"Socialism, one world, one people" says Harry Baldwin, the Socialist Party candidate for Hampstead (1966)

Reprinted below is the 1966 election address of Harry Baldwin, the SPGB's candidate for the Hampstead parliamentary constituency at that year's General Election. An election in which Harold Wilson's Labour Party won a landslide victory. 

This election address is also available as an audio file on YouTube. An important point of information about the audio file. It's not actually Harry Baldwin reading the election address himself, but is in fact a AI generated voice file where the uploader has used other recordings of Harry Baldwin speaking to provide the recording. Apparently, those who knew the late Harry Baldwin, say it's a faithful rendition of his voice and sounds uncannily similar. I'm not sure how I feel about such technological advanced practices. I have my worries and my doubts.

The SPGB received 211 votes (0.4%), and finished bottom of the poll.

Fellow Working Men and Women,

The message of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, which I am representing in this General Election, is fundamentally the same as in every other election in the past. While capitalism lasts Socialists have only one task; to explain, and struggle for, Socialism.

THE SOCIALIST PARTY

The Socialist Party of Great Britain was founded in 1904. Our object is the establishment of Socialism; a world-wide social system in which the means of wealth production and distribution (factories, mines, the land, railways, steamships, etc.) will be owned by the entire population of the world.

We are associated with our Companion Socialist parties in the U.S.A., Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and Australia. We have no connection whatever with any other political party or organisation.

We oppose every organisation which stands for capitalism, which includes the Labour, Conservative, Liberal, Communist, Independent Labour parties and many others. We oppose the wars which capitalism persistently throws up. We oppose political campaigns which appeal for votes on programmes of reforms (better housing, higher wages, etc.), which in fact do little or nothing to alleviate working class problems. We oppose Nationalisation, which is just another way of organising capitalism.

We support Socialism. Nothing less will do.

We work for Socialism. We spread among the working class the knowledge without which Socialism cannot be established. Our leader does not exist. Leaders are for the politically ignorant. The worker who has Socialist knowledge does not need a leader to interpret political affairs for him and to tell him what to do. There are, therefore, no leaders in the Socialist Party of Great Britain and we do not set out to become leaders of the working class.

We recruit Socialists and nobody else. We examine all applicants for membership to ensure that they understand what is entailed by being a Socialist.

We appeal to the working class to examine the case for Socialism and to vote for our candidate only if they understand, and want, Socialism.

We recognise that the road to Socialism lies through Parliament. At the moment, the number of Socialists is small and our resources are therefore limited; unfortunately, we can afford to run only a few candidates. But as the conscious desire for Socialism spreads among the working class we shall contest more and more constituencies, giving more and more workers the chance to vote for a world of abundance, peace and freedom.

THIS IS CAPITALISM

We live today in a social system which is called capitalism. The basis of this system is the ownership by a section of the population of the means of producingi and distributing wealth—of factories, mines, ships, and so on. It follows from this that all the wealth which we produce today is turned out with the intention of realising a profit for the owning class. It is from this basis that the problems of modern society spring.

The class which does not own the means of wealth production—the working class—are condemned to a life of degradation and dependence upon their wages. This poverty expresses itself in inferior housing, clothes, education, and the like. In the end, it expresses itself in the pathetic destitution of the old age pensioner—a fate which no elderly capitalist ever faces. Implicit in capitalism is the class struggle between capitalist and worker.

The basis of capitalism throws up the continual battle over wages and working conditions with attendant industrial disputes. It gives rise, with its international economic rivalries, to the wars which have disfigured man’s recent history.

Every other party in this election stands for capitalism, whatever they may cal! themselves. And whatever their protestations, they stand for a world of poverty, hunger, unrest and war. They stand for a world in which no human being is secure.

WHAT IS SOCIALISM?

Socialism will be a social system based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth, by and in the interest of the whole community. This definition was composed by the Socialist Party of Great Britain when it was formed in 1904. We have never altered it; not because we are stubborn and blind to changing conditions but because the word Socialism means the same today as it did in 1904—and as it will mean when Socialism becomes a reality.

Common ownership of the means of wealth production and distribution means that the things which are needed to make and distribute wealth will be owned by the whole human race. At present these things are the land, factories, mines, railways, steamships, etc. But common ownership does not mean that everybody in the world will own an equal share of every factory, mine, railway train and the rest.

