A marriage of convenience (1965)

From the October 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ever since they slipped into power last October the Labour Government have been pursued by speculations on whether they would come to an arrangement with the Liberals which would have the effect of keeping them in power. This speculation has, of course, become more intense as the Government’s majority has been slowly whittled down.

The idea of a Lib/Lab alliance, as the newspapers are fond of calling it, is not new. The Guardian, which is running a campaign in favour of it, recently published a series of extracts from editorials of 1912, 1924, 1926 and 1929 which advocated such an alliance (although it is difficult to appreciate what this was supposed to prove).

The whole thing is, in fact, one of the most grisly of all the spectres which haunt the Labour Party from their uncomfortable past. Their first attempt at Government, in 1924, was brought about only because the Liberals supported them, but the same Party turned Labour out of office as quickly as they had put them in. When they came back in 1929, Labour’s leader, Ramsay MacDonald, left us in no doubt about where he thought the blame for his previous defeat lay. “I am,” he told the press, “Going to stand no monkeying.”

This sounded very grand, Yet if anyone was doing any monkeying it was MacDonald himself, because despite his experience in 1924 he was once more relying on Liberal votes in the House to keep a minority Labour Government in power. This showed that Mr. MacDonald possessed the one essential quality of an “intellectual,” which is the ability to ignore inconvenient facts.

As it turned out, MacDonald went further than a mere voting pact with the Liberals. When the crunch came a couple of years later, when the unemployment figures were around the three million mark, when the finances of British capitalism were in turmoil, and when the Government were imposing panic cuts in expenditure, MacDonald did not wait for the Liberals or anyone else to defeat him in the Commons. He led the way into a coalition with the Liberals and the Tories. He joined hands with the men regarded by generations of Labour workers as representatives of the hated mine owners and steel masters, of the hard-faced men who had ground the working class down into unforgettable destitution.

There is no need to recall here the shattering effect which this had on the Labour Party. It is enough to say that the debacles of 1924 and 1931 made coalition a forbidden word in respectable Labour circles.

Of course, these same circles saw nothing wrong in their Party joining the wartime coalition, even if this was under the man who was a lifelong enemy of the working class, who had been openly contemptuous of starving miners and who had so zestfully edited the official British Gazette during the General Strike, when the workers were desperately defending what remained of their livelihoods. The war coalition was, apparently, different. Churchill was no longer cur enemy. He was our friend and protector. This coalition, said the Labour Party, was in what they called (but which they were not rash enough to attempt to define) the National Interest.

We should all be aware by now that when the bugles are blowing to rally us all to defend the National Interest a certain amusement can be had by observing countless politicians, men who swear by their own honesty and consistency, going back on a lot of what they ever said. Thus it was with the Labour Party, when they embraced their bitterest foe and joined the Churchill coalition in 1940. This gave them the experience of running capitalism which stood them in good stead when they took over in 1945 and had to tell the working class that the promises made during the war could not (naturally) be kept.

But no bugles are blowing now. The Labour Party cannot pretend that a pact with the Liberals would have anything to do with their precious National Interest. It would have only one object and that would be to keep the Labour Party in power. Ten regular Liberal votes in the House would enable Mr. Wilson to luxuriate in unaccustomed security of tenure at Number Ten. There is no secret about the price of these votes—a tailoring of the Government’s programme, to drop steel nationalisation and to push ahead with schemes like the Ombudsman.

Or the Labour Party could go into whole-hog coalition with the Liberals, and Mr. Wilson preside over a Government containing one or two Liberal ministers. Or again—another favourite dream of political wanderers—a new party could be formed, a so-called radical party with a programme consisting of bits and pieces from both Parties, mashed up and blended into something which, it is hoped, would attract massive electoral support.

Any of these is possible. It is evident that the Liberals, as distant from power as ever, are awaiting their chance. Mr. Grimond’s famous interview with the Guardian some months ago could not have been entirely a coincidence. It is more likely that the ground had been prepared in advance. This interview might have been Mr. Wilson’s chance to inspire his disconsolate supporters with a valorous, defiant refusal, to goad them forward on their devious, never-ending journey to the Promised Land. Instead, the Liberal offer was met with a heavy silence which, when we consider the business of coalition government, and of government itself, assumes a certain significance.

Governments are there to run capitalism, which means in the general National Interest of the capitalist class. Governments look after the economic affairs of that class, they keep up the machinery by which the capitalists assert their dominance in society. Governments concern themselves with customs laws, trading pacts, the police, prisons and armed forces. They look after capitalism’s finances and they do their best to weaken what bargaining power the working class may have in matters of wages, hours and so on.

Whether they are dictatorships or so-called democracies, governments always face a certain amount of opposition. This means that to stay in power politicians must exercise a deal of cunning and ruthlessness. The manner and the field in which these qualities—if that is the word for them—are applied varies with the type of government. In this country, where governments are elected by popular (if not very enlightened) vote, political skill often expresses itself in a politician’s ability to do one thing and persuade the mass of people that he is doing the exact opposite. This skill sometimes reaches a very high level, as, for example, when it was being practised by Baldwin and later Macmillan. It seems that Harold Wilson has also won his way into this distinguished company.

This is the perspective in which we should view Wilson’s silence at Grimond’s offer of an alliance. The Labour Party are supposed to be opposed to the Liberals, but in fact they have done little, in major policy, to displease them. True, they have pushed through a declaration that they intend to nationalise steel, but so far this remains no more than a declaration. On most other issues, as the Guardian never tires of bleating (“It will be a tragedy if the Government is brought down needlessly. Much of what it wants to do is common to the Liberal and Labour Parties.” 6/9/65), the two Parties are in harmony.

This means, in effect, that Mr. Wilson has the votes of the Liberal members. In other words, he has all the advantages of a Lib/Lab coalition without any of the disadvantages. He is doing one thing while convincing everyone that he is doing the opposite. In addition, he does not have the tiresome necessity of allocating jobs to the Liberals, he is not exciting the emotions of Labour Party workers who remember 1924 and he is left with the tactical asset of being able to fix the date of the next election.

This is by no means a surprising situation. The only thing to prevent an alliance between political parties is a difference of principle and the capitalist parties showed in 1931, and again during the war, that they are all united on the basic principle of protecting the National Interest of the British ruling class. Compared to this, whatever differences they may have are trivial. The Labour Party have always claimed they were basically different from the others, but experience shows us that in fact they are merely another administration for British capitalism.. Even more, they have claimed that their close connections with the unions would enable them to hold wages in check—in other words, to do capitalism’s dirty work—much more efficiently than the Tories could do it. Recent events at the T.U.C., and in Mr. Brown’s Department of Economic Affairs, shows that this is one claim Labour have made good.

