Property and the Countryside (1975)

From the October 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

A day in the countryside! Such a proposition is always attractive to the millions of urban dwellers who inhabit these islands. Escape from the polluted conurbations with their overcrowded thoroughfares, overwhelmingly tall buildings squeezed closely together and a pace of life which subtly imposes conformity upon the majority of people. Which human beings, even with only the slightest appreciation of aesthetics, would not want to free themselves, if only temporarily, from the grasp of our inhumanly large cities?

Since the majority of those in Britain do not live in the countryside but in towns, it is hardly surprising that there are many distorted views of what rural areas are actually like. Most town-dwellers have an absurdly romanticized impression of the countryside. They think of endless expanses of fields where one can wander about at will. Apparently, most of the restrictions of urban life are absent. Peacefulness and solitude are imagined, where there is a small population largely content with its supposedly idyllic surroundings.

However, anyone possessing just a superficial acquaintance with the countryside and having explored different parts of Britain, will rapidly realize the existence of large, wealthy landowners who have carved up such enormous slices of terrain. These individuals have always been able to hold much of the rural population, especially farm labourers, in servility. The cream of the bunch of these land-owners includes the Constable family, with its estates of many thousands of acres near Hull, the Countess of Sutherland who owns Dunrobin Castle together with 150,000 acres of land and the Cowder family who have grabbed 100,000 acres of Scotland. Of course, there is the fifth Duke of Westminster who is, according to Douglas Sutherland’s book The Landowners, one of the richest holders of land in the country. At the same time, on a smaller scale, we should not forget such individuals as the Hon. Michael Pearson, heir to the estates of the great industrial magnate, Lord Cowdray. He owns 4,400 acres of Gloucestershire.

These are just a few examples of those who make up the one per cent. of the population which owns more than twenty-five per cent of the wealth (Royal Commission on the Distribution of Income and Wealth, chaired by Lord Diamond, 1975). A Labour Research Department pamphlet entitled The 2 Nations — Inequality in Britain Today reveals the existence of Peter Cadbury, the chairman of Westward Television, who recently purchased a nine-hundred-acre estate in Hampshire, costing £2 million. He is just one of a number of multi-millionaire landowners in the south and west of England. Compare this with the weekly wage of the farm worker less than three years ago (£16.20p). The wage increase received since then has been relatively insignificant and the farm labourers remain poorly paid. Yet, on the other hand, we hear of the wealth of the estates owned by the Royal Family. These include the Windsor Estate which accounts for 13,500 acres of Berkshire, the Balmoral Estate which has gobbled up 40,000 acres of Aberdeenshire and the 7,000 acres of the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk. In spite of this, together with all the other royal land which is spread over twenty-seven counties, we are assured by Douglas Sutherland that as a private landowner the Queen is not even in the first flight of those who hold their wealth in land. The Church of England, the preachers and followers of that pauper- carpenter from Nazareth, Jesus Christ, should not be overlooked. The value of the Church’s assets as a landowner stood at over £318 million, whilst its estates were valued at £80,600,000 in 1964/65.

If one leaves a car and walks down almost any country lane, it will not be long before the inevitable barbed-wire fences, “Keep Out” and “Trespassers will be Prosecuted” notices appear. Few country ramblers have not been turned off estates, merely because they wanted to enjoy quite innocently the pleasures of the countryside. Anyone who has wandered deep into the countryside will recall the numerous restrictions which exist. Just think of the Fylingdale Moors Early-Warning Station and its Ministry of Defence area surrounded by barbed-wire which has seized a part of the North York Moors. In places such as Shiplake on the Thames, in Oxfordshire, one discovers electrified fences surrounding many of the fields, not to keep any cattle in, but to keep human beings out. “No Admission” and “Private Property” signs can be seen in innumerable rural areas such as at Kirkham Abbey in the East Riding of Yorkshire. The woods and fields of the Home Counties bear witness to the claims of the local landlords with their “Trespassers will be Prosecuted” signs.

How many of us, seeking a place for a picnic, have been compelled to sit down on a narrow piece of grass verge by the side of a busy road while “Private Property" notices stare menacingly at us from behind fences, hedgerows and barbed wire? How many footpaths have been ploughed over by farmers and land-owners determined to consolidate their estates? How many public rights of way and how much common land has been lost to the élite of the countryside?

