The Gravesend by-election by Eye Witness (1948)

From the January 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Labour victory in this hotly-contested by-election—we were told at almost every meeting that the eyes of the world were on Gravesend— must have been a surprise to the Tories. They believed that the discontent of the masses with their living conditions would assure them of victory; but two things the Tories forgot: first, that the worker’s have a memory which they sometimes use and secondly, that the Labour Party are at least their equal at pulling stunts out of the bag.

The main issue of the election was “Which party can better administer Capitalism, the Labour Party or the Conservatives?” Througout the campaign, the question of Socialism—the abolition of private ownership of the means of life and the consequent ending of wage-labour and capital—was mentioned by neither Party.

It is true, of course, that Sir Richard Acland, the Labour candidate, mentioned the word “Socialism,” and when reaching rhetorical heights claimed that the mines and the Bank of England were “ours,” but he never once referred to the fact that the previous private owners were given State-bonds in exchange for their company shares, and that, in consequence, they are still drawing their profits in the form of interest.

For Acland, as for other Lahour Party members, Socialism means the nationalisation of the key industries. Thus he was able to argue that “Socialism” would enable the village shop-keeper and the small, businesses to operate as they do now. He did not point out to his audiences that Socialism is a system of society fundamentally different from Capitalism; that, whereas under Capitalism goods are produced to be exchanged (sold) at a profit, they will, under Socialism, be produced solely for use. He did NOT point out that Socialism means the end of all exchange, including the exchange of the workers’ labour-power for wages.

It is not surprising, therefore, that there was in this election nothing fundamentally different between the policy of the Labour Party and the Tories. Even Anthony Eden did not speak in opposition to nationalisation—what he did say was that “before further nationalisation is tried, we should first see how the nationalised industries work.”

The bulk of the Tory attack was concentrated on the administrative blunders of the Labour Party, the lack of “leadership and foresight” by the government. Acland’s reply was that the Labour Parly had done a better job of administration after this war than the Tories did after the last.

On the question of controls the difference between the Parties was more apparent than real. The Labour Party stood for the retention of controls ; the Tories for ending those which are “irritable without being really useful,” but for retaining those judged necessary.

As stated in the first paragraph, the Tories perhaps underestimated the importance of the workers’ memories. At every Labour Party meeting the unemployment figures between the wars were hammered home and blame for them rivetted on the Conservatives. It was amusing to hear how the Labour Party speakers blamed world conditions for the present shortages of foodstuffs reaching the workers’ tables, but ignored these same world conditions as the main cause of unemployment between the wars. They even proudly claimed to he responsible for the present-day relatively low unemployment figures. They boosted the export drive, but they did not tell their audiences what is going to happen when the export drives, so madly indulged in now by Britain, America, Canada, etc., etc., have glutted the world’s markets and when, in consequence, goods produced cannot he sold. That time is fast approaching.

The Labour Party flattered the electors by telling them that they were intelligent people and able to use their reason in deciding which party to support. And yet they did not shrink from making the biggest emotional appeal either party attempted. With about 3,000 present at a meeting, lights were put out and a miners’ choir, complete with helmets and little lights shining, entered the hall from the rear, walking in single file and singing as they came. The applause was tremendous, as it was after each hymn and song rendered by the choir in the darkened hall. Sympathy of other workers for the miners had been won and, in the speeches which followed, the audience was told that every Tory vote would be a smack in the face for those miners. As an emotional appeal this was terrific and worth many votes to the Labour Party. The Tory stunt of carrying around a potato, dressed in Conservative colours, was puny in comparison.

Lastly it need hardly he said that the Communist Party had its finger in the pie. They said, in a leaflet, that if the Tories got back the queues at the labour exchange would be 1,000 times worse than before the war. And we have only 45,000,000 population in Britain ! They’ve been so busy changing policies and organising stunts of one kind and another that they cannot be expected to remember that unemployment reached anything from one to two millions before the war. In brief, the Communists came out strongly in favour of the Labour candidate.

Readers will see, therefore, that the main issues of the much discussed Gravesend By-Election were concerned with the administration of Capitalism. Time will show that Capitalism, notwithstanding the Party in power, means endless poverty for the masses.

C.A.

Editorial: Russia also juggles with finance (1948)

Editorial from the January 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

The more the Communists proclaim how different everything is in Russia the more events disclose how much that country resembles the other Capitalist States. The latest example is the decision of the Russian Government to issue a new currency in place of the old, thus doing what Belgium did in 1944 and what rumour says the British Government has been contemplating for some time past.