What common ownership does mean, is that there is one way in which all human beings will be equal. Everybody will have an equal right to take however much wealth they need and to consume it as they require. Because the means of production will be commonly owned the things which are produced will go into a common pool from which all human1 beings will be able to satisfy their needs.

Now if there is unrestricted access to wealth for everybody it must follow that nobody, in a sense of an individual or a class, owns wealth. This means that wealth will not be exchanged under Socialism; it will not be bartered nor will it he bought and sold. As a rough parallel we can consider the air we breathe. Everybody has free access to the air and we can all take in as much of it as we need to live. In other words, nobody owns the air; nobody tries to exchange air for anything else, nobody tries to sell or buy it. Similarly there will he no buying and selling under Socialism; no need for the complicated and widespread organisations which deal in commerce and banking in capitalist society. Socialism will have no merchant houses, no banks, no stock exchanges, no tax inspectors, or any of the paraphernalia of capitalism.

In a Socialist society wealth will he produced solely to satisfy peoples' needs and not for sale as it is today. Because of this there will be no deliberate variations in quality of wealth. Socialism will have only one quality. Whatever is produced will he the best that human beings are capable of. Homes, for example, will be designed and built with the only motive of housing human beings in the best possible style. The materials of which they an made, their facilities and location will all conform to this. They will be the best homes that society knows how to build.

Nobody will be employed by another person—nobody will sell his labour-power or work for wages. Everybody, in fact, will work for the whole of society. Work will be a co operative effort, freely given because men will realise that wealth can only be produced by working unless wealth is produced society will die. Yet it will not only be a reluctance to commit social suicide Ibid will keep us working under Socialism. Men will be free — free from the fetters of wage slavery, free from the fears of unemployment. free from economic servitude and insecurity. Nobody will be found doing a job which he hates but tolerates because it pays him well. Healthy young men will not grow pigeon chested over fusty ledgers. Nobody will waste his time learning how to kill scientifically. We shall be free to do useful work, making things which will add to society's welfare, things which will make human life better and happier.

There will be no war — the cause of war will no longer exist. This means that there will be no armed forces with their dreadfully destructive weapons. It means that the people who arc in the armed forces, together with the rest of the enormous social effort which is channelled into them, will be able to serve useful, humane purposes instead of destroying and terrorising.

When production is only for human use we shall see a great development of society's productivity. First of all, an enormous number of jobs which are vital to capitalism will become redundant. Socialism will have no use for such jobs because its wealth will not be produced for sale, There will probably be statisticians to collect information about society's productive resources and to relate this to out needs. A lot of people will work at transporting wealth all over the world. These are useful occupations, just as all work will be.

Capitalism has veined the world with frontiers and has fostered patriotism and race hatred, none of which has any scientific basis. Frontiers are purely artificial and are often altered at international conferences. Many workers ate proud of their nationality although in logic they cannot take pride in something over which they had no control. Socialism will have none of this. No frontiers, no racial barriers or prejudices. The world will be one with only human beings working together for their mutual benefit.

Socialism will end the wasteful, fearsome, insecure world we know today. It will remove poverty and  replace it with plenty. It will abolish war and bring us a world of peace. It will end fear and hatred and give us security and brotherhood.

Now what about the other political parties?

PROMISES! PROMISES! PROMISES!

A few months ago, Mr Harold Wilson told us that nineteen-sixty-six was going to be “Make or Break" year.

This was nothing more than another way of making a promise which we have heard many times before; that if we all work harder, cut out restrictive practices, increase our productivity, go easy on wage claims, a Golden Future of prosperity will be ours.

Although this is a very old promise, it has never been fulfilled. However hard the working class work, they never get rid of their problems, they never get any nearer the Golden Future.

The reason for this is simple. Working class problems are caused by the capitalist social system and until that is abolished the problems will remain.

Mr. Wilson's government were not, however, concerned with solving the problems of the working class. They devoted a lot of effort to battling with their difficulties over the balance of payments, the international standing of sterling and so on. These are all matters which concern only the British capitalist class.

The difficulties which faced the Wilson government were not peculiar to this country. Take wages. In France, Germany. Sweden, Australia, the United States—to name only a few—unions are at logger- heads with governments and employers over wage claims.

Similarly, employers in these countries are trying to increase the productivity—in other words the intensity of exploitation—of their workers and to make their products more competitive on the world’s markets.

