Is British Capitalism played out?
Since the War, politicians from Conservative to Communist have joined with business men and economic experts to harp on the theme that British capitalism was on the verge of collapse. They pointed to growing unemployment and the decline in the volume of exports and imports as proof that the industries of this country were being strangled. The Communists assured us that the end was only a matter of time. They repeatedly prophesied the early outbreak of the revolution at the “psychological moment.” Like Bottomley, who always promised that the War would be over by Christmas, the Communists pinned their faith each year to the cold weather which would drive the unemployed to desperation when winter came. In the meantime they went on sharpening up the knuckle-dusters with which they were going to attack the armed forces. We of the Socialist Party said all along that the “facts” on which they based their case were largely fiction, and that their theories were all nonsense. A consideration of the growth of the total income of the country year by year, side by side with declining exports, shows in unmistakable fashion that we were right.
The figures in Column (1) are taken from the Economist Budget Supplement of April. 18th, 1931. It may be remarked, however, that, according to a rough estimate by Professor Bowley, communicated in a letter to The Times written by Sir Herbert Samuel (Dec. 1st, 1930), the 1930 National Income might be as much, as £100,000,000 above the 1924 level; at the worst, it would not fall below 1921 by more than £200 millions.
The figures in Columns (2) and (3) are taken from the Statistical Abstract, 74th number, 1931, page 312. The figure for 1930 is taken from an official summary published in The Times, Feb. 26th, 1931.
It will be observed that although exports are now down to the pre-war level (after having been well above it owing to the increase in prices), the total national income is not far short of double the amount it was in 1914. During the last two or three years, especially in 1930, the volume of goods and services represented by the national income has grown larger without the money value growing proportionately, this being due to the heavy fall in prices. Sir Walter Layton, Editor of the Economist, says that the national production increased nearly 12 per cent. between 1924 and 1929 (Times, March 31st, 1931).
It is evident that technical changes and new tariff policies in the different countries have altered the conditions of world trade. The mistake the Communists made was in assuming that the British and other capitalists would not be able to adjust their industries accordingly. They have made the adjustments and, in this country at least, are richer than ever they have been, and still securely fixed in the saddle. Capitalism has its problems now, just as it had them before the War, but so long as the workers are content to put up with the capitalist system and go on voting the control of the political machinery into the hands of the parties which will use that control for the purpose of guarding capitalism, just so long will capitalism continue in being. Even had the Communists been right about the decline of the British capitalists, they overlooked the fact that the decline of Britain as a capitalist power would only mean the rise of other capitalist powers in its place. So lacking in a correct understanding were the Communists, that they helped to make that alternative more likely by lending their aid to the capitalist movements in India, China, Egypt, and elsewhere, under the mistaken impression that the native capitalists who control the “nationalist” movements desire to work or can be compelled to work for Socialism.
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Mr. Hicks solves the unemployment problem.
In his election address (see Daily Herald, April 1st), Mr. George Hicks, the successful Labour candidate at the recent by-election in East Woolwich, claimed with pride that the Labour Government are employing more men at the Arsenal than had been employed there by the Tory Government ! But it is disclosed that this “increase” had been achieved simply by having more Government work done at the Arsenal, and less done at private yards. So that the employment of more men in one place will have been balanced by the dismissal of a similar number elsewhere. Mr. Hicks’s solution for unemployment is in line with the Cabinet’s attempt last year to boost the sale of cotton fabrics (at the expense of artificial silk), and the suggestion that the over-production of wheat can be met by persuading Orientals to eat more wheat (and less rice).
If the reports of his speeches in the Daily Herald are to be believed, Mr. Hicks talked more nonsense than one is accustomed to receive even from the most ill-informed or insincere of Labour candidates. In view of the fact that Mr. Hicks (once a member of the S.P.G.B.) claimed in public debate with a Communist, in 1921, that he still accepted the principles of this Party, it would be instructive if we could be told what events have sufficed since 1921 to cause Mr. Hicks to abandon the position he then held. There is a vast gulf between the belief that only Socialism can solve the workers’ problems, and Mr. Hicks’s present desire “to maintain the high traditions set by Will Crooks” (Daily Herald, April 1st). Perhaps Mr. Hicks was combining the serious personal business of getting into Parliament at all costs with a misplaced April fool joke at the expense of the electorate.