The Wilson Government’s policies have upset many of their supporters; in the Guardian of 6th September last, for example, Mr. Reginald Paget, Labour M.P. for Northampton, was asking: “Ought a Labour Government, committed to Tory expediency, be permitted to continue in office? . . . should they be allowed another session?” The obvious answer to these questions is that it all depends upon Mr. Paget—only one vote, after all, is needed to turn the Government out. But who is really to blame for all these broken hopes? Mr. Paget is disillusioned simply because he had illusions to lose. He actually believed, in the face of all evidence, that a Labour Government would be different from a Conservative. Now that Labour have once again shown how similar they are, they have not only confused their friends; they have also confounded their enemies. Even Mr. Heath, strain as he might, can pick no specific quarrel with them—only vaguely accuse them of not doing the “right sort of deeds.”

The whole point is that, whether they formally admit it or not, all the capitalist parties are constantly in coalition to support the private property system of society. In many ways they actually need each other. But even more they need the votes of the millions of workers who are misled into thinking that capitalism is in their interests and who, if Mr. Grimond ever succeeds in getting Mr. Wilson to the church on time, will be lining the aisles to give the uneasy couple their blessing.

Ivan

The Monarchy—past, present and future (1965)

From the October 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Old ideas die hard, and every age, including the present, is strewn with the debris of the past.

By far the biggest collection of such debris is the Monarchy. All levels of society, from Parliament down, are thick with relics of this once powerful institution. In theory the Monarchy is the centre, and ultimate seat, of power; in reality it is a mere shadow with nothing left of its old influence. But although a shadow, it has a tremendous hold on unthinking minds.

The Monarchy for many centuries really was the centre of power and authority, and the battle against it was long and bitter, but even now when it is won and over, large numbers of people either fail or refuse to grasp the fact. They still write personal letters to the Queen asking her to exercise one of her prerogatives such as the prerogative of mercy. Such letters are, of course, automatically passed on to the appropriate department. But the royal prerogatives and powers, completely hollow as they are today, were not always so. Each one was a powerful weapon in the hands of the Crown, and it used them constantly in its battle with Parliament.

To quote just a few; the Privy Council was once the King’s Council, the highest body in the land; it supplied the Ministers of the Crown, and through the Court of Star Chamber could overawe any subject. The right to create Peers enabled the Crown to fill the Upper House with its own supporters, while the right to grant and withdraw charters to towns was used to pack the Lower House. The right to dissolve Parliament (still in theory a Royal Prerogative, but in practice decided by the outgoing Prime Minister) was used to get rid of an awkward Commons, in the hope of a more pliable one being elected. Again Wardship, so beloved of Sunday Newspapers in elopement cases, once gave the King control over heiresses. This was both a means of putting political pressure on their parents, and—by the sale of the control of minors—a source of ready cash.

The Monarchy today is popular. After all it is difficult to fall out with something that says nothing, attacks nobody, expresses no controversial opinions, and is all things to all people. The Monarchy is said to be above politics, which means out of politics. It will accept all governments whatever their party or policy, and although the titular head of the Church of England, will greet the Pope or the Salvation Army with the same meaningless affability, Jew or Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist, they are all in the fold; in fact it is difficult to keep out of it.

This was not always so. Until well into the 19th century the Monarch was a politician, and as such suffered the ups and downs of popularity common to politics. Queen Anne was a Tory and recognised as one, while Victoria on her ascension openly supported the Whig government of Lord Melbourne. Monarchs shared the unpopularity of the parties they identified themselves with. William IV, at the time of the 1832 Reform Bill, was pelted with clods of earth by the London mob, while Victoria was greeted with shouts of “Mrs. Melbourne” by the same well-mannered crew. Victoria spent most of her long reign in various stages of unpopularity. In the early days attempts were made to assassinate her, and bitter personal attacks were made in the Press. The Prince Consort was made the butt of comic songs from the stage of the early Music Halls. It was only during Victoria’s last 20 years, when the power of the Crown was largely at an end, that she began to be built up into a legend.

The usual line, which was heard a lot of at the last Coronation, was that the Georges were unpopular because of their immoral lives and bad behaviour, and that Victoria’s blameless life restored the prestige of the Crown. This theory does not bear examination. George III, who reigned for 60 years—nearly as long as Victoria—lived a life of domestic dullness that not even the most prudish of Victorians could have objected to. This fact, far from endearing him to his subjects, was the cause of ribald songs sung in taverns, treating his “virtue” as a joke. It was the political position of the throne, and not the private life of its occupant, that decided popular sentiments.

By the time of the Restoration an uneasy balance between King and Parliament had been struck, with the King as the Executive—a kind of permanent President—appointing and dismissing Ministers and controlling affairs, and Parliament as the Legislature, with the sole right to levy taxes. This was the idea accepted by most of the participants in the Civil War. Only a minority of people, with ideas ahead of their times, thought of Parliament as the sovereign body. Judicial murder, although becoming rare, was still a hazard during the reigns of Charles II and James II. An unsuccessful politician still stood the chance of having a phoney charge of treason fixed on him, and conviction by a packed court. This largely disappeared after 1688.

The Revolution of 1688 weakened the Crown, William and Mary becoming joint Sovereigns on conditions laid down by Parliament. The Bill of Rights established Parliament’s right to elect the sovereign, change the order of succession, and depose a King. The Act of Settlement of 1701 extended these powers. Kings were forbidden to leave the country without the consent of Parliament, and no judge could be removed except by Parliament. Thus began the slow but steady stripping of power from the Crown, and its transfer to Parliament, that went on through the 18th and early 19th centuries. This process was aided by the fact that from Queen Anne to William IV, or to quote the terms of common abuse from “Brandy Nan” to “Silly Billy,” the throne was occupied by a line of people of the most monumental incompetence. Not that Parliament in the 18th century was even remotely democratic, the vast majority of the people having no vote. Power at National level was largely in the hands of the Aristocracy—the large landowners—and at local level in those of the gentry or lesser landowners. The masses, especially in London, expressed themselves by bouts of rioting and arson.

By the time of Victoria’s ascension the power of the Crown was largely gone, but she could still, in 1839, keep a Whig government in power by refusing to appoint Peel to Prime Minister in spite of the government’s lack of a proper majority. Victorian politics were tough and dirty, and the methods used to force the hand of the Queen were ruthless in the extreme. An interesting point is the part played by those later pillars of respectability, the Times and the Morning Post, who printed stuff that would land a modern editor in gaol.

What the future of the Monarchy will be is anybody’s guess. One thing is certain. If the bulk of the Capitalist class decide to end it, they will do so. After all they got rid of one King in 1936, and would not hesitate to get rid of the whole lot. Something that is equally certain is that if the Monarchy goes, but Capitalism remains, the working class will not notice any difference. Except perhaps for a different head on the postage stamps.