They, too, have been telling their workers that this is a time of “make or break".

What about the problems of those workers? They are not confined to any one country. All over the world millions of workers suffer bad housing, inadequate medical attention, poor food. They live sub-standard lives, catch diseases they could avoid, die before they need.

All their lives, in every land, workers face the strains of poverty—of struggling to live within the restrictions of their wage packet, of having always to leave a mass of needs and desires unfulfilled.

As much as poverty, war is a condition of our lives under capitalism. In between the massive World Wars, minor conflicts are raging, perhaps setting the scene for a greater clash. At present it is Vietnam, Not so long ago it was Kashmir, Algeria, Suez, Korea.

There seems to be no end to it—nor can there be, as long as capitalism lasts. For behind the military conflicts the economic rivalries of capitalism, which are the basic cause of modern war, are as acute as ever. The world is still divided into spheres of influence and "protection”, there are still great power blocs confronting each other, the nations of the world still hold mighty arsenals of frightening power.

Capitalism, in short, creates a mass of problems for its people. It restricts, represses, degrades and destroys them. For many people, life under capitalism is made tolerable only by their faith in the politicians' promises of a Golden Future.

Yet however much the politicians assure us that they have the solution to our problems, they never succeed in solving them. The future, as long as the workers are content to trust their leaders, and to keep capitalism in being, is grim.

The expansion of Socialist knowledge and action is the only hope for a sane world, a world which is safe and abundant and free.

WHAT THEY DO

Why do the various political parties keep breaking their election promises? The Labour Party and the Conservative Party accuse each other of incompetence and trickery and the Liberal Party blames them both. But these are all superficial explanations. The real reason is more basic; the Government is not the free agent when it comes to tackling social problems that the manifestos, slogans and promises of these parties suggest.

All these parties aim to take power within the framework of capitalism and through legislation to solve the many social problems of the day. The function of a government is to manage the day-to-day affairs of capitalism so that it is the needs of capitalism rather than election promises or abstract moral principles that determine how it acts. By its very nature capitalism cannot be made to work to the benefit of the immense majority of its people, those who work for a wage or salary. Any party, whatever its intentions, which takes on the task of running the governmental affairs of capitalism is sooner or later forced to act to the detriment of the working class. Time and time again this has been confirmed. The Labour government has been no exception as its record on wages and salaries, war and immigration shows.

When the Labour government took office its first problem was to deal with the financial mess that British capitalism had got itself into. This took priority. “We shall have to defer some of the desirable social reforms we had hoped to do in the immediate future,’ said Callaghan last July. The government did all it could to keep down wages and salaries so that more profits would be available for re-investment. In fact in this it has had little success. The economic forces of capitalism have made a mockery of the Prices and Incomes policy and the first year of the so-called National Plan.

In Aden and Malaysia the Labour government is involved in wars to protect the oil, tin, and rubber supplies of the owning class of Britain. In Vietnam it has given its support to the American government’s policy of killing and destruction there. Again, as any government in capitalism must, it has had a ‘defence” policy based on the latest weapons of destruction, including nuclear weapons. It has even appointed an arms super-salesman.

The Labour Party has always talked of standing for human brotherhood. Yet the present government has pursued a thinly-disguised policy of colour discrimination. In August last year immigration controls were tightened and vague talk of “illegal immigrants” by the then Home Secretary has no doubt helped to fan racial prejudice.

Once again the Labour Party has failed to tame capitalism. Indeed over the years the opposite has happened: Capitalism has tamed the Labour Party. It is now openly and obviously little different, in words as well as actions, from the Conservative and Liberal parties which don’t claim to be against capitalism.

Governments of all parties fail not through incompetence or insincerity or sabotage. They fail because they cannot do what they claim. They are elected by cruelly exploiting people’s hopes of a better world and then find they can’t deliver the goods.

Now we come to the important point—what about you, the voter?

