Apostles of Confusion. (1907)

From the April 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

The last strains of the “Marseillaise” (it’s all right, Mr. Editor, this is not a tale of the French Revolution)—the last strains of the “Marseillaise” were being sung when two comrades of the Watford Branch and myself entered Clarendon Hall, Watford, on the evening of Friday, February 22nd. We found an audience of about 300 assembled to hear addresses by Hyndman and Gribble (of Northampton) on Social-Democracy. The meeting was being held under the auspices of the Watford S.D.F., I.L.P., Trades Council, and Labour Church.

To make speeches that would suit such a mixture of psuedo-Socialists, “Labour” men .and reformers as were here gathered together would tax the capabilities of the best S.D.F. speaker, and that is saying much. Anyway, Hyndman and Gribble tried, and whether they succeeded in tickling the ears of their audience or not, they certainly never gave a clear exposition of Socialist principles. At least, that was our opinion, but then perhaps we are “too scientific.” As we took our seats, the chairman, Mr. Gorle, who proclaimed himself the only working-class representative on the local bodies, was reading apologies for non-attendance from Lord Hyde and other class-conscious individuals.

The chairman then made a short speech intimating that an S.D.F. candidate would be run for the County Council. Gribble was called upon and proceeded to speak on “Social-Democracy and the Present Political Situation.” After a few preliminary remarks (including the usual compliments to Hyndman) he assured us “that it was never more necessary than it was to-day for Socialists to work along the straight path,” a remark that called forth loud “hear, hears ” from the S.P.G.B. men.

He then traced the evolution of the Socialist movement in England. He stated how the S.D.F. had fought alone for many years; told us how the I.L.P. came into existence as an independent political party only, but gradually evolved until it differed but slightly in its principles from the S.D.F. He told us of the desire for fusion that grew up in the two parties, of the vote taken and carried by a large majority, but did not tell us why the leaders refused to carry out the mandate of the members.

Briefly scanning the events that led to the formation of the L.R.C., he tried to make clear the S.D.F. position in regard to that, body. He said “it was a policy of friendly criticism and advice.” We (the S.P.G.B.) know where that policy has led.

He then told us how disappointed he was at the past year’s work of the Labour Party, and proceeded to criticise its members. He dwelt with bitterness upon those “Socialists” who opposed the adoption of a Socialist programme. The speaker complained of the way the decisions of the Labour Conference had been set aside by the Executive body, and of the way in which, after Quelch and others had by superhuman efforts managed to make the trades unionists swallow an “Universal Suffrage” resolution, the Labour members had disregarded that vote, and had allowed individual members a free hand to support or oppose any measure they liked during the coming session.

“They,” he said, “think that they alone are the Labour Party, and that the thousands behind them in the country are a mere nothing,” and he grew sarcastic about Shackleton’s withdrawal of the Old Age Pension amendment upon Mr. Asquith pointing out that it was a censure upon the Government. Then finishing up with the statement that the workers should put their trust in Socialists and disregard everything except the establishment of a Socialist Republic, Gribble sat down.

All this was very interesting. It might have been news to the audience, but it was merely what we had predicted come to pass.

Is Gribble’s feeling toward the Labour Party the feeling of the S.D.F.? Did his remarks please or offend the members of the local branch ?

As regards the S.D.F. as a body, we know that they occasionally utter a few criticisms of the Labour Party but all the time are supporting it. As regards the local branch, it is their duty either to repudiate Gribble or to repudiate and oppose the local Trades Council, I.L.P., and Labour Church.

But we know they will not do either. They will play the old game of being “all things to all men,” and nothing of any real value to the working-class movement.

The chairman then introduced the principal speaker of the evening, Mr. H. M. Hyndman, who started his speech by saying, as he usually does, that he never worked but lived upon those who did. We had heard this before, but the audience had not, and cheered in the usual way. It always fetches ’em.

The speaker then went on to show the desirability of certain reforms, dealing at length with the question of Free Maintenance. “After years of agitation,” he said, “we have at last got in the thin end of the wedge.” Afterwards in answer to a question, he admitted that this much desired reform would only produce better wage-slaves for the capitalist. He enlarged upon the benefit of Better Housing and Old Age Pensions. In stating that the opposition to Socialism arose largely from ignorance, he said that he had sufficient faith in humanity to believe that, did but the governing classes only know what benefits would accrue from Socialism, notwithstanding their desire to dominate others, they would join the Socialist movement !

And so his speech proceeded, “boxing the compass” politically, industrially and ethically, hinting vaguely at revolution, dealing in detail with useless reforms, but never giving his audience any real insight into scientific Socialism.

After the collection, questions were called for. Comrade Wilkins asked the speaker how he reconciled his statement that the capitalist class would welcome Socialism when they saw what benefits would come, with his supposed belief in the Class Struggle and the Materialist Conception of History as expounded by Karl Marx.

Mr. Hyndman answered that no reconciling of statements was needed, that although he believed in the Class Struggle, he believed that when the capitalists recognised the advantages of Socialism they would welcome it. Yet previously in his speech he had quoted Marx in agreement with his contention that, however much peaceful revolutions are expected, history always proves the expectations false ; that force is the deciding factor.

We sent up two other questions. One: was he in favour of economic organisation of the workers on a class basis, and if so could the present trade unions be altered to such ? To this he replied that the outlook in the trade unions from a Socialist standpoint was hopeful, and seeing that many of their officials were S.D.F. men the future should see a more Socialist position taken up. The other question was: The Watford S.D.F. claimed to be revolutionary Socialists : if they believed what Gribble said to be true, would not the proper attitude to be taken up towards the Labour Party, both locally and nationally, be one of hostility ?

