Take your Pick
One way of spending an entertaining half hour is to go into a public library and compare the accounts given in each paper of one particular event. For example, on September 5th all the papers except the Daily Herald and the Daily Mirror carried reports of the wedding in Germany of Prince Ernst August of Brunswick-Luneburg and Princess Ortrud of Schleswig-Holstein. The details of the story, as told in the various dailies, enable one to see just how far the Press is animated by a passion for truth. The News Chronicle said a horse-drawn bridal coach took the princess to church. The Daily Worker said that the Government of Lower Saxony had vetoed all horse-drawn vehicles, and had stipulated that cars of not less than 8 m.p.h. must be used. The Daily Express, ahead of its rivals, said that the cars had to go at 10 miles an hour. Inside the church, the Daily Mail said that the bridal train was made of 27 yards of champagne-coloured silk, and 19 yards of taffeta. The Daily Worker, more generous, gave her 28 yards of silk and 21 of taffeta. After the ceremony, the Daily Mail said that there were 150 royal and titled guests, the Daily Express that there were 800 royal and noble guests, and the Daily Telegraph that there were 4,000 guests, without specifying their ranks in society.
Fascist Aggressor
But certain indisputable facts emerged. The bridegroom is the eldest son of the man who would be king of Hanover if Germany still had kings; and his mother is the daughter of the last Kaiser, Wilhelm II. During the war he fought for the Nazis, becoming aide-de-camp to a panzer commander. Did the British upper class ignore his wedding on that account? They did not. The Land Commissioner for Lower Saxony, Mr. Gibson, and the former Land Commissioner for Hanover, Brigadier Langham, were there. So were two sisters of the Duke of Edinburgh. One of them, Sophie, married the bridegroom’s brother, Prince George, and the other, Theodora, married his cousin, the margrave of Baden. (The former’s eldest son, by the way, who was born in 1937, was christened Karl Adolf, after Hitler. What a pity our newspapers, who delight in printing slushy articles about the royal family, don’t tell their readers the really interesting facts—such as that Prince Charles has a cousin called after the man whom Winston Churchill described as “this wicked man, this repository and embodiment of many forms of soul- destroying hatred.”) As for King George, he sent his congratulations and lent the bride her diadem.
The Grip of the Gestapo
Now, it is not a dozen years since Churchill was whipping up the working class to the pitch of fury necessary for them to go on fighting the war by launching his polemics against the Nazis. In 1940 be was saying “the British and French peoples have advanced to rescue not only Europe but mankind from the foulest and most soul-destroying tyranny which has ever darkened and stained the pages of history.” “Upon this battle,” he said, “depends the survival of Christian civilisation." “If we fail, then the whole world . . . will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age.” Many of the workers believed him, and sacrificed themselves on the battlefields. But apparently the ruling class didn’t, if we judge by the friendliness they now display towards a man who spent several years helping Hitler to impose “the grip of the Gestapo and all the hideous apparatus of Nazi rule ” on more and more conquered territories.
Moral Re-armament
An article appeared in the Jersey Evening Post on September 24th about the conferences which the moral re-armament movement has been holding at Caux in Switzerland since the beginning of August. The author waxed lyrical about a “force which solves industrial deadlock,” and said that at Caux an ideology was taught which was one of “inspired democracy above party, class, colour, creed, national prejudice and point of view.” One sought in vain for a more detailed description of this force or ideology; and a Times article which appeared four days later was similarly vague, saying merely that what moral re-armament wants is a “worldwide renaissance of moral and spiritual forces.” Exactly what system of morality Buchman and his friends want, exactly what kind of spirituality, all this is left dark. But about the practical achievements which they claim their movement has made they are less reticent. One of their aims is apparently harmony in industry. And proudly they produce at Caux labour leaders who in the past have led strikes against the employers, and who now publicly regret that they have been capable of such wickedness. But so far no morally re-armed employers have been heard to regret refusing wage-increases to their workers. Nor have any converted shareholders been produced who have resolved to refuse in future to live on the labour of others.
Does the Conservative Party Lose Members?
Further, the Buchmanites claim that they have been instrumental in reducing the membership of the Communist Party in certain areas. No doubt: but if the movement is really above class and party, why does not M.R.A. produce figures to show how the membership of the Conservative and Labour Parties drops when it gets to work. After all, neither the former party, which supports the private-enterprise bosses, nor the latter, which supports the bosses of State-industries, can claim with truth to be above class.
Matters become clearer when one reads in The Times that employers of labour have taken a close interest in the proceedings at Caux, and that industrialists were present from British centres, Germany, North Italy, the French textile area, Austria and the Low Countries; and further when it emerges that among those also present were Dutch officer-cadets sent by their military authorities. It would take more than the persuasions of a Buchmanite to convince one that the Dutch army chiefs were spending good money on holidays for officer-cadets with no ulterior motive whatever in view.
Close Harmony
If all these facts did not indicate the real character of M.R.A, then surely the talk about harmony in industry would. For the idea of harmony between a ruling and a subject class is not new: members of the ruling class in every age have propagated it. Under a slave-owning system, it is in the interest of the slave-owners to preserve harmony between themselves and the slaves, while it is in the interest of the slaves to put an end to that system. And under a feudal land-holding system, it is in the interest of the barons to preserve harmony between themselves and the peasants, while the interest of the peasants lies in ending that system. Similarly, under capitalist industry, State-owned or private, it is in the interest of the bosses to promote harmonious relations between themselves and the workers; but what will benefit the workers is not harmony in capitalist industry, but its abolition, and the introduction in its place of Socialism,
Moral Re-Armament is, in fact, one of the forms taken by the struggle of the capitalists of the Western world against their own working class on the one hand, and against the Russian ruling class on the other.
When the Workers Ran the Factories
Recently the Trade Unions International of Metal and Engineering Workers (which is part of the World Federation of Trade Unions) issued a pamphlet describing how the Italian steel workers refused to allow the owners to close steel factories during 1949 and 1950, and instead continued at their work without wages and without professional management, electing temporary managers from their own ranks. While the workers ran the factories themselves, they built ships, aeroplanes, furnaces; they improved efficiency; and by introducing new processes, they economised considerably on production costs—for example, at the Ilva-Bolzaneto works at Genoa, they reduced the price of a kilogram of metal from 44 to 28 lire, and, in order to economise on oil, they invented a process which saved 500 kilograms of oil in every eight hours of work.
It Can be Done
This episode in Italy has a number of useful lessons for all socialists. First, that workers can run the factories by themselves; and that they can not only maintain but improve efficiency. Second, that this kind of movement, which consists of industrial action alone, cannot permanently put the workers in control of the factories. As the pamphlet itself says, "there was no point in cherishing the illusion of stable and lasting working-class management in a capitalist regime." Like all such experiments, this one would have ended immediately had the Government decided to employ resolutely the coercive forces at its disposal. Italy thus reinforces the lesson of Russia after 1917, where the system of worker-elected managements, which operated for a short time after the Revolution, was soon abolished by the Bolsheviks in favour of State-appointed managements when the former system was seen to be incompatible with State-capitalism.
State-Ownership
And the third lesson is that State-ownership of factories does not alter in the slightest the position of the workers vis-a-vis their employers. The most powerful attack of the employers, says the pamphlet, came in September and October, 1950, when in a dozen or more factories they attempted to dismiss 15,000 metal workers. And of these undertakings, “the majority belong to the I.R.I., that is to say they are State corporations." So in Italy, as in Britain, those workers who spent their energies forwarding the nationalisation of factories can now seen how they have wasted their time.
Set Free the Producers
Mr. Roy Harrod gave a talk on the home service on September 19th in which he brought forward a theory which has been heard often of late from Conservative economists and politicians; it is that the cure for our national ills lies in greater productivity, and that this can only be obtained by reducing controls and restrictions and setting the "producers” free. No one could object to this, were it not for the fact that when a Conservative talks of the "producers” he means not the actual producers, the workers, but the people who order the producers about, the business-men and managers. Now setting the business-men free to produce exactly what they wanted might lead to greater productivity, and it might not; for what every business-man pursues, what the system forces him to pursue, is not higher output as such, but higher profits. If the business-men in a particular industry come to the conclusion—as they sometimes do—that the way to raise profits is not to increase output, but to restrict it, then they will restrict output
Agreed, Mr. Harrod
But although Mr. Harrod did not know it when he talked of our output being kept below what it could be by a system which restricts the producers, he had stumbled on to a great fact—one of the facts on which the theory of Socialism is based. For in our society the workers, the producers, are indeed greatly restricted. Millions of them are forced, by economic necessity or by orders of the heads of State, to work in occupations which produce nothing whatever, which adds nothing whatever to the sum total of the goods and services consumed by mankind. Hundreds of thousands of them, in this country alone, are forced to join those monstrous organisations whose sole aim is to murder other human beings, to destroy the houses, schools and factories which other men have built; those organisations which are constituted, maintained and directed not with the aim of increasing human happiness, but with the aim of increasing, by cold and scientific calculation, the already vast sum of human misery and destitution; those organisations, in short, which are politely known as ‘‘His Majesty’s armed forces.” Other workers are forced to spend their time and their skill in the armaments industries, producing instruments and machines which will be used when the next war comes to kill workers in other countries and to wreck their houses. Other workers still are employed in clerking and office jobs, in stamping tickets, in doing all the jobs connected with money, advertising and banking—all of which have one thing in common: they are totally non-productive. Socialism would give to all these workers the pleasure of doing a constructive, creative job, which is at present denied them.