Les Dale

Inflation and prices - Part 4 (1965)

From the October 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 3.

In this last instalment it may be useful to make a few brief comments on the subject which we have been discussing.

A great many people think that higher prices are caused by higher wages; they look at what has been happening in the last 20 or 25 years and they think this proves their point. One fact is enough to dispel this belief. Between 1945 and 1951 the retail price index was more or less continually rising faster than wage rates, it was not a question of wages going up and prices following, but the reverse. Secondly, it has to be remembered that in a period of continuing inflation, when manufacturers can more or less confidently expect that there will be a steady rise of prices of, say, five per cent a year because of inflation, they would often prefer to give a wage increase when it is demanded than to risk a strike. And, of course, they never fail to represent the price rise which would take place anyway as having been due to the wage increase. They will often time their price increases to follow a wage increase to give this impression, although if market conditions are against them, they cannot put up their prices whether they want to or not and whether wages have gone up or not.

At the present time the Government in Great Britain talks in terms of having no more inflation, even if this might mean fighting the trade unions over wage claims and risking big strikes. It remains to be seen whether they will. While relatively full employment lasts, the trade unions are in a fairly strong position, rather different from the situation between the wars when there was always at least a million unemployed.

Governments do not always prefer inflation. In certain countries they carry out the reverse—a deflationary movement—as the British Government did after the First World War. On that occasion prices went down by about one-third, and wages came down with them. Russia since the Second World War has twice up-valued the rouble, replacing the old currency by a new and much reduced quantity of notes. France did the same in 1960. One of the reasons why in Great Britain the Government is unlikely to try to reduce prices to anything like their former level is that its obligation to pay hundreds of millions of pounds on the National Debt would become an enormously increased real burden, if they had to pay it in currency, the purchasing power of which was being increased by the deflationary fall of prices.

During the last 25 years the holders of Government securities have found that the real value of their holdings and the purchasing power of the interest they received on them are steadily being reduced by the falling value of the pound. This has suited the interests of the general body of capitalists in Great Britain.

When Russia in 1947 up-valued their rouble they got over that particular difficulty by simultaneously reducing the amount of bond holdings. A Russian, for example, who had Government bonds to the value of 1,000 roubles, found when the up-valuing of the rouble took place, that his holding of Government bonds was cut by one-third or one-half.

No city editor or orthodox economist accepts the Marxian view that the increase of a non-convertible note issue is a cause of inflation. Some of them, including some of the followers of the late Maynard Keynes, deny that the note issue has been excessive, and say that it has merely kept pace with the currency needs required by expanding trade. It is, however, for them to explain why it was necessary to multiply the note issue in Great Britain by nearly five times in face of the fact that the actual physical volume of production in Great Britain is now not more than about five per cent above the pre-war level. Obviously, these two facts do not square with the interpretation put on the note issue. It is a reasonable assumption that the excess issue has only been made necessary by the multiplied price level, which has itself been largely caused by the note issue. Another group of economists deny that the note issue matters any more, one way or the other. It is for them to explain why the Government troubled to multiply the note issue if it is not of sufficient importance to have any effect.

Edgar Hardcastle

(Concluded)

Inflation and prices - Part 3 (1965)

From the September 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 2.

Last month we discussed some aspects of the price of production, and what causes the changes in a commodity’s value. We then went on to the influence which the price and the value of gold has upon prices in general. So far we have assumed that the Government fixed the gold sovereign or pound at about one-quarter an ounce of gold and kept it at that amount. But suppose the Government decided to make an alteration in the law and to increase or decrease the weight of gold in the sovereign? If the Government made the sovereign half an ounce weight of gold instead of one-quarter ounce, the effect would be to cut prices of other commodities to one-half. Alternatively, if they decided to reduce the weight of gold in the pound to one-twelfth of an ounce instead of one-quarter ounce, the effect would be to multiply all prices by three. The £4 bicycle (we mentioned in Part One) would then cost £12. This would be a change in the currency unit showing itself as a rise or fall of prices. It would not affect the value relationship between gold and the other commodities—bicycles, suits or clothes and so on. The owner of one ounce of gold which formerly would buy a bicycle would still be able to buy one bicycle, but his ounce of gold would now give £12 instead of £4 and the seller of the bicycle, who formerly could get one ounce of gold for it, would still get one ounce of gold for it, but would now call one ounce £12 or 12 sovereigns instead of four.

Now this brings us to the inflationary movement that has been going on in Great Britain and in some other countries since about 1940. It may seem to have gone on in a mysterious way, but it is in fact an echo of something which has happened on previous occasions. Inflation took place during the Napoleonic Wars and again during the First World War. But before we can explain the technique of this inflation we have to ask ourselves what determines the amount of currency needed at any time.

This depends partly on the amount of trade that is going on, the amount of buying and selling transactions that are going on at a given moment, but it also depends on the rapidity with which currency itself circulates. The amount of currency needed can change because of expansion and contraction of production and trading, or because the velocity of currency circulation changes, or because the amount needed is reduced by the use of cheques, or certain other reasons. But we can still say that at a given time a given amount of currency is needed. Now when there was currency convertibility, that is to say when you could change gold into Bank of England notes and import and export it freely, the amount of currency regulated itself. Commodities were bought and sold through the medium of gold coins and notes convertible into gold which represented real values, that is to say the value of gold itself. This was a situation in which, if trade declined and less currency was needed, gold coins and notes flowed back into the Bank of England. On the other hand, if trade expanded and more currency was needed, additional amounts of it were forthcoming, but it was always directly linked with the value of gold. At that time, for every additional bank note that went into circulation from the Bank of England, the Bank had to place in its vaults an equivalent amount of gold.

We now come to the question of what happens if this convertibility is destroyed. Suppose the Government suspends convertibility and bank notes can no longer be converted into gold. This does not of itself cause inflation and rising prices. It only causes inflation and rising prices if, as well as suspending convertibility, the Government starts increasing the issue of the unconvertible notes to an excess amount, so that they exceed the amount of gold or silver which would actually circulate if they were not replaced by symbols. We mention silver here as well as gold because some countries used a silver coinage with convertibility instead of a gold coinage with convertibility, and when we refer to symbols we mean paper money—notes.

If the Government destroys convertibility and then issues an excess amount of notes, this causes prices to rise because more money is now circulating in relation to an unchanged amount of goods and trading transactions. This is just the same in effect as the earlier example of what would happen if the Government decided to cut the amount of gold in the pound from one-quarter weight of gold to one-eighth or one-twelfth of an ounce of gold. Prices in those circumstances would double or treble. Marx wrote about this:

“If the quantity of paper money issued is double what it ought to be, then £1 would be the money name not of one-quarter ounce, but of one-eighth ounce of gold.” 