River walks such as those by the Thames, upstream from London, have been decimated by the encroachment of local landlords on the public land immediately bordering the river. Many country walkers have found their strolls by the Thames ruinously interrupted by large estates such as those belonging to the Manor House at Shepperton in Surrey.

Marx was certainly right when he spoke of the “idiocy of rural life”. However, he was discussing the conditions in the countryside under feudalism and Capitalism. When the workers of both the towns and the countryside have realized that capitalism is a system of insanity and vileness, they will replace it by a form of society not only involving the common ownership of the means of production and distribution, but also one which will give freedom of access, in the fullest possible meaning of these words. This will certainly apply to the countryside and man will be able to enjoy the beauties of nature to the full. The enormous distinctions between the town and the countryside will disappear, and Socialism will provide all the people with the genuine opportunity to experience and appreciate the delights of rural areas.

Vincent Otter

So They Say: Short Memory (1975)

The So They Say Column from the October 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Short Memory

While a large number of Tory MPs are now reflecting on just how Mrs. Thatcher ever came to be elected as Conservative leader, the deposed Mr. Heath seems to be fostering the vision of a triumphant return. He has been making speeches. And he made one recently in Edinburgh which evoked from The Guardian the description “a fierce attack on Labour Ministers.” The form of attack was on orthodox lines — he chose a particularly glaring social problem and proceeded to lay the blame for it at the door of the Labour Party. He spoke of the Government’s attitude towards the current unemployment figure of one-and-a-quarter million in the following manner.

‘Where have all the Labour consciences gone ?’ he asked. 'Gone to graveyards every one.’ And with them had gone Labour’s care and compassion, to be replaced by what he described as ‘a cold stony callousness towards those whose lives had now lost all sense of purpose.’

(Guardian, 6th September, 1975)

The implication being that with a warm-hearted leadership in power (who does he have in mind?) things would be very different. To add point to the callousness of the Labour Party, he asked:

But have Labour Ministers been resigning in droves in protest? Hardly. Has any Labour Minister resigned because of this massive unemployment? Not a single solitary Minister.

That may be Mr. Heath’s idea of a solution, but only for preaching — not practising. Unemployment rose to one million in 1972. He was Prime Minister then — when exactly the same irrelevant gibes were directed at him from the Labour benches. Of course that was all of three years ago: Mr. Heath “did not intend to go back over the past in any detail.” Which is just as well for him — members of the working class might begin to suspect that unemployment is just one of the several cancers upon what was once described by someone as "the unacceptable face of capitalism.”

Woolly Waffle

The Labour party has never polled as much as 50 per cent. of the votes at any general election, says Mr. Bryan Magee, and having considered this point — goes on to pose the following question:

The truth only too clearly is that whatever the Labour Party may think, the masses do not, most of the time, regard it as representing them. And if that is the case, by what right can it claim to speak for them ?

(Guardian, 2nd September 1975)

Mr. Magee is clearly not inhibited himself — he is Labour MP for Waltham Forest. As a result of recent scares among Labour MPs that small “activist” groups within certain constituencies can shape so-called revolutionary policies, he feels free to criticize these rebellious reformers for being "quite untypical” of the Labour Party — which by his own token has only a dubious right to speak for "the masses.”

He describes these factions as "the left of the Left” which we understand he means to be a left-handed compliment. Magee feels that the “activists” adopt an intellectually pretentious stand — “élitist to the narrow of its bones”.

As his article attempts to provide an explanation for Labour’s failure to take as much as 50 per cent. of votes, we look to his own intellect for the answer:

The British people . . . are known throughout the world, and justly, for being tradition bound, past bound. They do not like change. Therefore they want it only when times are unusually bad. That is why it is usually in unusually bad times that Labour is elected to office.

This might be offered as a phoney excuse for Labour’s inability to deal with social problems — things were so bad when they were elected, that they were unable . . . etc. — but it doesn’t explain why they ever leave office. Or does Mr. Magee think that Labour, to use their phrase, gets things moving, and at the first sight of improvement the Conservatives are returned only to mess it all up again?

State Capitalism

The Russians are due to complete their Kama River industrial project (Kamaz) in March 1976. It is currently two years behind schedule, but when finished the complex will become the world’s largest truck-manufacturing centre. It is estimated that lorries of between 8 and 11 tons will be coming off the assembly line at the rate of one every 90 seconds. Although the Russians were unable to interest "western firms” in the construction, they have used a considerable amount of foreign assistance in design and the supply of machinery.

The dimensions of Kamaz are staggering: A $5 billions budget, three million square metres of factory space, a new city to house 250,000 workers and their families, 155 miles of highway, 75 miles of railroad tracks and 150 buildings. All this has been built on a 40 square mile tract of country side in the Tartar Republic, 600 miles east of Moscow.

(Guardian, 11th September 1975)

Such a development requires a large amount of capital to be fixed in it, but where has it come from? If we listened to Mr. Malik, the Russian delegate to the UN, the answer could be that it just dropped from the sky.

In a debate in which member countries attempted to find agreement on what was picturesquely described as “an attempt to reconcile the conflicting interests of the rich and poor nations by negotiation” Malik tried to wash his hands of the “greedy West.” He blamed

the capitalist states who plunder and exploit the developing nations for the disparities in world economic relation.

(Guardian, 4th September 1975)

But facts belie the jargon. Russia is not adverse to dealing with the “capitalist states,” of which it is one:

Nearly every advanced Western Country, as well as the Eastern European countries, has an interest in the Kamaz project. There are 40 US firms alone involved in the project, with contracts valued at $400 millions. To pay for all this the Russians looked to the West. The US Export-Import Bank (Eximbank) and Chase-Manhattan concluded in 1973-4 credit agreements with the Soviet Bank of Foreign Trade totalling $322.9 millions. Moscow is to pay 10 per cent down to US suppliers with the remaining 90 per cent financed by Eximbank and Chase. The latter says it is charging “market rates” while the Eximbank has set a fixed rate of 6 per cent interest.

Interest? We know the “capitalist states” derive their interest through surplus value. Have the Russians found a new source for it?

Daily Bread

A Paddington vicar, the Rev. Michael Stephenson, has been forced to make some less than Christian remarks concerning his governors, the Church Commissioners. That august body had set pay targets for vicars of £1800 for 1974, and £2100 for 1975. Being mere targets, and recalling the inaccuracy of the Church in other fields, it seems hardly surprising that they have been missed. An irate Rev. Stephenson disclosed that his income in the year ending May 1975 was, in fact, only £1487.

The Church Commissioners have agreed that he is “quite right” and will be recommending that Stephenson, and others in his position, should receive the Government maximum of £6 a week increase.

While we have a certain sympathy for Rev. Stephenson, our eyebrows were raised when he remarked:

It would have been far more honest of them to pledge themselves to meet a previous target which has not yet been met, than to set a new target which is sheer pie in the sky when compared to reality.

(Marylebone Mercury, 12th September 1975)

It may be “sheer pie in the sky,” but surely, Reverend, a classic case of “whatsoever a man soweth, that he shall also reap.”

Students need Knowledge

Among a number of other proposals which it is fighting against, the National Union of Students now has a new one to oppose. A Commons Select Committee on science and technology has just recommended that postgraduate science students should receive bigger grants than students studying “arts” subjects. The NUS quite rightly saw this proposal as “divisive” but this is no secret. The committee is not in the least worried by some vague ideas of the unity of students — it has been examining the requirements of capitalism tomorrow. The committee gave their own points of reference used when drawing up their report:

We believe that a system of differential grants for science postgraduates would provide the research councils with a practical and valuable tool to assist in the encouragement of research in priority areas. We are aware that such a scheme may create jealousies between different groups. We believe however that this is a price which may have to be paid if national needs are to play any part in the manpower training functions of the universities.

(Daily Telegraph, 12th September 1975)

If the NUS thought that universities were for "education,” they may now see what “education” is for. But this is not to say that knowledge is an irrelevance. The study of Socialist knowledge is the task which students and workers must attend. When this is done the cries of “divisive” will end.

Alan D'Arcy

Whatever happened to the middle class? (1975)

From the October 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

The most comical programme on the radio today, is, without a doubt, that uproarious piece of fatuous nonsense known as “Any Questions”.

Week after week a panel of so-called experts, or notorious personages, attempt to answer questions put by members of the audience.

Conversely the most profoundly philosophical item on the “box” is frequently the one professing to be ludicrous.

More often than not, the jokes of “the comedians” on TV are priceless little cameos highlighting the catastrophes and calamities of modern latter-day working-class life.