HOW YOU LIVE TODAY

Capitalism is essentially a system of inequality; it can be nothing else, and all the claptrap of its Lab/ Lib/Cons politicians cannot alter that unpleasant fact. The Board of Inland Revenue has recently issued its annual report for the financial year 1963-64, showing that over ten million people earned £500 or less, before tax, while at the other end of the scale, 110 enjoyed a pre-tax income of £100,000 or more. An interpretation of the Board’s report by “The Economist” for February 26 says that “two thirds of British people in 1964 had no wealth worth recording at all, while eighty per cent. of all personal wealth, including property, was owned by some five million individuals, nine per cent. of the population. ’

It is this division of wealth—this glaring inequality —which is a constant feature of capitalism. It is moreover a fundamental fact of capitalist life and colours the whole of your existence, so that by comparison the promises of the Heaths and Wilsons amount to so much trivia. Not that Wilson or Heath will tell you that, of course. All their attention will be directed to securing your vote for the continuation of a world where your life and that of many others, will be devoted to keeping the nine per cent. minority in the ease and comfort of their eighty per cent. stake.

If you think that’s a bit far-fetched, take a look at some of the issues which will be tossed back and forth this time. Have the politicians made yet another promise to solve the housing problem? Yes, we thought they had—the same promise they make in all elections. But just who is it who will be queueing for council “dwellings” or worried about mortgage rates? For whom, in fact, is housing a problem? Certainly not the nine per cent.

The question of education has threatened to become a major issue and “grammar versus comprehensive” has been debated angrily by worried working class parents. Understandably enough, but whatever emerges from the melting pot, real education for your children will not be part of it. There will be a training of some sort or other for the jobs which will be going in the capitalist world of the 1970s', and that in general is what the kids will get—except for the lucky few whose parents belong to the nine per-cent. and can afford something very much better.

And do the nine per cent. have to worry about high prices, lagging wages and pensions? Of course not, but you do, and it’s because you don’t look further into the background of these problems that politicians can keep you stocked with promises, and that’s about all. Your vote can be used to do something really positive about all this, but only when it is backed with determination which stems from knowledge of the world in which you live.

THINK FOR YOURSELF

Apart from the Socialist Party, all other parties will be seeking support for a political leader. The fact that the Socialist Party emphatically rejects the cult of leadership is another basic difference between ourselves and all other parties. To us, political leadership symbolises immaturity; it is inherently corrupt. By supporting political leadership in this election, the working class will relinquish yet again the power they can have to act in their own interests.

Over the years, politics has given us a procession of various leaders and a great deal of attention has been given to their various personal qualities, but the electorate has a fickle appetite for the men it consumes. The magic Macwonder image can easily give way to something outworn and flabby. It is convenient under Capitalism to associate individual personalities with various phases of its administration. It is convenient to be able to associate failure with a man instead of a system. It is convenient to be able to swap the man but keep the system, to create the illusion of fresh opportunities by introducing a new personality. Political leaders come and go, but the institutions they administer remain. We do not attack one leader as against another. We argue that no man, or for that matter no team of men, can administer Capitalism in the interests of the whole community.

The political leaders in this election claim that they can work on behalf of the majority. By now the cheap electoral promises that crumble in the hard test of actual policies and subsequent experience is more than familiar. As ever, this process will repeat itself in this election. Regardless of the endless auctioneering that takes place between parties seeking to form a government, the stark tacts of Capitalist society must assert themselves, We live in class divided society that operates in the interests of a privileged minority. Regardless of intentions. Capitalism can only be run in their interests. There can be no choice. The defence of interests that are hostile to the working population must go with the job of government.

The administration of a society that is based on privileged interests requires the cull of political leadership. Workers who accept economic exploitation will abdicate their political interests by supporting a leader. Socialists have a knowledge of Capitalism that enables them to know where their interests lie. For us leadership is an irrelevance. We combine in a democratic way with the object of realising our mutual interests through the establishment of Socialism. Action for fundamental social change is beyond individuals. This must be the act of a majority who assert demociatic control over their social affairs through knowledge and understanding. For us leadership and the confused support that it rests upon walks a political path fraught with disaster.

In this election, the Socialist Party of Great Britain does not seek your blind support on the basis of empty promises which are easy to mouth and cheap to print but, which, having no prospect of success, are in reality deceptive lies We do not offer you a leader with an allegedly magic touch. We do not ask for your vole unless you understand our case.

There is no easy way out. We ask you to put in socialist perspective the realities of everyday life. We seek to spread knowledge of Socialism and secure your understanding. When we have that, we shall ask you for more than your vote; we shall ask for your comradely help in establishing Socialism.

I urge you seriously to consider our case, for the issues before you at this Election are vital. Upon your knowledge, and your action, depends the hope for the future.

Yours for Socialism ..