The effect would be the same as if an alteration had taken place in the function of gold as the standard of prices; those values which were previously expressed by the price of £1 would now be expressed by the price of £2.

We may be asked how can one tell if inflation has taken place, because it is not always easy to know whether the amount of paper currency being issued is in conformity with the amount needed. There is in fact always the simple measure of inflation, and that is the price of gold itself in the market. As soon as convertibility ceases and excess notes are issued the price of gold starts to rise. We saw earlier that this had happened during the Napoleonic Wars. The economist Ricardo wrote about this, and what he wrote led to the setting up of what is known as the Bullion Committee, which issued its report in 1819. Ricardo set out to explain, as did the Bullion Committee, why the price of gold in the market had gone up from 77/10½d, an ounce to 92/- an ounce. Ricardo and the Bullion Committee gave their answer; that it was due to the suspension of convertibility and to the issue of excess notes. The remedy was simply to restore convertibility, in which case the excess notes would go out of circulation. The same thing happened again in World War One, and just after that the Cunliffe Committee, which reported in 1919, gave a similar verdict. They told the Government to stop issuing excess notes and the fall of prices which took place in 1921 and 1922 was partly due to the ceiling that the Government placed on the issue of bank notes, and partly due to the fact that a world slump was in being at the time.

We now come to the inflation that has gone on in the last 25 years. Again, we can see the proof of this inflation and the measure of it in the fact that instead of gold selling at about £4 an ounce, it is now selling at 250/- an ounce. The reason is the same as on the other occasions; convertibility has disappeared and an excess note issue has been engineered by the Government. The note issue in Great Britain has increased from about £530 million in 1939 to nearly £2,400 million. The steps by which this 25-year inflation has taken place included the following.

At the original gold weight the pound was equal to 4.86 American dollars. In the 1930’s it was the American Government which cut the gold content of the dollar to about half what it was before. A further step in the process was that in 1940 the British Government pegged the British pound to the American dollar, not on the old relationship, but on a new relationship of four dollars to the pound, and in 1949 they reduced it again to 2.8 dollars. The effect of these various changes has been that the amount of gold represented by the English pound is only about one-third of what it was in 1914 and in the 1930’s.

This is the main reason why the general price level in this country has more than trebled including, incidentally, the price of that particular commodity labour power—wages. It is true that the process in Great Britain has not been so crude or so drastic as the inflation which took place, for example, in Germany between the wars. On that occasion the German Government was paying its way by printing tens of millions of mark notes every day; in Great Britain now the effect is the same, though in less degree. The British Government prints additional notes and the Bank of England uses them to buy in Government securities. Incidentally, this has the effect of enabling the Government to get what may be called interest-free loans running into an amount of over £2,000 million, but, of course, the effect on the price level is just the same as it would be if the British Government had used the same direct method as was used by the German Government.

One thing it is interesting to notice here is that, being traditionalists, the British Government and the Bank of England continue to issue their accounts just as they used to issue them before 1914, as if the present note issue in this country had some backing. Before 1914 the Bank of England, apart from a certain small amount of notes which was uncovered by gold, had to have a gold reserve fully covering every additional issue of bank notes. At the present time in Great Britain there is in fact no backing at all for the note issue, but in the Bank of England accounts you can see the thing entered in the form that the £2,400 million of notes in circulation are shown on one side of the account in the balance sheet, and on the other side there is shown a similar figure for Government securities, which, of course, in practice means nothing at all.

Edgar Hardcastle

 

(To be concluded)

“Visit a socialist country this year” (1965)

From the October 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

 

“Visit a socialist country this year,” said the advertisement. The result of reading this was that one dreary Sunday morning several months later I found myself in the centre of Karl Marx Stadt, in the middle of a vast crowd, listening to a speech by Walter Ulbricht—First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party, and Chairman of the State Council of the German Democratic Republic.

The “Socialist Unity Party” was formed by the union of the “Communist” Party and the Social Democratic Party in the Eastern sector of Germany on 21st April, 1946. Here, then, was the “socialism” of East Germany plain for all to see. The country’s leading party proclaimed itself a “socialist” party, the town of Chemnitz had been renamed after the socialist pioneer Marx, and—-to clear up any remaining doubts—the official travel guide (VEB edition, Leipzig 1962) announced, in terms that brooked no argument: “The German Democratic Republic is a socialist state.”

Ulbricht was addressing an international rally of pioneers—the youth organisations of the East European countries. Following his speech the children were marshalled and then followed a massive parade of the marching pioneers in their thousands, complete with uniforms, banners and martial music. It was certainly an impressive spectacle and, for sheer military precision, it must surely have equalled anything the Hitler Youth could have achieved. The party of Young Communist League members, with whom I was travelling, was wild with enthusiasm and evidently could see no contradiction between the sight of these herded and dragooned youngsters yelling their slogans in carefully rehearsed unison and the professed socialist nature of the organisations to which they belonged.

The Socialist Unity Party officials were continually bringing to our attention aspects of their country which, they contended, illustrated its “socialist” nature. A favourite example was the national health service. Yet Otto Lehmann—director of the East German social insurance service—has some interesting revelations to make on this subject:

“But there are also hidden reserves of labour power which can be tapped by improving workers’ health and living conditions . . . Herr Lehmann described how effective measures of this kind can be. In the Nunchritz chemical factory, for example, labour productivity and output were doubled and profits increased by 400 per cent between 1958 and 1963, while the sickness rate fell from 5.56 per cent to 4.81 per cent . . . These good results can be traced quite clearly to better working conditions and preventive health measures . . .” (Democratic German Report, February 19th, 1965).

This is reminiscent of nothing so much as Sir John Anderson speaking in the House of Commons and saying:

“On a long view the improved standard of health and education resulting from the development of the social services ought to increase enormously our productive efficiency as a community.” (Our italics. Hansard, 11th April, 1949).

How can it be that in “socialist” East Germany and capitalist Great Britain the national health services can find such identical justification? Yet this muddled thinking on the part of the membership of the “Socialist Unity Party” is less surprising when some of the profundities of its leader are examined. Walter Ulbricht can hardly be recommended as a beacon of socialist understanding. For example, he advises how socialism may be achieved “in some countries”:

“… the question can be examined as to whether the workers in some countries may not be able, under capitalist conditions, to use their political and economic struggle in order to reduce the power of the great monopolies, and later to “buy them out”.

Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx had considered this not only possible, but under certain conditions possibly the “cheapest way” of establishing socialism(!.), Walter Ulbricht recalled.” (Our emphasis. Democratic German Report. October 16th, 1964).

