The weakness of the anti-war movement (2001)

From the November 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

The weakness of the anti-war movement is that the majority want nothing more than a return to capitalist “peace” rather than the overthrow of the system that causes war

According to the Guardian (15 October), government ministers were genuinely surprised at the estimated 20,000 plus demonstrators who turned out the previous Saturday for a CND peace march against the war in Afghanistan. The editors of the Guardian themselves must have been surprised, since earlier the same week they had published opinion polls showing 86 percent support for the war. Opponents of the war have already had a number of surprisingly large turnouts, given the short notice and word-of-mouth methods of announcing their meetings.

On 21 September a meeting was called by the “Stop the War Coalition”, an umbrella front organisation organised under the auspices of the SWP’s “Globalise Resistance” umbrella front organisation, and the “Socialist Alliance”, another front organisation. They had booked the main hall at Friends Meeting House in London, which seats 1,200 people. In the end over 2,000 people showed up, to this snap meeting, and thus an extra hall and an impromptu out-door meeting had to be organised as well, with speakers rotating between meetings. Although a healthy turn-out, the bulk of the audience was made up of what MP Jeremy Corbyn (one of the speakers) referred to as “The Usual Suspects”. Indeed, there is every chance that a bomb strike on that hall could have wiped out most of the left in London.

A CND concept vigil was organised outside Downing Street the following day (the concept being that everyone wear black). This attracted some 2,000 people as well, and saw them lined up along Whitehall displaying placards stating that they were standing “Shoulder to Shoulder against the war”, in pastiche of Blair’s cretinous soundbite of support for the US government in its war.

In clear distinction to the recent “anti-capitalist” demonstrations, these events were attended by an immensely broad range of background and age. One of the demonstrators was old enough to recall being handcuffed to a Socialist Party member, as a conscientious objector during the Second World War. Compared with crowds at other political events, they were relatively receptive to taking the literature being distributed by Socialist Party members present.

Alongside this various committees have been formed: “Media Workers Against the War”, “Artists Against the War” and “Lawyers Against the War”, usually with a significant SWP organisational input. This mushroom-like proliferation of organisations and their prominence within the anti-war movement that exists demonstrates the degree to which it is dominated by leftist notions and agendas. The aim, indeed their very existence, is focussed on the war itself, as an immediate crisis, without developing any broad analysis of the system of society that spawned it, with themselves as the unifying organisations drawing together the disparate groups and agendas involved in opposing the war.

Many of the protestors are dyed-in-the-wool pacifists, whilst others are leftists, and still others Islamists, united only in their opposition to this particular war, not their reasons for opposing it. This was made abundantly clear at the CND march. Trafalgar Square had been booked, some time before the 11 September 11 attack, by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign for their own cause, but they handed it over to CND for their anti-war march. A number of speakers, including one from the PSC, used the occasion of the war to push the Palestinian nationalist case as a cure for international terrorism. The number of mosques thanked by the meeting chair for their help in organising the event indicated why slightly more turned out in opposition to this war compared with the Kosovan conflict. The chair also thanked the Stop the War Coalition for helping organise the event. So, the front of a front was working in a front with CND to hold the march.

Speaker after speaker at each of the meetings have trotted out a long list of reforms, from George Monbiot’s suggestion of a Tobin Tax and an International Clearing House to alleviate world poverty, to Tariq Ali’s more conventional leftist approach of assessing the situation in national terms such as placing the Palestinian question at the centre, to the general cry for a standing International World Court to try “crimes against humanity”. The best CND could manage was a weak call to “negotiate”. The only glimmer of hope has been that the nebulous threat from “terrorists” has made the situation resistant to attempts to nationalise the problems into a conflict between specific states, thus speakers have had to talk much more in terms of a world solution.

The problem with this approach, above and beyond the mendacity of leftist fronts, is that it fetishises the crisis (both in philosophical, and more popular usages of the word, the latter, specifically for all the “activists” who long for a campaign to throw themselves into). It sees the immediate situation of open conflict as the problem, the simple solution of which is to simply pull back the troops. It doesn’t go beyond that to examine the fact that if states have weapons and armies, they are there to be used. It fails to look at how conflict is actually continuous in the present world. It simply adopts (and promotes) a simple moralist position, “War is bad, mmm’kay?”

Cause of war ignored

By taking the state propaganda at face value, and focussing on this war as a singular event, rather than a manifestation of historically arrived-at social relations, peace protestors are left with nothing more than vapid hopes. In ignoring this, they lose sight of the fact that we live in an economic system which drives its actors to battle against one another, in order to secure trade routes, natural resources and capital investments. This conflict is continual, the only variation being in the intensity of the conflict and the badges on the uniforms.

The leftists focus on the role of American Imperialism (with the SWP pointedly refusing to condemn the 11 September hijackers, merely disapproving of their tactics), hence their couching of their anti-war sentiments in terms of US withdrawal from the region. Such accounts present it as if the American government had some choice in pursuing an imperialist policy, that its actions result from some mysteriously gung-ho national characteristic, rather than from the dictates of capitalist economy. It also ignores the fact that if the US ceased to be the disruptive force for chaos in the region, there are plenty of willing understudies to take over that role. All capitalist states are basically imperialist in character and ambition.

That the master class of each nation needs to have recourse to violence to enforce and defend its interests in the world means that they must keep exclusive control of the states that direct those armies. The political machinery of society remains in the hands of a tiny minority so that it can be exercised to enforce the wage-enslavement of the immense majority at home, and rob the capitalists’ rivals abroad.

Hence why in Britain the decision to deploy military forces isn’t permitted to be voted on by Parliament, and why in America (as in the Kosovan war) the state can ignore the (unconstitutional in itself) War Powers Act (which, basically, states that the President may not deploy forces abroad for more than 60 days without congressional approval). The fewer hands involved in controlling the power to wage war, the better for the ruling class.

In its heyday, CND could count on having half-a-million marchers turnout to march down Whitehall to press its case for abandoning nuclear weapons. The holders of political power steadfastly ignored them, and nuclear weapons are still here. CND could march half a million down Whitehall against the war now, and the clique in charge would steadfastly ignore them again. The principle that the “masses” have no say over the means of war must be maintained at all costs. So long as the immense majority allows the state to arm itself and remain in the hands of a select few, we will have no capacity to effect war policy.

A socialist took the opportunity of an open microphone to address a Coalition Against the War demonstration from the plinth of Nelson’s Column, at a demonstration on 8 October, and point these facts out to the crowd. Hopefully some seeds of thought were sown there, and the idea that only socialism, the abolition of these conditions of war, exploitation and the existence of class, represents the practical material answer to the threat of war in all its forms will gain ground. So that, at some future demonstration, the impressive number of participants will stop chanting the puerile “Welfare not Warfare” and instead loudly proclaim their adherence to “no war, but the class war” as a means for bringing this ongoing horror to an end.

Pik Smeet

World View: Strange values, denials and a few truths (2001)

From the November 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

The proverbial line has been drawn in the sand and President George W Bush has told the world “either you’re with us or you’re against us.” It’s a catch-all sentiment that is taking hold. Indeed, one writer asked me through the letters page of the Shields Gazette: “A simple message to John Bissett. Which side are you on, ours or the terrorists?” “It’s that simple”, I’ve been told on the streets!

The mainstream view is that the forces of barbarism have declared war on the bastion of democracy. George Bush boldly declared: “They hate our freedom, our freedom of religion, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with one another”, yet wonders not why, if this were so, the Statue of Liberty, the White House or the Lincoln memorial was not attacked on 11 September. Why the Pentagon and the WTC – one a symbol of America’s global military reach, the other a symbol of US economic prowess?

Of course there is much missing from Bush’s assertion that Islamic terrorists are simply jealous as hell of the democratic freedoms “enjoyed” in the US. The simple truth is that throughout the Middle East, indeed the world, the US has, despite its alleged support for movements towards democracy and greater freedoms for all, generally hampered provisional steps in the direction of democratisation whilst it has increased its support for despotic regimes such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Morocco.

Israel, for instance, gets 40 percent of all US overseas aid. Meanwhile Israel is in breach of six UN resolutions and continues oppressing people in Palestine. During Jordan’s despotic and repressive rule in the 1970s and 80s, US aid for the Amman regime was enormous. Then when Jordan decided to oil the cogs of its political machine in the 1990s, that aid was vastly reduced and for a while suspended. Similarly, aid to Yemen was cut off within months of that unified country’s first “democratic” election. In recent weeks, when it was discovered that Qatar’s satellite channel Al-Jazeera was beginning to sound a little “pro-democracy”, upsetting regional dictators, broadcasting images of the US bombings and airing bin Laden’s now famous video, it was Colin Powell who demanded the channel be closed down, insisting it fostered “anti-Americanism”.

When it comes to Middle Eastern peace, the US’s actions have ensured that the region is as unstable as ever, cocking a snook at UN Resolution 687 which calls for region-wide disarmament – which would also mean an end to Israel’s nuclear capability – and at the same time selling $60 billion worth of arms to Middle Eastern country in 10 years (80 percent of all world arms exports to the Middle East). Israel, by the way, receives $3 billion in US military aid on the pretext that it is defending itself from its Arab neighbours – those same neighbours the US has armed to the teeth.

Writing in the Guardian (29 September), Artundhati Roy goes a little further. “Could it be”, she asks, “that the stygian anger that led to the attacks has its taproot not in American freedom and democracy, but in the US government’s record of commitment and support of exactly the opposite things, to military and economic terrorism, insurgency, military dictatorships, religious bigotry and unimaginable genocides?”

Blair’s double-speak

This side of the Atlantic, in his finest Orwellian double-speak, Tony Blair could announce: “The values we believe in should shine through in Afghanistan”. Could this be the same Blair whose government armed the Indonesian military machine that not so long ago ran rampage through East Timor? Whose government has signed 91 military export licences for Israel in the last eight months of the current Intifada? Such instances fly in the face of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office claim that “we will not issue export licences where there is clearly identifiable risk that the equipment might be used for internal repression or adversely effect regional stability”. Are these the same “values” which, on the same day as the attacks on the US, allowed the DSEi arms fair to go ahead in London and to continue for another two days? And are these same “values” informing a Labour government who, without any mandate from the UN, has helped notch up 15,000 RAF/USAF bombing raids on Iraq since the second Gulf War?

These same values are now behind the decision that Britain and the US should support a proxy army, the Northern Alliance, an outfit with an impressive record of widespread rape, pillage and murder in Kabul, in its confrontation with the Taliban. One of the key figures in the Northern Alliance is Abdul Rashid Dostom, and ally of Uzbekistan’s President Karimov, who has made huge profits from exporting drugs via Uzbekistan, and who allegedly was all to keen to secure Russian weapons and military supplies in exchange for keeping the gas flowing north.

Just as Blair’s values can enable him to curry favour with Israel’s Ariel Sharon, architect of the slaughter in Qibya in 1953 and the 1982 massacres in Sabra and Shatila, so can these same ideals prompt him into friendly dialogue with President Karimov, whose airfields are suddenly strategically important now the bombing of Afghanistan has commenced. Karimov, incidentally, holds 7,000 political prisoners, allows no free press and no political opposition. And Karimov, of course, has other reasons for supporting the anti-Taliban alliance. His corrupt police state is facing bankruptcy and to prop it up he is intent on having a pipeline through Uzbekistan and Afghanistan to a Pakistani port.

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw was castigated by his boss for making a link between Palestine and the recent terrorist attacks in the US when he said that Middle Eastern terrorism was bred “by the anger many people in this region feel at events over the years in Palestine.” Tony Blair was to spend 15 minutes on the phone to Ariel Sharon, trying to calm him down and get him to agree to meet Straw.

US foreign policy aims

Neither will Washington acknowledge its complicity in other areas which have a direct bearing on the present. Whilst Bush is mouthing off about the importance of curbing the funding of terrorist groups and keen to see the Taliban’s overseas assets frozen, it was his own administration, May gone, that scuttled international efforts to clamp down on tax havens, withdrawing support for an OECD initiative that called for more transparency in tax and banking procedures.

Moreover, it was again in May of this year that the Bush administration was giving the Taliban $43 million as an incentive to reduce the cultivation of poppies, knowing full well the Taliban were notorious abusers of human rights and that they harboured terrorists from all over the Islamic world. And there was no criticism of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan who for years gave the Taliban military and financial aid.

For quite some time now, US, German and Russian intelligence services have been alerting Washington to the fact that Osama bin Laden has been trying to acquire weapon’s grade nuclear material, indeed as early as 1993 from Russian outlets with poor controls. What was the response of the Bush administration to this? They proposed cutting funds for a programme aimed at preserving nuclear materials in the former USSR.

Of course all the cant and clever rhetoric and soldier speak of the last few weeks have helped mask what are now becoming the true intentions of the US. The attacks on the US on 11 September are now being used to serve US foreign and domestic policy.

The oil reserves of Central Asia are perhaps second to those of the Middle East and as Afghanistan is geographically located between the Caspian basin and the markets of Japan, China and the Indian sub-continent, we can well see the country’s strategic importance to foreign policy planners wishing to dictate the way in which the region’s oil and gas reserves are utilised to the benefit of the US dollar.

The “war on terrorism” is clearly being used to induce fear and mistrust in the US, and through this fear a justification will be found to curb all manner of civil liberties, increase police powers and military spending.

Furthermore, the current crisis serves to extend US power around the globe and perhaps set a definite agenda for the coming century, the ‘war on terrorism’ serving as a replacement for the Cold War, now that the US has had its anti-communist passport stamped null and void and is desperate to maintain a pretext to assert its hegemonic credentials.

None of which surprises socialists. We are well attuned to the machinations of the elites of powerful countries as they seek to promote the interests of their corporate backers. Though it is no easy task for the uninitiated, we urge our fellow workers to be as vigilant as ever. To believe the arguments of the likes of Bush and Blair is to disarm yourself intellectually – for it is at times like the present, when the media is dancing to the tunes of governments, when the trumpets of jingoism, patriotism and reaction are sounding, that we need to be fighting the war of ideas.

John Bissett

Tooth, Nail and Tiger-Skin (1953)

From the August 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

Britain’s traditional cultural intercourse with Europe has in the past hundred years been supplemented—and possibly, to some extent, supplanted—by a transatlantic inter-traffic. Having no barrier of language to surmount, the exchange between Britain and America has included popular as well as academic culture; aided by radio, talking pictures and, most recently, the long residence of thousands of American servicemen in Britain, the features of everyday life in America have impinged more and more upon British custom.

National culture in America has no long history preceding the mechanization of work and leisure, and so the slick, trashy product is more easily accepted there, while its importation into Britain has frequently caused concern to those who stand as guardians of public taste and morality. The adjective “American,” is often one of disapproval; and never has the disapproval been stronger than for a contemporary art-form which, hard as the moralists try, keeps on growing in popularity—American comics.

American comics are not comic. Their subject- matter is cowboys, crime, horror, adventure, sex and space-travel. Something over fifty million copies are sold every month in the United States, and since the war there has been a growing readership in this country. They are marketed by syndicates which operate on both sides of the Atlantic, and are produced by artists working in assembly-line fashion—one drawing the figures, another doing the lettering, and so on. America calls them “squinkies,” and their stock-in-trade is beatings, bludgeonings and fee faw fums.

