50 Years Ago: Land Tax (1962)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

At a time when the toilers are engaged in a bitter struggle with the employers, the Liberals are busy diverting attention to the “wicked landlords” and their “unearned increment.” The dockers being “done down” by a Devonport, are told to tax land values. The miners, vainly seeking 5s. a day, are urged to support the Single Tax idea. The railway men, cursing Conciliation, are advised to levy the ducal landlords.

The Land Tax campaign serves the Liberal manufacturers well. Labour unrest is exploited to turn the minds of the workers away from the real question to the old bogey of taxing land. The policy of smothering men’s bitter feelings against the Devonports, Thomas’s, and Hugh Bells, has, however, a more palpable and material driving force behind it. Hence we note from the Liberal Press that a wealthy and influential committee has been formed to boom the Land Tax campaign.

Mr. Joseph Fels, the well-known soap manufacturer, has contributed £30,000, and many others have given largely. Mr. Josiah Wedgwood, the Liberal pottery manufacturer, is one of the leading spirits in the movement.

Hirelings are sent about the country at great expense, preaching the virtues of the Single Tax.

But why this enormous expenditure? Why this outcry about taxation? Once the worker grasps the true facts of the question of taxation, the campaign and its real meaning become plain. The upkeep of this system of society calls for hundreds of millions a year to support the services that must be run to ensure the safety of our masters.

The cost of the Army. Navy, Police, and bureaucracy is ever rising, and the manufacturers and business men—chiefly organised in the Liberal party—are crying out about their heavy burden of taxation. Wishing to divide the cost of those forces and institutions necessary to keep the workers down, they propose to tax land or land values. The landowners, on the other hand, have no desire to be taxed further, hence their bitter wail.

This time honoured squabble as to who should pay is but one between robbers over the cost of the robbery.

[From the article, 'The Lying Land Campaign: The Socialist View' by Adolph Kohn, the Socialist Standard, September 1912.]

50 Years Ago: From the Cradle to the Grave (1994)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Manchester Evening News of May 25, 1944, publishes an article by a staff reporter under the heading, “Control of Funerals, Unlikely.”

We are not here concerned with the question of price control, whether for ingress to or egress from “this sorry scherne of things entire”—that we can safely leave to those “financial wizards” and “price ceiling experts” whose job it is to “navigate” the “good ship Capitalism.”

The footnote to the above mentioned article is much more interesting and informative, and we quote it as follows :

“Prices at Southern Cemetery for Graves range from £3 4s. 6d. to £72 15s. More than 50 per cent. are buried in £3 4s. 6d. graves. Those at £72 15s. are double spaces in prominent positions on main drives. Single space in same position costs £30 1s. (Our italics.)

Human beings born into the working class are rocked in “shoddy” cradles, dressed in “shoddy” clothes, fed on “shoddy” food, housed in “jerry” buildings, and when their days of toil are over buried in “shoddy” graves. Worn out by a lifetime of toil and poverty midst plenty, the worker “giving up the ghost'” reaches his goal—a “£3 4s. 6d. grave.”

[From an article by G. R. Russell in the Socialist Standard, September 1944.]

50 Years Ago: Amin, Africa and the world (2026)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

The way to stop understanding of events is to show them as resulting from personal misconduct or mismanagement by those in charge. Had Hitler not been mad and bad, the Second World War would never have happened. Stalin’s treacherousness made Russia what it is. But for a succession of weak and untrustworthy leaders, the Labour Party would have brought us all to the Promised Land. This view of history means we are perpetually invited to look at figures idiotic and corrupt, and put all the blame on them. Without doubt they are all as objectionable as stated, but that is not the answer. The high chairs in which these characters sit are provided by capitalism, and at some time of need each appeared to be the ideal occupant.

The special place of buffoon-turned-villain is held at present by President Amin of Uganda. Since his regime began it has been characterized by killings, culminating in the ‘Makerere massacre’ of over 100 students in August this year. It has included the deportation of Asians in 1972, and a series of international incidents; in July there was a confrontation with Kenya, and on the 28th July Britain broke off diplomatic relations with Uganda. There have been attempts at uprisings and to assassinate Amin. On 1st August The Observer had an editorial headed ‘Getting rid of Amin’. (…)

The balance of power in Africa is between the growing and aspiring ruling classes of the states there, their deals for aid with bigger nations, and the bigger nations’ own need for oil and minerals for commodity production.