So there we have it, comrades; First Secretary Ulbricht (in the name of Marx and Engels) points the way to cut-price socialism.

However, the visit to East Germany was certainly not without value. For example, I learnt that by 1980 the wages system will definitely be abolished in the U.S.S.R.; or, at least, so one earnest young “communist” assured me. But, without a shadow of doubt, the burning question of the day in the “communist” world at present is nothing so mundane as the abolition of wage labour but, instead, the Sino-Soviet dispute. Ulbricht has clearly demonstrated his own discomfort on this issue. At a meeting in the Schwarze Pumpe coal combine on November 3rd, 1964 he stated in reply to questions about relations with China :

“I have no intention of avoiding this question . . . but I must say quite frankly that our knowledge is not great enough to say anything in detail about such questions.”

Within the rank and file of his party, however, opinions are expressed which—though they cannot be recommended being any nearer to the socialist position than Ulbricht’s—are, nevertheless, less bigoted. My most cherished memory of East Germany is of an argument with a member of the “Socialist Unity Party”. Because of the strange ideas I had been expressing, which he had evidently not bothered to listen to, he thought I must be a supporter of Mao tse-Tung and therefore launched into a violent attack on the Chinese leader. He ended by storming: “Mao tse-Tung is not a good communist!” I pointed out that surely Mao tse-Tung had been described as a great communist by Stalin and other leading communists in their day. Seeing his dilemma, he compromised: “Mao tse-Tung is a great communist but not a good communist”.

John Crump

What a lovely war!—for some (1965)

From the October 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

The “rights” and “wrongs” of the war in Vietnam are discussed ad nauseum, and the story varies according to who is telling it. One thing which everyone knows is that each day people are killed, wounded, made homeless and their lands and means of livelihood devastated.

Although everyone knows that weapons are needed to conduct a war, not much thought is generally given by the Man In The Street to the enormously increased profits being raked in by arms manufacturers.

In the Financial Times of 12th May appeared an article “The Defence Industry’s Shot in the Arm”. At the end of last year, it appears, much concern was caused among arms manufacturers in the U.S. by the announcement of an Industrial Research and Management Consultancy firm that the aerospace industry must expect a drop of 30 per cent over the five years up to 1969, due to the cutting back of the missile programme.

However the capitalists of this industry can, it appears, once more sleep easily, secure in the knowledge that orders for military helicopters have been doubled by the Defence Department. The Bell Company has already received a contract worth $50 million for the production of these helicopters and the Avco Corporation are to get an order worth $45 million.

In addition there is the happy expectation in other parts of the Defence Industry of the need for another 200 Douglas Skyraiders; and orders for replacement parts for these aircraft and for Thunderchief bombers are likely to be heavy. Lockheed Transport expect a large increase in orders for their military transport planes and several new war planes are under test with a view to their use in Vietnam.

The intention to add 340,000 men to the armed forces in Vietnam spells fat contracts for clothes, vehicles and ammunition, and contracts worth millions of dollars have recently been awarded to various weapons and ammunition manufacturers.

No doubt all these manufacturers look forward with happy confidence to the next few years. Compared with such profits and prospects the loss of a few thousand lives—Vietnamese and American, while regrettable, must surely—in their view—be borne with equanimity.

E.G.

Party News: Swansea Discussion (1965)

Party News from the October 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

A successful discussion between members of the Swansea Young Socialists and the Swansea Branch was held on September 6th. Our comrade Ambridge opened the discussion and .the Branch feel that this was a good propaganda occasion. The audience participation was keen and eager and the Branch are hoping for further discussions with other organisations during the forthcoming autumn season.

SPGB Meetings (1965)

Party News from the October 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

SPGB Snippets: The punishment of Christa Pike (2026)

From the Socialist Party of Great Britain website 

October 3, 2026

A dark abyss of cruelty lies behind capitalism’s glitzy facade. Christa Pike spent 31 years on Death Row for murder while lawyers launched appeal after appeal. The trial jury were never told about Pike’s hideous childhood: ‘Pike was physically and sexually abused by several of her mother’s husbands and boyfriends, and raped several times, once when she was 11 and again aged 17. Later, it was discovered that she was repeatedly raped as a toddler by her grandmother’s boyfriend.’

Unmoved, Tennessee’s governor, and the Supreme Court, refused to stop the execution. But the lethal injections failed, leaving Pike with possible brain damage. Her endless punishment is just one story in a trail of broken lives left by a world obsessed with money, power and bloody revenge.

New Blog Page: Proper Gander (Extras)

Back in July I posted on the blog a page dedicated to the Proper Gander TV Column, which is celebrating its 15th anniversary in the Socialist Standard this year. 

Following up on that, I thought I would compile a list of the twenty most popular Proper Gander TV Columns . . . according to blog stats, that is. Any opportunity to prod readers of the blog into exploring the Socialist Standard archive.

If you click on the month and year, it will lead you to the article.

20. Music For The Masses (Nov 2017)

19. Delicious Chips For Their Tea (Mar 2018)

18. Lights . . . Camera . . . Political Action? (Feb 2024)

17. Porn and Real Life (Sep 2014)

16. Home Truths (Aug 2017)

15. Back To The Future (Sep 2016)

15. YouTube And You (Feb 2020)

15. Flat broke (May 2023)

12. Alice Through The Looking Glass (Apr 2019)

11. The Benefits Trap (Jan 2017)

10. Maid In America (Jul 2017)

09. Monarchy Malarkey (Jun 2016)

08. Theroux the keyhole (May 2026)

07. The Vegan Revolution (May 2017)

06. Living The Dream (Dec 2016)

05. Mistaken Identity (Aug 2019)

04. Peering At The Peers (Apr 2017)

03. Super marketing (Sep 2023)

02. Bitter Pill (Mar 2015)

01. The Hand-Made Tale (Mar 2019)

This Month's Quotation: Socialist (1935)

The Front Page quote from the October 1935 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Not altruism but the lust for profit is the cause of modern wars . . . "

Trade Union Leaders in Confusion (1935)

From the October 1935 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Sixty-seventh Annual Conference of the Trade Union Congress met in the shadow of war, and its President, Mr. Kean, opened the proceedings with a touching, if incoherent, appeal for peace. Italy, he said, must be coerced into keeping the peace, by means of economic and financial embargo and, perhaps, by closing the Suez Canal, even if such action led the League Powers into a war with Italy. That is, we must have peace at all costs, even if we have to go to war for it. The logic is shaky, but the meaning is clear enough. Another war to end war! And the T.U.C. and the Labour Party are as blandly ready to send the workers to the shambles as if the last war had never happened.