The beginnings of strip drawings are ancient Egyptian rock tombs have sets of pictures recording the phases of wrestling bouts and acrobatic feats. The modern comic strip began in the American popular press near the end of the nineteenth century and, until recent years, drew its material almost wholely from workaday and domestic life; the awful child, the henpecked husband and the pert stenographer were its dramatis personae. With humour as the chief intention, the technique and conventions of the strip were perfected.

It was during the great depression that humour gave way to adventure, suspense and muscle-parade; possibly everyday life was too grim to be funny any longer. Tarzan and Superman took over, and the comics turned to worlds where nobody asked: “Brother, can you spare a dime?” The squinkies were born. Their theme was action, and they were uninhibited in portraying it; the war stimulated them to greater extravagances.

The aim of the squinkie artist is to create arresting, vigorous movement and easily recognizable character-types; the limitation of the small squares—and part of them is taken up by the speech “balloons’’—prohibits fastidiousness or subtlety. Technical quality varies considerably, from slick, stylish work to that of talentless amateurs. All characters are clearly labelled. Villains have black hair and thin moustaches, scientists are lean and bespectacled, and heroes have a superabundance of muscle (Ka’anga, Lord of the Jungle, has calf muscles slightly larger than his head). Heroines are wasp-waisted, but otherwise pneumatic.

Musical comedy costume is everyday wear in the squinkie world. Janga, Flower of the Wilds, Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, and Tiger Girl all appear in chic animal-skin swimsuits, while Dara of the Vikings prefers a two-piece, with helmet. The jungle men keep to trunks, of course, and the skymen—Superman, Captain Marvel and the rest—go about in long red underwear. There are rigid conventions of speech, too. In the jungle and other far away places, including outer space, they use archaic English, while all spies talk with strong foreign accents. Girls in danger have to scream “Eeek!” and villains coming to their inevitable sticky ends are obliged to shout “Aarghhh!”

These are the superficial conventions of the American comics. They present, for the most part, fantasy worlds. Into these, however, they project beliefs and customs of the actual world; thus their real content is not in their local colour but in their themes, and carries a much more significant set of conventions.

The simplest, broadest and most obvious of these conventions is that good—which is equated with law and patriotism—must always triumph over its opposite. The squinkies are as determined about this as all other juvenile literature, but infinitely more ruthless; when Captain Thunder or Tiger Girl grapples with evil, the end justifies any means. In the crime strips, the violences of the gangsters and killers are exceeded by those of the police, while the various jungle lords and space conquerors manhandle wrongdoers in ways which make all-in wrestling look soft stuff.

The only circumstances in which good does not always win by a knock-out are those in which unearthly powers are involved. The squinkies have great respect for the supernatural, and make it score freely off the lay population. “The Monster from the Pit," for example, a shaggy, shark-toothed immortal from Transylvania who changes into a New York policeman by day and goes out for blood at night, is last seen taking a large bite at his would-be slayer’s throat after a graveyard fracas. The postscript asks: “How many more lives will be snuffed out by the evil Grakhu . . . before he is once more sent to the pit of evil which spawned him? None can tell.” The moral clearly is that witches, warlocks, boggarts and long-leggity beasties are a different thing altogether.

If supernatural beings are the highest class of villains, foreigners are the lowest. To be foreign in the squinkies is to be a suspicious character. Spies and saboteurs are easy game, while the perversity of murderers, mad doctors and jungle marauders is explained from their lack of fluent English. Easterners are horrific unless they are the faithful servants of jungle princesses, in which case they are simpletons, or unless they are young women, in which case they are exotic but sinister. The credulous reader can hardly avoid being persuaded that the English-speaking nations breed the best types.

Love is virtually taboo in the squinkies, but they have a high sex content The exploits of the heroines lead them into comprehensive displays of their startling universal physique. Senorita Rio, a Government counter-spy, spends much of her working time being up-ended. Most of the jungle nobility have mates, whom they continually rescue and occasionally call "my love.” Much of the paraphernalia of perversion—inter-woman fights, whips and so on—finds places in the comics, and brings to mind that their era of popularity has also been that of the Hadley Chase school of novelists.

Since their introduction to this country, squinkies have been continually under fire. Educationalists, clergy and the press have united to denounce them as a danger to morals, an incentive to mental laziness, and a cause of delinquency. As has been remarked, that has not reduced their circulation and may even have increased it. Obviously, there is something about American comics. What cultural and social significance have they? And are the charges against them true?

In the hands of accomplished or thoughtful writers and artists, the least agreeable subject-matter can be presented to some value. That cannot be said for the comics. Their situations, dialogue and characterization are crude; their drawing is never better, and usually worse, than competent; they are badly printed in gaudy colours on the cheapest paper. On their intrinsic merits, they could be written off as contemptible or laughable, or—more correctly—classified with lavatory-wall graffiti. Their paramount element, however, is one to which the lavatory wall never pretends: they present ideals and patterns of behaviour.

The principal ideals promoted by the comics have already been noted. Summarized, they are that good always wins in the end, the end justifies any means, being good means being strong, foreigners are nearly always bad. the supernatural is to be respected, and women are to be judged in terms of physical desirability. None of these is a new or unconventional proposition, though the loudest cry against the comics is that they are subversive to morality. These are, in fact, the commonly accepted standards of our society at the present time; it is significant that the last war, which established in public consciousness that ends justify' means, also brought forth the squinkies. The ethics of the strip are the ethics of dropping atom-bombs on Japanese cities. It is not a case of saying that the brutalities of the comics are insignificant compared with the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, though that is true; the important point is that the morality which accepted the atom-bombs as regrettable but necessary means for a “good” cause to subdue an “evil” one is precisely the same as that of the comic, down to the inclusion of such details as the anthropologists’ explanation that the Japanese are not quite the same as other people—scarcely human, in fact.

The behaviour-pattern of the comics, therefore, is an effect primarily and not a cause of modifications in morality, and—more important still—the modifications themselves are produced by the ever-changing stream of social necessity. Morality is the scheme of behaviour needed to safeguard the institutions of a social group; our society, in which the nation-state is constantly preoccupied with war and its preoccupations, has had to modify its scheme to meet the needs of increased belligerency.

The question of sexual morality is not distinct from that of morality generally. The family, the institution which it protects in our society, has in recent years weakened as a coherent and durable group; the result has been a sharp slackening in the formerly rigid code of sexual morals. The carnality of the comics mirrors rather than promotes this trend; in fact, there are few popular papers and magazines which do not deem it necessary for their circulations' sake to titillate their readers' sexual imaginations. The juxtaposition of venery and violence in the comics has additional significance. Popular fiction and the films show an increasing addiction to this sort of subject-matter; its emergence as a dominant theme in the past has preceded the ends of social epochs—the decline of Rome, the seventeenth century in England, and the years before the revolution in Russia.

The anger against American comics, then, is anger against the changing conventions of our time—in some cases, perhaps, the rage of Caliban at seeing his face in the glass. It remains to consider the other charge against them, that they are encouragements to mental laziness. If this were true, it would apply also to the popular press and most of the agencies for supplying information and entertainment. The publishers of comics, like the press and the entertainment industries, give the public what the public can cope with. The truth is that the education given to a great number of working people provides them with neither the verbal skill nor the critical outlook necessary to serious reading. They are equipped to read comics, tabloid newspapers, simple-phrased stories, and very little else. A great deal is heard about the near-illiteracy of Army recruits (one hears nothing, however, of illiteracy among young women—presumably because they are not conscripted for anything); their lack of simple verbal mechanics being known, it seems hardly consistent to accuse them of mental laziness because they like comics.