But he would not have it. He could see the red light. “He wanted no rift within the lute” in Watford. So he said it was not his business. He left it to the local branch. He had never been a “Labour” man.

Of course it was not his business. Had he supported Gribble against the “Labour” crowd what a position the comrades would be in with an election coming on ! It would not have paid. “We are willing,” he said, “to work with those who go a little way with us and thus try and bring them in touch with Socialism.” And this is what Hyndman has spent twenty-five years of his life for.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Afterwards, when I had bidden my friends “good-night,” and braced myself for my four-mile walk home along the moonlit country lanes, the pity of it all came to me.

With machinery and industrial organisation rendering larger masses of men superfluous; with the intensity of production lowering man’s vitality; with the position of the workers becoming more precarious and the struggle for existence becoming keener ; with all the degeneration, poverty and hunger, with all the horror—there is no other word—of capitalism, yet they have no other message for the workers than this.

For two whole hours, having before them three or four hundred men, probably open to receive the truth, they had told them half truths that are worse than lies. Men who, properly guided, might have become members of a sound Socialist party, were deliberately led into the disappointing wilderness of reform.

What can one think of it?

Does Hyndman know the futility of these reforms he advocates ? Does he know he is misguiding the workers ? Has he not learnt the lesson that years of struggling for these things with no avail should have taught ? Can he not see that even if they were of any use the very best way to get them would be by the revolutionary method ? Does he not perceive that by side-tracking the working-class movement in this way he is delaying the day of the wage-slaves’ emancipation ?

If he does not see, then he is a blind leader of the blind, and should not be listened to. If he does see, then he is wilfully misdirecting the precious energy of the workers and should be exposed. Whichever way it is, we of the S.P.G.B. know our duty and are prepared to do it. We may be dogmatic—so is Science. We may deal with persons sometimes : but the act of any man that rivets the chains tighter upon the limbs of the workers is too tragic in its consequences to be lightly passed over. We may be small in numbers, yet we know that our efforts are exposing the misleaders of the working class and are teaching those principles that will help to bring about the abolition of capitalism in the quickest and surest way.

F. Hesley

Blogger's Note:

The Watford Branch member of the SPGB mentioned in the report of the meeting, Tom Wilkins, was the last living founder member of the SPGB when he died in 1970 at the age of 89. As his linked obituary states he was better known as 'Tom King', adopting the pseudonym during the First World War.

There is no record of a F. Hesley in the early SPGB records, so it was possibly a pen-name.

Wholesale Agents for the Socialist Standard. (1907)

From the April 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

Editorial: What a show of pretence and hypocrisy (1963)

Editorial from the July 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Yet another political scandal has hit the headlines. Mr. Profumo’s indiscretions are only the latest in a long line of such extra-curricular activities on the part of our elected representatives but, unlike most of the others, he failed to keep his indiscretions discreet.

His confession and resignation have left the Conservative Party in confusion and the Labour Party cock-a-hoop. The latter, of course, can hardly go wrong as long as they don’t overplay their hand and show their glee too openly. It is enough for them, whilst fervently protesting that they are not in the least concerned with Mr. Profumo’s sexual behaviour, to keep the pot quietly simmering with expressions of deep and distressed concern for the country’s security.

As for the Conservative Party, they are quite demoralised, in spite of all Mr. Macmillan’s efforts to pull them together. Following upon all the other distasteful events of recent months, the new bombshell has shattered forever the sacred relic they have so carefully carried in their political baggage for so long — the idea that they alone are the Party who should rule because they are gentlemen, the personifications of all the noble traditions of high principle, strict morality, implicit honesty, and overwhelming trustworthiness.

The sensation-mongering Press, after taking a bad beating over the Vassall case, are back in full cry. Miss Keeler got what is reported to be £15,000 from the News of the World for her confessions, and was also well paid by the Sunday Mirror for her letter from Mr. Profumo. No doubt more large sums are in the offing for her and others in the case. At the same time, it is disclosed that the actual facts were known to many sections of the Press even when Mr. Profumo was making his denials last March, but that they all chose to keep quiet about them. Not, be it added, because of scruples about Mr. Profumo, but because they were afraid of losing some money in libel damages. So much for the boasts they periodically give us about telling the truth at any price.

Large sections of the public, of course, put on their usual show of shocked protest whilst fervently perusing every hard-bought detail the newspapers provided for them. One of the choicer blooms of the British cultural scene, the weekly ration of spice, scandal, and snigger, flowered brighter than ever.

What a show of pretence and hypocrisy it all is. The capitalist political parties all play the game of setting up their leaders as men apart—as people of greater intelligence, higher principles, stricter morals, than the common herd. The working class accept all this, and even grow to believe it, in return for lots of nice, fat promises to have things done for them and the relief of not having to think for themselves.

All sorts of people are drawing all sorts of implications from the Profumo a case. But for Socialists, its chief importance lies in the way it reflects, yet again. the cynicism and hypocrisy of the capitalist parties and their system, and the political laziness and ignorance of the working class who support it all and refuse to take action to get rid of it.

News in Review: The Profumo affair (1963)

The News in Review column from the July 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Profumo affair

It was in the May Socialist Standard, at a time when Mr. Profumo’s strenuous protestations of the innocence of his relationships with Christine Keeler still held public water, that we pointed out how unimportant are the personal morals of the administrators of capitalism.

Now that Profumo has come clean, and now that we have been treated to the squalid detail of the Argyll divorce case, what we said in May still stands. With something to be added.

