Editorial: Labour Party Programme For The Year 2000 (1955)

Editorial from the August 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

The idea of encouraging the donkey forward by dangling a carrot a short distance in front of his nose is an ancient one but even the oldest tricks can be changed and Mr. Albu, Labour M.P. for Edmonton, has discovered a startling variation.

Like other Labour M.P.s he has had to realise that the Labour electoral carrot offered to the voters in the recent General Election was not successful in enticing them to the polling booth for 1,500,000 of former Labour voters this time refused to go in and put their cross. So Mr. Albu,_who is a member of the Executive Committee of the Fabian Society has been thinking up a new programme for Labour. He spoke about it at a meeting of the Central London Fabian Society on June 29. He said:—

“There should be adequate incentives, but property ownership should be reduced by estate duties and a capital gains tax so that by the year 2000 the distribution of inherited wealth would be similar to that of taxed income today."

(Manchester Guardian, 30 June, '55.)

Mr. Albu is not proposing that inequality of accumulated wealth be eliminated but only that it should be lessened, so that it would not exceed the smaller, but still very great, difference between the annual income of the rich man and the wages of the poor. So we progress! Many years ago the Fabian Society, and later the Labour Party, planned to do something “immediately” about this inequality. Now Mr. Albu suggests postponing the completion of half a plan until a date 45 years ahead, by which time most of the present generation will be dead. 

The basis on which Capitalism exists is the monopoly by a minority, of the accumulated wealth of society. It is the cause of the poverty of the many. This has been the central theme of the Socialist case against Capitalism and it was known to Mr. Albu’s Fabian Society long, long ago.

Two thirds of a century ago Mr. Sidney Webb wrote in the Fabian Essays 1889 (“Historic” page 60).

“If private property in land and capital necessarily keeps the many workers permanently poor (through no fault of their own) in order to make the few idlers rich (from no merit of their own), private property in land and capital will inevitably go the way of the feudalism which it superseded.”

In 1908 the Fabian Society had phrased the known inequality of wealth in the statement “about one seventieth part of the population owns far more than half of the entire accumulated wealth, public and private, of the United Kingdom.” (Fabian Tract No. 7 Capital and Land. Page 10.). 

Sometime later they expressed it in the form “ten per cent. of the population own 90 per cent. of the wealth.”

In this form it was used in articles in the Daily News in 1916 and reproduced in the Fabian Tract When Peace Comes. (P. 28).

This proposition has been doing service ever since in the propaganda of the Labour Party. It was featured in their election programme of 1918, Labour and the New Social Order and 31 years later, in 1949, a Minister in the Labour Government confirmed that it still represented the division of wealth. (Mr. Glenvil Hall, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, ‘Hansard' May 18, 1949). After all these years and though we have had three Labour Governments, nothing whatever has been done to end the state of affairs that the early Fabians recognised as the cause of poverty. Incidentally, the Fabian Society in 1908, proposed to take over the land and capital “ without compensation (though not without such relief to expropriated individuals as may seem fit to the community.") (Fabian Tract Capital and Land 1908. P. 18.).

The Fabian Society named itself after a Roman General, Quintus Fabius Maximus, known as the “Delayer,” who perfected harrying tactics described as “masterly inactivity,” and whose motto was said to be “make haste slowly."

But Fabius did win some notable battles and would have been surprised if he could have known that an organisation named after him was to do nothing at all to win its major battle for some 70 years and an executive member was then to propose aiming at some slight action 45 years later still.

Muddled as the early Fabians were in their twin notions that capitalism would disappear of its own accord or alternatively could be modified by reforms into becoming an equalitarian society, they were mental giants compared with those who have followed them in the Labour Party.

In the meantime the rich one-tenth still own nine-tenths of the accumulated wealth; and there is still no solution to the poverty problem except the Socialist one of transforming the means of production and distribution into the common property of society as a whole.

Maureen ! (1955)

A Short Story from the August 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

Maureen was such a nice girl. Everyone was delighted when she landed a good job. Some people had been a bit worried when she was in the third year. Got into bad company and caught smoking in the lavatory! But later, thank goodness, after a few talkings to she had responded splendidly.

Just before leaving she had been a modest girl. Her speech had improved, so had her manners and appearance. There was no difficulty in recommending her for a good job.

She got a post with one of the best firms in the City. “I am pleased!” said Miss Prim.

She had done so well in the dramatic class. Why, her new employers were so good that when she asked for a day off, only a day after she had started, they said “ Certainly!” You shall have full pay and we hope you will continue your drama studies! “What better treatment could you have than that? ”

Maureen came back after the first week to tell us how happy she was.