In this balance, the grotesque Amin is entirely dependent on his sponsors. The continuation of the Kenyan oil blockade in July could have caused his downfall, and from the viewpoint of his Arab allies he is unreliable and disposable; no doubt their attitude is like Samuel Pepys’s — ‘whether it will be better for me to have him die, because he is a bad man, or live, for fear a worse should come’. Meanwhile, workers in Uganda and countless other countries live not only under tyrannical regimes but have the prospect of being fodder for wars, in which the enemies are a matter of permutation. This is the result of production for profit. It does not have to go on.

[From the article, Amin, Africa and the World, by Robert Barltrop, Socialist Standard, September 1976.]

50 Years Ago: Organisation (1962)

The 50 Years Ago column from the August 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

. . . Often there seems to be an idea—an entirely erroneous idea in the writer’s estimation—that as capitalism (or at least the present phase of capitalism) appears to be drawing to a close, the next step must inevitably be the establishment of Socialism in its stead. There is, therefore, no need, so it is considered, to do anything more than sit with folded hands, waiting for the downfall of capitalist society and the springing up, full-armed, of the new system of society.

. . . It does not actually follow that Socialism will be the outcome of present-day capitalist society. If you have a discontented people, poverty-stricken, degraded by continual toil and suffering into mere human machines, ripe for any change from their present existence of physical and mental penury, you have within that people all the possibilities, not so much of an elevation to a higher type, but rather toward an atavism even more degrading physically, more destructive intellectually, than at present.

The essential thing is, of course, that there should be implanted in the minds of the workers knowledge of the fact that their position as workers must be altered from the present state of slavery to a state wherein they shall be free to order their lives as they may best determine. But this knowledge once having been attained, it then becomes quite as necessary to know how to live. After all, life is not only the eating of good food, the wearing of good clothes, the sheltering in good houses, with a minimum of work and a maximum of leisure. All these things are, or should be, simply the means to an end in themselves . . .

. . . So it can be seen that the necessity of organisation becomes doubly imperative. Firstly, in order to build up a body of men and women whose main idea shall be the ending of capitalism and the establishment of the Socialist Commonwealth. Secondly, that the men and women thus organised may have the opportunity of keeping themselves in touch with every phase of life, thus forming, indeed, an educational centre in the real meaning of the word education . . .

[From the article, 'The Need For Organisation', by F. J. Webb, Socialist Standard, August 1912]

50 Years Ago: The row about overseas students (2026)

The 50 Years Ago column from the August 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard 

 

Students who come to the UK from abroad to study make another part of the education pot that is at boiling point. But as with the reasons for the cuts in the education system (discussed last month) so also with the explanation of the row about overseas students. The causes have nothing to do with so-called academic freedom, or colour prejudice, or the duty to help developing countries. The cause of the dispute is within the economics of capitalism itself in one of its periodic crises.

Cuts are demanded in state expenditure by the capitalist class and in education in particular. One of the things which have been cut back on is the “subsidy” to overseas students. This so-called subsidy relates to the fact that the fees paid by all students to universities and colleges of higher education do not in fact represent the true cost of the course they will be attending. The real cost will be many times higher and the balance comes from central and local government grants to the universities and colleges, together with whatever else they can squeeze from private sources. Overseas students (estimated to be about 95,000 for the academic year 1973/4) therefore apparently cost the capitalist class considerable amounts.

For example the “price” of one year of a 3-year course in science at University College London, for the academic year 1975/76 was £157. But this figure probably represents no more than 10 per cent of the true cost of providing the services and equipment available to each student on a science course at UCL. So the call grows from the politicians (the mouthpieces of the capitalist class) and others involved to make students who come here to study from abroad pay the market price.

[From the article, 'The Row About Overseas Students' by Ronnie Warrington, Socialist Standard, August 1976.]