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Getting with the masses.
The Communists have always talked a great deal about the necessity of getting with the masses, and have criticised the Socialist Party because, as they truly allege, we have attached more importance to the preaching of sound principles than to attracting the support of non-Socialists. It is instructive to learn from one of their prominent members, Mr. Arthur Horner, that the Communist tactics secure for them not the approval, but the hostility of the workers. Horner, in a letter to Moscow (see Daily Worker, March 10, 1931), states that the setting up of Communist strike committees during the recent mining dispute in South Wales resulted “only in our isolation,” the miners preferring their own elected officials and committees. He says that the Communist movement showed itself, both nationally and in South Wales, “effectively bankrupt from every angle.” Horner was called sharply to order, and it was at first reported that he and Mr. J. Tanner were to form a new Communist Party, less given to wrecking tactics. It now appears that they are to be received back into the Communist Party.
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Comic relief at the I.L.P. Conference.
The National Council of the I.L.P. decided that their members must not belong to the Mosley Party, and the Conference passed a resolution rejecting “with disdain the quack remedies of the Labour Government and Messrs. Lloyd George and Oswald Mosley” (Manchester Guardian, April 7th). Yet Mr. John Paton, Secretary of the I.L.P., writing to the New Statesman about a fortnight earlier, said that the Mosley programme had been borrowed to a large extent from the living wage programme of the I.L.P. At least three of the M.P.’s who drafted the Mosley programme were members of the I.L.P. at the time. And although the I.L.P. Conference thus repudiates the quack remedies of the Labour Government and of Mr. Lloyd George, it is I.L.P. members in the House of Commons who form a majority of the Parliamentary Labour Party and permit these “quack remedies,” and permit the holding of office on terms satisfactory to Lloyd George.
One of the funniest incidents was a protest by a delegate (Mr. Southall) against Gandhi entering into negotiations “with the Imperialist leaders whilst still leaving so many of the Indian leaders in prison” (Manchester Guardian, April 8th). The joke of it is that the “Imperialist leaders” are all of them the nominees of the Labour Government, which is kept in office by I.L.P. members in Parliament. The Secretary for India, Mr. Wedgwood Benn, is one of the I.L.P.’s own M.P.’s. How was Mr. Gandhi to know that Mr. Southall did not want him to enter into negotiations with the people who are elected to Parliament with the assistance of Mr. Southall and his party?
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Forward and the S.P.G.B.
Mr. Emrys Hughes, who edits the Scottish I.L.P. journal, Forward, has been warning the I.L.P. to avoid becoming “an anti everybody and everything organisation like the S.P.G.B.” Mr. Hughes has fallen into error through taking a superficial view of things. He notices that we oppose the Liberals and Tories, the Labour Party, the I.L.P., and the Communists, but he has not noticed that one reason applies to each of these parties. We do not pretend that they are alike in all respects, but we do claim that each of them is prepared to retain capitalism, either as it now is or reformed to a greater or less degree. Since each of the three so-called Labour organisations find themselves advocating similar reforms and voting at elections for the same candidates, our opposition to one naturally involves our opposition to the others also. We have only one object, which is the replacement of capitalism by Socialism.