Imagine our surprise when she came again just before the Easter holidays to say that she was no longer there.

But why? Maureen! Surely the money was good, and it’s one of the best firms for staff welfare in the whole of London!

It appears that in three short weeks Maureen’s rosy dreams of a bright and happy future had evaporated.

The first week was jolly. The second a bit dull. The third very nearly drove poor Maureen barmy. Her job was examining banknotes, in a room full of other girls examining banknotes. All day long she sat at a table with a strong concentrated light looking at banknotes, hundreds of banknotes, thousands of banknotes. In the room she met and spoke to girls who had been examining banknotes for five years, and would go on looking at banknotes for another 25 years.

Maureen had looked hastily round. Girls can still pick and choose. She is now working in a dressmaking factory. At least the colours of the dresses are different.

Funnily, enough, I happen to know one of the directors of Maureen’s first firm in a purely private capacity.

“Pity about that Maureen kid!” I said. “Oh! I dunno! was the reply. She didn’t do so badly. Three weeks is about the average. We only get one in 20 to stay longer. Of course, it’s repetition work, but they can get used to it.”

There you are! That’s the trouble with the youth to-day. When I think of all the time spent at interviews. The Youth Employment Officer, the Headmaster, the Teacher. The letters and references, and now she’s gone to a dress factory where they don’t ask for references at all.

It makes you sick! Why, for all the good it’s done we might just as well have told her to go where she liked at first.

I nearly felt like telling her so when I saw her last week if she hadn’t told me first that she’d just been after a new job.

It appears that at the dress factory she had to sit at a machine sewing buttonholes. All day long, buttonholes, hundreds of buttonholes—thousands of ’em.

“CYNICUS”

Letter: The Class Struggle and Socialism (1955)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

(We have received the following letter of criticism, to which is appended our reply—Ed. Comm.)

Golders Green, N.W.11.

4.7.55.

Dear Sirs,

The July Socialist Standard reprinted a quotation from an issue of 50 years ago “ Militant the workers’ cause is identified with class; triumphant, with humanity.” Recently (Oct. 1954) you reprinted the same quotation, which seems to indicate that you endorse it to-day. I have given considerable thought to the attitude to Socialism which is summed up in these few words, and I would appreciate it if you would allow me to state my point of view, together with whatever reply you may consider necessary or desirable on behalf of the S.P.G.B.

The first thing that strikes me about the quotation is that it states an obvious—even tautological—truth about the class struggle that characterises all property societies The “cause” of the people who are organised as a class in society can only be seen as a class cause—they are on one side or other of the struggle between those who buy and those who sell labour power. These causes and this struggle—militant or otherwise—are unquestionably a major feature of capitalist society. In so far as there is any triumph in this struggle, it is when one side gains a victory at the expense of the other—a class victory.

There is, however, another kind of struggle going on in society—the struggle for Socialism. On the one hand are Socialists: people who believe that a classless society is both desirable and practicable. On the other are those who are not Socialists, and who either support or acquiesce in the continuation of Capitalist institutions. The struggle between these two groups of people is a different kind of struggle from the first because it is concerned not with class interest but With social interest. Triumph here means that co-operation, harmony, social equality, will have ousted competition, warfare (including class warfare) and commodity relations.

Bearing this in mind, it seems hardly possible for the appeal to establish Socialism to be a class appeal. Much more is it a call to all people to be “integrated in a carefree world of humans,” as one of your writers puts it. This, of course, is not to say that Socialists should, in their propaganda, disregard the fact of the class struggle within Capitalism. It is a plea that the case for Socialism should be presented clearly for what it is—the triumph of humanity through the work of humanity.

I would like to add a few words on another point quoted in the S.S. that “the interests of the human race are bound up with the aspirations of the oppressed working-class in its struggle with Capitalist domination.” Everyone championing a sectional interest claims that it really represents the interests of all. At a recent political meeting I attended, several speakers tried to persuade the audience that movements for colonial self-government (i.e. nationalist movements) were really international in character. How easily Socialists can see the fallacy of that claim! Yet does it not appear that the S.P.G.B. is a victim of the same fallacy in claiming that a class movement can establish classless society

Yours sincerely,

S. R. Parker.

Reply:

The quotations to which our critic refers are those published under the heading “Fifty Years Ago” in our issues of October 1954 and July 1955.