50 Years Ago: The class issue in the American Revolution (2026)

The 50 Years Ago column from the July 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

What, if anything, does the Declaration of Independence mean? The approach of its 200th anniversary has produced a small deluge of reviews of the saga of American history and the ‘truths’ adopted on 4th July 1776. There must be many who, having read and listened, still wonder why a nation claiming to be founded on ‘inalienable rights’ of equality, freedom of speech and thought and ‘the pursuit of happiness’ manifestly does not have them. The answer is that the Declaration of Independence was framed as the expression of one class’s economic interests…

The greater part of the Declaration of Independence consists of political attacks on George III. In Britain the Georges were supported by the Tory representatives of the landowning aristocracy while the Whigs, standing for the interests of developing capitalism and freedom of trade, were still struggling. In America, still in its early stages, the class issues were confused but the dominant interests were those from which the capitalist class originated: the smuggling merchants, land speculators, and would-be manufacturers. The Tories comprised large landholders, ‘respectable’ merchants, officials and dependants of the British regime, and the Church of England faction…

The War of Independence ended in 1782, one month before the Tory government fell and the Americans’ Whig allies came to power in Britain. This was the beginning of capitalism’s rise to maturity. How much the Declaration of Independence meant, and whom it stood for, can be seen in the fact that in the mid-1780s out of an American population of 3½ million (excluding Indians) only 400,000 were ‘free’ men. Its principles, and the ideas of democracy it embodied, were cast aside almost immediately…

The history books show Independence to have been essential to the emergence of a great modern nation: the creation of a strong central government controlled by the manufacturing and commercial class. The capitalists were a revolutionary class, advancing the capacities of mankind immeasurably. What the Declaration of Independence shows is their inability to fulfil those capacities after two hundred years. Like the aristocracy from whose grip they broke, from a dynamic social force they have long since become an obstruction to mankind. It is time for the next move, to Socialism.

[From the article, The Class Issue in the American Revolution' by Robert Barltrop, Socialist Standard, July 1976.]

50 Years Ago: Bernard Levin and the SPGB (2026)

The 50 Years Ago column from the June 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Levin wrote a criticism of the SPGB in an article entitled Credo Quia Impossible (The Observer, 18th April 1976) — and here we must add dog Latin to his many other talents. The article patronized us and what he described as the ‘glorious nonsense’ emanating from the SPGB. This attack on the Party gave the impression of an amused tolerance for a ‘sect’ based on ‘eccentricity’ (his words) and was made in a review of a book called The Monument — the story of the SPGB. Unfortunately for Levin, some of the facts and anecdotes contained in The Monument, despite its many merits, are a personal version and the Party does not accept any responsibility for its contents. (…)

He says our position is ‘Marx is right; the SPGB interpretation of Marx is right’. We do not accept that Marx was always right, and we have in the past criticized Marx. Nevertheless, we agree with the main Marxist theories of Historical Materialism and his analysis of capitalism.

Finally the SPGB has never been opposed to, or supported, reforms. Levin is confusing the political action which is necessary to get reforms with the content of the reforms. Nobody could oppose the introduction of safety working measures, of which Levin accuses us, free heating for old age pensioners, or other reforms, and we have never done so. If workers wish to sell their votes for a few crumbs of social reform that is their privilege, and equally, it is our privilege and duty to show that there is an alternative. We want them to take political action that will remove the need for reforms.

We mention these few facts in the rather forlorn hope that Levin will correct his mistaken view of the Party. We would also bring to his notice that no member was expelled or disciplined for carrying a gas-mask, nor is it true that ‘every time there was a vote on an expulsion those who had voted against it were themselves forthwith expelled’. Levin can satisfy himself on this score, as the weekly Minutes of the Executive Committee are intact from 1904 and photocopies are available.

[From the article, 'Bernard Levin and the SPGB', by Jim D'Arcy, Socialist Standard, June 1976]

Blogger's Note:

The Monument was reviewed by Harry Baldwin in the December 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard.

50 Years Ago: The General Strike (2026)

The 50 Years Ago column from the May 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

On its 50th anniversary the tales of the General Strike, real and legendary, will be told. The strike action of those Trade Unionists and others who took part was not based on a clear recognition of the position of the workers under capitalism and the class struggle resulting therefrom. The workers were not class-conscious, and therefore their actions were not a challenge to the existence of capitalism. Nevertheless, under the present order workers have to defend their living standards against their employers, and to that extent the General Strike must rank as a landmark in the history of the British working class; as the most determined display of solidarity we have seen this century. That is encouraging to the Socialist — if workers can unite on one issue for a limited purpose, they can certainly unite on the greater issue of Socialism. “Unity is strength”, and “A house divided against itself shall fall” (…)

Writing about the Strike fifty years later, what lessons were learned by the workers? Have they abandoned the idea of leadership inside or outside the Unions? The answer is no. Has the Trade Union organization and the TUC undergone a change of attitude on the question of class co-operation? Again, the answer is no. If anything, Trade Unions have become more insular: more concerned with the narrow issues affecting their individual members. They are completely steeped in capitalist ideology. Their world begins and ends with their members’ interests, not with the interests of the working class as a whole. The TUC is nothing other than a political wing of the present Labour government. Those who think in terms of a successful general strike with Jack Jones, Hugh Scanlon, Len Murray, and the other untalented servants of capital, in place of J. H. Thomas, Swales, Hicks, Tillett and Pugh, etc. are deluding themselves. The present Trade Unions are hopelessly compromised with the Labour government, and this is to their disadvantage. They are expected to co-operate on wage reductions, redundancy policies, wage freezes, and hosts of other schemes which are of direct help to the capitalists. But the general strike is not a means or an aid to the establishment of Socialism. Joint action by groups of Unions against groups of employers can achieve benefits or prevent living standards from being depressed. This is the most that can be expected. The capitalist class will not, nor cannot, succumb to any other form of economic pressure as long as they control the State machine.

[From the article. 'The General Strike' by Jim D'Arcy, Socialist Standard, May 1976.]

50 Years Ago: What should Women do to be Free? (1994)

The 50 Years Ago column from the November 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

An organisation called “Women for Westminster” has recently been born. It has a self-explanatory name and object. What a waste of time and energy such an organisation causes, and what future disillusionment must there be among its adherents ! Supposing they were to have a measure of success according to their aims, and get a predominance of women in the House of Commons. They would find that women, merely as women, can run capitalism no better than can the Labour or Tory Parties.

The Suffragettes have been appalled by the lack of enthusiasm for the vote, following their desperate efforts to gain it. Their lack of knowledge of the make-up of society is the reason for their indignation. Despite the constant propaganda of the press, screen and radio, woman as well as man is sceptical, often unconsciously so, regarding electioneering programmes, which cater for all tastes. Speaking generally, members of the working class are apathetic and not politically conscious. Many, unfortunately, are led away by reform parties, by idolaters of Russia, or by mushroom growths such as Commonwealth. (. . . )

Whilst capitalism lasts, women will remain, like men, in a subject position, no matter how far progress is made towards equality with men. The interests of women are therefore identical with men in struggling for the overthrow of the present system, as it is only under Socialism that both will find real emancipation.

[From and article by W. P. in the Socialist Standard, November 1944]

50 Years Ago: An implement for digging (2026)

The 50 Years Ago column from the April 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Have you noticed the way today’s politicians are afraid to call a spade a spade and instead resort to every kind of euphemism to disguise the reality of whatever they happen to be talking about? So we have ‘social security’—the Poor Law or National Assistance by any other name—a cynical term indeed. Ask anyone who’s ever had to claim and they’ll tell you there’s little that’s social and nothing that’s secure about it. Perhaps you’ve experienced yourself the interminable form-filling and prying by clerks for a pittance that won’t feed a dog, let alone keep it warm.

We have the ‘Department of Employment’. I wonder what the one and a half million on the dole would say about that, the Industrial Reserve Army as Marx put it?

What other contenders are there? How about ‘an expanding economy’? An expression that looks a little sick in these days. How about ‘the underprivileged’: politicianese for the poor and the deprived—members of the working class in other words. But let us not forget ‘the affluent society’ (it’s been a good year for grinding the faces of the workers); ‘we have got to pay our way in the world’ (we’re going to turn the rack a few more notches); ‘nobody owes us a living’ (your tomorrow, the promised land is just over the next hill); and, to end a short selection, ‘welfare state’ (80,000 will die this year from hypothermia).

Politicians are the mouthpieces and the lackeys of the capitalist system which needs to dupe the mass of the people in order to maintain itself in power. The contrast between the humbug of political pronouncements and the struggle for survival of the working class worldwide cries out for a solution. That solution can be achieved—Socialism, which will finally make politicians redundant when it replaces capitalism across the globe.

Workers of the world unite—you have nothing to lose but your leaders.

[From the article, 'An Implement For Digging' by A. L., Socialist Standard, April 1976]

50 Years Ago: The Liberal Party's Record (1975)

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

Freedom ! Liberty ! ! Read their record. The only liberty they have known is the liberty to exploit labour. Have we omitted anything from their rotten record? We have—piles of evidence. We have even omitted to mention they were a capitalist party. Is it necessary to add this now? Why, in their earlier days they were capitalism, as distinct from the Tory landed interest. The plague spots of Sheffield, Ancoats, Lanark, Cradley ; the industrial wens of the Black Country, the Potteries, the chemical districts, the mining areas; these are the heritage of the Liberal Party. A generation or so ago they re-christened Liberty. They called it by a French name—laissez faire—let alone. That was their idea of liberty, “Let us alone.” The slogan of the Manchester school : Starve, sweat, bludgeon, oppress and exploit, but let us alone. Men were stunted, crippled and crushed; women brutalised in mines and factories; children taken from workhouses and “apprenticed” to industrial exploiters; but—laissez faire; let us alone.

. . . We visualise real freedom as belonging to a time when the whole people have free access to Mother Earth; when the whole people are free from the incubus of a parasitic class ; when the whole people socially own their means of living; when development shall be free from the shackle of selling, and production free from the necessity of profit. Freedom will then lose its capital letter. It would be the normal, not the sum of a few piffling, fraudulent reforms.

[From an article "The Mockery of 'Freedom' " by W. T. Hopley, in the Socialist Standard, March 1925.]

50 Years Ago: Stop being fooled! (2002)

The 50 Years Ago column from the March 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Stop being fooled!

The world is large, and individually workers are small and at present united under no cause beneficial to themselves. Because of his ignorance and feeling of inferiority the worker considers the affairs of state and the understanding of politics for too complicated for his inadequate brain to comprehend. So he trusts the course of his life to others – namely the government – and remains employed, exploited and ruled.

It is difficult to have to realise that the worker himself can suffer the horrors of the capitalist system without being even conscious of being exploited. He reads the national newspapers and is bemused with such meaningless boastings as “Why is the Daily Express the paper for the people? – because it represents the heart and soul of the people it serves.” (31/12/51). Come, workers, let’s stop being so naïve. Let’s get down to realising the fact that the ‘nation’ these newspapers serve is nothing more than the British capitalist class, and that they are part of the medium by which capitalists continue to fog your brains and sense of reason with such empty phrases as ‘national prestige,’ and ‘duty and honour first.’

[From the Socialist Standard, March 1952, the first by P. R. Lawrence]

 

The Printers Object to an Article

An article that should have appeared in this issue entitled “The King Is Dead” has had to be withdrawn. The compositors’ chapel at our printers objected to the article, and it was too late to carry the matter further without holding up publication of the issue.

The article dealt with the general question of kingship from an historical point of view, and only had two incidental references to King George VI in his capacity as king.

[From the Socialist Standard, March 1952]

50 Years Ago: Rates and taxes (1962)

The 50 Years Ago column from the March 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Rates and taxes are imposed to cover the cost of local and national government. The employing class — the possessors of property — in order to maintain their existence as a ruling class, must pay the various charges incurred by employing an army, navy and police force. The ever-growing body of officials they appoint; the numerous departments they have to run to make smooth the working of capitalist commerce; the interest on their “National” Debt heaped up by the cost of past wars: all these have to be paid, and the problem ever facing our masters is—which section of the propertied class is to provide the money?

The employing, or capitalist class, though face to face with the workers they are as one, are composed of many sections, differing in their day-to-day interests. Right through the history of taxation the spectacle has been seen of one section of the propertied class trying to shift ‘the burden of taxation’ on to another class, and the question in many minds is: Can they shift it on to the working class? We answer, No! The working class do not own property. They exist alone by selling their energy (their power to labour) to the employing class, the owners of the means of production.

The employers take the whole of the wealth produced by the working class, merely giving back to the workers on an average, enough to maintain them in a condition to go on producing wealth.

This portion which is given to the workers—when their masters find it profitable to employ them—is like the fuel put into the furnace of an engine’s boiler, or the food given to the horse. It is the indispensable material without which they cannot be kept working. Clearly, then, the expense of carrying on their Government must be borne by our masters alone.

[From the article, 'Rates and Taxes. Do they fall upon the working class?' by Adolph Kohn, Socialist Standard, March 1912.]

50 Years Ago: Did the Socialist Movement fail in 1914 (1965)

The 50 Years Ago column from the March 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard 

We are now at the root of the whole matter of the failure of the “European Socialist Movement” to take up and maintain the Socialist position in the recent crisis. These gigantic political organisations which disposed of so many millions of votes were not Socialist organisations. They were not founded upon the principle of the class struggle. They had not done the work of politically educating their supporters. They had not built up their strength upon an electorate understanding the working-class position and desiring revolution. These millions of so-called Socialist voters did not understand the class division in society, and did not, therefore, realise the unity of interest of the workers the world over, and the clash between the interests of the working class and the master class, at every point, nationally and internationally. Their votes had been attracted by all manner of nostrums and side-issues, and simply expressed opinions thereon, and not on the vital matter of working-class emancipation.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain calls the attention of the workers of this and other lands to the fact that, founded as a political organisation upon Socialist principles, it has maintained the true working-class position in relation to the war without difficulty. We cannot boast of the support of millions of voters at the polls, but no one can point to a single word or deed of ours, in this time of crisis, which has been a betrayal of the cause of the proletariat. Well for Socialism, well for the stricken workers, well for the great cause of humanity, if, when the present riot of anarchy is over, and those who have to pay for it in blood and tears come to count the cost and apportion the blame, they realise that the political party of Socialism, weak though it was in numbers, was strong enough to denounce the war on all sides, strong enough to expose the misleaders of Labour and their purchased “patriotism”, strong enough to avow and maintain, in the face of a frenzy of insane nationalism, the unity of interest of the workers of all countries, strong enough to remain Socialists and keep the flag of Socialism flying.

[From the editorial,  'A Blow for Socialism', Socialist Standard, March 1915.]

50 Years Ago: Bert Ramelson buries Lenin (2026)

The 50 Years Ago column from the March 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard 

What happened when the BBC’s ‘Newsday’ interviewed the industrial organiser of the Communist Party would have been more suitable for the Goon Show, or Monty Python. Bert Ramelson, keeping a perfectly straight face, point-blank denied everything that the Communist Party was founded on and peddled for over thirty years!

True it is, as he said in the interview, that he only joined the CP in 1936; whereas some of us knew it intimately since 1920. However, that should not prevent him (or anybody else) knowing the facts. The interviewer did not know a great deal about the subject, and questioned from a prepared brief.

But even the political department of the BBC had heard that the Communist Parties were founded on ‘Leninism’. That is, seizure of power by an intrepid, resolute minority of ‘professional revolutionists’, leading the working class — who would then lead the ‘toiling masses’ (meaning peasants) to socialist victory. For thirty years a vast mass of pamphlets, books and newspapers flogged the Leninist dogma of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, meaning minority action.

Many able writers waded patiently through Marx’s work to show that, from The Communist Manifesto onward, Marx never used this then-popular French slogan to mean anything else than majority democratic methods. For instance, Lucien Laurat, who in Marxism and Democracy quotes The Communist Manifesto:

‘The first stage in the working class revolution is the constitution of the proletariats as the ruling class, the conquest of democracy.’

No use! For thirty years CP writers and speakers denounced democracy and exhorted the workers to follow ‘Marx’s best disciple’ Nikolai Lenin. Parliament was a useless ‘gasworks’, elections a waste of time (although they regularly took part in them, but ‘only for propaganda, comrade’). The state would be smashed and ‘bourgeois’ parliaments replaced by Soviets, ‘the workers’ democracy’ (…)

Understandably, the interviewer politely raised the question of the CP’s present policy, and its past. ‘Was it not the case that the CP had advocated ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat’ in the past?’

‘Not any more’, replied Bert. Not any more! And do you know why, dear reader? Let Bert tell you. Because there has been ‘so much misunderstanding of what Marx really meant’. He actually said this. ‘Marx meant the action of the vast overwhelming majority’, said Bert; the CP has not used the phrase in any document since 1950, to avoid any more misunderstanding.

[From article by Horatio, Socialist Standard, March 1976]

 

 

Blogger's Note: 

Regular readers of the blog will know that 'Horatio' was the pen name of the late Harry Young. Harry Young was especially placed to comment on the early history of the CPGB as he was a founder of member of that organisation, serving for a period on its Executive Committee as a representative of the Young Communist League.  In an article in the February 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard, entitled 'Why I joined the SPGB', he goes into greater detail. It's worth a read.

50 Years Ago: The Quintessence of Socialism. (1957)

The 50 Years Ago column from the February 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are quite a number of people in this country who call themselves Socialists because they believe in the municipalisation or nationalisation of various things. And these good people appear to be oblivious of the fact that the very essence of Socialism is the control of wealth production and distribution by the wealth producers. It is obvious that it a number of thieves are banded together they are not likely to seek less booty, or seek it less effectively, than when isolated ; so, therefore, the capitalist class, who control the national and local administrative bodies, are not likely to seek less profit, or to seek it less effectively, when their businesses come under their collective control than when they control them individually. The end and aim of a Capitalist is profit, whether it comes as interest on Metropolitan Water Board bonds or as dividend on shares in the A.B.C.; and the ruling class will not, indeed, undertake municipal or national services at all unless their interests are thereby served and their general profits increased. An industry taken over by the Capitalist State, though it may be also of advantage, in other respects, means that more wealth is thereby to be wrung from the workers. The sweating in government factories, the low wages in the Post Office that enable over £4,000,000 to go in relief of Capitalist taxation, are an earnest of what State Capitalism means. Nationalised industries can only become Socialistic, and can only be of real benefit to the workers, when the working class has obtained control of the administrative machinery. It is therefore of the utmost importance that the political movement of the workers place itself firmly on the basis of the class struggle. Indeed, all who do not recognise this fact, whatever they may call themselves, are emphatically not Socialists, for mere nationalisation, we repeat, is not Socialism at all.

[From the editorial, London County Council, Ltd., Socialist Standard, February 1907.]

50 Years Ago: The Suppression of the Communists (1991)

The 50 Years Ago column from the February 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

More recently (Daily Worker, March 30th, 1939) they were appealing by personal letter to Churchill, Sinclair and Attlee to get together to overthrow the Chamberlain Government and form a Government of their own in order "to save the country in the rapidly deepening crisis." It may well be said that they got the war they wanted (and then soon ceased to want it when Russia decided to be friends with Hitler) and got the Government they asked for and now it has got them.

So tortuous are the ways of the Communists that it is by no means impossible (the contents of the Daily Worker in recent weeks rather suggest this) that for some obscure reason they now no longer wanted the immunity from prosecution they sought last year by setting up a board of "influential persons" to run the Daily Worker but wanted to be suppressed.

All the same the S.P.G.B. is opposed to suppression of opinion. In our view the way to counter any kind of propaganda, and in the long the only way, is to meet it in the open in unfettered discussion. We are entitled to add that we practise what we preach and have always thrown open our platform to our opponents.

[From an article "The Suppression of the 'Daily Worker' ", Socialist Standard, February 1941.]

50 Years Ago: Patriotism and Scarlet Coats (1961)

The 50 Years Ago column from the January 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our ruling class can see that their Continental rivals are determined to obtain as large a share of the markets of the world as possible, and that sooner or later this must culminate in world-wide disruption. Hence their anxiety on the score of “patriotism.” Lord Esher gives expression to his anxious thoughts in the suggestion that “patriotism” is an attribute of the empty-headed. “How can you expect,” he writes, “recruits for your Territorial Force, when you dress them unbecomingly?” One paper, commenting on his noble Lordship’s article, suggests “a scarlet coat and a towering headdress” as the most effective appeal to the “patriotism” of the working class, though whether on the old, tried and trusty ground that those who have least in their heads must make the greatest show on them, or on the later calculation that now the workers are discovering how little country they have to fight for they may be induced to fight for their togs if only they are sufficiently removed from the humdrum drab of the corduroy to enable them to forget that they are countryless workers, does not transpire.