If Mr. Hughes would study the question further from another angle, he would recall one or two respects in which our capacity for being anti-everything falls short of the I.L.P.’s capacities in the same direction. For example, the S.P.G.B. has not achieved the distinction of being opposed to itself, whereas Mr. Hughes is constantly pointing out to his own opponents inside his own party that it is absurd for them to go on denouncing the Labour Government (including the I.L.P. members of it) and yet remain affiliated. He has also ridiculed the absurdity of there being three I.L.P. Parliamentary parties—first the group of 140 I.L.P. members in Parliament, then the group of about 30 M.P.’s for whom the I.L.P. was responsible at the last election, and lastly the group of about a dozen who have consented to accept the rulings of the Maxtonites. Mr. Hughes would recall that the S.P.G.B. remained Socialist during the War, instead of following MacDonald, Keir Hardie, and other prominent members of the I.L.P. into the anti-German recruiting campaign. Mr. Hughes will remember, too, that readers of Forward during the War were treated to the entertaining spectacle week by week of fervid anti-German articles from one jingoistic regular contributor, while the Editor attacked him and apologised for him in other columns.
Lastly, we would remind Mr. Hughes that, however anti-everything we may be, Forward has taken care that its readers shall not learn in its columns our justification for attacks we make. On July 14th, 1928, Forward described as “nonsense” our assertion that Keir Hardie boasted in 1914 of the number of recruits he had enrolled for the capitalist war. We promptly asked Forward to allow us space to give our evidence for the assertion. We are still waiting for Forward’s reply.
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The promise of Empire Free Trade.
It is worth recording that the destitution which now exists in Protectionist America is what the Empire Free Traders promise to copy.
Viscount Rothermere, writing in the Sunday Dispatch on February 23rd, 1930, gave an undertaking that five years after the achievement of Empire Free Trade, “Great Britain will be as prosperous as the Unites States.”
On December 17th, 1929, the Evening News, Rothermere’s paper, in an editorial said :—
“The world has never been without poverty . . . in the U.S.A., to-day, the richest nation in material wealth that the world has ever known, there is plenty of it—not relative poverty merely, but want and destitution.”
On February 2nd, 1931, the Telegraph’s special correspondent in New York, Mr. Percy S. Bullen, gave a review of unemployment in U.S.A. He said :—
“In all my experience I have never seen such want as exists here to-day. . . There is more misery to the square mile to-day in the great American Metropolis than in any city abroad.”
He thought 9,000,000 unemployed an exaggeration, but put it at between 4 million and 6 million.
He quoted Senator T. H. Caraway as saying that 1,000 persons die of starvation every day in the U.S.A.
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The co-operators set an example.
We are often told that the Co-operative dividend hunters set an example to the other employers. This is true. The Co-operative Societies in the North-Western Area are asking for the following alterations in their agreements with their 20,000 employees : —
Ten percent. reduction for juniors.Five per cent. reduction for adults.A still heavier lowering of the minimum for branch managers.Alteration of the period of payment for sickness from three weeks on full pay and three weeks on half pay to two weeks on full pay and two weeks on half pay in one full year.
Co-operative Societies in the North-Eastern Area, employing nearly another 10,000 workpeople, have also asked for the termination of the existing agreement.
The report is taken from the Daily Herald, April 10th. It will be recalled that Mr. Maxton wants the Co-operators to have a share in fixing a “living wage” for the workers.
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Straws in the wind.
The Daily Herald, has lately begun the practice of describing Lloyd George and his Party as “Radicals,” instead of “Liberals.” Is it that an alliance with the Liberal Party is intolerable, while an alliance with the same party under another name is more likely to be accepted by the Labour rank and file?
Edgar Hardcastle
Blogger's Note:
The mention in the column that the ex-SPGBer, George Hicks, stated as late as 1921 " . . . in public debate with a Communist . . . that he still accepted the principles of this Party" is referred to — and expanded upon — in this passage from an article in the June 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard:
"George Hicks, after leaving the SPGB became an official of a building workers union and was President of the TUC in 1927. He also joined the Labour Party and remained in it for the rest of his life. In spite of this he continued to take an interest in the SPGB and on occasions declared that he still agreed with the SPGB case. Early in the 1920's he debated with Palme Dutt and not only put the SPGB case against the Communist Party but frankly stated that it was the SPGB case he was putting."
" . . . as late as 1921" because Hicks actually finally left the SPGB in 1910.
The ILPer Southall who is mentioned in the column could have been the famous painter, Joseph Southall. I can't be 100% certain. Just an educated guess at my end.