The rather nasty stories have lifted a corner of the curtain on a life which is completely foreign to most workers.

The life of rich houses, glamorous holidays, expensive women and powerful men. Of easy luxury and sophistication. The life, in fact, of people who can dedicate their lives to what they conceive as living.

Which is something very foreign to most members of the working class, who are only the people who make possible the lives of luxury and glamour.

Profumo was a member of a capitalist government and capitalism teaches us, when we are children in school and when we are grown up enough to read its journalism, that the basis of morality is monogamy.

Many workers absorb this teaching and, no matter what it costs them in terms of personal strain, conform to it. Others conform because they cannot afford to do anything else. Promiscuity can be a costly business.

It can also be a tragic business, for workers. Only recently The Observer ran a series on illegitimate children in this country, which showed up the sadness of many unmarried mothers who are forced by their circumstances to give up their babies when they desperately want to keep them.

This sort of tragedy need never happen to rich people who are also promiscuous. They have no trouble in taking care of any number of children, 'legitimate" or no.

In more ways than one, capitalism is a sordid, inhuman social system in which only the ruling class are free.

War in the air

The early railways fought each other tooth and nail for freight and passengers, often taking enormous physical and economic risks in the process. In the same way, the great airlines are currently coming to grips over the pickings to be had on the world’s busy airlanes.

For some time, the American transatlantic carriers have been fighting the rest —and particularly Britain—over fares and cargo rates. This provoked the recent crisis in which British airports were on the point of being closed to Pan American and Trans World aircraft; something which was averted only when the American Civil Aviation Board made a temporary climb down. The situation remains threatening.

And now the war is hotting up in the freight carriers.

BOAC has been happily operating piston engined freighters across the Atlantic and had no immediate intention of spending any more millions on jets to speed up this service.

This intention has been upset by Pan American’s opening of the first all jet freight service, over both the Atlantic and the Pacific. Fast and capacious, the Boeing freighters have started an air cargo sales war which may, as in the case of passenger traffic, develop into a rate war.

If this happens, we shall probably see every airline which aspires to a place in the sun on the transatlantic run being forced to buy aircraft which they cannot afford, do not want, and which they often have to send off only half full of cargo. We may see countless aircraft which have plenty of useful life in them being scrapped or sold off for a song. And perhaps we shall see the airlines taking the same sort of physical risks which the primitive, battling railways took.

Competition, we are often being told, is one of capitalism’s health-giving substances. In fact, just like the other features of the all-wasteful society, it is a ludicrous way of running human affairs.

Advertising for votes

Do you vote for capitalism? You do?

Well, how does it feel like to be in somebody’s sights? You should know —both the big parties are now drawing a bead on you.

You have probably seen the big spread ads. which the Tories have been taking in the papers. You have probably heard that the Labour Party is indignant about where the money comes from, and you may have reflected that this argument has lost a lot of its point since Labour started putting out its own big ads.

These are part of a very expensive 
campaign. And it is all aimed at you.

The Tory ads. are punchy, with facts and figures about the roads they will lay down, the hospitals they will put up, and so on. If only, that is, you will give them the chance. Has it struck you as strange that after twelve years of Conservative paradise there are still no new hospitals in this country and the roads are still in a mess?

The Labour ads. are perhaps rather more airy, with some distant ideals of justice and equality—and Mr. Wilson just caught in the act of almost giving the new Labour thumbs-up sign. Labour has to go easy on the facts and figures. Their own record is pretty awful and to say too emphatically that there is anything wrong with Britain today leaves them open to the countercharge of running down the old country, dammit. That wouldn’t go down with a patriotic voter like you, would it? So Labour puts in the plea that everything could be all right. If only you give them the chance.

And will you? The big parties are lashing out the thousands in an effort to persuade you to put them in charge of British capitalism. But whoever gets that job will make no difference; the black spots which capitalism makes will remain unerased.

The tragedy is that the ballyhoo, the big splash, is what so often counts.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain cannot afford expensive publicity campaigns and indeed has to bleed itself merely to run one or two candidates in an election. Yet only Socialism can give us the sane world which most people, somehow, are looking for.

Remember that, when you read the next big ad. Remember it when you vote. They’ve got you in their sights but, in a way, you are the one who pulls the trigger.

The Pope is dead

Pope John died when, just before the Profumo scandal burst, news was in short supply. Especially the juicy "human interest” sort of news on which the popular press thrives. On thin rations, the papers made the most of the drawn out death agonies. Some of the headlines were almost ghoulish.

This gave us a peep at one of the nastiest sides of capitalism—the side which works for a profit out of human suffering, even when it is the suffering of one of the great upholders of property society.

Not only reporters rushed to say nice things about John XXIII. Bertrand Russell, a professed non-believer, echoed the popular estimation of the dead Pontiff as a man of peace:

The Pope used his office and his energy to bring peace and to oppose policies which lead to war and mass murder. His encyclical is a magnificent statement of the deepest wishes and hopes of all men of decency. . . I mourn his death.

There is, indeed, some rather tenuous evidence that the dead Pope was prepared to act as some sort of a go-between in a new world carve-up by the United States and Russia. This is the sort of diplomatic dabbling which often qualifies all sorts of people for the description of "peace loving.”

But this holds good only in peacetime. We know that, just like his predecessors, the Pope would have done nothing to oppose a future war and that in such a war there could well be Catholics on both sides, killing each other.

Thus does capitalism make warriors of them all.