But on “Any Questions” we have the best humour of all, unconscious, unintended, spontaneous. A question was asked: “What is happening to the Middle Class and what should they (the Middle Class) do about it” The result was side-splitting, a smasher, especially since the “panel” consisted of those well- known knockabouts, Malcolm Muggeridge, Lord Hailsham and Lord George Brown, plus Lady Barnett. Muggeridge jumped in with a broadside: the middle class he said are licked, powerless, helpless, they are being wiped out, done down, and there is nothing they can do but put up with it.

Then there was comedian George Brown’s go. In that absurdly pompous manner which he fondly imagines is impressive, he proceeded to babble more self-contradictory nonsense in a few minutes than anyone would think possible. The audience quickly told him as much. The place of the Middle Class today, he squeaked, has been taken by the working class. The miners, dockers, and car workers get over one hundred pounds a week; redundancy pay, social security, free health benefits and other advantages. The middle class is now the inferior class and the working class better off (than the “middle” lot.) These statements were apparently based on what has happened to “his kids”. My kids, he wailed, are (or were) members of the middle class with (and here he was expressing a common-place fallacy) “professional training’' but now much worse off than the dockers or miners.

One is tempted to ask why, if dockers are doing so well, his kids didn’t go in for it; but this never came up.

People in the audience tried to tell George that if all that had happened was a change of the names and addresses (middle for working) then no social change had taken place, but he only lost his temper.

Then it was Hailsham’s turn. We are not licked, he raved and ranted, we shall fight: wherever these great juggernauts, the TUC and the unions, challenge us we shall join together, and we shall win. Fine fighting words, “Hoggy”!

Rather unkindly (impudent workers) the next question was: “What do the members of the panel think are the qualifications for being on it?” Predictably enough this produced dead silence from the usually loquacious professional windbags. So much so, that Jacobs the question-master had to prod them. After all, they do get about £85 for the half-hour job.

Mugg said he hadn’t got any. Brown said none whatever, Hogg that he’d answered before and always tried to do his best. Likewise Lady B.

In the ensuing “Any Answer” slot supplied by listeners, a bloke wrote what Jacobs said was the shortest letter they’d ever received in twenty years. It was one word: “Ego”. And it is right. All of them, Brown, Hogg, Mugg. have no more knowledge of the economics of capitalist society than a bright fifth form schoolboy.

The one attribute they all have is boundless, mindless self-conceit; and the presumptuous conviction that most ordinary quiet people must be congenial idiots. They were all mistakenly talking about something that does not exist any more; and practically saying so without even knowing it! Especially the rubbish about “professional training.” Many kinds of workers today handle complicated equipment and require to be highly trained. Soldiers, airmen, printers, steelworkers, even a London taxi-driver whose intimate detailed knowledge of the most complicated maze in the world takes a minimum of two years to acquire.

The so-called white collar workers have joined the TUC in hundreds and thousands because, like blue- collar workers and no-collar workers, they belong to the same class. What defines a class is its relationship to the productive apparatus. In general those that are NOT capitalists are workers; whether driving a .Jumbo jet at £400.00 a week or a bus at £50.00.

What bogs many workers down on this is a failure to understand the difference between a whole class, and individuals. True, we all know cases whom we cannot slot neatly in. They are borderline cases. Every branch of knowledge has these, science could not function without them.

In biology we have the platypus: half bird — half mammal. In chemistry we have isotopes — compounds of unstable elements. “Heavy Water”: H30 not H20. No chemist has yet declared that ordinary water does not exist. In atomic physics unstable radio-active particles and anti-matter.

All these are exceptions. No biologist claims that the platypus invalidates species. So with society; individual exceptions merely confirm the general rule. Capitalism drives all workers ultimately into recognizing their class position. Once the process starts, the spread of Socialist ideas is inevitable.

There were 4,000 small bankruptcies last year; not Rolls-Royce, Leyland, Court Line or British Rail, but members of the hypothetical “Middle class” driven back to the ranks.

Members of the panel were NOT among them. They are bankrupt only in knowledge.

Horatio.

The World's Starving Millions (1975)

From the October 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is estimated that the awesome number of 460 million of our fellow human beings are suffering from severe malnutrition. What is worse, this estimate is based on the peak level of per capita food supplies before the situation began to deteriorate so seriously in 1972; since then the number of severely malnourished people must have greatly increased. (Report of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, 1974.)

So the horrifying story continues. In space men link up, with machinery costing more than those 460 millions could ever dream of, whilst on earth hunger and famine spread inexorably. In a world of space link-ups is there any scientific reason why there should be starvation? The answer is a resounding “No!” 