Harry Baldwin

Published by M. Davies, 245 Finchley Road, N.W.3. Printed by R. E. Taylor & Son Ltd (TU) 55 Banner Street, EC1.

Socialist Party of Gt. Britain

OBJECT

The establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community.

DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES

The SOCIALIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN holds:

1. That Society as at present constituted is based upon the ownership of the means of living (i.e., land, factories, railways, etc.) by the capitalist or master class, and the consequent enslavement of the working class by whose labour alone wealth is produced.
2. That in society, therefore, there is an antagonism of interests, manifesting itself as a class struggle, between those who possess but do not produce, and those who produce but do not possess.
3. That this antagonism can be abolished only by the emancipation of the working class from the domination of the master class, by the conversion into the common property of society of the means of production and distribution, and their democratic control by the whole people.
4. That as in the order of social evolution the working class is the last class to achieve its freedom the emancipation of the working class will involve the emancipation of all mankind without distinction of race or sex.
5. That this emancipation must be the work of the working class itself.
6. That as the machinery of government, including the armed forces of the nation, exists only to conserve the monopoly by the capitalist class of the wealth taken from the workers, the working class must organise consciously and politically for the conquest of the powers of government, national and local, in order that this machinery, including these forces, may be converted from an instrument of oppression into the agent of emancipation and the overthrow of privilege, aristocratic and plutocratic.
7. That as all political parties are but the expression of class interests, and as the interest of the working class is diametrically opposed to the interests of all sections of the master class, the party seeking working- class emancipation must be hostile to every other party.
8. The Socialist Party of Great Britain, therefore, enters the field of political action determined to wage war against all other political parties, whether alleged labour of avowedly capitalist, and calls upon the members of the working class of this country to muster under its banner to the end that a speedy termination may be wrought to the system which deprives them of the fruits of their labour, and that poverty may give place to comfort, privilege to equality, and slavery to freedom.

Editorial: Capitalism and the food shortage (1946)

Editorial from the March 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

THE Governments of the world are worried about the food problem. Mr. Herbert Lehman, Director- General of U.N.R.R. A., declares that: “More men, women and children in Europe and the Far East are hungry this winter than at any time in modern history." He calls it “the greatest critical emergency which has faced the United Nations since the end of the war.” The defenders of capitalism do not admit that the existence of the problem and the inhuman and bungling way in which it is being handled are evidences of the inherent defects of that social system, but that is what they are. It is not true that the shortage exists only as a bye-product of war, for in pre-war years, when there were great surpluses of wheat and other products there were, alongside of them, millions of undernourished workers and peasants too poor to buy the food they needed. War is itself an inevitable outcome of capitalist trade rivalries and has, too, a result that is welcome from the capitalist standpoint, of removing for a time the huge unsaleable surpluses of raw materials and foodstuffs. One of the reasons why war propaganda like that of the Nazis was listened to by the workers was that it was linked up with promises that territorial expansion would provide more food. Presumably with this in mind, Mr. Clinton Anderson, Secretary of Agriculture in the United States, demanded, in a broadcast in October, 1945, that: “hunger must be eliminated as a primary cause of war,” and “ the United Nations must not permit the pangs of hunger to bring about the basic fears and greeds which result in war.” —The Times, 15 Oct., 1945.

He went on to say that “two-thirds of the world’s population was undernourished, yet science and technology had advanced to such a point that the earth’s agricultural resources could fill the need of all.”

In a Socialist world, if a general or local shortage of food existed all the resources of the world would at once be available to move foodstuffs to the area where they were needed, or to increase total production if that was necessary. If, as a temporary measure, consumption of food generally had to be reduced to help a locality where shortage existed, there would be no obstacles in the shape of private ownership and the profit motive.

In the world as it exists to-day not even the realisation that starvation or semi-starvation threatens millions of people can prevent capitalism from functioning in its normal way. People in Europe need dried eggs, while in America, according to the Daily Express (8 Feb., 1946), there is “a glut of eggs” and “poultry farmers are facing ruin as a result." In the same country farm output could have been increased, but because farmers consider the price offered for their grains is too low “ they prefer to feed them to their stock rather than to sell" (The Times, 9 Feb.), and they have deliberately kept output below what it could have been (Daily Telegraph, 9 Feb.). American farmers had not forgotten the ruin that faced them before the war because they had produced too much, not too much for the needs of the population, but more than they could sell at a profit. The Times (9 Feb.; says that with the ending of the war the “fears of agricultural surpluses which haunted the United States between the wars were revived. In spite of the golden prosperity brought by the war years, the farmers recollection of the deep agricultural depression of the twenties and thirties is as active a political force as the ghost of the hungry forties was for a long time in the political history of this country. But the fear of being under an avalanche of farm surpluses, attended by a catastrophic collapse of prices, has proved to have been a misreading of the portents, and the miscalculation has been aggravated by the determination of farmers to hoard grain as a protest against the price levels imposed by Washington.”