In any case, modern war has nothing to do with a supposed lack of men of peace among the world’s leaders. Capitalism itself causes war and the leaders always go along on the tide of destruction.

And let all peace lovers remember that capitalism has always done well out of the servile ignorance of the religious, and especially of the Church of which John XXIII was so briefly the Vicar Supreme.

Postscript on housing

Of all the people to write a postscript to the special issue of the Socialist Standard on housing last May, it had to be the Minister of Housing himself, Sir Keith Joseph.

The last few days of that month gave birth to yet another White Paper which is supposed to be going to solve the housing problem. (“. . . promises,” commented The Observer, “borne on fairly insubstantial wings.”)

The new plan is to give housing subsidies only where the government thinks they are needed. Thus is quietly killed off the old policy (which was also going to solve the problem) of giving subsidies virtually indiscriminately. How long before the latest plan is pronounced to have failed?

There will be a bit more entertainment from the government’s financial jugglers; £100 million is intended to be available to encourage the building of houses for rent. From the merry shouts of welcome which greeted this announcement, nobody would have thought that these were the very policies which, in one form or another, have failed so blatantly in the past.

And, of course, the government will be speeding up slum clearance and will build more houses. The happy day when everyone will be living in what Housing Ministers think is a decent home has had to be postponed for a bit more, what with all this planning. Actually, it has been put off for another ten years. Said Sir Keith:

This programme will within 10 years transform the country's housing position, and will bring within reach of nearly every citizen in the land either a modern or a modernised house.

Presumably the Tories are hoping to win a few votes on this programme. Perhaps they will. It would not be the first time the working class have been hopelessly deceived about one of the ways in which capitalism blights their lives.

The importance of Mr. Profumo (1963)

From the July 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

it was the Daily Express which pointed out, quickly, cruelly, that profumo is the Italian word meaning perfume. But the famous scandal sticks in a way undreamt of in the philosophies of big newspapers.

Now Profumo’s “sin,” for the Tories, was not just that he was running a mistress. That was bad enough, but there have been some famous precedents who have got away with the same thing. It was not even that the girl was being shared with a Russian intelligence agent and at least a couple of others, although that was enough to wilt the flowers on the starchiest of hats at a Conservative women’s fete. What really put Profumo beyond the pale was that he admitted to telling a lie. Not a lie to just anyone, but to the House of Commons, which is supposed to be an assembly of gentlemen and where it is the tradition not to question nor debate personal statements like Profumo’s original assertion of his innocence, this was what Robert McKenzie called a kick in the stomach for the Tories, who have always liked to think of themselves as the party of better people, of Christian gentlemen.

It was the lie which gave Lord Hailsham the excuse for his fireworks in his TV interview with McKenzie, when he blasted Profumo as a man who has “ lied and lied and lied ” and insisted that the whole affair was a moral issue. Hailsham is well known as a Tory moralist, a strict Christian who professes unshakeable principles. So is another central figure in the drama surrounding the government crisis—Enoch Powell. The hullabaloo over Profumo has served to make these men— and others like them—heroes of integrity. The inference we are invited to draw is that generally capitalism administered by the sort of men who would never tell a lie and that Profumo was just the inevitable bad apple.

Alright. Let us have a look at this business of lies. And if we do, the first thing to hit us is that political history is crammed with examples of men who, as a matter of course, have told enormous lies yet have never been accused of being liars. Some of them, in fact, have died as respected pillars of capitalist society. Stafford Cripps, for example, was the very caricature of an ascetic moralist. Strict vegetarian. Fervent Christian. Like Enoch Powell, he was supposed to be a man who stood for principle before everything. Did Cripps, then, never tell a lie? We need nudge our memories only a little to recall that in 1949 he protested for weeks that he had no intention of devaluing sterling, while all the time his plans for devaluation were cut and dried. There are plenty of other examples of Cripps’ flexible reverence for the truth.

The Tories are not, of course, untarred by this brush. Hailsham and Powell are only two of those who were unprotesting members of the Eden government which embarked on the Suez fiasco. They apparently held their consciences in check when their government broke its word to the United Nations and justified the invasion by what were quickly revealed as blatant lies. More recently the same, government has been what we can politely call less than frank over, the deportation of Doctor Soblen and of Chief Eriahoro. In fact, in a more subtle way, Christine Keeler is not the only matter on which Profumo has been dishonest, although on these issues his ex-colleagues in the government would never dream of calling him rude names. As Minister of War, Profumo bore the ultimate responsibility for the big publicity campaign to persuade people to join the Army. The advertisements used in this campaign showed such a one-sided view of Army life that even some newspapers felt moved to protest. Profumo’s ads. showed clean-living young men playing rugby, climbing mountains, patrolling romantic deserts. They did not hint that military discipline, in its dreary stupidities, is designed to degrade and brutalise men. They did not mention the unpleasant places a soldier may be sent to, nor the dirty jobs he may have to do there. They ignored the fact that soldiers often die especially horrible deaths, looking not at all like clean living Soldiers of the Queen as they do so. The advertisements told lies, but nobody in the government got upset with Profumo because of that.

Neither have they been upset by the lies about, say, the effects of testing nuclear weapons. The government assure us that the danger from these exercises is negligible and that another little test will not do us any harm. Yet they know perfectly well that every test adds to the atmosphere’s load of radioactivity and that this means that a lot of people, especially children, will die who would otherwise have lived. Overseas, as well, lies are told on this matter. President Kennedy has recently announced that his government will suspend all tests, unless some other country starts them up again. This may well be followed, as it was in 1958, by a similar announcement from Moscow. Both sides will pose as the guardians of peace and human safety. Yet both sides know that a suspension of tests does not mean that the development of nuclear weapons has been suspended. They know that they are all working on -their bombs and that when they think it is to their advantage to do so they will think up some reason to start testing them again. Are Kennedy and Khruschev, then, champions of truth?