Mussolini, cries Mr. Kean, "knows no moral principle”—so “we” should bring out “our” poison-gases and long-range guns, to convince him how much loftier are “our" principles. Mussolini has made an “unjust and rapacious assault” on Abyssinia; so Great Britain, upheld by the comfortable conviction of moral superiority, given her by the tale of her just and generous acquisition of world empire, must teach him to play the game according to the rules. The subject races of the British Empire might inquire eagerly just what those rules are; but, of course, ignorant black men cannot be expected to comprehend civilised society. The British T.U.C. apparently does not comprehend it either. They spent days reading the riddle: “When is a war not a war?” and reached the solution, “When the other side call themselves Fascists.” Thus the Fascist is being used to fill the place occupied by the “Hun” in 1914; and the T.U.C.—together, be it noted, with the Communists, with whom they refuse to associate—tell the workers that it is their interest to take up arms against Fascism.

Leaders Mislead the Workers

What a highly convenient catchword is this “Down with Fascism” rallying-cry! Just the slogan needed to disarm the “Left-wing” resistance to war, and transform anti-militarist campaigns into frantic clamouring for the defence of Abyssinia. And these “leaders of the working class” are so muddle-headed in their principles and policy that they are voluntarily playing the game of the National Government—the very Government they have in the past so often and so bitterly attacked. Give them a war they can condone, a slogan obscuring the basic issue, and they readily, unreflectingly, follow the example of the Social-Democrats and others whose 1914-1918 war record will not bear examination.

The S.P.G.B. maintains that the “Fascism” aspect of the matter is the superficial excuse necessary to render war acceptable. The underlying issue is an economic one—the workers of all the countries involved are to be used as tools to make possible the extraction of profit from Abyssinia. Great Britain is inextricably concerned, since Abyssinia is surrounded on almost all frontiers by British territory; since the Blue Nile, source of Egypt’s essential floods, rises in Lake Tana; and since Eritrea and the Somalilands are on the route to India. The British capitalist group are not anxious for war at present; but neither do they want Italy to corner all the profits they foresee in the development of Abyssinia. Therefore, the politicians at Geneva and elsewhere have been treading the knife-edge of diplomacy, endeavouring to give Italy concessions large enough to stave off war, without actually giving Italy a monopoly of Abyssinian exploitation. The workers of the world have no interest in these jugglings. What reason is there for them to support one section of their exploiters against another? Whichever side wins the wage-slaves will still be wage-slaves; the basic problem of present society will remain unsolved.

The S.P.G.B. maintains, as it has done consistently throughout its thirty-one years' existence, that the workers' interests are inescapably opposed to those of the capitalists, whatever political and national trimmings the latter may use to mask their ends. When the workers open their eyes to the facts of their exploitation, and cease to be taken in by the multifarious propaganda of the capitalists and their tools, they will see that their own interests lie simply and only in an entirely new system of society—Socialism—and will struggle indefatigably to establish it. Under Socialism the entire absence of the profit motive will once and for all eradicate the cause of war. When the workers have set up Socialism, then, and only then, will war be impossible.

Equality for Women Workers

Not a word of this did we hear from the T.U.C., and equally indefinite and non-socialist was their attitude on Britain’s internal problems. The economic position of women, the plight of the depressed areas, and the battle for shorter hours were all discussed from a purely reformist standpoint. All these problems are inherent in capitalism, but the T.U.C. conveys the impression that they can be solved piecemeal, without touching the basis of society. This impression is false: some improvements may benefit sections of the workers for a time, but the working class as a whole can never escape from exploitation by such painting the sores of capitalism. The first essential of capitalist society is an army of wage-slaves, people dependent for their lives on the sale of their energies in the labour-market ; and the commodity labour-power commands only the price necessary, for the labourer to continue his existence and reproduce his kind. That is, the workers as a whole—whatever differences and fluctuations may occur in particular sections at particular times—receive as the price of their labour-power little more than enough to keep them alive. This is an integral part of capitalism. Suppose women succeed, as the T.U.C. hope, in obtaining equal wages with men. Are they any the less exploited wage-slaves? By all means let them, in common with all their class, fight against the encroachments of their masters, but let them not be deluded into believing that their principal task. They must realise that these encroachments can be made impossible only by doing away with the private ownership of the means of life, which produced their enemy, the master class.

The Workers a “Depressed” Class

The T.U.C., with penetrating insight into social cause and effect, further disclosed to an astounded world that “the stricken areas owe their lamentable position to the decline in their main industries.” We have heard also that the circular movement of the globe on its axis may be explained as being due to the rotation of the earth. The T.U.C. was full of warm-hearted sympathy about the “shame and pity" of the depressed industries' situation, but spent no time analysing its true causes, or pointing the obvious way out. We state that these areas are “stricken" simply because the capitalists of this country cannot at present envisage making profits from them, owing to foreign competition and to more attractive investing fields elsewhere. Moreover, the whole working class all over the world is ”stricken" and lives in a state of permanent “depression.” The difference between these areas and others which receive less publicity is one of degree, and not of kind. It has been often and authoritatively stated that most workers, whether employed or not, have neither sufficient food, adequate clothing, nor sanitary homes. Such conditions are an integral part of capitalism.

Similarly, the question of hours is one which can never be solved so long as the human race is divided into two opposing camps, one owning the means of life and the other divorced from ownership, the one buying and the other selling labour-power. The buyers and sellers of labour-power have irreconcilable interests, and until private ownership and the buying and selling of labour- power is stopped for good, the haggling and wrangling over its price and time of its use must inevitably continue.

Down with all the War-makers

Finally, the T.U.C. decided to exclude Communists from holding official positions in Trades Councils. At about the same time the Communist Party announced its readiness to affiliate with the Labour Party. The T.U.C. officially stigmatised the Communists as a disruptionist element. Yet on the Abyssinian issue the Communist and T.U.C. policies are identical. So they blow hot and cold and make confusion worse confounded. The S.P.G.B. has indeed every logical reason to claim that it alone, in this maze of capitalist politics, is treading the direct path to Socialism. The Communist Party’s attitude in the Abyssinian crisis must have demonstrated unmistakably to many of its erstwhile supporters how capable that Party is of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. Why further the declared policy of a capitalist Government? Why differentiate between national sections of the world capitalist class? To dam up Italian colonial expansion in Africa, which is so attractive to Italian capitalism, is merely to bring a European explosion so much nearer. To defend Abyssinia against Italy is merely to hand it over for capitalist exploitation by the native ruling class in alliance with Britain or France, or to split it up among various Powers. Abyssinia is due to be “civilised” by some capitalist group in any case. But the Communist Party is willing to lead British workers to slaughter Italian workers under the banner “down with Fascism and war." They remind us of Butler’s “Hudibras,” whose

    "Brain 

Outweighed his rage but half a grain, 

Which made some take him for a tool 

That knaves do work with, called a fool.”