At the same time that millions are undernourished—in U.S.A., as well as in other countries—because they cannot afford to buy more, there is not a country in the world in which the rich cannot buy the best food; either openly or in the black market, in unrestricted amounts. In every country labour and resources that could be used to supply the needs of the ill-fed and ill-clothed masses of the population are being used, often with the deliberate encouragement of the Governments, on production of luxury articles for the wealthy or goods for the export drive, or armaments. Hundreds of millions of pounds being spent by the leading Powers on perfecting the bomb or building up peace-time armies, navies and air forces. In Britain, simultaneously with the declaration about the need for more food, we read of booming exports of British cars and other products. The Evening News (9 Feb.), under the heading “British Car Exports Booming,” reported that the Nuffield organisation alone will have sent abroad 20,000 cars by the end of June, when its production will have grown to 1,000 cars a week.

Britain is short of food and because we live under capitalism low-paid agricultural labourers are so anxious to escape to the relatively better paid work in industry that the Labour Government—while refusing to carry out the Labour Party’s own oft- repeated demand that land workers should have wages not less than those in industry—uses the war-time emergency powers to tie agricultural workers to their jobs.

Capitalism is indeed a mad and sorry system, which has long outlived its usefulness

What Labour voters wanted? A world made safe for investors (1946)

From the March 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a country where the whole adult population have votes and where the overwhelming majority of the voters are workers, the art of administering capitalism is a delicate, tricky business. To attract and keep the support of a majority of voters the party in power must have a programme that promises to introduce improvements in the miserable conditions of the poor; but in order to make capitalism function at all the government must not at the same time frighten and antagonise the rich, whose investment and spending has to go on unless industry is to slacken towards a standstill. Until such time as the workers recognise that their interest demands Socialism, the party that succeeds in persuading the electors that it can both please the workers and conciliate the capitalist will be the party that wins elections. The Labour Party succeeded in doing this, and is now carrying out its pledges, or some of them; but how many of the Labour voters who were attracted by the promises of more work, higher wages, social security, houses, etc., studied and understood the other half of the programme, the half that was directed to the capitalist class? How many of them observed that if wages rise and other things remain unchanged, then profits must fall; and that if profits go on at the old level (or increase), wages can only be prevented from falling if the total output of industry is increased? There has been plenty of Labour Party propaganda designed to make the workers believe that a Labour Government would reduce the wealth of the rich in order to help the poor, though this was not stated explicitly in the literature got out for the purpose of the general election. Workers can already see what is happening. War-time earnings, enlarged by overtime and various temporary bonuses, are now falling, and the changes introduced in the income tax, while decreasing somewhat the amount knocked off wages, also reduced Excess Profits Tax levied on companies, and reduced the total amount of tax levied on surtax payers. Mr. Dalton, Chancellor of the Exchequer, made two revealing statements in his Budget speech. While declaring that many surtax payers are idlers, he went on to announce that his Budget reduced their income tax. 

“The truth, in fact, is . . . that a large number of the surtax payers do nothing at all. They subsist on very large investment interests. Many of these have been inherited through many generations in the past, sometimes along with noble names, sometimes not. As a consequence of this, there is, in the total surtax income, a great quantity of completely unearned income, conglomerated in huge lumps around people who have inherited it, obtained it by luck, or other means." —Hansard, 19 Nov., 1945. CoL 152.

“ I repeat . . . that in terms of income, next year everybody will be better off, including surtax’ payers . . ." —Hansard. 28 Nov., 1945. Col. 1358.

The principal feature of the Labour programme at the election was the pledge to nationalise certain industries. In some vague way never clearly explained this was supposed to benefit the workers. It will, however, be noticed that since the Government entered office, the theme of numerous speeches by Cabinet Ministers has been that the compensation terms would be "fair" or even "generous" to the capitalist investors, while to the workers the Labour leaders' reiterated appeal is for harder work, austerity, and greater production.