It would, indeed, be surprising if men in their position were, for they administer a social system which is full of lies, and not only those told by politicians. Were the makers of thalidomide telling the truth when they asserted that the drug could safely be taken by pregnant women? What sort of principle were they upholding, when they protested that the delay in the American Food and Drug Administration approving thalidomide was costing them their chance of exploiting a Christmas market? Do the mass-production tailors believe their own advertisements, which show aristocratic young men being admired by glamorous girls for the cheap off-the-peg outfit they are wearing? Are the estate agents who advertise a cramped, poky apology for a house as “ neat and compact ” and a garden with knee-high weeds as “mature” keen churchgoers who regularly say their prayers?

We know what grounds these lies are excused on. We know that capitalism claims that strategic and commercial reasons justify telling lies. As R. A. Butler said about the Cripps lie, “. . . I know that if you talked about devaluing the currency well ahead of time, you would do indefinite damage to your own currency. . . .” But they cannot have it both ways. Capitalism professes to work on a basis of morality; workers are taught from the very beginning that the road to Heaven is paved with honesty and high principles. Yet capitalism admits that its own interests force it to deny these principles. And since when have the sort of morals propounded so often by capitalism's leaders been relative, adaptable, matters of expediency? A lie, after all, is a lie under any circumstances. No, they cannot have it both ways, although over Profumo that is how they have tried to have it.

Imagine a politician who told the truth! A Minister of Housing who admitted that he could not solve the housing problem! A Foreign Secretary who blew the gaff on every double-crossing international carve up as soon as he had made it! A Chancellor of the Exchequer who introduced his Budget with the admission that it was just a rehash of a lot of ideas which had flopped in the past! If that happened nobody would get involved in a scandal. There would be a dignified resignation, surrounded by sorrowful stories of tiredness, strain and mental breakdown.

Profumo told a rather foolish and, for him, a risky lie. But at least it was a lie about his personal life, a lie which involved only a very few people. In contrast, day after day capitalism goes on turning out lies which affect the welfare and in many cases the very lives of millions of people. What is more, those lies play their part in bolstering the social system which degrades and depresses the majority—the only socially useful people—the working class.

No minister gets worked up about that. There are no top level inquiries, no resignations, nothing on television. In cases like the Profumo scandal the working class are supposed to be content with a mixed diet of salacity and hypocritical moralising. The same newspapers which got indignant over Profumo's lie saw nothing wrong in paying thousands of pounds for Christine Keeler's story, nor in publishing photographs of her which we will describe—and not for want of a better word—as arresting.

It will be tragic if in among this smoke screen of hypocrisy and scandal the essential fact is lost sight of. Let us state it here, quickly and simply.

Lies are essential to capitalism and super moralists like Lord Hailsham know it. And capitalism itself is the biggest lie of all.

Ivan

A long, cool look at a hot potato (1963)

From the July 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Politically speaking, the issue of full employment has become a very hot potato. Ever since post-war capitalism pulled out the first of its many surprises by not going into the deep slumps which were such a feature before 1939, governments have trod carefully, thinking perhaps that a couple of million unemployed would mean the end of their term of power. (Although if they do think like this they may be over-pessimistic. Despite the heavy unemployment between the wars, the working class never got around to challenging capitalism ; indeed, in 1939 they were preparing for yet another slump under yet another Conservative government.) Inevitably, Chancellors of the Exchequer have churned out many soothing speeches on the theme that the jobs of the working class are safe in their hands. Then can even produce that old and faithful ally Statistics to prove their point. Yes, a hot potato.

And why? It is obvious that employment is important to the working class under capitalism for the simple reason (and we shall have more to say on this) that they depend on their jobs for their living. But the matter does not end there. For so many workers their employment is more than that. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that they almost deify the company they work for. Listen to them talk about it: “ My Job “ My Company.” You can almost hear the capitals. If employment is important to the working class, if it is a delicate political issue, it can be because a depressingly high proportion of workers ask for nothing much more from life than the chance to live in servitude.

In these circumstances it is only to be expected that there would be a lot of wrong thinking about employment. In the first place, about “ full ” employment. Recently, the newspapers, the novelists, film directors, TV men, and so on, have made the startling discovery that in many industries and in many parts of the country full employment is a sour joke. In the shipbuilding industry, for example, and in the towns where the shipyards are based. Day by day, gloomy reports come in from the yards. Employment is low. Orders are scarce. Some yards are completing what they fear may be their last work for a long time. A few small yards have had to shut down.

In the second place, a lot of nonsense is often talked when unemployment is in prospect, and it is not only the politicians who are to blame here. Consider again the shipbuilding industry and the recent decision of the Court Line to order a big tanker from a Japanese shipyard. Court Line is a British company, although the tanker is for a subsidiary of theirs in the Bahamas. Nobody needed to be a clairvoyant to forecast that the placing of this order abroad would provoke strong protests and sure enough that rumbustious fellow, Mr. Ted Hill, secretary of the Boilermakers' union, satisfied our expectations. This was, he said, a ”. . .  wrong to the British workers.” And more specifically: “Any British shipowner who places an order in Japan is un-British.”