So if you really mean what you say, Mr. Harrod, about setting the producers free to raise production you know which party to support.
Words and Deeds
Many people are misled by the revolutionary phraseology of some parties of the “left.” They hear these parties attacking Capitalism and imperialism, and they assume that the parties concerned must be parties of socialists, parties of the working class. But, unfortunately for clarity of political thought, any demagogue trying to gain power during the last thirty-five years has automatically had to denounce Capitalism and imperialism in order to obtain support. Such demagogues have often been the instruments of developing State-capitalism, either in countries which have previously had private-capitalist systems, or in countries where previously the landowners have ruled.
Why take their word for it?
But just as no one would now accept the claim of the English Puritans of the 17th century that they were fighting merely to secure freedom for their own form of religion, so in the 20th century no one should accept any politician’s speeches at their face value. It was therefore surprising to bear so eminent an historian as Professor E. H. Carr (during his talk on the B.B.C., 5.9.51) repeat the old fable that because Marx said that the first socialist revolutions were to be expected in the leading industrial countries of the world, and because the first socialist revolution actually took place in Russia in 1917. therefore Marx was wrong. If the first socialist revolution had in fact taken place in Russia in 1917, then Marx would have been wrong on this point; but since neither the 1917 nor any subsequent revolution was socialist (as should be obvious to anyone who not only quotes but also reads Marx) then the truth or otherwise of Marx’s statement still remains to be proved. It is true that the leaders of the 1917 revolution indulged in lengthy tirades against Capitalism, and it is true that they were the first successful revolutionaries to do so; but are we to believe their words or their actions? And if we believe their words, why are we not to believe all the other demagogues who followed them, all claiming to be the leaders of the proletariat against the national or international capitalists?
Uncle Tom Peron and All
Hot on the heels of the Bolsheviks in Russia came Kemal Ataturk in Turkey, who claimed the fight against “international capital” and the “rule of the bourgeoisie,” and who said he was on the side of "the proletarian masses of the world.” Then came Mussolini in Italy, Salazar in Portugual, Hitler in Germany, Franco in Spain, and a number of dictators in South America; now Tito has emerged in Yugoslavia, Mao Tse-Tung in China, and Ho-Chi-Minh in Indo-China. Of the same demagogic type, though the regimes they have introduced are less dictatorial because of the particular circumstances of their various countries, are, or were. Roosevelt in the United States, the Labour leaders in Britain, and Nehru in India. All claim to be socialist, or at any rate to be against Capitalism and “big business.” And the recent revolt in Argentina was blamed by dictator Peron on “obscure forces of Capitalism and imperialism.” Peron, it is worth noting, commands the enthusiastic allegiance of Argentina’s trade union congress, the “General Confederation of Workers”: which should be a clear warning against supporting any particular politician or party just because the trade unions do.
Case Dismissed
Are all these claimants to be admitted as socialists? Or are their respective policies and actions to be examined first, before a decision is made? If they are, no member of the Socialist Party will doubt the verdict that will be reached. And if we reject the laziness which takes every politician at his own valuation, let us hope that the argument that Russia’s was the first socialist revolution, and that therefore Marx was wrong, will be consigned to the limbo of the lost.
By Courtesy of Sir John
It seems that Sir John Ellerman may be ranked among those who can differentiate between the Labour Party’s protestations and its practice. Sir John (Daily Express, 28.9.51) is the richest man in Britain, and he holds shares in the majority of the papers which support the Labour Party—he has 307,450 shares in the Daily Mirror, 41,285 in the Sunday Pictorial, and 10.000 in Odhams, publishers of the Daily Herald. So all these papers support the Labourites with the help of Sir John’s money; evidently be has no strong objection to their politics.
While we are on the subject of Sir John, those who believe that Capitalism will in some mysterious way be ended by attacks on the fortunes of individual capitalists by devices like death duties will be interested to know that Sir John’s father, who died in 1933, left £36 million, which was reduced to less than £20 million by death duties; and that only eighteen years afterwards, the Ellerman fortune has surpassed the 1933 figure, being now estimated at £40 millions.
Sympathy
Concerning the sympathy which recently poured in from the rich and powerful in many parts of the world when a very wealthy man in this country was ill; we should all, of course, be sympathetic to all those who are sick, but especially toward those who cannot afford five doctors and eight nurses to look after them.
Alwyn Edgar
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