Dr. Magnus Pyke (Secretary of the British Association for the Advancement of Science) in an address published in New Scientist (10th July 1975) points out that scientific ability has more than kept pace with population expansion. “For the world as a whole,” he says “the production of food has — the figures show — outstripped the increase in population numbers.” It is estimated that whilst the world’s population over the next ten years can be anticipated to grow at the rate of 2.1 per cent, per year, the world’s food production will increase by 2.7 per cent, per year. And according to Dr. Pyke there is enough food around to feed the human race: “. . . food is available to prevent hunger world wide.”

So what’s the problem? Dr. Pyke argues that it is not know-how that is the difficulty:

The thesis I am propounding is that while the knowledge and power over events which science can provide can make great things possible, there are certain human problems in the solution of which science is incompetent.

Unfortunately Dr. Pyke does not tell us what are those “human problems”. Instead he gives us an idea as concrete as hot ice-cream. He says the starvation problem is basically the result of

. . . fundamental incapacity to deal with the relations between man and man, with human miscalculation and misfortune, and with Acts of God such as the failure of the monsoon two years running . . .

He has hopelessly contradicted himself. Having talked about “human problems” the solving of which are necessary, he is now talking about miscalculation, misfortune, and (spare us!) “Acts of God.” About

as scientific as dry rain. He ends up calling for the extension of the equivalent of the British Welfare State throughout the world.

As a scientific analysis of the ability of man to produce food, Dr. Pyke’s address clearly shows man’s capacity to produce an abundance of food. As an explanation of hunger alongside surpluses of food he takes the listener nowhere.

Two things are clear. One, there is the ability to produce a surplus of food; two, millions of people are starving (not just in “underdeveloped" countries either).

The reason for this conundrum is the economic system that man now uses. Instead of food production aiming to feed the people of the world, it is directed at one thing only, profit and accumulation of wealth for the owners. Although the scientists like Dr. Pyke often appear not to see this, the politicians who are elected to run capitalism can, when they choose to. For instance, Mrs. Judith Hart MP, former Minister of Overseas (Under) Development said that British farmers wanted to help towards solving the problems of shortage of food. But on what terms:

Our agricultural industry does not mind very much what it produces, as long as it gets a fair return.

(The Times, 21st July 1975)

And there is the difficulty in a nutshell. Producers don’t care what they make or how they make it. So long as it sells at a profit, capitalism will make it. The starving millions can’t “buy” food because they can’t fulfil that essential condition. So the capitalists invest in other things which bring a “fair” (i.e. profitable) return. Such as armaments for the governments of the starving.

The solution to the appalling problem lies in our hands now. But it demands, not as Dr. Pyke in childish simplicity suggests “a world welfare state” (isn’t the British one bad enough?), but a world working class, consciously determined to establish Socialism.

Ronnie Warrington

Both-ways Tories (1975)

From the October 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The Conservatives will stand by the Government if its policy to beat inflation is challenged, Sir Geoffrey Howe, QC, Opposition spokesman on Treasury and economic affairs, said on Saturday.” 

(The Times, 1st September 1975) 

“Mrs. Thatcher gave a clear warning last night that the Labour Government cannot rely on unquestioning Conservative support for its anti-inflation policy.” 

(The Guardian, 9th September 1975)

The Liberals are believed to endorse their views.

Letter: Productive forces (1975)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Productive forces

I’m sure it was not intended, but in your reply to A. R. Ewbank about the “Inevitability of Socialism” (Socialist Standard, August) you could be taken as suggesting that capitalism has reached the limits of its economic development through lack of markets when you write:

Every advance in science and technology, each new mineral discovery, can add to the social wealth. But there is simply no market room for further development of the productive forces, and this is what matters (emphasis added).

But surely, as explained by the SPGB in its 1932 pamphlet Why Capitalism Will Not Collapse, capitalism will never collapse through lack of markets, but will go on, with recurring crises, till the working class organize consciously and politically to abolish it.

A. Buick

Brussels, Belgium.

Reply:

When we stated that capitalism has developed all the productive forces for which there was room, we meant precisely that. Any further development would be socially unnecessary. Capitalist production is for a world market, and the productive forces have overloaded that market, as they have done repeatedly in the past. A market consists of people buying and selling each other’s products, and although markets may expand as the population grows, the existing social powers of production can more than cope. The working class is the greatest productive force of all, and are laid off in their millions through lack of markets for surplus products. Their labour-power cannot be used.

The economic development of capitalism is based on the profit motive, and the curtailment of the profit motive through restricted markets, or the lack of them, fetters the productive forces and prevents their use. The social powers of production are in conflict with the mode of exchange. Factories and shipyards are closed, machinery is left idle; the means of distribution, which form part of the productive forces — oil tankers, aeroplanes and locomotives, are laid up because of the inability of the capitalist system of production to employ them.

The productive forces in Socialist society would be allowed to develop freely, because the governing principle behind the production of wealth would be the social and personal requirements of human beings, not the profit of a few individuals.

There is no connection between the first and second parts of your letter. We have never claimed that capitalism would collapse because of its basic contradictions which produce recurring crises. Neither could this be deduced from anything in our reply. Our pamphlet Why Capitalism Will Not Collapse represents our view today as it did in 1932 when it was written. The historical conditions for the establishment of Socialism can only emerge as a result of the contradictions of capitalism, but the working class must become aware of these contradictions, and consciously strive to end capitalism. It will not happen otherwise, and we have never said so.

Letter: The need for Socialism (1975)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

The need for Socialism

Your article on “Ideas and Understanding” in the August issue of the Socialist Standard is a masterpiece, a real gem of materialist, historical and economic analysis. No other writers can equal the writers in the Socialist Standard; one is journalism, the other educational informative matter.

I have read and re-read it many times and I enjoy each reference. There is that much data packed into the one article that I find it difficult to break down into less than eight headings to do it justice.

But let us take just one, “the problem of communicating Socialist ideas”. There are literally thousands who have heard the SPGB case about getting Socialist knowledge i.e. economics, history, politics, understanding, as people read our literature and hear our speakers. They all say "true, I accept the case”, but how few see the necessity of joining the party prepared to work for Socialism.

Why the “left-wingers’ ’etc. still fool about with reforms and other myths beats me, unless it is sheer funk and fear. Surely they have wasted enough time and energy by now to see the futility of their activities. Because if the working class do not become Socialists then as your writer concludes, they will drown in the slough of degeneracy, degradation and base primitivism — poverty, worry, insecurity, illness, frustration etc., is their lot under capitalism, but there is a world waiting to be won and used.

The tragedy is, that the working class cannot think about anything except in terms of work, wages, money, trade, rent, rates etc. Cannot they see the vast waste, luxury and uselessness that goes on in capitalism? and the vast possibilities that men and women can enjoy with common ownership, democratic control and production for the use of ALL.

Harold Shaw 

Gloucester

Letter: Who did what in the war? (1975)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Who did what in the war?

Going back to the year after the war I lived in London and used to come along to your meetings and debates with other parties. I used to come to Leicester Square to one on a Sunday evening. In London recently I bought one of the SPGB books, on war, and I must say I enjoyed reading it.

You state that the Communist Party supported the war at first, then in October 1939 they were against it. Well, didn’t the Communist Party give Harry Pollitt the sack during the changeover? I think I am right when I say that later on in the war Harry Pollitt put up in a by-election at Silvertown as a “Stop the War” candidate. And when did the Labour Party join Churchill’s government? They opposed them.

Now in your book Questions of the Day you write about Parliament and the elections. Well, does the ruling class go to the country when it suits them? From 1931 to 1945 the Tories only had two elections, and in 1910 and 1974 there were two elections in one year.

I must say there have been a lot of wars since the SPGB published the book War and the Working Class in 1936: all the killings going on in Ireland at the moment.

With best wishes to the SPGB.

L. J. Taylor 

Peterborough.

Reply:

The answer to your question about the Communist Party is as follows. In March 1939 the Daily Worker published an appeal to Attlee and Sinclair, the leaders of the Labour and Liberal parties, and Churchill for the Conservatives, to get together and form a “Popular Front” government to oppose Germany. On 2nd September this demand was affirmed in a manifesto issued by the Central Committee of the CP for success in the war about to start. Harry Pollitt wrote a pamphlet How to Win the War, in which he said: “The Communist Party supports the war, believing it to be a just war”.

A month later the CP changed its mind and issued a fresh manifesto published in the Daily Worker on the 12th. It said: “The manifesto of October 7th corrects the declaration issued on September 2nd. The present war is not a just war, but an unjust and imperialist one.” Pollitt was relieved of his job as General Secretary of the CP, but continued as its leading propagandist after he had made an abject confession of error. The CP continued to oppose the war and, when the coalition government it had asked for was formed in May 1940, yelled indignantly: “What a man [Churchill] to take under the wing of the Labour Party!”

The reason for the change was, of course, keeping up with Russian foreign policy. Pollitt assumed that the CP would support a war against Germany without taking into account the Russo-German pact of August 1939. When Germany invaded Russia in May 1941 the CP again became vigorous supporters of the war and the Churchill government.

On your second question, the frequency with which governments “go to the country” depends on their assessment of the need to have the support of the working class demonstrated or reaffirmed. The chief reason why there was no general election from 1935 to 1945 was the war, in which the coalition government (not the Tories alone) assumed itself to have general support with a desire for as little disruption as possible.

Blogger's Note:

A later version of the Questions of the Day pamphlet is online on the SPGB website.

Letter: Environment and reforms (1975)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Environment and reforms

I have an interest in environmental affairs. I am a little perplexed at the reluctance of the SPGB to endorse the rôle of active organizations such as Friends of the Earth or new villagers’ association who, though allegedly apolitically reformist, have the following impact:

1. To precipitate a situation whereby the structural changes in the material world are conducive to the smooth passage to Socialism;

2. To identify the nature of problems as being rooted in the unplanned, inherently wasteful and undemocratic framework of capitalism;

3. To inculcate in the public mind an attitude of educated and systematic scepticism founded on the abundance of evidence for the bureaucratic wastefulness of the capitalist mode of production.

I see the point that a reformist stance makes the capitalist system more palatable and tolerable. But would not piecemeal Socialist measures in this area assist in undermining capitalist credibility, especially if the nature of the solutions and the source of the problems were identifiably explicit?

I wholeheartedly agree that an enlightened working class is a prerequisite for a Socialist revolution (and the brunt of Socialist effort ought to be expended to that end). But it becomes onerously futile to attempt to enlighten the bigoted, especially where their interests are tied up in their minds with the interests and unilateral decisions of those in authority who shape and mould the social and material conditions of a seduced and emasculated working class. Ought one to attempt to effect a change in social structure, to a more egalitarian end, in order to deprive the ruling class of the stranglehold grip they have on the mechanism for the dissemination of ideas?

Robin Cox 

Haslemere

Reply:

You contradict yourself. If Socialism cannot be got over because of the capitalist grip on working-class minds, why commend organizations which aim “to inculcate in the public mind an attitude of educated scepticism” — would not that also be “onerously futile” if your belief is true?

Your argument for piecemeal measures is that ideas become institutionalized, or that enlightened legislation makes enlightened people. Again, we refer you to your own statement that we have “a seduced and emasculated working class”: this is after a hundred years of legislation, much of which had the claims made for it that you are making.

It is impossible to be “apolitically reformist”. Those who desire changes have to support the leaders and parties which promise them, and therefore also support general political programmes.

It is often difficult for reformers to comprehend that their work will turn out differently from what they intend; but see how the Welfare State and comprehensive education have gone sour on those who saw egalitarian ideals in them. It is not because of misapplication, but through the nature of capitalism, which eats good intentions and, we’re afraid, Friends of the Earth.

Your letter shows you are thinking about these things. Keep on doing so.

Letter: Four questions (1975)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Four questions

I enjoyed listening to your speakers in Hyde Park, in particular their synopsis of the “wage-slave” state we have today. Perhaps you could enlighten me on the following questions.

1. You stress the importance of the working man under Socialism, but do you believe that work alone is the reason for man’s existence? Surely self-fulfilment of the individual and the economic freedom necessary for this are more important. Surely the real challenge of the future is not full employment but the management of leisure?

2. Surely it is a basic desire and right of man to own his own piece of land for himself and his family.

3. You subscribe to the idea of “democratic representation”, presumably this means majority rule. Do you think the majority are ever right? Surely a better system would be for each individual to exercise his freedom with respect to the rights of others based on the inherent good of man and the acceptance that Utopia is impossible?

4. Would not elected Socialist representatives succumb to corruption, just as is evident today in the major political parties and has happened to every governing body since time immemorial?

S. D. Chapman

London W.11.

Reply:

You have obviously not yet fully grasped the Socialist position, but we appreciate your interest and will try to make matters a little clearer.