The Russian Government’s scheme, though rather complicated in detail, is simple enough in its broad intention. Wherever there is rationing and the sale of rationed goods at controlled prices a “black market” is bound to arise as those with enough money try to supplement their rations and get scarce high-priced luxuries. Russia was no exception though the “free” market in that country was officially recognised and anyone rich enough could buy what was offered at the enormous prices ruling there. The government’s scheme is to abolish rationing, reduce the prices of a few foodstuffs while raising the prices of other goods so that the new price level as a whole is raised to a point somewhere between the present low “rationed” prices and the present very high “free”market prices. At the same time they aim at a drastic reduction of the amount of money available to be spent, by the simple device of giving fewer new rouble notes in exchange for the old ones. If you have 100 roubles in cash in your pocket or at home you get only 10 in exchange. If you have 10,000 roubles deposited in a savings bank you get the full rate for the first 3,000 and two-thirds for the remaining 7,000 roubles. We can illustrate the effect by putting 10,000 roubles into pounds at the rate of exchange (32 to the pound) allowed to foreign diplomats in Russia. It means that a. man with £312 in a savings bank will find it reduced to £240. If his £312 was invested in a State Loan (except the most recent loan in 1947) he will have it cut to one-third of its value, £104. Wages are not being reduced but the workers, in addition to losing some of their cash and savings will be hit by the higher prices.

Of course the Daily Worker had to rush in and say what a fine thing it all is—”a step forward,” “a triumph for the Socialist economic system,” but the article (published on December 16th) indicated a certain amount of uneasiness. The writer, Mr. Andrew Rothstein, had to admit that “everyone will inevitably be affected to some extent because the new prices must lie somewhere between the ‘rationed’ and ‘off-rationed’ prices.”

Some other interesting points are thrown up by the new policy and by the Daily Worker comment on it. Just as Sir Stafford Cripps, at a time when prices are rising, tells the workers it will soon be all right because harder work will increase supplies and bring down prices, so the Daily Worker says “the existence of ample supplies . . . will soon more than compensate for the temporary difficulties.” This is printed in the “Worker” alongside the reproduction of a Russian “plenty to eat” poster which tells how much meat, fats, sugar, etc., etc. will be produced “in the five-year plan to be completed in 1950.”

During the war when news came out of Russia about the rouble-millionaires the Communists hastened to explain that this was a good thing and natural to a “socialist” country, and that we should note that it was all earned money and there were no speculators able to accumulate fortunes by speculation and black market operations as in Britain and U.S.A. Now we learn that the new policy is designed to hit “speculators, who amassed considerable sums ” and were, able to “buy up stocks, create artificial shortages and lower the purchasing power of the rouble.” (Daily Worker, 16/12/47).

It should be observed incidentally that the new policy, while reducing the big fortunes, does not by any means wipe them out. The speculator or other wealthy person with 1,000,000 roubles in State loans will still possess 333,000 roubles of investments and will, of course, gain to the extent that he can now buy goods at much lower prices than he formerly had to pay in the “free” market, prices which ranged up to ten and fifteen times pre-war prices. (Manchester Guardian, 15/12/47).

One wonders, too, how the Communists are going to wriggle out of their claim that the Russian Government, unlike other governments, does not descend to slick tricks in its dealings with workers’ savings. It is going to be very difficult to square what has just been done, with the claim made in 1946 that “money put into the State loan is, of course, absolutely secure” and that holders of bonds “can redeem them at their nominal value at any time within the 20-year period.” (Article by S. Grigoryev in Soviet News, published by the Soviet Embassy in London, 16/5/46.)

Readers of the Daily Worker (15/12/47) who read that “the new rouble of full value will be much stronger that the old,” will perhaps recall how the Communists jeered at the late Lord Snowden when he defended the economy cuts of 1931 on the ground that they would enable the pound to be strengthened and “look the world in the face.”

Doubtless one of the reasons for the new policy in Russia is to back up the campaign to capture the support of the European workers by pointing out that the West European governments, notwithstanding loans from U.S.A., are behind Russia in abolishing rationing. If the British Communists try to push the same policy over here they will be in the same position as those Conservatives who press for the abolition of controls and who argue that it would be better for the workers in the long run even though it would mean higher prices immediately. The truth is that for the workers it would be merely a choice of evils and so far, judging by results of by-elections, the majority of workers prefer the evil of rationing that they have got used to and are not enamoured of the Conservative alternative.

Socialists, of course, are not in favour of Capitalism anyway, whether with or without controls.

Effect of the Russian Government's currency changes (1948)

From the January 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Economist (20/12/47) in an article on the Russian Government’s financial changes summarises the effect as follows :

“The main effect of the reform is a redistribution of purchasing power, primarily between towns and countryside, in favour of the town. In the towns, the highest stratum of the privileged bureaucracy and intelligentsia has been shorn of some of its power to snatch scarce goods and amenities of life from the mass of the employees and workers. It would, however, be an exaggeration to say that Soviet policy has now gone hack to the uravnilovka, the egalitarian principles of the early years of the Soviet regime. What is being redressed is a social balance that has been gravely upset by the war. The reform eliminates the gross inequalities that have spontaneously grown up until recently, and that, moreover, the rulers could not but tolerate or even encourage. Having now done away with these anomalies, the Government continues to base the plans for the economic development of the country on the accepted system of incentive wages and salaries.