The squinkies, then, are part of the cultural pattern of our time, and reflect its consciousness just as the popular domestic novel reflected that of Victorian England. Their simple function is to provide escape, but their illusory or distant worlds form backgrounds against which the modern morality play is acted; that the morality is brutal and prurient is a comment upon our society, not upon the passing phenomena which mirror it. The exclusion of American comics from this country would mean no loss. Neither, however, would it contribute to the re-establishment of moral standards which are no longer compatible with the driving forces of society, or to an improvement in the literacy of Army recruits. The sincere, worried people who want the comics banned have failed to understand the relationship between a popular art-form and its irreversible social environment; if they could do so, there would be less concern with the rash on the face and more with the organic causes of the malaise of our society.

Robert Barltrop

Slings and Arrows: “Be it ever to humble . . ." (1953)

The Slings and Arrows column from the July 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Be it ever to humble . . ."

Scoffers and cynics sneer when they hear Bishops and sanctimonious politicians talk about the sanctity of the home and the family as the foundation of Christian civilisation. But that they are sincere cannot be doubted even by the most disbelieving. Why else would they live in such comfortable circumstances? Obviously because they believe that if the foundation is right the rest of the edifice must follow suit. Thus, true to their principles and beliefs. Archbishops live in Palaces, politicians in mansions and Stately Homes, Queen in Castles (two), Palaces (three), and Stately Home (one), and dogs, as is fitting and proper, in kennels.

Since there are not sufficient mansions, palaces and castles to go round, we content ourselves with flats, Nissen huts and prefabs. “Mid pleasures and palaces,” wrote a Victorian songster, “though we may roam. Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.” Had he been alive to-day he might have added the words “even if it’s only a dog kennel.”

The New Statesman publishes each week a feature entitled “This England” consisting of extracts from newspapers submitted by readers, which show the lighter and more humorous and eccentric side of what is known as the “British character.” In its issue of the 13th June, 1953, the New Statesman published in this feature the following extract from the Times: 

“For a year a husband and wife have lived in a wooden dog kennel seven feet long by five feet wide at Ystradmynach, Glamorgan. The kennel is one of four in the corner of a disused allotment. Three are occupied by dogs and the fourth by Mrs. Dorothy May Norman and her husband, an engineer at a local power station.”

Reference to the Times showed that far from them being examples of British eccentricity this unfortunate couple lived in a kennel from sheer necessity, and not from choice. To journalists fond of writing about the glories of the welfare state and with comfortable homes in Hampstead or Bloomsbury and well appointed offices in High Holborn, the idea of people living in a dog kennel may be a joke. But each to his taste. Perhaps the juxtaposition of this item with articles by Mr. John Strachey showing where Marx was wrong, and that it was possible by legislation and “counterpressure ” to offset the evils that Marx denounced, may have given them cause for laughter which escape us.

According to the Times, notice to quit has been served on this couple and soon they will have nowhere to live, not even a dog kennel. But perhaps one of the Bishops or politicians may invite them to share their homes till further arrangements can be made, and thus keep the foundation of our Christian Civilisation in being.

* * *

Three Cheers for the Red, White and Blue

Those, who since the last war have watched the manner in which British capitalism has become almost a colonial dependancy under the hegemony of the United States, might well expect that our foremost leaders would have objected and raised some form of protest. Instead, most of them have actually supported dependence on America. There was no one to demand the return of independence to this once mighty Power, until Coronation Day, when appropriately enough the following clarion call was issued:

“How the Yankees now parading London's streets must laugh when they see multitudes of Union Jacks. It is Britain’s national flag. Once it was meant to symbolise our power and independence. To-day the Yankees determine British policy.

"THEY dominate our Army, Navy and Air Force. 

"THEY tell us with whom we may trade and with whom we may not trade.

"THEY cause our lads to be killed in their war in Korea . . . If those in Westminster Abbey were real patriots they would help to send every Yankee back home. . . .”

Who is this leader who on Coronation day tried to imbue the nation with a sense of patriotism and national independence? None other than that staunch defender of the Union Jack, that heir to the traditions of Palmerston, Wellington, Drake and Raleigh, that paragon of patriotism, Mr. Harry Pollitt. There are of course several shortcomings in this appeal, but one cannot have everything. Suffice it that the clarion call has been made, and if Harry does not tell us what to do with “our” Army, Navy and Airforce, when the Americans are made to hand them back; well we must find out for ourselves. And as for being allowed to trade with whom we please, that would be wonderful, except that we can’t quite think of anything we have worth trading. The most interesting feature of Pollitt’s call to action, is, of course, the use of the collective pronoun. It serves to remind us of what “we” have lost by our dependence on the Americans.

In the first Elizabethan era, its most famous writer wrote a play in which a clarion call appears which has rallied Britons for three centuries, and has immortalised the hero who uttered it. Is it too much to ask that some playwright of the present Elizabethan era will do the same by Harry Pollitt? We hope not, and we feel sure that when that call is heard throughout our land there will be none who will not feel uplifted. "Cry, God for Harry, England and St. Joe!”

* * *

Anti-Americanism

There is a more sinister aspect to the grotesque posturings of Harry Pollitt and the Communist Party. Since the erstwhile Allies quarrelled over the postwar settlement, the Communist Party has indulged in stirring up anti-American prejudices. They refer to “Yank” in almost the same manner as Fascists refer to “Yids.” Should some unfortunate girl be assaulted by an American soldier, then it is headlined in the Daily Worker. But should Americans give large contributions to flood relief funds then one requires a microscope to find any reference to it. In their spoken propaganda they harp on this anti-yank theme with the same assiduity as Mosley once tried to work up prejudice against Jews.

There is no baseness from which the Communist Party will shrink in its effort to follow in the footsteps of their masters in the Kremlin. But they had better be careful. Not for the first time, Moscow might suddenly change policy, catching Harry Pollitt and his friends on the wrong foot, again not for the first time. Then, in their efforts to catch up with the change they might trip and break their political necks. An event which would be unmourned by all who know the Communist Party for what it is.

It was said of Shakespeare that “he touched nothing he did not adorn.” Of Mr. Pollitt and his Party it might truly be said that they touch nothing they do not degrade.

S.A.

50 Years Ago: Anti-Americanism (2003)

The 50 Years Ago column from the July 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is a more sinister aspect to the grotesque posturings of Harry Pollitt and the Communist Party. Since the erstwhile Allies quarrelled over the postwar settlement, the Communist Party has indulged in stirring up anti-American prejudices. They refer to “Yank” in almost the same manner as Fascists refer to “Yids.” Should some unfortunate girl be assaulted by an American soldier, then it is headlined in the Daily Worker. But should Americans give large contributions to flood relief funds then one requires a microscope to find any reference to it. In their spoken propaganda they harp on this anti-Yank theme with the same assiduity as Mosley once tried to work up prejudice against Jews.

There is no baseness from which the Communist Party will shrink in its effort to follow in the footsteps of their masters in the Kremlin. But they had better be careful. Not for the first time, Moscow might suddenly change policy, catching Harry Pollitt and his friends on the wrong foot, again not for the first time. Then, in their efforts to catch up with the change they might trip and break their political necks. An event which would be unmourned by all who know the Communist Party for what it is.

It was said of Shakespeare that “he touched nothing he did not adorn.” Of Mr. Pollitt and his Party it might truly be said that they touch nothing they do not degrade.