This contrasts oddly with some of their speeches and writings during the war. Two examples, both from Cabinet Ministers, illustrate this. In 1942, Mr. Bevin, now Foreign Secretary, but at that time Minister of Labour in the Coalition Government, made a speech in which he said:— 

"At the end of the war we should be able to buy goods only for goods. The rentier, comfortably living on interest, would certainly be gone. It will mean that we shall have a nation at work, and that will not be an unhealthy thing."

—Daily Herald, 16 July, 1942.

Then there is Mr. Shinwell, now Minister of Fuel and Power. In his book, “When the Men Come Home” (Gollanz, 1944, page 41), he laid down the principle “that any physically and mentally fit individual who fails to make a useful contribution to the work of the community shall not be fed, clothed and housed at the expense of those who do work."

How are Mr. Bevin and Mr. Shinwell, and their Cabinet colleagues, progressing with their healthy doctrine that there should be no non-workers, comfortably living on interest, clothed and housed by the labours of those who have to work? It is only necessary to look at the nationalisation schemes to see that, far from abolishing interest receivers, the principal achievements for which this Labour Government will be remembered is that the “rentier, comfortably living on interest,” is being vastly increased in number and their position consolidated. The so-called epoch-making change brought about by the Labour Government is merely the transformation of some capitalist investors holding company shares, into holders of Government bonds. It was a development already making headway under the Conservatives before Labour came into power. Here are some examples of that nationalisation or State capitalism, wrongly described as Socialism by the Labour Party. The Central Electricity Board has over £50 million of stock outstanding and pays interest each year to the stockholders amounting to over £2¼ million. Port of London Authority, £34 million of stock, paying £1⅓ million interest. Metropolitan Water Board, £58 million, interest £1,790,000 a year. London Passenger Transport Board, stock, £112 million, paying interest of about £4½ million a year.

Then there is the buying out of owners of coal royalties, just completed, with payments of £66 million, available for investment elsewhere. This was a measure backed by the Labour Party though not introduced by them.

Since the Labour Government came into office the Bank of England has been taken over and the stockholders are to receive £58 million of Government stock on which the interest at 3 per cent, will amount to £1¾ million a year.

The Daily Express City Editor (20 Nov., 1945) gave the following rough estimates of the total cost of the Labour Government’s nationalisation schemes:—

Taking interest at, say, 3 per cent., this will involve payments by the Government of about £60 millions a year to the stockholders in exchange for the dividends they are at present receiving on their shares in the various companies. They will on the whole receive a lower rate of interest than before, but will get in return the greater security of bonds backed by the Government. 

As far as the workers are concerned, their position as wage slaves, exploited to maintain a propertied class in luxurious idleness, will not be altered. The State to an ever increasing extent will be the medium through which the exploitation is carried on. The accumulated wealth of the country (the means of production and distribution) will still be concentrated in the hands of the same small minority of individuals, the capitalist class, who own it at present. 

Edgar Hardcastle

The World To-Day — A Socialist Survey (1946)

From the March 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the corrupted currents of capitalist life the wage slave is never, but always to be blest. Good times are said to be coming, but they never arrive. During the war promises were lavishly spread and the workers looked forward to the cessation of hostilities eagerly, and hopefully, under the impression that the strain would then be over and they could relax to some extent from their arduous toil. They were soon disillusioned however. Exhortation was made to them to resume their weary burden, and when relief was sought through the election of a Labour Government there was no respite. The wage slave gets his fodder barely enough to work on—the difference between the working men who lost, and the working men who won the war-is soon levelled up—amid all the confusion of concentration camps, displaced persons, foes and friends, and the chaos existing everywhere, the commodity nature of labour power manifests itself: the slave must receive sufficient to generate within him what he is called upon to deliver.

The conflict now raging between the more powerful groups of capitalists has forced them to do away with internal competition as much as possible, and this is largely responsible for the growth of nationalisation. There are other causes of course, but this fact should not be lost sight of. A Labour Government puts it over for them, and what is more, fools the wage slaves into believing they are receiving Socialism. The pooling of national capitalist groups has had an effect on the international situation, which is revealed in the quarrel over the proposed loan from the United States, and the squabbles at U.N.O. The recipients of surplus value cannot reconcile their sectional interests; these stand out sharply immediately the war ends. The smaller nations are at the mercy of one or the other of the big three, the mighty economic forces are carrying society along, and forcing the thinking section of the community towards the point when they will be forced to perceive that Socialism is the only way out.