The two articles from which these quotations were reproduced appeared in our issues of October 1904 and July 1905. They both express the point of view of the Socialist against that of the Reformists who, while reluctantly having to admit that the class struggle is a fact, want to disregard it. The first was an attack on Keir Hardie, who was one of these, and it included a quotation from Belfort Bax, who wrote of the “Benevolent old gentleman who says, 'Let us ignore classes, let us regard each other as human beings.' "

The second article (July 1905), again attacked those who, admitting the reality of the class straggle, refused to recognise the necessity of basing working-class political action on that reality, on the ground that “it is immoral, that it stirs up strife and sets one class against another.” It admitted that this was logical for those (Keir Hardie was one) who based their “Socialism” on the New Testament and its injunction “Resist not evil”; it also pointed out how this injunction serves the interest of the Capitalist class and fits in with their class morality which teaches the workers that any resistance by them against their exploitation is immoral. The article went on to show that as no propertied class ever voluntarily gives up its privileged position, and as the ending of class society is in the interest of humanity, “the only class that can be relied on for the abolition of privilege and power to exploit, is the unprivileged propertyless working class.”

One point made in the article was:—"Not indeed that we must hate the individual Capitalist, for he is the product of his circumstances; but in the interests of humanity the firmest action must be taken. The power to exploit must be wrested from the parasites.”

It should not be necessary to reproduce again the passage quoted in our July issue, but we do so because our critic’s letter so grotesquely misunderstands what it contains.

The quotation was:—

“The victory of the Socialist working-class is the only possible ending of this great struggle. This, however, does not mean the subjection of the Capitalist class by the workers: it means the abolition of Capitalism and the end of classes, for the great unprivileged masses cannot secure equality of opportunity without abolishing class privilege, and privilege is based on private property. The triumph of the great working majority thus involves the emancipation of all from class oppression, for the interests of the toiling masses are fundamentally the interests of humanity.

“Socialism, is then, the ethics of humanity, the necessary economic foundation of a rational code of morality. The interests of the human race are bound up with the aspirations of the oppressed working-class in its struggle with Capitalist domination. As it has very truly been said: 'Militant, the workers’ cause is identified with class triumphant, with humanity'.”

(In our July issue the word rational in line two of the second paragraph was in error given as national).

Our critic misrepresents the substance of this quotation by the peculiar and quite incorrect meaning he gives to the term class struggle and by his failure to read simple phrases in their obvious unmistakable meaning.

He thinks, as will be seen from the second paragraph of his letter, that the class struggle consists of “the struggle between those who buy and those who sell labour-power.” Historically class struggles have sometimes been between propertied classes, as for example between Feudal landlords and the rising Capitalists. In modern society the predominant class division is between the Capitalists who own the means of production and distribution and the property-less working class. This is the basis and substance of the class struggle; the struggle over wages is merely a restricted aspect of the class struggle, the one to which the workers are normally confined because the State power precludes other activities on their part. The culmination of the modern class struggle is the political struggle of a Socialist working class for Socialism.

But even for non-Socialist workers the wages struggle does not represent the whole of their aspirations. In our own time we have seen workers, when conditions made this temporarily possible, seize possession of the employers’ factories, as in Italy after World War I, and the Syndicalist movement before that war aimed at "taking and holding.” In the early 19th century workers’ movements (e.g. the co-operative pioneers) aspired to create a new society, though their aim was vague and they failed to understand the means necessary for its achievement

Next our critic evidently fails to notice that our quotation begins with a reference to “the Socialist working-class,” and fails to notice the reference in the same quotation to “the aspirations of the oppressed working class in its struggle with Capitalist domination." “Aspiration” is defined in the dictionary as “noble ambition,” and Capital domination does not merely mean the employers’ resistance to wage increases. So, departing entirely from the plain meaning of the passage, he criticises it as if what had been written there was something like this:—

“The victory of those non-Socialist workers whose aims extend no further than the struggle for another 3d. an hour embodies the aspirations of the Socialist working class and is in the interest of humanity.' "

In the light of what the quotation actually says the criticisms of it contained in the letter are almost entirely irrelevant

Rejecting the Socialist conception of a working-class becoming Socialist, and taking political action to end class society, our critic offers us instead the conception of a “group” of Socialists struggling against a “group” of non-Socialists, but omits to tell us how this is to lead to Socialism.

He concludes by asserting, without any discernable reason, that a Socialist working-class, constituting the great majority of society, cannot have a classless society though that will be its aim, but informs us that a “group” (a section only of society) can do so by struggling against the defenders of Capitalism.

What the example of self-styled Nationalists claiming to be Internationalists has to do with the case we do not know.

Editorial Committee.