Mr. Hill did not tell us, at the same time, what he thought of foreign shipowners who have their ships built in British yards. The Sunderland yard of Joseph L. Thompson & Son, Ltd., for example, recently completed the 24,500 ton bulk carrier Kolfinn for an Oslo firm. This was the fiftieth vessel built by the yard for Norwegian owners; their next launch will be an 80,000 ton tanker for Red Olsen & Co., Ltd., also of Oslo. Mr. Hill did not comment that it was un-Norwegian of Olsens to place their orders on the Wear instead of using them to develop their own shipbuilding industry. Neither did he say that it was un-Russian of the Soviet government, when they recently invited tenders from British yards among others—for six fishmeal factory ships.

Mr. Hill’s brand of nationalism is very much a have-your-cake-and-eat-it affair, with the added complication that he is not the only one to be after the cake. When the Russians put out the fishmeal ships for tender, there were signs that the British government were considering swapping an order for Russian oil for the contract to build the ships. This may have pleased the boilermakers, but it upset the miners, who regard every drop of oil as a threat to their jobs. Mr. Sidney Ford, president of the National Union of Mineworkers, described the oil-for-ships deal as “ridiculous.” “This cannot/' he said, “ be a good thing for the coal industry."

And while all this rumpus is going on, capitalism continues on its way, as serenely as it may. For capitalism, once we accept its basic, chaotic illogicality (and that is what trade union leaders have done) has its own orderly logic for its actions. Court Line did not give its order to Japan to cock a snook at British shipbuilding. They protested that they had made every effort to get their ship built in a United Kingdom yard. But:

It was found, with sincere regret, that British prices and credit terms for this type of vessel resulted in an uncompetitive unit when compared with the offers received from abroad. Had the order not been placed in Japan, no ship would have been contracted at all.

Court Line, in fact, are taking advantage of the low shipbuilding prices which are resulting from the current battle between Swedish and Japanese yards and are gambling that the recent rise in tanker freight rates will still be effective when they take delivery of their new tanker. From their point of view it was reasonable to place the order abroad; the economic requirements of capitalism saw to that. In the same way it was reasonable for the Soviet government to put Mir. Ford's mind at rest by ordering their fishmeal ships from Sweden. They got a good price, a promise of quick delivery and generous credit terms. What more does any Capitalist concern ask for?

Capitalism, because of its insistence on the profitability of an enterprise, is often bound to make life difficult for anyone who preaches economic nationalism, whether they do so in the board room or a trade union conference hall. For the working class, it goes even deeper. Last May, an American trade union leader on a visit to this country uncovered an example of the use which the employers can make of working class nationalism. He was Mr. Ben Segal, the director of international affairs in the International Union of Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers. This is how The Guardian of May 17th reported him:

. . . General Electric, the American company, had pointed out to their own unions the dangers of lower standards in Japan, but . . . it was found that their own international company was the largest stockholder in Toshiba, one of the principal manufacturers of electronic products in Japan.

Nobody need get indignant about this. A nationalistic working class are wide open to the smooth operator.

The big point in this is that capitalism has split its population into two and of these two it is the working class who need to get a job to live. But merely finding employment does not mean that a worker has solved his problems; indeed, so often it is the people with the better jobs who suffer the most strain. And even when he is earning a steady wage, the worker always finds that he lives under restrictions and that the cloth available to him allows only the skimpiest of coats to be cut.

Let us pile it on a bit more. A worker only gets a job when his employer can make a profit from his labours. If, for any one of a number of reasons, the profit is not there then very often neither is the job. This is why workers are so often interested in their employers finding markets for their goods. It is why shipyard workers agree with Ted Hill raving about “ un-British ” shipbuilders on one side, and on the other miners agree with Sidney Ford snapping about “ridiculous” international trading deals. In another way, it is why workers in the North want industry diverted to them from other areas. It never seems to strike them that this is the most futile tinkering with the problem and that the very best that they can hope for is to keep themselves in a job while another worker somewhere else gets the sack. Employment, of course, is the great dream of the working class; to many of them a regular job is the sun and the moon. What a measly outlook! For the only difference between employment and unemployment is often that between one degree of poverty and another.

Until the working class have grasped this fact, capitalism will continue, and so will its anomalies and stupidities. Industries will continue to boom and to slump and if they are industries like shipbuilding the slumps will cause some concentrated suffering in the areas which live off the industry. For capitalism makes its wealth in order to sell it, and this applies to ships just as it does to anything else. When conditions look good for selling cargo space, the tendency is for a lot of ships to be built. This in itself can mean that the market becomes restricted, helped perhaps by something like a decline in general international trade. This is what defeats gambles like that which Court Line are making over their new tanker. Too many ships compete for a limited market. Ships are laid up (there are over 500 like that at the moment). Shipyards slump and whatever help they may get from their governments (a £30 million fund was recently announced by the British government to aid shipbuilding) can have little effect on the problem.

This is something like the situation today. The chairman of the Houlder Brothers shipping line described it like this in his last report to the shareholders:

. . . instead of reaping the benefit of the expansion in world trade, the shipowners of the world have robbed themselves of that benefit by excessive building of new ships.

This excessive building has been stimulated by. . . over optimism generated by the prosperity of previous years. . . unhealthy encouragement imparted by tax considerations in some foreign countries and . . . the building up of national fleets based on policy unrelated to commercial considerations.

There speaks an authentic voice of capitalism, unconsciously displaying the system's crass anarchy. For no economist, no managing director, no minister, has yet been able accurately to predict the course of capitalism's markets. But all of them must go out on some sort of a limb and take their chance on beating their rivals into a market. British shipbuilding may be groggy on the ropes but it is still in there punching, even if rather weaker than before. Camell Laird's chairman said in his last report: “. . . we have intensified our efforts to attract business from overseas. We shall pursue relentlessly and vigorously all potential business at home and overseas . . ."