[From a column by “S.A.”, Socialist Standard, July 1953]

Life and Times: A letter to my son (2025)

The Life and Times column from the January 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The ‘Life and Times’ column I wrote for this year’s April Socialist Standard had the title Horror in the Middle East. Choosing Sides and talked about the support that has built up for the Palestinians in the Gaza conflict and the widespread condemnation of Israel for its role in the fighting. It asked whether this could be attributed to the oldest hatred – antisemitism. Its conclusion was that it was not antisemitism that underlies it but rather the association of Israel with the United States and ‘the anti-Americanism on the left of Western politics which dates back a long way’.

The column gave rise to discussion, disagreement and controversy on the Socialist Party’s various online forums and, when I showed it to my son, not a member of the Party, he didn’t have an entirely positive reaction either. He attributed the sympathy and support the Palestinians are getting not mainly to anti-Americanism but rather to the vast amount of media coverage being given to this particular conflict. We discussed this and agreed to disagree. But then a little later I was going through some papers of my own, and I came across a copy of a letter I had written to him over 20 years ago, shortly after the 9/11 attack. It struck me how related what happened then was to what is happening now, even if in different countries and with different protagonists. What do I mean by this? This may become clear if I reproduce parts of that letter:

‘Since you brought up the present world political situation yesterday, just an amplification here.

The virulent anti-Americanism that is prevalent on the left has a historical, if entirely irrational, origin. When Russia emerged as the champion of ‘socialism’ after the Russian revolution, throughout the world those who were on the left supported it. So bewitched were they by what was largely rhetoric that, even when Stalin murdered millions in the 30s, made a pact with Hitler at the beginning of the second world war and later set up ruthless dictatorships in all the countries of Eastern Europe, in those peoples’ eyes Russia still remained the ‘homeland’ of socialism, to be supported at all costs. The consequence was that, when, after the second world war, the world divided into two capitalist camps, led by Russia (state capitalist) on one side and America (private capitalist) on the other (the so-called ‘Cold War’), the great villain for the left was America. In an unshakeable double standards mentality, the Russian abuses were ignored or apologised for (eg invasion of Afghanistan, setting up of client dictator states elsewhere – Korea, Syria, Angola, etc.), and all similar actions by the Americans were seen as evil rapacious acts designed to extend and further American power, which they of course were. So strong was the emotional attachment to Russia that even those left-wing people and groups who criticised it in various ways and even in some cases recognised it as a form of capitalism still hung on to it at bottom as fundamentally being on the right side. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the left no longer has a country to cling on to (unless Cuba or, for some, China), but what has remained as a legacy of former times is the hatred of America as the symbol of world capitalism (not that most of them even know what the word means) and the epitome of evil.

The other things that have remained among left-wingers is a continuing opposition to those regimes or countries that America backed during the Cold War, especially Israel, and support for those countries that Russia backed during that period, especially those that have one-party states (eg, Syria, Palestine, Cuba). Ironically that rhetoric has now been bent to the service of fundamentalist Islam. If, historically, wars in the modern world have been struggles for markets, raw materials, trade routes and strategic positions, what you have here, in fundamentalist Islam, is the ideological product of ‘normal’ wars fought in the past and, in fact, much more difficult to fight than a normal war. In his writings Marx continually talked about ‘the contradictions of capitalism’. He usually meant phenomena like the existence of poverty among plenty, or of opposing factions within the owning class of a country causing political instability. And here is another (though obviously unforeseeable in Marx’s time) ‘contradiction of capitalism’, the military power that usually goes with economic power having difficulty in prevailing over the force of a religious ideology which should belong to previous centuries. Though nothing can justify the plane bombing in New York, it’s fatal to get drawn in and say you support one side or another.

At bottom it’s probably not a problem that can be solved, at least not in the short term, and even if it somehow does get solved or alleviated, it will tend to create further unforeseen problems. So whatever people say, it is in the end a problem for those who have created the breeding ground for it in the first case, those who rule.’

So how is what happened in 2001 (and the period immediately following) related to what is happening in the Middle East today? Well, these events show us how phenomena in capitalism have a habit broadly of repeating themselves. It shows the tendency the system engenders in people to take one side against another in a conflict failing to recognise the underlying causes of the conflict. Then there is also that ‘instinctive’ reaction of opposition by the left and other so-called ‘progressive’ forces to any association with the United States. And there’s also the inevitable failure of that reaction to result in any positive outcome for any of those caught up in the conflict. So the massive demonstrations we saw following 9/11 against the Western policy of invading Iraq and Afghanistan had not the slightest impact on events, and, once the invasions had taken place, the opposition to them faded into the background. In the same way, the current large-scale movements in Western countries in favour of the Palestinians and against Israel will die down as the conflict there takes its course and the outcome is decided by the governments that manage the capitalist system, an outcome which will be largely dependent on the economic and military strength of the different sides.

For this reason, were I to write another letter to my son now about the current conflict in the Middle East, the points I would make would be oh so similar to those I made 20+ years ago when yet another of capitalism’s crises had exploded and people were being drawn into the futile activity of supporting one side against the other.

Howard Moss

Life & Times: Horror in the Middle East. Choosing sides (2024)

The Life and Times column from the April 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the community centre where I play bowls, on a Thursday evening the room next to the bowls hall is used for meetings by the local branch of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). They have talks, show films, engage in discussion, and I’ve often thought that I might be better occupied in with them discussing politics rather than playing bowls next door. But I’ve never done that, and recently, when I looked through the window on the door from their meeting room to the bowls hall, I was all the more tempted. I noticed that, though they only had a small attendance, there were banners, posters and leaflets about the current Israel-Hamas conflict strewn everywhere. They carried predictable slogans such as Stop the Genocide, Free Palestine, Stop the Attacks in Gaza, Defeat Islamophobia.

Anti-semitism?

I didn’t attend the meeting, but I did look in to buy a copy of their newspaper, the Socialist Worker. And all that made me reflect not just on Israel and Gaza but also on the attitude of left-wing organisations like the SWP towards the situation there, on the fact that they are all, without exception, staunchly supportive of the Arab side and profoundly hostile to Israel. From many quarters it is being said that this is a form of the oldest hatred, anti-semitism. But I find that hard to accept, since I know personally a number of the people who attend those meetings in the community centre and nothing I know about them suggests to me they are anti-semitic. In the same way, I find it hard to accept the claim made recently that London has become a ‘no-go zone for Jews’ during weekend pro-Palestinian marches. I have observed these marches at first hand myself on two occasions and, despite the anti-Israel slogans, I have seen no display of anti-semitism. I don’t of course doubt that some of those on the marches who are Muslims do not distinguish between Israel and people of the Jewish faith, nor do I doubt that many others in society with anti-semitic prejudices are using the situation to indulge their hatred of Jews. But nothing I saw among the large number of likely non-Muslims on the demonstrations, despite their obvious anti-Israel fervour, led me, Jewish by birth and upbringing as I am but of no religious faith, to attribute to them anti-semitic motives.

Crime scenes

But if it’s not anti-semitism, what is it? What makes them (and the left generally) want to give such unique prominence to horror and injustice in this one particular situation rather than talk about any of the other comparable or manifestly worse situations that exist in many other parts of the globe?

A recent issue of the Socialist Standard gave voice to this very question. It featured on its front cover the caption ‘Crime Scene Investigation’ and listed six horror scenarios taking place in the world at the moment – Yemen, Gaza, Ukraine, Congo, Syria and Iraq. It could have listed many other examples of groups of people, many of them minorities, being horribly oppressed and downtrodden (eg, Kurds in Turkey, Rohingya in Myanmar, Uyghurs in China, civil war in Sudan). Yet we see no particular protest about these scenarios by the groups and individuals demonstrating about Gaza. So why the focus on Israel alone? And why, when a situation like the current one arises, do they harden their already existing anti-Israeli stance and dedicate themselves to campaigning solely against that country and its government?

Anti-Americanism

As previously indicated, I see no evidence for anti-semitism as the motive. I attribute it rather to the anti-Americanism on the left of Western politics which dates back a long way and, despite all changes in circumstances, still survives. It goes back to the old nostalgic belief that there was somehow something good and positive about the first country to call itself ‘communist’ or ‘socialist’, ie, the old Soviet Union, and therefore more or less automatically something bad and negative about those countries and their governments that opposed it, and in particular the United States which had the most power and influence and to a large extent dominated and dictated the policies of the Western world. America was therefore the major enemy of the left and, despite everything that has happened since the end of the Soviet Union, that remains as a residual, almost visceral, feeling on the left and resurfaces with a vengeance whenever a situation arises in which a country is seen as being supported by the United States or is, in any sense, one of its clients. And this is the position of Israel today. And so, almost instinctively, without anti-semitism needing to enter into the equation, Israel and whatever action its government may take has to be opposed by those on the left because in it actions the hand of the American oppressor is seen.

So, no anti-Houthi demonstrations despite the fact that the Houthi terrorise the Yemen, operating stringent policies of repression against all who oppose them and against women and gay people; no demonstrations against Russia’s bombing of civilians in Ukraine; no demonstrations against mass slaughter and rape in the Congo; no demonstrations against China’s brutal treatment of the Uyghurs; and no demonstrations against the vicious slaughter and expulsion of the Rohingya by the military government in Myanmar. The common denominator of all these situations is that there is no obvious American hand in or support for the repression taking place.

Socialism as it really is

This is the kind of thing I would have tried to say if I’d attended that SWP meeting in my community centre. I would not have accused those present of anti-semitism, since I do not believe them to be anti-semitic, but I would have challenged them to examine their motives for such a disproportionate focus on only one of capitalism’s crime scenes compared to the very many others. And I would have invited them to consider joining with the Socialist Party to campaign not for better or ‘fairer’ conditions within capitalism (which at bottom is what they do) but for getting rid of the system that gives rise to those conditions and replacing it by a leaderless, borderless, moneyless world of voluntary cooperation and free access to all goods and service based on the principle of from each according to ability to each according to need – which is what ‘socialism’ really is.

Howard Moss

The peril of moralism (2007)

From the August 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The Guardian (5 June) ran a story by George Monbiot about pharmaceutical companies’ promotion of baby formula in the Philippines. The article, together with readers’ responses, is online at http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2095325,00.html.

As in other underdeveloped countries, the majority of the population in the Philippines has access only to polluted water. As formula has to be mixed with water, its widespread use instead of breastfeeding kills thousands of children every year. Nevertheless, the corporations promote it in the most ruthless fashion. For instance, they encourage their saleswomen to dress as nurses to gain the confidence of young mothers. The Philippines government has tried to restrict the promotion of baby formula, but the Pharmaceutical & Healthcare Association of the Philippines (PHAP), representing the manufacturers and backed by the US government and Chamber of Commerce, has led a campaign to thwart the attempt, using lobbying, diplomatic pressure, legal action and (apparently) targeted assassinations.

All this is, indeed, horrifying, and indignation is a natural and healthy reaction. But against who or what should we direct our indignation?

Irrelevance of nationality

Often enough, indignation expresses itself as national hatred, typically as anti-Americanism. America Puts Profit Above Babies’ Lives – runs the headline over the print version of the article. Of course, the American government and American business do put profit above babies’ lives (and above everything else). But the same is true of other countries. Ordinary Americans tend to feel that accusations against “America” are aimed at them too and respond in like manner: “You British are just as bad!”

Nothing could be more irrelevant to the issue than nationality. The first target of activists opposing the promotion of baby formula in underdeveloped countries was Nestlé – a Swiss company. The members that PHAP represents include European, Australian, and Japanese as well as American companies. They are equally ruthless.

Bad guy approach

But blaming “America” – or the Jews or the Japanese, perhaps, or some other nation or ethnic group — is a form of the broader phenomenon called moralism. Alternatively, we might call it “the bad guy approach.” Track down the “baby killers,” the evil people responsible for the evil deeds and do something about them. Do what exactly? Here things generally get fuzzy, but one Guardian reader has an answer: “The world right now needs another Revolution like the Bastille when all these greedy, unprincipled, corrupt and criminal politicians/industrialists are rounded up and are summarily executed.”

That should do the trick! Or would it? The “revolutionary” remedy has already been tried – in France, Russia, China and other countries. And yet there are still plenty of “bad guys” around, in those countries as elsewhere. Why should more shootings help? The more adaptable “bad guys” survive the “revolutions” by switching to the winning side in good time, and any who do get shot are readily replaced. What we have here is obviously an expression of extreme feeling, a fantasy of revenge, rather than a carefully thought-out solution. The moralistic approach stirs up emotions so powerful that thinking is paralysed.

Evil deeds without evil people

Really evil people are few and far between. They are not the crux of the matter. Most of the people involved in making and selling harmful products are not truly or intrinsically evil. The saleswoman dressed as a nurse to sell more baby formula and earn her commission, the Chinese tobacco farmer, the Afghan poppy grower, the armaments worker making land mines that will maim and kill children as they play – they are all doing evil things. Their deeds are evil, but they themselves are not, for they have to make a living somehow. They have to feed and clothe their own children.

Even the corporation executives who organize the evil deeds are not doing evil as a free and deliberate choice. They are required by law to do whatever is necessary to maximize profits for their shareholders. They could, of course, give up their positions and join the working class, but you can understand why so few of them would want to do that! The shareholders, in turn, do not feel obliged to concern themselves with the morality of the businesses that provide their dividends. Everywhere we look we find moral ambiguity. Evil is certainly being done, but no one is clearly to blame – only the social arrangement that we refer to as a system.

Some of us are lucky enough to come by a livelihood that allows us the luxury of a clean conscience (more or less). Some are not so lucky. The appropriate target of our indignation is the system that places people in such excruciating dilemmas, penalises altruistic impulses, rewards ruthless egoism, and inexorably turns “good guys” (or potential “good guys”) into “bad guys.” It is only by understanding the system that we can devise a way of freeing people to heed the voice of their conscience and freely contribute their talents to society, without thereby jeopardising their families’ survival and wellbeing.

Stefan

30 Years of Scottish Bombast (1953)

From the July-August 1953 issue of The Western Socialist

The political scene in Britain (particularly Scotland) to-day, provides, in some important respects, a striking contrast to that of 30 years ago. To describe and analyse the intervening years would be an inquiry into decay and decline; a study in bilge and bombast; a picture, sad in itself, of promise without performance.

It would indeed be a journey through a period littered dismally with the bones and residue of movements which got their sustenance from the energies and hopes of many thousands of working people.

To-day, in Glasgow, and the industrial belt of which it is the centre, one meets many men and women, now despairing cynics, who were, thirty years ago, enthusiastic, selfless workers in the various movements.

Then, thirty odd years ago, as now, war-time conditions were slowly changing into normal capitalist conditions of “peace”: rationing was giving place to the accustomed sway of the purse, and a greater variety of goods were appearing in shop windows to tease and tantalize working-class housewives. Another obvious feature in common, a natural aftermath of the long war years of unbridled violence and deceit, is an increase in crimes of violence, rape and fraud. And, of course, what is delightfully described as “delinquent youth.” In other words, the behaviour of young men and women, growing up in their most malleable years in a world of organized, colossal murder; whose playgrounds were air-raid shelters and bombed buildings; who accepted as natural the “blackout” with all its inevitable framework.

The drift away from organized religion is ever more marked today and it could perhaps be said that highly organized gambling — particularly the “football pools” — with their billion-to-one chance of winning £75,000, have ousted religion from its former supremacy as a social dope and bulwark of capitalism.

“Tomorrow? Why, tomorrow I may be myself with £75,000” is a faith more potent, and supplanting than of the Sacred Articles and Beatitudes.

A striking commentary on Capitalism is the fact that the gambling industry fast rivals others in order of importance. And that in this retreat of theology, its hired and paid (evidently underpaid) laborers are quisling to the football pools, as scrutiny of the prize winners lists sometimes reveals.

Here in Glasgow, 30 years ago, events had earned the area the totally unjustified title of the “Red Clyde.” The Communist Party had recently been formed out of a host of individuals and movements conspicuous by their sound and fury, and by their lack of Socialist understanding — “Armed insurrection,” “Direct Action,” “Minority movements,” “Collapse of Capitalism,” “Anti-Parliamentarianism,” were some of the slogans shouted by many a man now seated comfortably in Parliament. Some indeed now Peers of the Realm.

The Labor and Independent Parties — then part of the same organization had their stronghold here on Clydeside and in the landslide of 1924 when a record number of I.L.P. and Labor Members of Parliament were elected, scores of thousands of elated workers assembled in the centre of the city to see the conquerors off to London to capture the bastions of Imperial Britain. It seemed to many excited workers that the world was theirs and the late James Maxton M.P., confirmed this impression by declaring “The working class is now the ruling class, so why should they go in rags?” Everywhere in the area. Labor and I.L.P. orators were pushing their themes of Nationalization. Everywhere, there were meetings, demonstrations, United Movements, “New Worlds,” “New Perspectives.” “Revolutionary situations” were perpetually conjured into verbal being.

Joining in the unholy chorus, the Communist Party added its own nostrums of “Direct Action” and “Soviet Power.”

Elements of DeLeonism contributed their proportionate share with their Industrial Unionism and wild talk of “taking and holding the means of Life.”

The Glasgow Branch of the SPGB had just been formed by a literal handful of men. Amidst trouble, difficulties, most of them unemployed, meeting in hovels in which they lived, in the jungle of wind and bombast surrounding them, they presented the case for Socialism. A case which at first, largely met with sneers and ridicule. and on many an occasion, with violent measures being taken against the couple of speakers. Today, what is the general political and industrial position in contrast to that of then?

In the industrial field, the open allegiance of the prominent Trade Union officials to not only Labor Government but the present Tory one exceeds anything of 30 years ago. Indeed, Trade Unions threats to become mere adjuncts of Governments and the employing class instead of what their pioneers intended them to be—organs of working class struggle. Insolent admonitions to work harder and forego wage-claims abound from every quarter of the Trade Union movement. “More production for the export markets” is now an official Trade Union slogan. Here and there, of course, the pinch of the cost of living and the increased tempo of production force workers to take action but, in the main, such episodes meet with, not only the disapproval of the Government, but with the opposition of the official Trade Union movement.

At Conference after Conference, spokesmen ruminate on problems of national self-sufficiency, of capital investment, of the problems of British Capitalism in the markets of the world; on anything and everything except working-class interests.

At the Scottish Trade Union Congress held in Rothesay in April of this year, a Mr. T. O’Brien, M.P. who is chairman of the British T.U.C. delivered himself of the following piece of unvarnished nonsense:

  "There were workers who thought of efficiency as something to do with the boss, but nothing to do with themselves. I say this to all of them — if they persist in such attitudes for long, then all they will have to live on will be their illusions. And illusions are a poor currency in World Markets. We are right in a period when we can’t afford inefficiency in management or low productivity in the workshops. Whether industry is privately or publicly controlled or owned it is everybody's job to help the nation to earn its living. These are not class issues. They are the plain unvarnished economic facts." Daily Express, April 13, 1953.

An even more penetrating and squalid insight into the functions of the Labor Party and its allies — the official Trade Union Movement — during the so-called boom years, was given by the last Labor Chancellor of the Exchequer in his Budget speech reported by the National Press on April 10, 1951:

  "During the past few years of labor scarcity and sellers’ market, workers had been in a position of unexampled strength of bargaining power. Had they considered only their own immediate interests they could have pressed their advantage home."

Little wonder the more sober-minded Capitalist press greeted somewhat ruefully the narrow victory of Churchill and his Tories in Oct., 1951. Apprehensive forecasts of subsequent widespread industrial disorder were speedily proven wrong. Trade Union leaders like O’Brien, Deakin, Lowther and others were not slow in assuring the new Government of their support. So that, shortly after, Mr. Churchill could gurgle happily the famous understatement, “four-fifths of both parties were agreed on four-fifths of their programs. ”

In Scottish Labor Party circles this process goes on apace, so that a Mr. G. McAllister writing in a Labor Party paper the Glasgow “Forward” could opine that while Churchill stood for 10 per cent Socialism in the national economy, Mr. Morrison, the second in command of the Labor Party, stood for 15 per cent and that the new bogey man of Wall Street — Mr. Aneurin Bevan — stood for somewhat more!

The same “Forward” had an article recently by a prominent Labor M.P., Mr. Arthur Woodburn on “What do we mean by Socialism” wherein with a nonchalance worthy of the Stalinists, he threw overboard the theories of half-a-century .— “Planning and not Nationalization is the cornerstone of Socialism.” In the usual run of reformist politicians, not a word of apology does he express for a lifetime of sedulously identifying Socialism with Nationalization, the aspirations and energies of humble workers, lending their support to the Labor Party, do not appear in his balance sheet.

The formerly mighty I.L.P. now shrunk almost to nothingness, still maintains a precarious existence. Boasting sometimes of how it differs from the stinking organization which preyed, vulture-like, upon the workers for so many years, it reveals the same old lousy story of reform. With its divisions of Pacifism, Quakerism, Catholicism, Secularism, jostling side by side with a counterfeit Marxism, it presents the same old mixture of confusion and futility. And even more productive of sardonic comment is the ease and facility with which prominent members of the I.L.P. can leave the I.L.P. for the more comfortable and secure Labor Party.

It would, perhaps, be illuminating to digress temporarily in order to examine briefly a prime and significant example of this phenomenon.

In the noisy days of 1923-24 onwards, Gorbals, a constituency in Glasgow of world renown (or notoriety) was represented, on behalf of the I.L.P., by a Mr. G. Buchanan. His seat embraced the most squalid slums in Europe, possibly the world. Rows and rows of the most terrifying, rat-infested slums. Lice-ridden, the habitat of millions of bugs, with a population of the most diverse in Scotland, where Scottish, Irish, Jewish (from all parts of Europe) and Indian workers lived literally on top of one another, it had, and sadly still has, the greatest infantile mortality in Europe. An area where criminals were bred, where gangsters and bullies were ten-a-penny and yet withal thousands of men and women retain their dignity and integrity.

In short, a working-class constituency, par excellence.

Mr. Buchanan, who held the seat for twenty years with one of the biggest majorities in Britain, and on the basis of “decent homes,” “high wages” and all the other vote catching nostrums, decided blandly around 1945 to leave, in between elections, naturally, the I.L.P. for the Labor Party.

