376.2 million to £778 million—in impressive increase, even after we have allowed for currency inflation. Vital production, such as steel, has bounded upwards.

With her economic power, and with a ruling class which is possibly the most sophisticated in Africa, South Africa could become the workshop of its continent. But the policy of its government is firmly denying the Republic its chance of becoming an advanced, developed capitalist nation.

This policy is apartheid—euphemistically translated as “separate development’’—which the South African government has followed single-mindedly since the Nationalists came to power in 1948. Because apartheid is essentially a repressive policy, it needs widespread coercive laws to enforce it.

The Pass Laws, for example, forbid an African to stay outside his allotted area for more than a certain time. The Laws are designed to keep the Africans out of the towns, and confine them to the rural areas. There are frequent round ups of Africans in the towns, to ensure that the Pass Laws are not flouted. One thousand Africans a day are being arrested in this way.

South Africa has established Bantustans, or areas reserved exclusively for coloured people. Nobody goes voluntarily to a Bantustan—100,000 native families have already been forcibly moved into them and the government plan to move a total of five million families in the same way. This has meant that one-third of the Africans now have no legal right to live anywhere.

It means that eventually South Africa will be split into two nations, with the white one having 87 per cent. of the land.

The Pass Laws are not the only repressive legislation at work in South Africa. The Africans—the vast majority of the population—have no legal right to strike, nor even to negotiate through trade unions. And in case opposition to the government threatens to become too vocal, there are Acts like the recently passed Security Bill, which allows the indefinite detention of an opponent of the government and which can, of course, be used against a European as easily as against an African.

As the screw has been tightened upon the African, his desire to hit back has been intensified. The Luthuli tactic of passive resistance seems likely to be forgotten, as the violence from one side inevitably provokes further violence from the other. The immediate outlook for South Africa is not happy. 

Why does the South African government stand out against what seems the inevitable progress of its country into the ranks of the world’s capitalist powers? In South Africa there are eleven million Africans as against three million Europeans. If the country’s industry is to develop it needs a stable, contented working class to draw upon for its labour requirements. The bulk of this working class must come from the Africans.

But a stable working class is one which has the sort of political and legal rights which workers in this and other capitalist countries have. If the Africans had these rights, there would almost certainly be no compromise with the Europeans. The country would become, like Ghana, Nigeria, and so on, politically African.

To the industrialists of South Africa, this is not so fearsome a prospect. They are confident that they could do a deal with an African government and in any case they know that their future expansion depends upon the freeing of the native labour force.

It is a different matter for the landowners. Their future hangs upon them preventing the Africans asserting their numerical superiority. So they have done their best to prevent the Africans developing into a perceptible working class. They have tried to keep them out of the towns. And now, as they split the country in two, they are in fact trying to stop South Africa entering the twentieth century.

South Africa's industrialists—her capitalists—aspire to become the continent’s dominant economic power. The policy of apartheid stands in their way, while the smaller, newer states do their best to catch up and take the lead. Unless the industrialists can match their economic power with political power, their ambitions will become an empty dream.

They have a hard struggle ahead. At the moment, as the country slips ever deeper into the pit of violence, of crime and xenophobia, it seems that the landowners may win.

And there is a massive irony in this situation, which should be remembered by everyone who, for one reason or another, takes up the stand against apartheid. The very people who are administering the policy—the dour, ruthless men who are obstinately turning South Africa into a mad dictatorship—are the heirs of the men who were once the darlings of the “progressives.”

When, at the turn of the century, British capitalism was reaching out for the new-found mineral wealth of South Africa, the Boer farmers were the world’s favourite underdogs. Many people thought that they were gallant defenders of liberty against a powerful bully. What was called the “morality” of what was called “ England's last imperialist war ” was a hot political issue.

Well, the Boers made their point. Out of the early struggle of their nationalism has grown the dictatorship which oppresses South Africa today. There is nothing surprising in this. Most struggling nationalist movements pose as the champions of freedom; when they come to power, freedom is often one of the first things to be thrown out of the window.

True as this is of the Boers, it is equally so of the Africans who are now suffering under apartheid. There is no reason to assume that if they ever get power in South Africa they will be any better than some of the other African governments, who have allowed only as much political freedom as their particular brand of capitalism needs. There is no reason to assume, in fact, that the African nationalists would be any better than Verwoerd himself.

This is the irony and the bitterness of nationalism and indeed of property society. South Africa is but one corner of a world which, by its very fundamentals, can only live by denying human priorities.

Ivan.

This Superiority Notion (1963)

From the June 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

It should be obvious, really. Whenever they test another H bomb, or run into another economic crisis, or whenever a politician opens his mouth and puts his foot in it, or whenever we think about the strain and ugliness which are the modern substitute for living, it should be obvious. Capitalism, is not a desirable or a sensible method of running human affairs.

But instead of being obvious it is infuriating. There are the facts, there is the mass of evidence, all screaming for attention. Yet the message gets through, if at all, only slowly. For one reason or another the working class still like capitalism. This is not to say that they like war, or any other problem that capitalism brings with it. They think of these things almost as elements outside human control, like the weather. But capitalism they do like, they support the system which leaves the ownership of the means of life to a very few of the world’s people. They support the system of rich and poor, of palaces and prefabs, of ripe pheasant and Spam.

If at any time the workers have to think about why they like capitalism they may say that it gives everyone his chance and that it is our own fault if we are not all like Paul Getty or King Saud. Or perhaps they will offer some equally inane reason. But mostly the working class do not think about why they support capitalism. They absorb the ideas of the system effortlessly. As if by instinct they build up a wall of ignorant, indefensible ideas which all play their part in sustaining1 the social system of destruction and insecurity. And that can be very infuriating.

It would take up many issues of the Socialist Standard to enumerate every one of these ideas. In any case, they have all been dealt with at some time in the past. Let us now take a look at just one of the strange notions with which capitalism is supported on its pedestal of ignorance. This idea is a popular one among the working class. It is also, in some ways, a surprising idea. Let us call it the Superiority Notion. It is, simply, the conviction which many workers hold that they are in some way better than anybody who comes from another working class group.

In one of its most easily identifiable forms, the Superiority Notion is. race prejudice. White workers think that they are better than coloured workers; even if they do not want to discriminate against Negroes they often feel sorry for them, just as they would for someone who had cancer. Colour prejudice is so widespread partly because its victims are most easily recognised. Race prejudice itself extends beyond mere white-against-black antipathy, reaching out to embrace anyone who is “foreign” It is almost a tradition among English workers, for example, to distrust some types of foreign workers. (Some, on the other hand, they may trust; many English workers think that Chinese people are naturally honest.) They are content at one time to blame the troubles of the world onto French temperament, at another onto German belligerence, at another onto American irresponsibility. (Although we should notice that this particular fallacy has its fashions. Young workers nowadays think it glamorous to be Italian, but that is not what their fathers, in 1941, thought.) In England, in other words, many workers think that the only person who can be trusted, the only person who makes a desirable neighbour or workmate, is English, while and gentile. In other countries they have their own version of this particular prejudice. A popular idea on the Continent is that everyone in England is a horsey fop.

The Superiority Notion does not end at race prejudice. It is common for workers in one part of a country to think that they are better than those in another part. In Southern England they think of the North as an endless slag heap, with flat-capped dinosaur-brained inhabitants to match. In the North they think the South a cissy lot, a pretentious bunch who sound their aitches alright but are strangers to a good day’s work. This feeling can even extend to different parts of the same town. There is at least one dilapidated area in London, dissected by a dirty canal, in which the slum-dwellers on one bank think themselves better than those on the other. These examples could go on for a long time.

The basic ingredient of the Superiority Notion is that, no matter how depressed a worker may be, he can always look down upon somebody else. Even those who are themselves the victims of widespread prejudice have their own Notion. Some Negroes look down upon other coloured people: some Jewish workers regard Negroes as inferior, and so on. And if we ask why the Notion is so popular, is the answer that the working class occupy such an inferior situation in society, and eke out such restricted lives, that it is practically essential to their peace of mind to be able to console themselves with the idea that somebody, somewhere, is lower than they are?

The Superiority Notion is booming, for example, in Southall in Middlesex. Southall has a rubber factory, a massive lorry works, a cereal factory, a canal, a gas works and a ten pin bowling alley. It also has a large Indian and Pakistani population, who have taken some of the jobs at the rubber factory and the gas works for which it is now difficult to get white workers. So Southall also has a race ignorance problem because, apart from any personal objections there may be to the immigrants, there is also the usual deep-rooted opposition to strange men whose skin is a different colour and who speak a language which sounds incomprehensible.

So the Southall workers feel superior. Yet a walk around the place quickly puts their Notion into perspective. Street' upon street, the dingy houses stretch away. Sometimes they are houses which were built in the 18th. Century; sometimes those which were built since 1900. Some are even post-war. But the drab sameness, the cheapness and the restrictions, are all there. These houses, standing in the richly combining vapours of the molten rubber, the exhaling gas works, the oozing canal and the roasting cereals, each day feed the local industry with its supply of human ability. To be blunt, Southall is one of the dreariest imaginable working class areas. It is a problem to appreciate how anybody who lives there could keep up the pretence that he is better than anyone else. But the Southall workers manage it.

There is only one way to deal with this ridiculous situation and that is to cut right through the middle of it with the facts. Socially, there are only two types of people living under capitalism. One type is the capitalist who can live without going to work because he owns places like the gas works and the canal and he gets the profits from them. The other type is the worker who does not own any factories or anything like them and who can only live by working for a wage. For the worker, capitalism is an unpleasant system. It brings him problems like war and insecurity and the ever present strain of balancing his budget. It puts him to live in places like Southall.

But capitalism does something else. It separates and illuminates the fact that all workers all over the world, whatever language they speak and whatever the colour of their skin, are suffering the same sort of problems. The capitalist world has innumerable Southalls—and many worse places besides. Thus capitalism makes it plain that the interests of workers everywhere are the same; to get rid of their problems, to get rid of capitalism. To do this, they must get rid of their Superiority Notion, in all its forms, and of the other baseless, ignorant ideas which keep capitalism going. Capitalism itself, day by day, piles up the evidence in favour of its own abolition. It stares the working class in the face.

It should be obvious really . . . But this is where we came in.

Ivan.

Branch News (1963)

Party News from the June 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

With the usual optimism of Socialists, last month was an extra special one, with a larger supply of the special edition of the Socialist Standard—20 pages dealing mainly with the subject of Housing. The weather on May Day was not helpful, but despite this much was done.

On May 1st an indoor meeting was held at Caxton Hall, London. The audience numbered over 100 and a large percentage of the audience were non-members. Literature sales amounted to nearly £3 and a collection of £13 4s. was made.

On May 5th, Sunday, there was the usual meeting in Hyde Park. It was a modest success. Members rallied well to the meeting despite the very cold winds. Next year the Propaganda Committee will ensure a better speaking position. This year we were restricted by the rebuilding that has been going on at Hyde Park.