“This conclusion emerges clearly from a brief analysis of the new wages and prices policy embodied in the reform. ‘While the currency reform is being effected,’ says the decree signed by Stalin and Zhdanov, ‘the wages of workers and employees, as well as the incomes of peasants from deliveries to the State, and other earned incomes of all sections of the population, will not be affected by the reform. They will be paid in the new currency at the previous rates.’ The purchasing power of workers and employees will thus be relatively strengthened by comparison with the purchasing power of the peasantry. But the differential scale of wages and salaries remain in force. The reform of wages adopted early this year (see the Economist, of March 22nd and 29th, 1947) provided for a drastic extension of incentive wages ; it raised the minimum rates of output per worker by 20 to 25 per cent., and it replaced time rates by piece rates in those branches of industry and in agriculture where time rates had still been prevalent. The Stakhanovite has forfeited cash and savings which would have given him an enormous start over his less fortunate or less industrious fellow-workers in the competition for scarce goods ; but he is still able to recoup himself and to maintain a relatively high standard of living if he goes on beating records in output. The present reform is likely to make the system of incentive wages more, and not less effective than it has been hitherto.”

Press Cuttings (1948)

From the January 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

One-third of Recruits Unfit

“Field-Marshal Viscount Montgomery, C.I.G.S., yesterday said at the annual meeting of the Royal Eye Hospital, Southwark, of which he is president, that about 19 per cent. of the age group eligible for national service would be unfit for the post-war Regular Army. A further 15 per cent. would not be fit for full military duties.

” ‘There are many causes why a third of those eligible for service are suffering from such a degree of disability,’ he added. ‘They include housing, bad nutrition, and, not least, the preoccupation of the medical profession with disease rather than with the promotion of physical fitness’.” — (Daily Telegraph 10/10/47.)

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Great Men

“Here are some of the things Sylvester, for 30 years Lloyd George’s personal assistant says about his master :

“He was often peevish and childish; strangely lacking in physical courage; no greater autocrat ever lived; a most unholy muddler, and just a spoiled child.”—(News of the World, 28/9/47.)

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Labour Party and the House of Lords

“The Party stands, as heretofore . . . for the complete abolition of the House of Lords . . .”—(“Labour and the New Social Order,” Labour Party, 1918, p.12.)

“Since our last report the following have been welcomed to our ranks: Lord Citrine (Sir Walter Citrine), Lord Dukeston (Mr. Charles Dukes), Viscount Hall (Mr. George Hall, M.P.), Lord Kershaw (Mr. Fred Kershaw), Lord Lucas (Mr. G. W. Lucas), Lord Shepherd (Mr. G. R. Shepherd), Lord Simon (Sir E. D. Simon), Lord Trefgarne (Mr. G. M. Garro-Jones), Lord Uvedale (Sir Ambrose Woodall) . . . Our total strength is 46.”—(From Labour Party Report on Labour Strength in the House of Lords. Conference Report, 1947, p.65.)

What Bernard Shaw thought 60 years ago (1948)

From the January 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The division into classes with various standards of comfort which always occurs among slaves, and which is due to the necessity for educating and maintaining the slave who is a doctor or barrister very much better than the slave who is a mere hewer of wood and drawer of water, makes the highly skilled slave despise the unskilled, the unskilled hate and envy the skilled ; makes the upper regard classification with the lower as an intolerable degradation, and the lower spurn classification with the higher as a hypocritical effort to reconcile him to his inferiority. Organisation of the proletariat, and recognition by them of their common interest, is thus defeated by class feeling, which is always bitterest among the worst off. It is doubtful whether dukes habitually despise beggars; but it is certain that butlers despise scullions, artisans labourers and professional men tradesmen. The solicitor’s daughter must not know the young lady from Peter Robinson’s nor will the “amalgamated engineer” permit his wife to demean herself by visiting the spouse of the carman. The proprietors, on the other hand, though their properties vary in size, seem to understand that they belong to the same class ; and so, whatever petty jealousies and disputes as to precedence may arise between them, they are always united against the proletariat. There is a saying that a man can be no more than a gentleman (a gentleman being one who lives by robbing the poor). There is no such saying as that a man can be no more than a worker : there is on the contrary, a widely spread feeling that he cannot be much less, short of being a convict or a pauper. Hence the proprietors succeed in maintaining their privileges against enormous odds in point of numbers. The proletariat, excepting the fragment in the trade unions, are a mere mob ; and even the trade union regiments seem to mistrust one another far more than they hate the enemy, to whose ranks everyone of their individual members is eager to desert if a commission there be offered to him.”— (George Bernard Shaw in “Our Corner,” September. 1887).

The Russian Church and its money (1948)

From the January 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

Unlike workers and peasants who lost nine-tenths of their cash at the recent calling-in of the old rouble currency “Reuter” reports (Sunday Express, 21/12/47) that the Church received preferential treatment:

“The Russian Church has, for purposes of the recent rouble exchange, been treated as a ‘State organisation,’ and has had all its money exchanged at one new rouble for one old – Reuter.”

SPGB Meetings (1948)

Party News from the January 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard