Editorial: The Labour Party’s Budget. (1931)

Editorial from the June 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is the Land Tax Socialism ?

When the Countess of Iveagh, a Conservative M.P., told a meeting of her party, as reported in the Southend Standard on May 21st, that she could see behind the Budget, and particularly behind the proposed Land Tax, “the pure Socialistic principle that private ownership should cease,” she was putting a point of view that finds expression alike in The Times and the Daily Herald. Have we not been assured for many years by the Labour Party leaders that their Budgets would be instruments for procuring bold social changes, and would, for that reason, be strikingly different from the unimaginative and orthodox financial measures of the Churchills and Lloyd Georges ?

Is there, then, ground for the fears of the Countess? Are we about to witness a great frontal attack upon the existing social system? The Government professes to attach great importance to the Land Tax, and even one of their harshest critics, Sir Charles Trevelyan, who recently resigned his ministerial post as a protest against their inertia, is enthusiastic for this one measure. His enthusiasm is inspired by the example of Vienna, where a Land Tax has been used by the Municipality to subsidise the building of working-class houses.

Nevertheless, these hopes and fears, so far as they relate to the wage earners, are groundless. The Land Tax is capitalist in origin and in effect, and has nothing whatever to do with Socialism. Sir Charles Trevelyan, forced to admit that it was a Liberal proposal, brought forward by Mr. Lloyd George 25 years ago, lamely seeks to gloss it over by describing the pre-war Liberals who were pushing the proposal as “Socialist-Liberals”—whatever that, may mean (New Leader, May 15th). He could have chosen no better example than Vienna to show the uselessness of the Land Tax to the workers. It is true that the Vienna Municipality taxed the land owners to build houses for workers at very low rents, but the effect of thus reducing the workers’ cost of living has been to facilitate a reduction, in their wages by a corresponding amount. The land owners have been taxed, not for the benefit of the workers, but of the employers. Here, as in Austria and elsewhere, in order to carry on the administration of capitalism, the Government needs revenue. Taxation, in the last resort, can be paid only by those who have property, and the controversies about the kind and amount of taxes are disputes between the sections of the propertied class as to which of them shall foot the bill. If this is a correct view of the situation, we would expect to find the Land Tax welcomed by certain sections of the capitalist class who stand to gain thereby; and, indeed, we find this to be the case. The following are comments from various capitalist newspapers, politicians, and business men.

The Daily Mail (April 29th), in its editorial, puts the Conservative point of view : —

“The new duty on land values will be received with favour even in the Conservative party, subject, of course, to the terms of the measure when they are made known.

For some unexplained reason urban land has hitherto escaped its fair share of taxation in this country. The position is very different in the United States, where land values in the great cities have long been subjected to taxation for State and municipal purposes, and at a rate much higher than Mr. Snowden proposes. In Mr. Snowden’s scheme agricultural land is to be exempted, so that the new duties will not affect farmers and small holders.

Such being the circumstances, it may be difficult for the Conservative leaders to prove that the proposed land tax is unreasonable, when it is regarded by the majority of voters as overdue. There could be no worse point upon which to fight an election when the next dissolution comes. The now scheme should then not be condemned out of hand.”

The Daily Herald’s Lobby Correspondent confirmed this :—

“Now the Conservatives realise that the taxes on urban land will be popular in most quarters, especially among business men, and that it would be bad ground to fight on.”—(Daily Herald, April 30th.)

The Daily Express’s Lobby Correspondent reported similarly : —

“The Conservatives, acquiescing in the principle of Mr. Snowden’s plan, will concentrate their attack on the details.”—(Daily Express, May 4th.)

Sir John Corcoran, director of the National Union of Manufacturers, gave his opinion, and presumably the opinion of his Association, to the Daily Herald (April 28th) :—

“If Mr. Snowden can levy the land tax without too much cost and in such a way that it will not have the effect of withholding development, the scheme may be practicable.”

Lord Melchett, director of coal, oil, and chemical concerns, also gave qualified approval (Daily Herald, April 28th).

What is true of the Land Tax is true of the Budget as a whole. It embodies no principle of any significance whatever to the workers. It makes no inroads into the power of the capitalists, and is, in fact, hardly distinguishable from former Tory Budgets. Mr. Churchill, the last Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer, put the point neatly in the debate in the House of Commons on April 29th : —

“I shall deal with the general question of the Budget, and the House will naturally not be astonished if I say that I listened to the Budget speech with amusement, which almost rose into hilarity. (Laughter.) I could hardly believe my ears as I heard the Chancellor of the Exchequer unfold a long series of proposals which were virtually an acceptance in fact and in form of the financial measures and expedients which I devised and practised, and which he derided and condemned. (Laughter.) As one by one those familiar shades arose from that side of the table, and as I recall to memory all the criticisms and scathing censures he had lavished upon each of them, I wondered whether I had not perhaps left behind some of my old Budget notes and that one of his able secretaries had, by mistake, put them into the Chancellors’ famous red box.”—(Times, April 30th.)

The I.L.P. is, as usual, divided in its attitude, but will, of course, go to the aid of the Government if there is danger of a defeat, no matter what the Government does and no matter what opinion the I.L.P. may decide to express about the merits of the Government’s measures. While Sir Charles Trevelyan supports the Land Tax, another I.L.P. Member of Parliament, described as a “leading member of the I.L.P. Group,” is quoted by the New Leader (May 1st) as saying of the Budget :

“Until Land Values were mentioned, it was a Tory statement. Then it became Liberal. Of Socialism, not a comma ! In other words, it is to be Toryism this year. Liberalism in two years’ time, and Socialism in the year X.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Brailsford, also of the I.L.P., writing in the New Leader on May10th, laments the Land Tax because it will encourage the use of land for commercial purposes and so disfigure the landscape. In the past, other members of the I.L.P. have advocated the Land Tax precisely for the purpose of promoting commercial development.

On the subject of the social reforms promised by the Labour Party, it is interesting to have Mr. Snowden’s admission that his views coincide with those of Gladstone—this from the party that regards Marx as out-of-date !

“I have always agreed with Mr. Gladstone’s rule that in times of industrial depression it is better to use our resources to stimulate trade than to make undue sacrifices. It is in times of prosperity that we can afford to lessen the intolerable burden of debt and so liberate resources for schemes of economic and social reform.”—(Daily Herald, April 28th.)

Any workers who are disappointed with the Labour Party’s Budget may derive some comfort from the announcement by the City Editor of the Daily Express (April 28th) that—

“The Budget was favourably received in the City.”

We can now point out to the Countess of Iveagh that behind the Land Tax proposals and the Budget generally we see, not Socialist theory, but a motley band of Liberal, Labour, and Conservative newspapers, politicians and business men, differing among themselves only on the question of the best method of administering the capitalist system.

Housing reform examined. An illustration from Vienna. (1927)

From the December 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The housing problem is—for the workers —neither new, nor limited to any one country.

It existed before the War and exists still, despite the much-advertised efforts which have been made by the post-war Governments all over Europe. In essence the problem is simple. The workers cannot afford to pay rents high enough to make the building of houses a profitable undertaking for the capitalist building concerns, and even when the municipalities or the Government step in they are faced with the choice either to let their houses at rents less than sufficient to meet the cost, have them unoccupied, or else overcrowded with two or more families. In the “New Leader” (October 21st) there appeared an article by an Austrian writer, Olga Misar, bestowing high praise upon the Austrian Labour Party for the housing policy which they have carried out on the Municipal Council of Vienna. They have built some 25,000 working-class dwellings and have thereby greatly reduced the pressure on accommodation which immediately after the War was probably worse than in any other European city.

The writer points out that whereas in pre-war days the Viennese worker had to pay away about 25 per cent. of his wages as rent, the present proportion is only about 2 or 3 per cent. A man with £1 per week wages, instead of paying 10s. rent, now pays only about 1s.

If this is true, does not the Austrian Labour Party fully deserve the praise which Olga Misar showers on them?

In fact, however, this is only part of the story. Other information is contained in an Austrian Labour Party pamphlet, “Die Wohnungspolitik der Gemeinde Wien (1926)” (Housing Policy of the Vienna Municipality), which very admirably illustrates the soundness of the Socialist opposition to the advocacy of reforms.

True, rents are proportionally less, but SO ARE WAGES. What has happened is as follows :

Seventy per cent. of the production of the Austrian factories is for export, but as Austria has few sources of raw materials or fuel, she must import them at world prices. Faced with the problem of exporting manufactured goods in competition with big and better equipped German, English and American industries, and lacking the capital to re-equip their factories on modern up-to-date lines, the only solution for the Austrian capitalists was to lower wages, and at the same time, if possible, increase the efficiency of their workers.

By the almost complete elimination of rent from the expenditure of working-class households wages could be and have been reduced without sacrificing the indispensable minimum of food, clothing, etc., necessary to maintain their working powers.

That this is a correct view of the situation is confirmed by a report published by the International Labour Office of the League of Nations. The report says :—

“The item of expenditure on rent in working-class budgets was reduced to practically nothing ; in July, 1923, it was barely 1 per cent. of the total expenditure of a working-class family, whereas before the war it might be estimated at about 20 per cent.

The change, however, directly benefited certain classes of workers only. But this applied only to unskilled wage earners in a few industries. Most of the workers were in the same position as those of Germany; they had practically no liabilities under the heading of rent, but the corresponding amount was not included in their wages. The actual gain was thus nil.

Industry, on the other hand, benefited, as in Germany, by the reduction in the cost of most labour by the full amount which rent represented in wages before the war.” (The Workers’ Standard of Life in countries with depreciated currency. International Labour Office, Geneva, 1925 P. 97.)

The nett result is that the efficiency of the workers has been maintained or increased by the added comfort and contentedness promoted by better and less-crowded housing accommodation than would have been supplied by private capitalist builders. And since this could not be carried through as a financially self-supporting scheme it has been financed at the expense of the Austrian landlords, by means of heavy house and rent taxes levied on landlords money was raised by the Municipality to build and subsidise working-class dwellings.

In short, the landlords have been plundered by the Labour Party in order to subsidise the export trade of the Austrian factory owners. The workers pay less rent, receive wages which are correspondingly less than before, and give better service.

The “successful” Labour housing policy is then just part of the sectional struggle between exporting and landowning capitalists.

Even so, there remains the question of the better housing accommodation. It will be said that this at least is a gain to the workers. True, but did it need a “Labour” majority to secure that incidental gain, and is the securing of it a justification for the policy of fighting for reforms of the capitalist system ?

It was in the interest of the manufacturers to have their employees well housed, contented and efficient. Henry Ford, Bournville, and Port Sunlight are instances of the care taken by more progressive capitalists to ensure that the home conditions of their workers do not militate against their efficiency as wealth producers ; and the activities of almost every government (including the Austrian Central Government) in the direction of restricting rents or of building or subsidising houses, show that they will not neglect their own interests as an employing class. Instead of allowing themselves to be used as the instruments of a section of the capitalist class, the party of the workers should concentrate on the very necessary and at present largely neglected task of demonstrating the impossibility of solving the poverty problem inside the capitalist system.

Edgar Hardcastle

The Goal of the Class Conscious (1941)

From the June 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

The conflict now raging has now reached a more serious stage, and the working-class, compelled by circumstances to fight the enemy of their masters, are naturally somewhat anxious regarding the duration, even though they may, in Britain, at least, have no misgivings in regard to the outcome of the fighting.

There was a time, not so very long ago, when our masters were not so much concerned about Democracy as they appear to be at present. For instance, when the Social Democrats of Vienna were shot down by Dollfuss at the command of Mussolini; the deed received the blessing, tacitly, of the ruling class of both Britain and France. There was no protest except a pious, hypocritical gesture. Surely, if any group of men ever sacrificed their lives in the interests of Democracy it was those of the Karl Marx Flats. The Social Democrats were not revolutionaries, but they believed in liberty. They offered to give their support to Dollfuss on condition that he would restore the Democratic Constitution. He refused because Mussolini, whose tool he was, wanted to get control of Austria ahead of the Nazis. Hitler out-manoeuvred them both, and Dollfuss was assassinated.

The events now taking place in Crete and the Atlantic are so breath-absorbing that we are not very observant in regard to what is happening in the profit-making sphere. The war is as exciting as a circus, and it may be to our advantage if we look at the actions of some of the wire-pullers behind the scenes.

The United States is in the picture just now and has recently unearthed a few interesting things by means of certain investigations made by the U.S. Department of Justice.

These have been condensed in an article from the pen of Albert H. Jenkins, which appeared in the Federationist (Vancouver, May 1st): —

“War or no war, Big Business men of all nations do business with each other “as usual,” regardless of the results to their own countries. That was proved by shocking disclosures after the last World War. It is being revealed again by sensational grand jury probes now being conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice.

There are three of these investigations. First came the inquiry showing that the Mellon Aluminium Company of America’s tie-up with a German firm resulted in a serious shortage of aluminium and magnesium for aeroplanes and other defence needs of the country, while production of those strategic light metals went ahead by leaps and bounds in Germany.

Second is a probe of the drug industry, begun last July, and third, is an investigation of the chemical industry, begun this week by a grand jury in New York.

COMBINED AGAINST U.S.

The facts which are being brought out show how American and foreign corporations got together to limit production and fix prices of important products the world around, by means of patents and secret agreements, with results harmful to the interests of the United States. These international combines include many other foreign firms beside those in Germany, but the latter are particularly significant because of war and defence developments.

The latest action by the grand jury was to subpoena the books of five companies—General Aniline, Sterling Products, Winthrop Chemical, Sobering and the Swiss Bank Corporation. The subpoenas also require these companies to give the jury full information about their relations and dealings with 100 other big concerns in the United States, Germany, England, France, Italy, South America and other countries.

GIANTS UNDER FIRE.

Among these companies are such giants as duPont, Dow Chemical, American Cynamid, Lever Brothers, and practically all the other leading American and foreign drug and chemical corporations.

Grand juries do not disclose their findings until they make indictments, but some idea of what the Department of Justice officials are after can be obtained from their recent testimony before the Monopoly Committee and the House Appropriations and Patents Committees, where they were describing this probe and asking for more money to carry it on.

One of them, who was talking “off the record” and does not want his name mentioned, told the Appropriations Committee that “the German chemical trust has in this country eight affiliates, one of which is a $30,000,000 investment trust.”

UNCLE SAM IS “STOOGE.”

Since the war shut Germany off from South American markets, he said, the German chemical companies are having American companies fill their orders from South American customers. The American products are “packed in such a way that they look like German stuff.”

Thus the American companies are handling the South American markets for the German concerns, so the latter can take back those markets after the war, despite the Roosevelt administration’s attempt to expand the U.S. trade with South America.

Moreover, he continued, the American chemical companies pay “millions of dollars a year” in patent royalties to the German concerns. Some of this money is being sent secretly to Germany, and much of it is sent to South America, where the Germans use it for “penetration” of South American countries.

OTHER CONSPIRACIES PROBED

In addition to the aluminium, magnesium, drug and chemical probes, the Justice Department is acting against similar “conspiracies” involving other products which are vital to national defence.

The situation on several of these other products was described at the same House Committee hearings. One case is “an agreement between the General Electric Company of the United States and Krupp, a big German trust.”

This agreement, the witness said, covers “tungsten carbide, the key to the whole German machine-tool industry. It is harder than diamond.” Because of the agreement. “Germany produces 20 times as much tungsten carbide as the United States.”

Another interesting item in the same paper indicates that Uncle Sam is not in full sympathy with Democracy everywhere. The prosecution of the Social Democrats of Germany in Spain could be stopped if the United States made an appropriate gesture. The following is worth noting: —

“The Mexican Government has protested strongly to Vichy against the violation of the agreement that Spanish refugees were to be protected by the French Government and permitted to emigrate to Mexico.

Undoubtedly there has been connivery with Franco, who is unwilling to allow Loyalist leaders to escape, because he is afraid that one day they will return and lead a revolt against him, and is hoping that ultimately France will deliver them over to his vengeance. Progressive Americans point out that Washington could help by refusing to send foodships to Vichy or to Madrid, unless those ships could carry back the refugees to Mexico.

The fate of anti-Nazi German refugees in France is not less tragic. Recently two able German intellectuals of the Social-Democratic Party who held high office in the Weimar Republic, Breitsheid and Hilferding, were handed over to the Germans by the Vichy Government; by this time they may be dead. No one will bemoan the fate of the capitalist Thyssen, through whose money Hitler came to power and who recently was handed over by Vichy and died in a concentration camp. The betrayal of the anti-Fascist refugees to their enemies is the lowest act that Vichy has committed.”

The ruling class of this and all other countries will endeavour to do their utmost to make the world safe for capitalism after the war. Their great new world is a profit world. But there is one thing they cannot do, and that is reconcile the contradictions the present system produces. These will become ever more glaring and ever more irreconcilable.

War Savings Weeks are a means of lowering the real wages of the class to which we belong: real wages are food, clothing and shelter; these are declining in quantity and quality.

We are told that our savings will help us tide over the trying period that will follow the cessation of hostilities. This means when unemployment comes you will be able to exist on what you couldn’t buy during the war.

There is one thing, however, the ruling class forget, and that is the increased knowledge that is being imbibed by those who live by selling their labour power. The wage slaves are not all asleep. The conversations one overhears in cars, in restaurants, on the job, in fact wherever workers are gathered together, induces one to conclude they will not readily go back to the bread line after the war.

This is as it should be. The material conditions have reached the stage when the present system of production is a fetter on production. A sure harbinger of a new, and, let us hope, a better form of society, in which there will be neither wage-slave nor capitalist, nor private property in the means of life. The Socialist has heretofore lacked encouragement, but he has builded better than he realised. The issue between the capitalist-class and the working-class has been kept clear, and moving circumstance has now brought into being those conditions which make Socialism practical politics. It is the only policy that unquestionably offers peace and plenty to all mankind. It is the only policy that can be advocated honestly and without equivocation. It is true. Its triumph is inevitable. Whatever its enemies attempt in another direction will be exposed as inadequate and harmful. The common ownership of the means of life and production solely for use is our goal. Those who ask for less condone exploitation and betray the class to which we belong.

Charles Lestor

The Labour Party and the London County Council (1934)

From the April 1934 issue of the Socialist Standard 

It is a curious circumstance that the forcible removal of the Austrian Social Democrats from the Vienna City Council was followed within a month by the entry of their British counterparts into control of the London County Council for the first time. The major issue before the voters in London was the same as that on which the Austrian party was elected and kept in office, the problem of housing and slum clearance. By promising to build more houses at low rents and to dear away slum areas, the London Labour Party, under the leadership of Mr. Herbert Morrison, managed to get about 340,000 votes against 300,000 cast for the Conservatives and 23,000 for the Liberals. They now have a comfortable majority on the Council and have three years in which to try to carry out their pledges and prepare for the next election.

The position of a party controlling local councils while an opposing party controls the central Government is a dangerous one for reformist parties. In a country like Great Britain, where the control of finance and the armed forces is strongly centralised, the capture of a local council means little in itself, because the central Government is always in a position not only to enforce the existing narrow legal restrictions on the local elected body, but— if need be—to alter the law so that the restrictions are made narrower still or the powers entirely abolished. If we were dealing with the control of a local council by Socialists elected solely on the demand for Socialism, the position would be understood by the voters and no difficulty for the party would arise. The voters would know that while the control of the machinery of local Government will be a useful support for Socialists when they control the machinery of central Government, control of local councils alone does not open up the road to Socialism. Such control would be valued by Socialists for its propaganda value and for the part it would play in the larger scheme of control of the machinery of Government. There would, therefore, be no possibility of Socialist electors expecting great present benefits from capturing the L.C.C. or any other body, and no danger of them turning away disappointed when benefits failed to accrue. With the reformist parties the situation is different. The workers who voted for Social-Democratic candidates in Vienna, or Labour candidates in London, expected two things: firstly, that the reform programme would be carried out, and, secondly, that this would materially improve their position. On the first point the Austrian Social-Democrats can claim that they did their best to fulfil their pledges, and there is no reason why the London Labour Party should not carry out many of its promised housing schemes.

That, however, is only half the problem. It is the second part that is fatal to the reformist parties. The Austrian party erected its huge modern flats for Viennese workers, and hired them out at very low rents, far lower in many cases than would have been charged by private builders.

The flats were subsidised by the Vienna municipality, the cost being raised by taxation, largely from landlords. This, on the surface, looks like a gift to the tenants in the flats, and so it has been understood by the superficial admirers of the Vienna scheme to be found in the I.L.P. and Labour Party. Actually, the workers gained little or nothing financially, for, with a lowered cost of living, the employers were able to reduce wages without making the workers less efficient wealth producers. The subsidy was not a gift to the workers, but a levy on one section of the propertied class, to be handed over, indirectly, to the industrial capitalists. A similar position happened in Germany and elsewhere, as testified by the International Labour Office in a report published in 1925: “The Workers' Standard of Life in Countries with Depreciated Currency."

The result was that the hardships of the Austrian workers were not materially lessened, and they were in exactly the same subject position after long years of Social Democratic rule as they were before. That is one of the reasons why the Social Democrats were losing members to the Austrian Nazis during the past 12 months, under the attraction of new and more seductive promises.

Mr. Herbert Morrison will find that the same causes will have the same effects in London. Not that we expect to find him three years hence manning machine guns at the County Hall, but that those who voted for the Labour programme will turn from it sooner or later when they realise that its fulfilment does not solve their problem of poverty and insecurity—in short, when they find that capitalism goes on in very much the same way as before.

One feature of present-day local elections in Great Britain is the small number of voters who trouble to use their local vote. Whereas in 1907 some 55 per cent. voted, in the present election it was only a little over 30 per cent. This, of course, makes the tenure of office of the Labour Party still more precarious. If they do anything whatever to rouse the fears of the apathetic thousands of Conservatives and Liberals who did not go to the poll this time, at the next election these voters will be stirred into activity and the small Labour majority will be swamped. On the other hand, unless the Labour Party makes some show of activity its own supporters will drift back into apathy again.

Other features of the election call for comment, the first being the calm way in which the leading Conservative newspapers took the “victory for Socialism." Although they declared in their usual misleading fashion that the Labour voters had voted for "Socialism," their placid acceptance of it showed that they knew they were lying. The Times, for example, devoted its comments largely to chiding its own party for faulty organisation, inactivity, and, in. particular, for its inadequate housing programme.

It was noticeable how little support the I.L.P. and Communists obtained. Their total vote was less than 7,000 and, in most areas, it was only a tiny percentage of the votes cast for Labour and Tory candidates. The Communist, Saklatvala, formerly M.P. for Battersea (which he won only because the Labour voters then had no candidate of their own and voted for him), polled 577 votes in the present L.C.C. election, against 8,334 Labour votes and 4,549 Tory votes.

Another interesting feature is provided by the leader of the Labour Party, Mr. Herbert Morrison. After the crisis of 1931 many of the Labour Party leaders, including Mr. Morrison, and also all the I.L.P. and Communist leaders, lapped up the silly theory that capitalism could afford no more reforms, with the consequence that the workers would be driven to accepting the revolutionary position. Now, one by one, they are recovering their nerve and their sense of proportion and are entering the fight again with the same old list of reform measures. They do it, of course, for the reason that they cannot win elections any other way, and reformist parties cannot live unless they are always able to hold out to their members the prospect of early electoral victory. Hence we find Mr. Herbert Morrison, who so recently told us that “the Labour Party must place Socialism in front of social reform, and must achieve much more clean-cut, reasoned Socialist propaganda," (News Chronicle, August 2nd, 1933), leading his army to victory in the L.C.C. election behind a programme in which, as usual, social reform was everywhere and Socialism nowhere.

Now, one last word for those who believe that reforms are stepping stones to Socialism, and those who believe that what they call “revolutionary reforms" lead to revolution. The Social Democratic Federation held these views half a century ago and, among the points in its programme of palliatives, was one calling for the “compulsory construction of healthy dwellings for the people, such dwellings to be let at rents to cover the cost of construction and maintenance alone." After all these years of wasted efforts leading to no tangible result, and helping Socialism not at all, even the modest demand for “healthy homes" is as far from satisfaction as ever it was, and still the “practical" men of the Labour Party, and the mock revolutionaries of the I.L.P. and Communist Party can think of nothing better to do than fight elections on such issues.

Edgar Hardcastle

"Red" Vienna and "Red" London (1929)

From the October 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

In recent years we have heard much talk of the wonders of Vienna under its Labour Council. It has been held up as a model of “Socialist” administration, although there is nothing in its record of municipal houses and baths, etc., which has anything whatever to do with Socialism. Vienna, to many members of the I.L.P. and the Labour Party, has been the equivalent of Moscow to the Communists: a sort of Mecca. Now Mr. Herbert Morrison, M.P., Minister of Transport and former Secretary of the London Labour Party, has been to Vienna, and comes back to tell us that capitalism in Vienna is just like our own brand. He says (Daily Herald, 10th September) “it would be misleading to say that Vienna is, in general ahead of English towns.” There is one other little thing we learn from his visit to Vienna. That is that the Viennese Labourites are just as credulous and willing to believe tall stories as their British counterpart. To the I.L.P. Capitalist Vienna is “Red Vienna,” and to the Viennese, London, it appears, is “Red London.” In the Arbeiter-Zeitung (Vienna, 4th September), an article on the electoral successes of the London Labour Parties describes Mr. Morrison as “The man who has made London red.”

We who, unfortunately, live in London and carry on the uphill work of trying to make Socialists did not know that Mr. Morrison had already done this for us. We did not even know that Mr. Morrison and his party were trying to. So also our Socialist friends in Vienna were completely unaware that Vienna is "Socialist Vienna," and although Mr. Morrison now informs them of this fact they still refuse to be persuaded. It requires distance to lend enchantment to the view of capitalism when seen from the angle of the factory bench, the office desk, the working class home, or the Labour Exchange.

Edgar Hardcastle

Editorial: The Rent Strike Stunt. (1932)

Editorial from the February 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Independent Labour Party, like all reform parties, is constantly faced with the need to discover a new programme to hide the failure of all the old ones. Family Allowances and the Living Wage Scheme are already fading from the picture and going the way of nationalisation, bulk purchase, housing schemes, rationalisation, trade boards and all the rest of the junk that has served the purpose temporarily of keeping alive the illusion that the I.L.P. is doing something and getting somewhere. At the moment the nationalisation of the banks is sharing the honours with public utility corporations and with the latest stunt, a “rent strike." The I.L.P. are backing the London and Manchester Trades Councils in a demand that, wages having fallen, rents should be reduced. The I.L.P. has, time after time, pointed to Vienna as a city where their ideal of low rents has operated to perfection, and they have talked of the millions of pounds supposed to have been saved to the workers by the Rent Restriction Acts in this and other countries. The whole of it is based on illusion.

Rents were kept low here and in every European country at the instigation of the employers. They knew that high rents would raise the workers’ cost of living and leave the employers to face either lowered efficiency among their wage-slaves or the alternative of paying a larger wage. Rent restriction has lowered the average cost of living, and wages on the whole have fallen proportionately, leaving the workers just where they were before. Even where this policy of plundering landlords to help industrial capitalists has been carried to its furthest point, as in Vienna, the workers were not the gainers, but their employers. In 1925 the International Labour Office published the results of an inquiry into rents, wages, etc., under the title “The Workers’ Standard of Life in Countries with Depreciated Currency.” The Report dealt especially with the effects of rent restriction. Writing of Germany, it says:—

   Since wages no longer had to cover rent, the cost of labour was correspondingly reduced. (P. 37).

In other words, the employers reaped the advantage. In Austria the same thing was found by the investigators:—

  Most of the workers were in the same position as those in Germany; they had practically no liabilities under the heading of rent, but the corresponding amount was not included in their wages. The actual gain was thus nil. (P. 97).

The Report continues:—

  Industry, on the other hand, benefited, as in Germany, by the reduction in the cost of most labour by the full amount which rent represented in wages before the war. (P. 97).

In Great Britain the policy of rent restriction has had the further defect that it has badly hit the section of workers who have had to get into houses whose rents have been “decontrolled.” The average wage has not allowed for the exceptionally high rents in decontrolled houses, and these individuals have been the sufferers.

The only sound policy for the working class under capitalism is to use whatever strength their economic organisation can give them to press for higher pay from the employers, not to lend themselves to stunt campaigns whose only result will be to make reputations for a few Labour leaders, and help the industrial capitalists to secure more profit. The workers should, however, face up to the limits of Trade Union action. Socialism is the only remedy for the workers' poverty problem, and Trade Union action cannot bring about Socialism.

Returning to this latest I.L.P. stunt, we read in Forward (December 26th) an amusing account of what happened some years ago in the last Clydeside rent strike. Mr. David Kirkwood, M.P., made a fighting speech in which he said that there would be no evictions in Clydebank "except over my dead body." In spite of this, as his local critics complain, the evictions took place, but the "dead body" goes about—talking as usual.

The Vienna Butchery (1927)

From the September 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

A reader who lives in Vienna sends us the following letter on the so-called "Revolt" in Vienna, which ended so tragically. The letter arrived too late for insertion in August issue.—Ed., Comm.

Vienna,

July, 22nd, 1927.

Last year a Russian film called "Potemkin" made the round in Germany and Austria; its main feature were a successful revolt of Czarist Russian marines in the battle cruiser "Potemkin," and its sequel in Odessa—the crushing by Czarist soldiers of a people's manifestation of sympathy.

Little did the people of Vienna dream that they would so soon have a real life experience of the terrifying scenes they saw last year from a comfortable chair in a picture palace. And if the numerous English, American and other foreign visitors who stop in this city at this time of the year on their continental pleasure trips, and whom a considerate censor had prevented from seeing the Potemkin film in their own countries, they have now been able to learn and to appreciate Czarist Russian manners and methods in grim reality in the fair city of Vienna, "the city of songs and music on the blue Danube, the centre of art and of culture."

Anyone who, like the writer, happened to be on the Friday (July 15th) afternoon on the beautiful Ringstrasse, could not but become the terrified witness of scenes not one whit less revolting and gruesome than those he had seen in the said film. Police. mounted and on foot, and gendarmes firing into a mass of unarmed and fleeing civilians, screams of falling men, women and children, under a sky laden with the smoke-clouds from a burning building. And a hundred men, women and children are now lying in their graves,  a mass grave, as befits members of the working class to which they all belonged; a thousand others left to continue the battle for life with broken limbs and shattered nerves, many of them still in the hospitals at the time of writing, fighting between life and death; two hundred in prisons awaiting trial fro lawlessness and incendiarism; such is an episode in Capitaism's career—the sequel to "Bloody Friday in Vienna."

What had happened? What was it all about? What had aroused this special anger and fury of the powers that be?

Had the poverty-stricken mass of the city's workers suddenly lost their patience and their temper, and broken into the comfortable quarters of the rich and wealthy? Had they tried to ease their and their families' wretched lot by forcibly seizing some of the goods with which the countless stores are filled to the roof tops? Had they made a determined attempt at gaining access to the good things of life they produce and store up for a favoured few? Had the workers suddenly come out of their dens and hovels with the set purpose of establishing themselves in the elegant and spacious garden villas and mansions of the "Cottage" or the "Ambassador's quarters"?

Had the sumptuous palaces of the Rothschilds', the Fürst Liechtenstein, and the innumerable other palaces of the city been seized by the "common" people? Had the warehouses been attacked and plundered? Was property in danger? Could it be that the workers marched up to overthrow the Capitalist order and to proclaim the Socialist Commonwealth?

But though the fear of these things, which was stimulated by a general shutting of shops, betrays the existence of great social inequalities—"injustices," if you like—that will sooner or later force a correction, not one baker's or tailor's shop, and not one villa in the "Cottageviertel!" was in danger. And even the fact that the scene of that terrible collision between working men and the powers that be was the "Palace of Justice" (the Law Courts of Vienna) does not do more than provide an accidental omen.

This attack, however, of July 15th, silly and stupid as it would be in any circumstances had nothing to do with Socialism. though the party that pretends to stand for the interests of the working class in this country, namely, the Social Democratic Party, cannot be acquitted of a large measure of the guilt for the massacre of so many working class lives. This guilt lies in the awful confusion which that party creates among working men and women by identifying them with, and wasting their energies on, all kinds of minor issues and reforms. The workers are dragged into every kind of political fracas, the petty squabbles of the innumerable organisations, and thus become easy preys of Bourgeois intrigues.

Only class-unconscious workers could have been so staggered by the acquittal of the two nationalists who shot dead a social democratic working man and a boy at Schattendorf last January as to begin a "wild strike" and a march to Parliament with the disastrous consequences that followed.

For let us make it clear that these thousands had come for no other purpose but to protest against the acquittal of the two murderers; they soon found the police, mounted and on foot, confronting them and moving them on in the usual police style, until the sight of the "Palace of Justice," with more police and showers of bullets, provided the signal to a maddened crowd to set fire to the building. In vain did the well-tried "leaders of labour" endeavour to appease the infuriated masses from resurrected barricades, in vain did the Social-Democratic mayor himself mount a fire-engine to save the burning building, but—is it necessary to say—after an all-day and night struggle the police and military eventually "cleaned" (as they put it here) the streets.

With a more or less obscure object the Social Democratic Party declared a partial "general" strike. On Wednesday, the 20th, the victims were laid to rest, and now things are "normal" again. The "labour market" is relieved to the extent of the murdered and mutilated workmen, and by an increase of the police force supplied by members of the S. D. Party, ready, as that party always is, to assist the Capitalist class in maintaining and perpetuating Capitalist order.

The Communists saw in the march once more the advent of the social revolution, though it is not all certain whether they will survive its defeat.

Frank.