The U.N.O. Conference in London has disclosed the relative decline of European capitalism. Out of 51 nations not a quarter are Europeans.

The veil was lifted for a while during the quarrel between Bevin and Vishinsky, and the real character of Russia was revealed, as also of capitalist Britain. The sudden publicity given by Bevin to the part played by the Communists was not to Moscow’s liking. It looked at one time as if the Bear was going to hibernate, but instead he beat a strategic retreat. Whilst this was going on Molotov was telling the slaves of the Soviet Union that Russian would never allow any other nation to interfere in her internal affairs. A sense of humour is essential at these times even when discussing international bickerings.

The Russians are the victims of their own propaganda ; we are told by them that there is no unemployment in the Soviet Union. There was little unemployment in the slave states of old, or under the feudal system, but this is not saying there was no exploitation. Russian has this in common with ancient Rome and the old civilisations—she allows little or no freedom. The masses are taught and induced to believe what the ruling clique consider it is desirable they should know; their contact with the outside world is restricted; a real knowledge of what exists in other lands might make the Russian workers dangerous from the standpoint of their oppressors. The wage slaves of Russia will grasp the facts underlying their real position eventually: the machine may help to clarify their ideas, and although freedom of association with the workers of other lands may be retarded, it cannot be permanently prevented.

We are beginning to obtain a little more information from Germany about the movement there, and it is pleasing to note that the opposition to the Nazi dictators was stronger than we had been asked to believe. The ruthlessness of the Hitler regime did not prevent certain groups standing out for what they believed to be the real interests of the workers, of which freedom of speech was one. The brutality with which they were treated by the Nazi gang is a sign that Hitler feared them. Many articles have been written about Nazism, but it is hard to accept the statement that the children of Germany were educated and trained by the Nazis against the wishes of their parents. The majority of the wage slaves of the Reich were willing tools and for this reason we should appreciate all the more the courage of those who refused to bow the knee and steadfastly stood, during the whole period of Nazi supremacy, for the unity of the working class of all countries.

There are great troubles ahead; the quarrel over the control of the waterways of Europe is now rampant, with Russia taking the place of Germany. 

How cynically the Russian rulers act: they apparently consider the masses of all other countries to be as backward as the peasantry of the Steppes. They classify themselves as belonging to the freedom- loving nations whilst holding against their will vast numbers of helpless individuals, whose voices they will not allow to be heard. Let the admirers of Russia read the chapter on Pan Slavism in Marx’s “Revolution and Counter Revolution”: let them take stock of the actions of Russia in the Baltic States, and everywhere where she has been able to get a foothold, and they will realise that this totalitarian power is as much a menace to all members of the working class, who are endeavouring to escape the horrors of capitalism by establishing Socialism, as are the rest of the capitalist Powers.

The Labour Government are still continuing their policy of dangling the carrot before the donkey. When anything was wanted during the war how quickly it was brought into being. What a difference when the wage slaves desire something for themselves. Houses, for instance. What a lot of discussion precedes action. The number of samples on show cause hope to spring in the breast of those who live in over-crowded conditions. Swedish houses, Canadian houses, American houses. The specimens are of wood, brick, aluminium or plastic. The women are being questioned as to why they do not have more children. One would think even a Labour Government would get the shelters ready before asking the slaves why they do not have more offspring. The maternity wards are said to be overcrowded. What more do they want? The fact is the God of Profit must be served first, and unless and until a way can he found to enable capitalism’s deity to obtain his pound of flesh, the woes of his victims will be allowed to continue. It is plain to every observant individual that the Labour Party cannot fulfil its pledges to the electorate. There was to be no unemployment. A visit to the Labour Exchange will soon show differently. Capitalism has its own laws and these are more powerful than governments.

To take something from one section of the working class and give it to another does not decrease the amount of exploitation or the amount of surplus value that goes to the capitalist class.

The above is all the Labour Party’s proposals amount to in reality. No expropriation of the recipients of rent, interest, and profit is seriously contemplated, and until that is done nothing is accomplished of lasting benefit to those who produce the wealth of society.

Charles Lestor