Once again we must reiterate that these internecine squabbles, for all the fine phrases used as top dressing, are no concern of the working class. The paramount issue in the world to-day is the struggle for Socialism. The S.P.G.B. calls on the workers throughout the world to realise their class position, and to determine to end class-society and all its evils by organising consciously and politically for the one end, of establishing Socialism.

D. S.

Letter: The Future of Palestine (1935)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1935 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

This letter was in response to a two part article that appeared in the July and August 1935 issues of the Socialist Standard.

The Future of Palestine

Amhurst Road, E.8,

August 25th, 1935.

The Secretary,

The Socialist Standard, 

42, Gt. Dover Street,

S.E.1.

Dear Sir,

Kaye and Scrutator have gone to great lengths and to a good deal of trouble to show the fallacies of Zionism and the utter uselessness of a Jewish State. In their eagerness to “prove” their theories they have written quite a number of words, quoted a lot of phrases torn from their context, said quite a lot of irrelevant (and shallow) things, but have not given one single and valid reason why the Jewish people, out of all other peoples who inhabit this unhappy earth, should not possess a country of their own, where they should be able to lead a normal national life, unhampered and unhindered by the tremendous forces which, everywhere, make Jewish life a burden and an encumbrance.

In their quotations referring to conditions in Poland, they show that prominent Jewish employers refuse to employ Jewish labour. In a Jewish State this would, of course, be automatically impossible. On the other hand, they blame the Zionist authorities for disqualifying Jews from membership from the Z.O. who do not employ Jewish labourers! This | is only one glaring example of the shallowness of your writers.

There are many more. “Many Jewish workers in Germany,” they state, “knew the terrors of unemployment long before the coming of Hitler” | (does this mean that Hitler is, after all, not such a bad fellow?). Precisely so. Only that this fact, which also refers to Poland and many other countries, proves conclusively how necessary it is for the Jewish people to have a country of their own, where they will not be subjected to unemployment because they are Jews, and where, since your scribes seem to be so deeply concerned about the religious requirements of the Jewish workers, a Jewish Government will impose Saturday as a day of rest.

One does not know whether it is sheer stupidity or malice when your writers assert that "in the more developed capitalist countries, conditions are not so favourable for the growth of anti-Semitism.” In view of what has been happening in one of these “more developed capitalistic countries”—Germany —where even the “joint control of huge undertakings by Jewish and non-Jewish capitalists” does not tend to “weaken racial prejudice,” one must be utterly blind or foolish to state that there “is little danger from pogroms in advanced capitalist countries,” when for 2½ years there has been one continuous, incessant and intensive-pogrom of the most efficient and gigantic variety, and where Jewish capitalists, middle-class people and Jewish workers alike have been mercilessly and ruthlessly ousted from their homes and positions and are prevented from earning a living and doomed to certain death and extinction. The same process, only not so thorough, goes on in Poland and in Rumania, and elsewhere, where the ruling and capitalistic class are not at all afraid that anti-Jewish “riot and bloodshed would upset the delicate mechanism of capitalist trade and finance.”

“Even in Germany,” your scribes console us, “at the height of the Nazi triumph, there has not been a pogrom of a Czarist character.” Is then a pogrom less beastly and cruel because it takes place, like in Germany, not in the open market-place, but in the concentration camp or in the subterranean passages of the Brown Shirt Headquarters? Or are all the reports contained in the Brown Book and in the hundreds of newspapers mere figments of the imagination, and the result of what Hitler and his gangsters call “Greuel-propaganda” ?

As to the unlikelihood of anti-Jewish riots in a city like London, perhaps I may refer your scribes to what happened in a “city like Berlin” only a week or two ago, on the Kurfuerstendamm, where “valuable property in which many non-Jews are interested” exists, and where the police had no desire to “keep such a mob in hand.”

The extremely complicated Jewish problem is not at all safe even in the hands of the working classes. In Germany and in Poland, Rumania and elsewhere, the working classes are the first to destroy Jewish property and mutilate Jewish lives, and we have even read in the London Daily Worker that the slaughter of Jews in Palestine in 1929 was the rising of the Arab masses against Jewish exploitation. Jewish exploitation by 65 poverty-stricken Talmud students in the ”Yeshibah” of Hebron! We have also seen how a Labour Government, then in full power, instigated a slaughter of 150 Jews in Palestine in August, 1929, how that Government treated the all Jewish demand for protection with the greatest and cruellest callousness, how that chief culprit, Lord Passfield, an avowed Socialist, and then in charge of the Colonial Office, has, as a result of the ghastly slaughter by Arabs of Jews, punished the Jews, curtailed their rights, suppressed their aspirations, and rewarded the Arab murderers, extended their rights and encouraged them in their devilish designs. It was that very Socialist who said that he bad no sympathy with the aspirations of the new generation of working Jews, but that he understood and sympathised with the old, the pious, i.e., the idle, Jews! So much for the safety of the Jew under a Labour Government. That Labour Government, too, was unable, or unwilling, to “keep such a mob in hand,” and allowed the iniquity to go unpunished. The Mufti, that arch-murderer, is still a persona grata with the British authorities.

It will thus be seen that there is no remedy for the Jewish problem except a Jewish State. It has long been recognised that all classes of Jews not only suffer in common with all classes of humanity, but that they are subjected to very special—and inevitable —sufferings and persecutions which are alone the result of their being a pariah among the nations for the last nineteen centuries. All attempts to solve this vicious problem have so far failed. As a Zionist theoretician puts it: “To be robbed as a Jew is equally humiliating, equally hurtful to the self-respect of the Jew, as it is to be protected as a Jew/1 Judeophobia is an hereditary form of demonopathy, peculiar to the human race, and anti- Semitism is based upon an inherited aberration of the human mind.

No people, generally speaking, has any predilection for foreigners. This has its ethnological basis and cannot be brought as a reproach against any people. But the Jews, more than any other people, are subject to this dislike. Every foreigner is more or less respected because he can repay in his own country with the same coin. The Jew, alone, because he has no country. remains the stranger “par excellence.” He remains a refugee always, and who is the refugee to whom a refuge cannot be refused ?

The real panacea for the Jewish problem, and the only one, is and remains a Jewish State. And in that State, according to the best Jewish and Zionist traditions and teachings, there shall be “one law for the citizen as well as for the stranger that dwelleth in its gates.”

I am, Sir,

Yours faithfully,

Jacob Sarna.

Reply.

It is a pity that Mr. Sarna offers no evidence to support his accusation that we have torn phrases from their context in our anxiety to misrepresent the Zionist position. Our correspondent, evidently, does not share our eagerness to "prove” things.