Many literature sellers met during the morning and despite heavy competition from other organisations sold over 300 Socialist Standards and many pamphlets throughout the day.

Nottingham. Two London speakers held meetings during the week-end. The meetings were well supported by Nottingham members and six dozen Standards were sold.

Glasgow. Comrade Baldwin from London joined the Branch activity and although the Saturday arrangements for an outdoor meeting had to be called off due to heavy rain, fifteen or so Comrades descended on the City Square to sell Socialist literature.

During the Sunday afternoon procession 4 dozen S.S. were sold, and at the outdoor meeting afterwards a collection of 27/6 was taken and 3 dozen Standards disposed of. The evening indoor meeting drew an audience of 65 including 20 Party members. A collection of £4 was taken and much literature sold.

The May Day propaganda meetings were part of the great work that Glasgow members have been carrying on since they decided to contest the Municipal election, held in May. Our comrades are most enthusiastic and energetic and are constantly seeking ways and means of furthering the Socialist case. Their immediate aim is to contest Municipal elections in every Ward in the city, this apart from their wish to contest Parliamentary elections.

Lewisham Branch report that from October 1962 to March 1963 they held a total of 21 lectures and 6 meetings. These were held at the Co-op. Hall (their branch meeting place) and the Lewisham Town Hall. Literature sales amounted to £5 and collections £35. The meetings were most successful and much experience in organising successful propaganda has been gained. Four applications for membership of the Party have been made. The Branch is hoping to organise regular outdoor meetings during the summer at Blackheath and Ladywell Fields. In addition to this work, the Branch members have been helping the Bromley Group which is also holding meetings from time to time among other activities.

World Socialist Party of Ireland. From this month the Standard will be the official journal of both Socialist Parties. As soon as it can be arranged, regular articles and news items will be sent from Ireland and incorporated each month. The Belfast Branch held May Day meetings on Sunday, May 5th and it is hoped to have a full report of these next month.

A comrade living in Cornwall is spending much time in travelling the county selling Party literature. The results are astounding and anyone visiting Cornwall, or living there, should have no difficulty in purchasing Socialist Standards and Party pamphlets. It is hoped to give a list of the towns visited by this Comrade next month when a full report of his activities is available.

The third of the inter-branch (Bloomsbury, Ealing, Paddington) "Any Questions” meetings was held at Conway Hall on May 13th. These meetings have proved most successful They give a good opportunity for members and visitors to ask questions on matters that concern them. The questions have ranged widely and have been most stimulating to all. The atmosphere is, or certainly appears to be, less formal than normal propaganda meetings and in addition to a panel of three members answering points, ample scope for discussion is also given. It is hoped to continue these meetings and it would seem that for Party Groups the idea is a very good one and should be given serious consideration by organisers of these.

Phyllis Howard

Philosopher off the rails (1963)

Book Review from the June 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Perhaps it was inevitable that Bertrand Russell would be asked to write in the current Penguin Special series. After all, it would be churlish to deny that he is a remarkably vigorous old man with a mind more alert and youthful than many men half his age. Anyway, he is certainly an able writer.

But there our compliments must end. We are not really concerned with the attractiveness of Russell’s personality but with whether he has any grasp of the capitalist situation in relation to the hideous problem of war. For that is something on which he has spoken loud and often in the past few years. When judged from this standpoint, he scores very low marks.

Readers will, of course, be aware of his prominence in the C.N.D. and later the Committee of One Hundred, of some of the foolish things he has said and done in the name of Nuclear Disarmament. But if you want a concise handbook of pathetic political ignorance, then Unarmed Victory (Penguin Special 2s. 6d.) is a must. This tells of the author’s frantic appeals to the various statesmen involved in the Cuban and Sino-Indian crises toward the end of last year. The short note on the back cover even suggests that perhaps it was Bertrand Russell’s efforts which really saved the world then from nuclear disaster.

There is no evidence to support this at all. The Soviets certainly took a gigantic risk (maybe a calculated one) when they started supplying missiles to Cuba. They must have realised early on that the U.S. would bridle sooner or later, but having gone so far, it is ludicrous to suppose that the cries of Lord Russell made much difference. They were, after all, quite well aware of the man in the street’s horror of war—how often have they used this very point in their propaganda—and apart from anything else, war is a costly business, not to be embarked on lightly.

It was suggested at the time by such journals as The Economist that perhaps the Soviet Union had never really intended to go to war over Cuba, that Krushchev’s advisers probably warned him that Russia was just not ready to take a showdown that far. But who knows, maybe next time they may think differently. There will certainly be other crises to make our hearts jump with fright as we face again the prospect of obliteration.

If we are to get behind this problem, we must recognise first of all that the gathering of the war clouds is not just a nasty accident. We have, in fact, to acknowledge that the Cubas and the Berlins are manifestations of a bitter struggle which is waged incessantly between the various capitalist powers. It is useless to appeal to the statesmen, because such people are caught up in the tragedy and, as spokesmen for their respective ruling groups, are not there for humanitarian reasons. They are prepared to go to war if their interests so demand.

Lord Russell certainly has not grasped this. True, he recognises the existence of American capitalist interests in Cuba and the readiness of the U.S. Government to bolster up Batista in support of them. But he does not seem to understand a new group of rulers now has the island in its grip, having risen to power on the tide of seething discontent generated by the hated Batista regime. It has happened elsewhere in the world and is a familiar story. Dr. Castro promised to “take immediate steps to resolve” the problems of housing, unemployment, education, health, etc., but instead took immediate steps to turn Cuba into an armed camp. And for the Cuban workers there was a distinction without much difference—they could now die for Castro instead of Batista.

Throughout this book are dotted examples of the confused and contradictory thinking which seems to afflict those who are tarred with the CND brush. In a footnote on page 34, the author chides the Labour Party Executive for advocating mediation through the United Nations. “. . . Whereas we may consider the UNO to be the cat’s whiskers,” he says, “most inhabitants of the U.S. consider it merely a cat’s paw.” Nevertheless, it was Lord Russell who telegraphed Krushchev only two days before, urging “condemnation (of U.S. actions) to be sought through the United Nations.”

Again, it is not disputed that “nuclear weapons are instruments of total annihilation,” but it is foolish to say in the same breath that they “ are themselves an imminent threat to the peace of nations and a hostile act ” (page 25). For such a statement begs the entire question—why nuclear bombs? In fact, why armaments of any kind? Such horrors do not exist in a vacuum. They are produced by society, but a society deeply divided into owners and non-owners in the means of life. It is here that we must commence our search for the way to free mankind from the terrifying prospect which faces it. Socialists discovered long ago that armed conflict is the ultimate method used by one group of owners to advance its interests against those of another. How ludicrous then to try and deal with atom bombs in isolation.

Nowhere does the author give any real consideration to this vitally important aspect. He has no inkling of what causes war and he is not opposed to it in principle anyway. To him there are some wars which are justifiable and others not (see page 11). Well, at least he is honest about it, but is it any wonder that he gets into such a mess when writing about present trends towards another bloodbath, and only a few lines later is blaming the “strength and habit of tradition ” for the strife between governments since the end of the last world war?

Having mistaken notions about the cause of war, it is not surprising that Lord Russell should have faulty notions also about its future prevention. He wants a joint statement by America and Russia:

That nuclear war cannot achieve anything anybody would desire . . . that they have a common interest, namely survival, and that both will sacrifice this common interest if there is a war.

What touchingly childlike faith he has in the statements of capitalist politicians, despite ample evidence of history to show how worthless these are, even granting the sincerity of those who utter them. But there is more to come. Let all states agree, he pleads, to submit their disputes to the arbitration of disinterested parties (whatever that may mean). He feels that arbitrating bodies “would acquire such moral authority that it would be very difficult for any government to flout the decisions of the arbitrators.”

Yet in the very next paragraph, he forgets this idea and advocates instead that prime fallacy of recent years, World Government. This will not rely on moral authority, because Lord Russell says it will have armed forces “. . . capable of defeating any state or combination of states that might attempt to resist its authority.” It will have to have a monopoly of all the major weapons of war and possess the raw materials necessary for weapons of mass destruction— presumably including those of nuclear origin.

Here is the final absurdity in one hundred and twenty pages, that strife can be abolished by indulging in it. For this is what the proposal really means, ignoring for the moment all the other objections which deny World Government even the remotest chance of ever being established. The strength of such an organisation, on Lord Russell’s own admission, would depend very much on its ability to wage war, the very evil we all seek to end.

As we have already said, Bertrand Russell is an able writer, but the whole of this book is a transparent illustration of his pitiful ignorance on how to solve perhaps the most terrible problem of our time.

Eddie Critchfield

Who cares about spies (1963)

From the June 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why all this fuss about spies and traitors? The commercial press, of course, likes a sensational treason trial. It helps them stir up national hatred. Spies are held up as objects of public scorn. They are, we are told, greedy men and women led to betray their country for thirty pieces of silver. Now come the Spies for Peace. The Spies for Peace have in fact done us a good turn by telling us some of the minor preparations the government has made for its safety in any war. The press, the Labour Party, the churches and other capitalist henchmen, naturally feel differently. They want the “traitors” arrested and punished. They are concerned about Mr. Krushchev getting hold of the pamphlet. But no-one bothers to ask the more basic questions. Why are there state secrets? What is their significance? Does it matter what Mr. Krushchev knows? That he knows there are plans for Regional Seats of Government at Warren Row and the other places where they’re supposed to be?

Consider the matter a little more closely. Today there are two kinds of people around. Those who are rich and wealthy and own all the means of living and the rest of us who own practically nothing. This means we have to work for these owners in order to live. In other words we are slaves. There is no other word for it. The workers are dependent on the owning class—just as the slaves of the past were dependent on their masters. Its the same all over the world. In America, in Russia, in France, in Germany. The working class, we are always told, no longer exists. But how stupid can you get! Of course, the working class exists. Its us—those who work and make everything but own nothing. Everywhere the working class is a slave class with the rich owners as their masters. So what’s all this nonsense about nations? The slaves in Athens didn’t count as Athenians. And we don’t really count as Britons, Germans, Poles, or any other of the names in use. Our political nationality is a fraud. “The Nation” is the owning class. The “national interest” is their interest. So all this talk about bombs and armies being kept to protect us is so much nonsense. They exist to protect our masters. To protect their property. To protect their ruling position. To protect their markets. Ask yourself: what have I to sell save my ability to work? Nothing! Then why worry about whether factory owners can sell their steel, their cars, their machines? But its for these people that wars are fought. To get markets for them. To help their trade. War gives us nothing. In no war is there anything at stake worth dying for. Just our masters’ markets and trade interests.

Everybody wants peace these days. Everybody is against war. But how do you get rid of it? Peace marches, perhaps, or conferences? No, neither. If the set-up didn’t mean that one class lives by selling what the other makes there would be no war. For capitalism has a built-in drive toward war. That’s why its stupid to hope for disarmament under capitalism. Armed forces are not kept for the fun of it. They can’t be disbanded at will. They exist to protect the interests of the capitalist class at home and abroad. A capitalist must sell or die. If he doesn’t sell he gets no profit. If he gets no profit he can’t accumulate capital. If he doesn’t accumulate he can’t modernise his equipment to meet competition. Which means he will be driven to the wall by more efficient-competitors. This is the basic cause of modern war.

The capitalists in various areas join to keep a national state to look after their interests and carry out their wishes. Hence the so-called nation. Every “nation,” or rather every capitalist gang, competes against every other. In this struggle might is right. This is why armed forces exist. Today America and Russia and their allies are at cold war with each other. They are struggling for world domination because they must. Neither of these groups of powers can afford to let the other get ahead militarily. So the arms race and the H bomb. In this race to keep ahead military secrets are important. Important, that is, to the capitalist class and the state they keep to protect their interests. This is why in every country the worst crime is treason, worse even than murder.

But where do we come in? Should we worry about cases of treason? Should we look upon those who give away secrets as traitors? The short answer to questions such as these is that workers have "no country. And it’s not? as if the state and its secrets exist for our benefit. They are only traitors from the capitalist viewpoint because they have committed the worst crime m the book. They have helped a rival capitalist gang. Each secret betrayed to a foreign power weakens the military machine. This is why state secrets are so important to the capitalist class. This is why those who give them away arc labelled traitors and punished harshly. For us it’s different. We don’t need to worry about security and defence matters. They’re not our concern. The war machine is not there to protect us. It’s there to protect our masters’ interests at home and abroad. And more. The armed forces are used to keep the masters masters, and us slaves. They are part of the government machine. And it is through this machine that the capitalist class rules. At home the government machine is used to keep ’’law and order,” to keep the set-up whereby the capitalist class live off our unpaid labour.

We have nothing to gain from war, nor from war or defence preparations. It is for the capitalist class to worry about British “security” services or about whether Mr. Krushchev knows “our” secrets.

Adam Buick

The end of the line (1963)

From the June 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

At last the dreaded news is out. Dr. Beeching has dropped his bombshell on the Cabinet; at least so headlined the daily press. But in fact the general outline of the Beeching plan has been known and discussed widely for some months. The Transport Minister, Mr. Marples, immediately confirmed his support of the plan on the day of its publication—hardly the action of a person struck dumb by devastating tidings.

Let us make it clear that we are unconcerned whether or not Capitalism manages to make the railways a profitable concern. We do not urge modernization schemes whose motive is that wealth can be used to serve the interests of a minority. We prefer to show how such changes can and do affect the mass of the population and how these changes can often be unpleasant for some sections of the community.

Probably the new plans will produce a slick rail system. But for how long? And just what new problems will be created by its implementation? Even Dr. Beeching cannot be emphatic in his replies. Change as such cannot be avoided, but we should find out why a change is desired, whom will it benefit and who will suffer and whether it is particularly necessary.

The rapid growth of road traffic has dealt railways everywhere a heavy blow. By point-to-point delivery, transport costs for both goods and passengers are cheaper by road. As the rail running costs increase, so freight and passenger receipts have either fallen or not kept pace, and often the railway's only answer has been to raise rates and fares. This puts the railways at an even greater disadvantage, especially on freight carrying. The car industry is the number one consumer of steel, and the oil interests are powerful factors in Britain's economy, and this is possibly why the Government tends to be more favourable towards the road interests than to an industry like railways.

Many sections of the capitalist class are fed up with subsidising, through taxation, a transport system that is no longer so useful to them as in days gone by. Many lines have massive engineering works which were erected a hundred or more years ago. Such works do, and will in the near future, need large sums spent on them for restoration, but the takings on these lines would not justify this expenditure. So, in the interests of the profit motive, some fifty to seventy-thousand people will over a period be sacked. Some areas will be more isolated than they are already and no doubt the slashing of lines in Wales and Scotland will be ready fuel for the fires of the small nationalist parties. Mr. Marples has promised that roads in the trainless areas will, if necessary, be improved to take the heavier road traffic, but he gives no guarantee that such construction will synchronize with the closures. The promise of replacement by extra buses is not certain as the routes have a tendency to be just as unprofitable for the bus companies as they were for the railways.

We have heard a lot of chat from the Parliamentary-maid-of-all-work, Lord Hailsham, about new industries in the depressed areas, but it is noticeable that the cuts are heavier in the North and the Scottish lowlands than in the “prosperous" South. Does this mean that the Hailsham promises are just so much political flannel to keep the unemployed in a state of suspended animation?

When the Labour Party nationalised the railways, we were promised efficiency, cheapness, security of jobs for the railwaymen, and improved travelling conditions, but the iron road became the odd man out. The mines were modernised; even the small film industry was subsidised; and huge sums were poured into aircraft production, while the steam train clanked on, encrusted in Victorian filth. So in the 1950's the railway became a whipping boy; a god-send to every comic and mummified politician who aspired to enter the House of Commons: trains always late, freight often mislaid or stolen, and public relationships ranging from antagonism to despair the more recent modernisation programmes have been held up by political uncertainty. Government decisions have ranged from plans for dieselization and electrification, to shutting the whole lot down. At least Dr. Beeching has arrived with something definite.

In spite of the sectional and local feeling, the majority of the people will not be very much concerned with the drastic cuts. The wide ownership of cars has removed the utter dependence on the trains. The car, in fact, has become a universal season ticket, but with the owner himself providing the vehicle and being responsible for garaging, parking, maintenance and driving-problems that were unknown to the train traveller.

After the lull of a few days that followed publication of the report the railway unions have made arrangements for protest strikes, and some local councils and M.Ps. have organised agitations. Some sections of line may be saved, but there is always something of the forlorn rearguard in token strikes and strongly-worded protest; the cage door is being closed after the bird has flown. The stick that falls across the shoulders of the working class is unfortunately wielded by themselves. Most workers believe in and support a society that stands four square on profit, exploitation and privilege for a few, and the railwaymen are no exception. Whilst this mass support is given to capitalist society, those who are not under immediate fire will never extend more than a passing sympathy for the afflicted and with many workers it probably never gets that far. Perhaps the attitude of a fair number of people can be expressed in the statement by a Conservative M.P., Kenneth Lewis, when he stated that the N.U.R. strike threat was a “strike without reason, a strike against change." (Evening News, April 4th. 1963.)

Capitalism with its ever-pressing need for new modes of production to prevent its profit from falling has mesmerised its supporters into dumb worshippers who fall prostrate at the very mention of words like “Streamline.” Few of them stop to wonder why and for what purpose slickness is established in our every day lives. It is pathetic to wail and protest, to alternate between humble petition and violence, if over the past years one supports in word and deed the very base of our social maladies. If those who ardently organise protests and demonstrations against this and that were to examine more closely their position as workers, the nature of capitalism and its Socialist alternative, their power to defend themselves as a subject class would be much stronger, and a new society that degree nearer. It is not only rail systems that are stunted by our current society. 

How will transport operate in a Socialist society? Firstly, it will be owned by the community as a whole, which means that it would be absurd to charge ourselves fares. The problems of threatened bankruptcy, or the need to reinvest surplus would be unknown in such a society. One cannot say with certainty just what form of transport would be most common, but this we do know; man's prime concern, in transport as everything, will be to serve the needs of the entire community.

If a given form of transport should be technically obsolete, then the operatives would certainly not be cast on a dole queue. This only happens in capitalist society, where the exploitation of wage labour is dominant. A Socialist society would also ensure that alternative methods of transportation were already fully in operation before other means were removed. The present dominant form of travel—the car—in its current form, is hardly likely to be regarded as beneficial under Socialism. The effect of enormous numbers of people driving their vehicles along a confined road space serves only to jar our nervous systems and it is not to be wondered at that the road casualty figures have become an outstanding disgrace and tragedy.

The history of capitalism, with its demand for accelerated production and improved methods of buying and selling has been the basic cause of speed in the modern world. Remove these social and economic factors for one of common ownership and mankind can revert to a more leisurely pace—and be the happier for it.

Jack Law

Obituary: Tom Mallett (1963)

Obituary from the June 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

We sadly report the recent death of our comrade Tom Mallett. For those who knew and worked with him, his death will leave a deep feeling of loss. Tom joined the Party in the middle 1930’s. He never became a speaker or writer; he chose instead to spend his energies on canvassing and selling Party literature at his place of work and at party meetings in the South London district.

For many years. Tom earned his living as a news-van driver for one of the big London evening papers, and it was along his run, from Temple Gardens in the City to Twickenham, that over the years he managed to persuade news-vendors to take and to display the Socialist Standard. His greatest delight was the time he managed after much persuasion to get a display of the Standard in Parliament Square, and another display of a selection of party literature outside Russell Square tube station. At his place of work he managed to sell a regular number of Socialist Standards and he also managed to take up a regular collection for the Party's General Fund. Unfortunately over the years no record was kept of these small but regular sums, which must have amounted to quite a respectable contribution to Party funds.

Branch canvassing was yet another of Tom’s interests, and for many years he gave example to, and urged others in S.W. London Branch to sell the S.S. from door to door. At the time that regular outdoor meetings were being held at Clapham Common, Tom could always be relied upon to be there with his case of Party literature, and when some few years ago Comrade Ritchie died leaving a large literature round, Tom casually managed to add quite a large portion of the round to his own, already large and scattered, rounds in Battersea and Clapham. So, before ill health began to mar his efforts he was selling twenty dozen Socialist Standards regularly.

Sadly, in recent years persistent ill health prevented him from being as active as he once was, yet he still managed somehow to take and sell a regular five dozen Standards. Now he has gone, remembered probably by only a few Party members, but known to a great many readers and sympathisers. His role in the Party’s work was silent but his efforts live as an example to us all. He will be sadly missed. And to his wife and two children we send our deepest and heartfelt sympathy.

Vic Phillips.

SPGB Meetings. (1963)

Party News from the June 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Building in Russia (1963)

From the June 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

During September and October, 1962, members of the Eastern Counties Federation of Building Trades Employers visited Russia and made a fairly extensive study of their building methods. Resulting from this visit, they have published a very revealing pamphlet, Building in Russia. They say:

“We believe we are the first group of British builders to examine the structure and organisation of the Soviet construction industry, our report covers a wide field, with the emphasis on housing. We hope it gives a broad but accurate picture of what we saw in a tour of some 6,000 miles extending from Leningrad, through Moscow to Volgograd in the South".

The British building trade unionist can, with this material, compare his wages and conditions with those of his brother in Russia.

In order to speed up housebuilding, emphasis has been placed on prefabricated factory built units, rather than the traditional brick-built house of this country. “The aim is to build compact residential areas with blocks of flats, 5,8 and 10 storey, densities being on average 150 persons per acre. Two room flats predominate . . .”

As the State owns and controls all capital for construction, area building Trusts are formed to decide upon design and the price of each contract. The chief of the Trust and his managers then negotiate with the Unions to determine site conditions. However, with a fixed price for each job there is a definite limit to the pay which can be offered! This has an all too familiar ring; haggling with the boss for terms that would hardly satisfy the militant on most British building sites. For example bonus earnings up to 50 per cent. of wages can apparently be earned with an efficient Trust. In comparison, British Union agreements have often settled for a minimum of 20 per cent. of earnings, but where union organisation is strong on the building site, bonuses nearer 100 per cent. and over are expected and negotiated.

The State apparently fixes the wages, determines the amount of bonus to be earned and insists on a 3.7 per cent. profit from all contracts finished at scheduled cost. When a profit is realised, an enterprise fund for the building worker within the Trust is formed, to be shared into workers’ bonuses, housing and holiday facilities; Living conditions of the unfortunates who work for an inefficient Trust clearly reveal the unequal equality of Soviet “Socialism.”

The standard of accommodation for the Russian working class is low compared with Britain’s New Towns’ traditional 2 and 3 bedroom terraced house. During 1964-1965, says the report, a suburb of Moscow will provide “90,000 people in flats, 10 per cent. of which will have one room, 60 per cent. 2, and 30 per cent. 3 rooms. Living rooms are used for sleeping in.”

To speed up house production, the Soviet Government have mass housing projects, with strictly narrow limits of layout and design. They say that the housing problem will be solved by 1970. One thing, however, which has resulted is monotonous city suburbs which are “depressing and oppressive despite open spaces.”

Building conditions for the wage earner under Soviet State and British private capitalism are so nearly alike that differences are hard to detect.

For a 40 hour week, typical wage rates in Moscow range from £6 per week (minimum) for labourers, £12 carpenters, £16 bricklayers to £20 for a general foreman and £40 for a building Trust manager. Lost time due to bad weather qualifies for half pay, whilst overtime qualifies for double time.

Building trade rates of pay in Britain are stated to be, at present, labourers £11 9s. and all skilled trades £12 7s. Soviet workers may pay less in rent which does not exceed 4 per cent. or 5 per cent. of the family income, but what they can purchase on commodities is small indeed. “Foodstuffs are two or three times dearer than in Britain, a poor quality suit costs £40, an overcoat £80 and a pair of shoes £15.”

Perhaps the most important difference between the two industries concerns strikes and tea breaks. Whereas the British trade unions clearly recognise the vital need to withdraw labour in times of dispute, and take refreshments and rest for dirty and arduous tasks, Soviet unions are denied these essential rights. The pamphlet drily comments “Tea breaks and strikes are not in the industrial vocabulary.”

All these comparisons show only too clearly that capitalism functions in the Soviet Union, with a working class living on a very poor standard. Although it was not the object they had in mind, the building employers’ pamphlet certainly exposes the claim that Socialism is enjoyed by building workers, or by any other workers, in Russia.

J. P.

50 Years Ago: Profit sharing (1963)

The 50 Years Ago column from the June 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Co-partnership is the curative syrup for all capitalist ills just now. Fabians recommend it, Liberal and Tory newspapers have given it their blessing, and business men who have tried it are loud in their praises. It has a double effect in its application—it increases profits and stifles labour “unrest.”

Some sociological and political experts, indeed, regard it as the solution, par excellence, for the labour troubles. The hard-headed, unscientific capitalist, who has “no soul above immediate profits,” is, however, somewhat sceptical, and not without reason. For profit-sharing in at least one case was productive of labour trouble.

The instance in question was recounted at a fashionable gathering of co-partnership apostles, at Lord and Lady Brassey’s, in Park Lane—a meeting arranged for the purpose of devising ways and means of sharing profits with the workers—something eminently desirable from the Park Lane point of view. One speaker said that he offered shares to his employees, one of whom took up a hundred. Next day in the workshop he remonstrated with a fellow workman for wasting the gas. The reply was: “Oh, there are too many blooming policemen about this business!” (just what we say) and the following day the whole of the employees struck work.

[From the Socialist Standard, June 1913.]

Behind the “Labour Unrest”. (1912)

From the June 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Cause and the Remedy. 

In England, after 66 years of Free Trade, a century of Trade Unionism and of Social Reform, strikes and lock-outs are the order of the day. Cotton operatives, printers, seamen, railwaymen, carmen, miners, tailors, dockers and transport workers, are all struggling for betterment.

The “labour unrest” is “explained” by various politicians in various ways. Lloyd George tells the “Daily News” man that the cause is the low wage of agricultural labourers ; Bonar Law says it is the want of Tariff walls ; the Anti-Socialist Union hirelings fix the blame on the Socialists.

The first, playing the Cobden game of turning attention on the

SLEEPING PARTNER

—the landowner—in working-class robbery, is effectively answered by Chiozza Money (“The Star,” May 29) when he shows that agricultural workers’ real wages have suffered less than the town workers’ during the rise in prices. Mr. Bonar Law is silenced by the growing labour upheaval in Protectionist countries. Finally, the Anti Socialist Union may be reminded that the majority of those striking are, unfortunately, anti-Socialists.

Is it want of trade, Messrs. T. Reformer and F. Trader ? The Board of Trade returns show an enormous increase ! Is it want of wealth and power to produce, Mr. Malthusian ? Lloyd George told you during the “unrest” debate in the Commons that the wealth produced and the ability to make it was unparalleled in human history. Income Tax. returns have risen rapidly and recent wills prove that it is distribution, not production, at fault.

The two brothers Coats left 3½ millions ; the Duke of Fife a million, and it is reported in the “Telegraph” that Rockefeller’s income one year alone was

£27,000,000.

Mr. H. G. Wells may talk of the need for “high pressure service,” and Balfour babble of seeking “greater command over nature” : the one cause of the ferment around us is the growing pressure of poverty amidst stupendous wealth.

Said Lloyd George at Cardiff, December 2th 1911: “To-day you have greater poverty in the aggregate in the land than you have ever had. You have oppression of the weak by the strong. You have a more severe economic bondage than you probably have ever had ; for grinding labour to-day does not always guarantee sustenance or security. At any rate, that condition of things was foreign to the barbaric regime of the darker ages.” He had a few minutes before reminded us that “this is the richest empire under the sun. If there is poverty, misery and wretchedness it is not because the land is sterile and bare and does not provide enough for all.”

On the other side Mr. Bonar Law told us (Manchester Nov. 16, 1911) that: “During the last ten years there has been a considerable increase in the total wealth of the country, but in that time the condition of the working class has not improved. It has actually deteriorated. From information supplied by the Board of Trade we know that during that period

THE COST OF LIVING

has gone up 10 per cent. and wages remained stationary.”

Then at the National Conference on the Prevention of Destitution (Caxton Hall, May 31st, 1911) the Lord Mayor informed us that a hundred millions were spent on poor law relief and charity, and he asked : “Are we as a community getting the best return for that huge expenditure ? Are we making destitution any less? Are we stopping the perpetual creation of new clestitutition ? In spite of greatly improved Poor Law administration, in spite of momentary good trade, there was on the 1st of January, actually a larger number of people in the workhouses than at any previous period of our history. Moreover, the plague of vagrancy seemed to be actually increasing.”

Mark the words of the mental specialist, Sir J. Crichton Browne, at Tottenham Hospital on November 16, 1911: “We have in many of our industries adopted a policy of “speeding up,” whereby men do their work in less time than formerly, and with fewer intervals of rest allowed them in the workshops and therefore with more exacting and exhausting calls on their nerves, which probably in some measure accounts for the great increase of reputed injuries to workpeople which we have to deplore. We have been

BRINGING UP OUR BABIES

on anything but mother’s milk, and by the employment of women in factories and by giving them an unrestricted sphere of activity, have curtailed that family life in which the young nervous system thrives best.”

The result of this hustle is seen in the 65th Annual Report of the Lunacy Commissioners, which shows the number of inmates of lunatic Asylums to be 133,157, an increase of 2,604 in a year. The meaning of these terrible figures is driven home in the table showing that in 1859 the number of lunatics was only 36,762. Thus while the population increased but 85.8 per cent., the number of lunatics increased in the period 262.2 per cent.! How capitalism crushes the working class becomes plain from the fact that 121,172, or 91 per cent., of the total lunatics in 1911 were

PAUPER LUNATICS.

This was an increase of 2,271 over 1910, nearly all the year’s increase being pauper inmates !

Our teetotal fanatics often think the cause of increased lunacy is drink, but Sir J. Crichton Browne exploded that idea. He said : “Drinking is admittedly on the decrease. Sir Thomas Whittaker pointed out last year that £46,000,000 had been saved in the national drink bill, but it did not bring any diminution in the number of the mentally afflicted.” In the same speech he said that whereas in 1890 the number of suicides was 2,205, in 1910 there were 3,577, and he blames the stress of modern society. was 2,205, in 1910 there were 3,577, and he blames the stress of modern society.

The worsening of the workers’ lot is shown by the fact that the children of the toilers are driven, into the factories to a greater extent in order to “make both ends meet at home.” The Board of Education in their report quoted by Mr. Chiozza Money in the “Daily News” on May 29th, says that out of a total of 691,000 children aged 14, only 155,682, or 22 per cent., attend day school. As Mr. Money remarks, this system “compels two persons, and sometimes three persons, to work for the wage which

ONE PERSON OUGHT TO EARN.”

Schemes of social reform do not help matters. Says the Chairman of the West Ham Board of Guardians in the Annual Report just issued : “Although a large number of out relief recipients have been transferred to the Old Age Pension list, the number of applicants for out relief has been steadily ascending. One of the principal causes is said to be the disinclination of employers to engage or retain persons of advanced years or suspected of infimity.” As to indoor pauperism, the “Daily Chronicle” (Nov. 11th, 1911) said : “Indoor relief in London has risen enormously. For the year 1886-7 the average number of indoor paupers (excluding casuals) was 54,861, or 13.7 per 1,000 of the population; last year it was 78,114, or 17.3 per thousand.”

Millions never reach the Poor Law portals, but are murdered in the cradle. The National Liberal Federation says, in “A. Nation Insured” : “We have many large towns . . where 200 out of each 1,000 die within 12 months of birth. . . The wholesale sacrifice of infants is followed by the robbery of a great part of the life of those who survive. . . It is not pretended that the National Health Insurance can dispose of

THE DAMNING FACTS.”

Of course it cannot. The only remedy is our remedy—the institution of a new social system, not fiddling with the effects of the present one. The evils which give rise to the “labour unrest” which convulses society is a necessary concomitant of the present social system. They arise inevitably from its competitive institutions, and will continue to arise as long as those competitive conditions remain.

It is futile, therefore, for the master class to look for any cure for the “labour unrest,” or for the workers to seek industrial peace. Under the system the fight must go on, and battle follow battle. Let us prepare, then, to end the strife by ending the system.

Adolph Kohn