Cheers, almost certainly, from the Cammell Laird workers. Cheers, for sure, from their shareholders. Employment may be a tricky issue for capitalism and there may be a lot of nonsense talked about it. But the worst thing of all is that the nonsense usually persuades the workers that their interests are hand in glove with those of their employers and this delays the day when the world can take a long, cool look at itself. And come up with the right answers.

Ivan

Finance and Industry: Enter the trading stamp (1963)

The Finance and Industry Column from the July 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Enter the trading stamp

In this present world of ours, goods are produced for sale. To enable things to be sold, a whole complicated network of distribution has grown up, involving wholesalers (first, second, and the rest), retailers, hire purchase companies, credit firms, discount houses, as well as sundry other middlemen and hangers-on. Each of these takes his cut, which naturally he tries to make as large as possible, from the process whereby the articles of life find their weary way from the factory to the consumer.

Now yet another group of middlemen arc trying to muscle in the trading stamp companies. They are not, of course, entirety new to this country, but so far they have not played much of a role. In the United States, on the other hand, they have become big business and some of the American firms are now invading Britain.

Arguments are already heated about whether the consumer really gains anything from trading stamps. Some observers say that he does and that it is the retailer who does not give stamps who suffers by losing his trade to his competitor who does give them. Others say that American experience shows that the consumer may benefit slightly at the beginning but that later he will be no better off because more and more retailers will go over to the stamps and add their cost to their selling prices. They allege that this has already happened in the U.S., where the net result of the trading stamp boom has been to put up retail prices to the point where what the consumer gets back in stumps he pays for in higher prices.

But all this is really beside the point. Whether the consumer gets a small advantage at the expense of the retailer, or the latter makes it up by higher prices, it only serves to conceal that all that has happened is that yet another set of middlemen has managed to get into the act, getting a nice fat rake-off for doing something which is utterly useless from the point of view of actual production.

It really amazes us sometimes the way people will dismiss Socialism as utopian, but accept all the idiocies of capitalism as normal and reasonable. Not one ounce of extra wealth is produced from the activities of the trading stamp companies; the only result is to sharpen the struggle over the profit derived from what has actually been produced.

Competition goes supersonic

Things look like moving faster than ever in the air world. And we don’t mean only aeroplanes. The prospect of lots of extra supersonic bangs before long is going to disturb more than the sleep of those unfortunate to live too close to airports. Lots of airline operators, as well as politicians, are already reaching for the tranquillisers. Everything seems ready for yet a further round of waste, muddle, and stupidity in the international air industry.

Pan-American's decision to order six Anglo-French Concords took only 24 hours to squeeze an announcement from President Kennedy that the United States were going to build an even faster plane. The staggering sum of $750 million has been mentioned as a likely cost.

The Concord venture is being supported by the British and French Governments to the tune of £75 million from each. The final cost may well be more. All the purpose of all this vast expenditure of wealth? To enable a microscopic few of the world’s inhabitants to cross the Atlantic in three hours or get to Australia in half a day.

All this against a background of waste and absurdity in which the great majority of the airline companies are already losing money and where the pace of competition is so hot that large numbers of perfectly good aircraft are discarded with years of useful life in them. So fierce is the drive for speed that many of the world's airports are no longer really capable of coping with the planes. Now all the sorry story over jets seems likely to be repeated with supersonic aircraft.

Not all the experts are happy about the new development. Lord Brabazon is one. Instead of “promoting air transport for the peoples of the world,” he has said, “the airlines have simply helped the rich to travel vast distances at very higher speed and cost.” And, he added, “A big machine carrying 200 people in comparative comfort at up to 250 m.p.h., but landing at no more than 60 knots should be safe, welcome, and pay.”

But Lord Brabazon, more than most, should know that his appeal will go unheeded. Air transport and aircraft construction are no longer the concern of private capitalists, but have become wards of the state. In general, they now make no more sense, even from the capitalist economic viewpoint, than the vast industries that have grown up to throw rockets into space. They have become part and parcel of the struggle between national groups, in which the various governments are prepared to go into all sorts of projects, spend vast amounts of money, engage in ridiculous competition with each other. They are a supreme example of the tendency of the units of capitalism to get bigger; in the air it is no longer the private capitalists that fight each other, it is their national states. Behind every aircraft company there are state subsidies, government orders, and national military needs.

No, the Concord was not well-named. Discord would have been more appropriate.

Facts about fish

A recent report from F.A.O. reveals that 1961 saw the world's highest production of fish—just over 41 million tons. This shows an increase of 10 million tons, or 30 per cent., over the total catch in 1957, but the picture is really not as optimistic as it looks.

Most of the increase is the result of a phenomenal rise in Peruvian production —of small anchovies processed into animal feed. Apart from this and "a modest rise in the Chinese catch, world production has remained virtually static. Indeed, the alarms are already sounding of a likely decrease in production as the well-known fishing grounds become depleted. The boats get bigger, their engines more powerful, and their range ever-wider, but the catch tends to get smaller. Competition has led to overfishing.

But, as usual, the paradox of production under capitalism discloses that there are still many more fish in the sea than ever come out of it; of the sea’s possible production, 90 per cent. is still left untouched. And even under present conditions. F.A.O. reckons that the total world catch could be doubled without too much danger to stocks. Today, 80 per cent. of total production is caught north of the Equator; the southern seas are almost unfished.