[From “The Decline of Patriotism” by J. R. R., Socialist Standard, January 1911.]

50 Years Ago: Who likes facing Labour’s future? (2026)

The 50 Years Ago column from the February 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

A generation of workers have placed their trust and wasted their lives on the pie-crust promises of ambitious politicians. More than thirty years have passed since the Labour Party issued its post-war election manifesto: Let us Face the Future. People like Barbara Castle, who were rising ‘stars’ of the left, when Aneurin Bevan was chief demagogue, have lived to stand in the crumbling ruins of all the misguided hopes which they themselves helped to build. Once again the ludicrous spectacle is one where the reformers proposed and capitalism disposed. We are now living in their future.

Every group of workers in the NHS has been (and will continue to be) ruthlessly exploited by their Labour government overlords. (Yes, we know and by the Tories.)

The nurses, whose devotion to their patients has been mercilessly used by successive governments, were forced to organize, demonstrate and threaten strike action. Then the ambulance crews were pushed into the same position. The ward orderlies and laundry workers caved in under the weight of increasing drudgery and near starvation wages. The extreme reluctance of any of these workers to add to the suffering of the sick and aged, has been cynically played on by the Tory and Labour governments.

The latest miserable episode is that of the junior doctors. Driven by being on duty or on stand-by for as much as one hundred hours per week and working for as many as eighty hours with virtually unpaid overtime, they banned overtime. This brought about the closing down of wards, casualty departments and even entire hospitals. If this reads like a nightmare, that is what capitalism does to dreams of reformers. (…)

Aneurin Bevan once said the Tories were ‘lower than vermin’. What does that make the Wilson, Castle and Foot mob? Regretfully, calling names however well deserved, does little to raise the level of class-consciousness. When the working class wake up, they will contemptuously brush aside these petty upstarts and, in fact, dismiss all leaders. Ultimately the responsibility rests with the workers. Their political maturity (or lack of it) is reflected in how they vote. The power to continue the agony of capitalism derives from the votes of the workers. The power to end it will come from the same source.

[From the article, 'Who likes facing Labour’s future?' by Harry Baldwin, Socialist Standard, February 1976.]

50 Years Ago: Enoch Powell & war (2026)

The 50 Years Ago column from the January 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Enoch Powell is no friend of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. His divisive views on race are enough to make any self-respecting Socialist shudder. Yet amongst politicians he is undoubtedly one of the more coherent defenders and theorists of the present social set-up. His opposition to government spending, for example, does not extend to the police or prison services. He is in no doubt that crime is an unavoidable part of competitive society and maintains that economies in this field can only hamper the smooth running of that system. On inflation, too, he is uncompromising. He fully understands that inflation is caused by governments having an excess of paper currency printed, an explanation given (although Enoch may not realise it) by all Socialists since Marx.

In a recent edition of the BBC’S Any Questions Mr. Powell “came clean” once again, this time on the subject of war. He expressed the view that, with nations obliged to defend their interests against possible attack by outsiders, all grandiose, well-meaning schemes to disarm or to abolish war were pie-in-the-sky; the best governments could do was to stave off for as long as possible the wars that were bound to break out sooner or later. This is a bold, objective description of conditions in the world today and we must congratulate Mr. Powell for his frankness and lucidity. (…)

Enoch Powell is simply acknowledging what we have said: in a commercial, nation-divided world, war is inevitable. If the politicians are unable to avert wars, it is quite simply because they are committed to looking after a system that breeds them.

What is our alternative? We suggest a truly united, wholly democratic world with no nations, no money and with the satisfaction of human needs as its first priority. Impossible? We don’t think so. All that is in fact needed to bring it into being is peaceful political action by a convinced majority of ordinary people.

[From ' Enoch Powell & War' by HKM, Socialist Standard, January 1976.]