The attitude of our critic is that of a nationalist. He writes about Peoples. We analyse society in terms of classes. To him the Jewish "problem” is the problem of the Jewish people. To us all problems are to be examined in the light of working-class interests. A considerable divergence of opinion is expected in these circumstances.

We should be glad to learn more about this “normal national life" from which Jews are debarred. May we remind Mr. Sarna, that in the United States of America, one of the wealthiest countries in the world, according to Senator T. H. Caraway, there were in 1930 1,000 deaths a day from starvation (Daily Telegraph, February 2nd, 1931). There are now about 12,000,000 unemployed, and millions more are in misery and want. Here in England, hundreds of thousands of people are on the borderline of starvation. Surely this is not what Mr. Sarna, and those who think with him, are striving so hard to attain? We are afraid it is. Palestine must be developed on capitalist lines, they say; then it will produce the same conditions. We suggest that it is precisely these conditions which are the “tremendous forces" that hamper and hinder Jewish workers, and all workers, the world over.

It is obvious that in a Jewish State where presumably the bulk of the population would be Jewish, the employing class would have no option but to exploit Jewish workers, unless they had facilities for importing cheaper labour. What of the cheap negro and continental labour which the American capitalists imported into “God’s own country” ? Industrial history is full of examples of how employers have used “foreign” labour to break down strikes or to lower the standard of living. Furthermore, we did not, as Mr. Sarna suggests, BLAME the Zionists Authorities for any of their actions. We merely gave this information in order to prove that it was unnecessary for the Jews to wait for Sir Oswald Mosley or Adolf Hitler to make them unemployed, as Mr. Smilansky and his capitalist colleagues in Palestine, Manchester, London, and Warsaw have no compunction, when their interests dictate, in sacking their “fellow" Jews. A capitalist, be he Jewish or British, in London or in Jerusalem, has as his first consideration, the making of profits.

Mr. Sarna objects to Jewish workers being unemployed because they are Jews. We go further. We object to Jewish workers, and all workers, being subjected to unemployment because they are surplus to the needs of capitalist industry. Our argument is that the overwhelming majority of unemployed Jewish workers are such because they are privileged to enjoy some of the blessings of our “normal national life.” This is not a defence of Hitler. It merely proves that Hitler and other individuals are not responsible for the existence of unemployment. Why Mr. Sarna believes we are deeply concerned about the religious requirements of Jews, is a mystery yet to be solved.

Our correspondent betrays his ignorance of German political conditions, and we must advise him to make sure of his facts before he again rushes into print. One of the reasons for Hitler’s advent to power is that the German workers had not yet become accustomed to the altered political conditions since the setting up of the capitalist republic after the War. There are also millions of small property owners, peasants, and petty proprietors of workshops in Germany, and these people are very susceptible to anti-Semitic propaganda. Large areas in Germany, are as yet, relatively untouched by industrial development. Mr. Sarna should also keep in mind that most of the Nazi victims in concentration camps are political prisoners, and in view of the support given by numbers of Jews to the Social Democratic Party, it is not surprising to find some of them there together with Communists and Catholics. There is one other point; Mr. Sarna's attitude, and that of other Jews, to this vexed question of brutality and violence, is peculiar and rather limited. They fume with indignation over the atrocities of Hitler, but are strangely silent when the name of Mussolini is mentioned. Marshal Pilsudski, the late dictator of Poland, well known as a pogrom-inciter during and immediately after the War, was lauded to the skies in the Jewish Press on his death. Our sympathies are much larger than Mr. Sarna’s. We also sympathise with the workers who are ill-treated for their political views. Nor would the establishment of a Jewish State on Revisionist lines safeguard the Jewish workers from brutalities at the hands of their “brother” Jews. In order to show how closely the Revisionist organisation is modelled on Fascist lines we shall give a further quotation. In the " Blue-White papers, 1935," published by the Revisionists, there appears a short account of the brown-shirted Revisionist youth organisation, the Berit Trumpeldor. The following are some clauses from their “ Heptalogue ” : —

(1) The Jewish State as the purpose of your own life.

(2) “ Monism ” in the sense of rejecting all subservience to slogans not connected with the Jewish State, especially that of the “ Class War ”

(4) The duty of self-defence, and readiness to join a Jewish Legion should necessity arise . . .

As regards the destruction of valuable property in the streets of Berlin some weeks ago, the “valuable property” destroyed consisted of some broken windows, tables, chairs, crockery, and some smashed windscreens (see Jewish Chronicle, 19/7/35).

We do not understand why Mr. Sarna should have brought The Daily Worker, Lord Passfield, and the Labour Government, into the discussion. Mr. Sarna must know that we are opposed to the Communist Party and the Labour Party. It is absurd of Mr. Sarna to try to foist responsibility for The Daily Worker's nonsense, and the Labour Government’s colonial policy on to the Socialist Party.

Therefore we are on unassailable ground when we urge the Jewish workers not to waste their energies struggling for something out of reason, and which, if achieved, would confer very doubtful and dubious advantages on them, and urge them to assist us in the task of establishing Socialism. The disabilities they suffer as Jews are inextricably bound up with the far greater disabilities they suffer as members of the working class.

Mr. Sarna believes that anti-Semitism is based upon an “inherited aberration of the human mind.” We contend that anti-Semitism in the modern world is mainly a smoke screen used by nervous sections of the ruling class in order to distract the minds of the workers, and to cover the class struggle. It is a means of diverting class-antagonism into racial hatred, and of splitting the workers into warring groups. By trying to fool the workers with fairy stories about the intrigues of secret councils of Jews planning to overthrow all Christian states; of conspiracies of “Jewish” capital, it is hoped to discourage revolutionary ideas. Anti-Semitic propaganda can flourish best where there is an inexperienced and uninformed working class. The only real solution for the Jewish problem is the spread of Socialist knowledge, which teaches the workers that the main struggle is between worker and capitalist. It dispels the illusion, fostered by Zionist and anti-Semite alike, that racial and national distinctions are of concern to the workers.

The spread of Socialist knowledge will bring nearer the day when we can say good-bye to capitalism, and build up a Socialist system of society, which will involve the ”emancipation of all mankind without distinction of race or sex.” Instead of this, Mr. Sarna offers to Jewish workers something which will not bear a moment’s examination, as can be seen from the opening paragraph of his letter. He asks why the Jewish people, out of all other peoples who inhabit this unhappy earth, "should not possess a country of their own.” Note these words, “possess a country of their own.” We challenge Mr. Sarna to show us how it will be possible for Palestine to be possessed by the Jewish people, in view of the fact that it is to be run on strictly capitalist lines, which means, of course, that it will be monopolised by the capitalist class, like all those other countries at which Mr. Sarna casts such envious eyes, but which he himself dubs “unhappy.”

Kaye & Scrutator