Capitalism will itself see to it that the oceans of the world give up more of their riches. But progress will as usual be slow and wasteful. The trawlers of dozens of countries will continue to compete fiercely with each other; will set out to fish over the same grounds; will spend useless weeks at sea, some of them, before reaching fishing areas which the trawlers of other countries can reach in a quarter of the time. There will still be disputes over international rights; over 3 mile, 6 mile, 12 mile limits; prices will still be subject to catastrophic fluctuations. Over all will remain the constant threat of overfishing.

Even in this situation, F.A.O. tries to introduce a little order and co-operation, but competing self-interests foredoom its efforts to failure. What is required is the harmonious, organised and co-operative development of research and productive techniques to provide a steady, reliable, and efficient production of food from the sea.

But we shall not get that under capitalism.

Stan Hampson

People You Know: Ex-Flying Officer Bob (1963)

From the July 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

He likes to be known by the popular, friendly, the “good company” name of “ Bob.” The youngest and favourite son of respectable, godly parents, Bob, during his schooldays, was drawn into the boy scout movement. As a scout he learned how to tie a variety of knots, to fix up tents, to do wonders with a jack-knife, and to light fires without matches or lighters. He also learned the virtue of perpetual preparedness—of preparedness, in particular, for working hard and for defending one’s country in peril. For was not loyal and willing service, in peace or war, a right and bounden duty?

It cannot be said that there was much glory in the various occupations by which Bob sought a living in the years preceding the second World War. Each was marked by its particular brand of stultification— smelly, unhealthy surroundings; tedious mechanical operations; arduous back-aching toil. All were paid at the lowest possible rates. And, ironically enough, in all these loathsome occupations were ex-servicemen of World War One who, I no doubt, had grown tired of trying to reconcile their miserable conditions with the great “ fruits of victory ” that once they were promised.

Not that Bob saw anomalies in the scene—he had never dreamt of looking for them. Uppermost in his consciousness was a smugness that saw no need for questioning, for seeking to know things which in any case could not improve the serenity of outlook that already was his. Pleasing enough for him that he had once been a perfect “true blue” scout: that now, on the verge of manhood, he was helping in his own way to maintain the greatness of England.

The outbreak of war found Bob more than eager to give his services. Disdaining to wait for his calling-up papers, he hastened to enlist. He preferred, somehow, that his entry into the heroic arena should be through the Air Force—the Army and Navy, it was whispered, attracted the more common elements. And so Bob joined the R.A.F., to spend the following months learning to fly, to make parachute landings, and to drop bombs accurately on given targets. At last, fully trained, and raised to the rank of Flying Officer, he engaged in a number of ‘“ops” over Germany—most of them highly successful in the way of “enemy destruction.”

The war ended and he was demobilised. He had “done his bit.” Proud and self-assured, he came back to the daily hawking of his energies in order to live. But not for him now the grimy, sweating, low-paid toil of his pre-war years. The “la-de-dah” and practiced glibness of his fellow flying officers, the swanking discourse of the Officers’ Mess, the studied preservation of “superior” manners—these and other things had made of Bob an easy persuasive talker capable, in not too discerning company, of impressing and convincing. He became a commercial traveller with a salary of £1,000 a year.

He remains so today. But Bob is now a married man with three young children. His job demands that he should always be well-dressed and smart, that, he should have a handsome car and a reasonably “posh” residence. All this, and the hire-purchase payments by which he is still paying for his furniture, he finds just a little beyond the purchasing power of his present £1,500 per annum salary.

Bob has not completely severed his connection with the R.A.F. Besides regularly attending the annual Air Force reunion dinners, he is the commander in the local Air Training Corps. Through the latter he helps to make fliers, parachutists and air-bombers of the future.

This is the Bob of today. By nature he is, in his way, a man of integrity and goodwill. His trouble is that he has never looked into himself or into the world around him. He does not know, therefore, that despite his innate worthiness, his outlook and his conduct have made of him an anti-social being. He has never questioned, let alone discovered, the mockery of the “national glory” that had been part of his childhood teaching. Had he done so, he might have rejected the patriotic concepts that were later to lead him to a proud acceptance of atrocious working conditions.

He might also have suspected the capitalistic commercial nature of the war into which he eagerly rushed in the belief that, just as his masters said, here was a war of British right against German wrong; a war for “ our ” country’s survival; a war for the preservation of democracy. He may even have felt revulsion at the thought of teaching callow adolescents how best to engage in war from the air, how best to kill on a wholesale scale— and all on behalf of a privileged few whose competitive interests are war’s real cause.

One of the most deplorable features of Bob’s case is that he failed to learn from his own personal experience the fallacy of his national pride. There was nothing of which he could be proud in subservience, ill-pay, loathsome conditions, and a shackling to the treadmill by economic necessity. And even on his present £1,500 a year, Bob, were he logical, could feel no pride in the enforced daily pushing of travellers’ lines, the flowery representations, the “switched-on” charm and the many other humanly degrading devices of the commercial traveller. And this quite apart from the indignity and anxiety of a continued indebtedness to hire-purchase firms.

The tragedy of Bob is that he has allowed himself to be moulded exactly to the pattern desired by his capitalist masters, or, at least, by the various elements that represent capitalist interests. How thankful must be these people that the working class has so many like him!

Frank Hawkins

Blogger's Note:

Does this qualify as a short story? I'm not too sure, to be honest. Whatever the case, it's similar in tone and style to the 'People You Meet . . .' series of articles that 'Ronald' penned for the Socialist Standard in 1949/50.