1. We stress the importance of the working class under capitalism because they are the great majority whose interests can only be expressed by establishing Socialism. In Socialism there will be no classes at all. Of course work should not be the be-all and end-all of existence and individual fulfilment is something all Socialists look forward to. However, bear in mind (a) that comfort and freedom must rest on a solid material foundation — man has got to produce, and (b) that many people can and do find personal fulfilment in creative, interesting work. Leisure and “management” of it is the corollary to dull, unrewarding work to which people are condemned. “Full employment” has to do with capitalism, not Socialism.

2. “Ownership” and “rights” arc not basic human desires but ideas implanted by property societies: they imply a person’s or a class’s having something to the exclusion of others. Socialism means that all the means of living will be owned by everyone in common, and all people will have free access to them — including pieces of land for cultivation — and their products.

3. What else can democracy mean except majority rule? To speak of majorities being right or wrong implies some superior standard of judgement; however, the informed and argued collective view of a dozen or a hundred people is more likely to be sound than an individual’s by himself.

The individual’s freedom is always bounded by his existence among other people. What you term “the inherent good of man” is simply his social nature and consequent tendency always to co-operation and order. Given that, there is no conflict between individuality and democracy.

4. To refer back to no. 3, we do not advocate “democratic representation”, where — as now — a person is elected without being answerable; if we did, we might be in a way to “succumb to corruption”, as you say. In the Socialist Party we appoint delegates who are instructed by those who elect them and have no other powers. Our organization is framed to vest control in all matters in the entire membership; we have no leaders or positions of authority, and all our transactions down to the most trivial ones are open to the public as well as the membership. That is how the administration of Socialism will be carried out.

Letter: A new view of woman's place (1975)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

A new view of woman's place

I would like to comment and enquire on the following factors and the SPGB’s attitude on them.

First, that women under capitalism are voluntarily ideal economic slaves, not by what they do but what they don't do. For example one never hears of women doing smash-and-grab raids and bank robberies under present conditions.

Second, at one time the SPGB made great emphasis on the economic threads of religious ideas. Religions are based upon conserving private property interests, that’s why we hear bible-bashers saying “Thou shalt not steal” — just what the capitalist class want — not to steal their property! But the recent Socialist Party presentation is that industrial and scientific developments alone have discarded religious hokum and a recent article in the Socialist Standard makes no reference to the economic and political significance of religion.

R. Phillips 

London W.9.

Reply:

Some hardened married cynics claim that bourgeois marriage is a smash-and-grab raid: smashes up your life and grabs your money.

If you have not heard of women bank-robbers you cannot have been paying attention. What about Patti Hearst? “Bonnie and Clyde?” The chief partner in the Bader-Meinhof terrorist gang is a girl.

There is no such thing as a voluntary slave. The reason why women have been enslaved throughout the ages is because private property (until recently) was almost entirely vested in rich men.

The Socialist Party has not altered its viewpoint regarding religion and its real (economic) explanation. You are quite right about “Thou shalt not steal”, “Work for the night is coming”, “Blessed are the meek”, etc. The situation is simply that we have not had an article on it for some time, and will endeavour to produce one before long.

APOLOGIES TO CORRESPONDENTS still waiting. We hope to reply to them in the next issue.

Fifty Years Ago: No quick road (1975)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is evidence that capitalism has yet a considerable future before it; a future of extensive exploitation of the yet untouched areas of the earth; a future of economic centralisation crushing out the last effective remnants of individualism; a future of imperialism and war, of industrial and political anarchy without parallel; a future in which the workers will be hammered and battered into a recognition of social realities.

But alongside the education of experience and practice will go also the education in theoretical principles and tactics born of the conception of history we owe so greatly to Marx. The first form will provide the necessary groundwork of class-consciousness; the second, the essential guidance to a policy avoiding the pitfalls and errors that beset a revolutionary class groping its way amid endless problems along the path towards emancipation.

[From an article “Economics and Ideas” by R. W. Housley, in the Socialist Standard, October 1925.]

SPGB Meetings (1975)

Party News from the October 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

The advertised mass meeting for November listed above had the following speakers: Dom Zucconi, Robert Barltrop and Cyril May.

Where to buy the Socialist Standard (1975)

From the October 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

I occasionally post 'Where to buy the Socialist Standard' ads on the blog because I'm always fascinated with the history of the Socialist Standard, and where it was available. The 1970s and early 1980s were definitely the heyday for independent left-wing bookshops and, looking at this list, I actually visited six or seven of these bookshops in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Of those six or seven - I can't remember the exact number - I think only Housmans still exists.

A bygone age.