Regardless of the blazing fact that his constituents were still in in the company of lice and vermin, still in the same old filthy slums, with their infants still dying in greater numbers than anywhere else, he transferred his allegiance. Although the men and women who had supported him all through the years were still exploited, oppressed and insulted, exacerbated by years of bereavement, sacrifice and hardship in the years of war, and although he had won the seat in 1935 in the teeth of Labor Party opposition which seemed to indicate their preference for the I.L.P. Without even going through the motions of consulting his electors, he joined the Labor Party. Since then he has fared much better than the workers of Gorbals. He is now Chairman of the National Assistance Board, which, after a Means Test, relieves the poor and needy (over 2 million cases in 1952). The remuneration of the Chairman of the Board is £5,000 per year. He, McGovern, Carmichael, F. Brockway and many others left the I.L.P. and joined the Labor Party when the writing appeared on the wall for the I.LP.

For the first 30 months of the Labor Government elected in July 1945, the Communist Party supported the Government. This support, of course, was directly in line with Soviet foreign policy, best seen in all its naked callousness by the statement of the late demi-god Stalin in Crimea 1945: “The alliance between the Soviet Union, the United States and Great Britain, is based not on casual and transient motives, but on vitally important and long-standing interests.” This also led the Communist Party to oppose every strike during this period. For example, the strike of the Grimethorpe miners in Sept., 1947, was denounced by the Party as a “stab in the back of the working class.” Their General Secretary, Mr. Pollitt, who had in his pamphlet “Questions and Answers,” 1946, so obsequiously re-echoed Mr. Stalin’s Crimean declaration, however, in December 1947, in his report to his members was compelled to abandon as unreal, his own and his semi-divine leaders prognostication by stating:

  “Because of the United States and British policy of refusing to co-operate with the Soviet Union, the differences have deepened to the point where today there are two world camps. It is necessary that important changes be made in C.P. policy.”

Thereupon, the C.P. attacked the Labor Government until its defeat in 1951, The attack, naturally, was mainly in the area of foreign affairs. In recent months the C.P. has reached the depths of nationalistic slime in its anti-American policy. Defenders of native culture against Wall Street; on guard against Yankee music, literature and films; assailants even of the “crew” hair-cut and the “drape” suit; disdainful of the crepe soled shoes, coat shirts and ties of America, they present a sordid spectacle.

Starting from the stellar heights of “Go home Yank” in which they suggested in a front page article of the “Daily Worker” that an inebriated G. I. who had allegedly misappropriated a crucifix from “an old Saxon Church,” should get life imprisonment; rising to dizzy cosmic heights of a knight-like solicitude and concern for the sexual virtue of the innocent, unspoilt British womanhood beset by threats and wiles, by the dollars, nylons and other merchandise of the PX of the licentious American soldiery, they have descended to the noisome depths of “Let Britain Arise" 1952, in which Mr. H. Pollitt proposes as a serious measure: “That no foreign worker shall be employed while a British worker is unemployed or on short-time." In other words: “Workers of the world — divide — you have nothing to gain but your jobs.’’ Or: “Did your mother come from Ireland? or Italy? or Spain? or America?"

Arguing “that if we have to have a Coronation, let’s make it a British one — untainted by the products of Broadway or Hollywood," agitating for a lowering of the cost of production of labor-power, squealing about the need for “East-West Trades,’’ defending every tortuous twist of Kremlin policy from Vishinsky’s “No” to Molotov’s “Yes,’’ bleating about Scottish, Irish and Welsh Home Rule; moaning about the “sell out of Britain to Wall Street,’’ the C.P. of Great Britain is in truth, indeed, an object of contempt in the eyes of workers with even a spark of working-class principles.

The small Trotskyist party, the R.C.P. were compelled to “liquidate” when their counterparts, the C.P. became slightly critical of the Labor Government. Its self-appointed leadership is now in the comfortable bosom of the Labor Party. All its noise and its innumerable and uncomprehensible theses, its fury and bombast, now muted to a safer and more respectable key.

The Scottish Nationalists, with no real roots in the working class, still shout the funny slogan of “Scotland for the Scots.” Some of their misguided followers, infuriated by the choice of the title of Queen Elizabeth II, and quite obviously motivated by an over literal interpretation of Thurber’s “Secret of Walter Mitty,” and encouraged by the indignation of the regal title expressed by Scots, Tory and Labor M.P.s are engaging in the pleasant pastime of sticking home-made bombs in mail-boxes bearing the obnoxious slogan “ER II.” In the West of Scotland there is a very small but vociferous crew of Anarchists. People who take the discordant views of Jesus Christ, Proudhon, Stirner, Bakunine, Tolstoy, Kropotkin and the Syndicalists, yes and even the I. W. W., in one indigestible swallow and confront the workers with the confusing result.

That is the dark side of the picture.

On the other side, we have, first of all, the Socialist Party of Great Britain, plugging away at the serious, un-melodramatic job of spreading the Socialist idea. The two branches in Glasgow, although faced yet with great difficulties, meet with nothing like the hostility encountered by the pioneers of 30 odd years ago. The myth of Socialist Russia is not nearly as widespread. Nationalization as a panacea has lost its vogue. The stupid theories of armed insurrection and the like, are virtually extinct. Perhaps the most hopeful sign of the times is that the younger workers, in discussion, seem to value more serious argument than the shouting of windy slogans. It rather seems, too, that the day of the reformist party is past. And as more and more of the working class recognize the already open identity between Sir Winston Churchill and Major Attlee, they must turn their attention to the Socialists.

Therefore, the Socialists in Scotland, like Socialists the world over, are confident of the working class ultimately accepting the view that the world and all that is in or on it, should belong to all.

It is a hard task, but one well worth the doing.

Tony Mulheron

Glasgow Branch, SPGB

The Foreigners in Our Midst (1945)

From the December 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

A young G.I., who seemed to think that he owned the earth, was behaving rudely to a tough-looking bus conductress. Instead of ticking him off as a rude young man the angry girl commenced a lengthy and colourful attack on all Americans. The "Yanks," so it seemed to her, were responsible for most of the evils of this unhappy world. This unpleasant incident is typical of thousands that are occurring all over England and Europe to-day, and it is not only the Americans who are indiscriminately attacked.

Under the most unfavourable circumstances the workers of many countries have mingled. German, Russian, British and American conscripts have in their turn performed the unenviable duties of armies of occupation. Individually the conquerors and conquered cannot hate one another, and "fraternisation," an old word with a new meaning, has been inevitable. But only the most romantic optimist can imagine that a real basis for international understanding can be established on the love-affairs of lonely and sex-starved British soldiers with the hungry women of Berlin. Armies of occupation cannot be ambassadors of goodwill.

But one might imagine that the mingling of allies might have more fruitful results. Let us look at the position in this country and judge for ourselves. For a decade or more England has become the permanent or temporary home of many opponents of Nazi Germany. First came the Jewish refugees, Germans, Austrians and Czechs who fled to avoid death, the Ghetto or the concentration camp, then the remnants of defeated armies, the Poles, the French, the Belgians, Dutch and Norwegians, and, lastly the American "champions of democracy." Most of these men and women came to this country not on a heroic mission but because they had no choice. Individual friendships between some of them and the "natives" have grown up, but on the whole many British workers (who are not alone in this respect) still retain their illogical and almost unconquerable aversion to foreigners.

In the uncertain days of peace national prejudice increases. With the end of Lease-Lend, grumbles against the Americans became louder; a Scottish town council urges the Government to send the Poles home; 3,000 residents of Hampstead want the aliens living among them expelled; the shadow of unemployment draws near and thoughtless workers voice the fear that foreign Jewish workers will steal their jobs, forgetting that in 1931, when there were more than 2½ million unemployed, the refugees had not arrived. The foreigners in our midst are blamed for the housing shortage, and the Evening Standard (by the way why doesn’t Beaverbrook return to Canada), always quick to turn working-class discontent into reactionary channels, gives prominence to a series of articles dealing with the number of houses and flats still occupied by refugee Governments in London. These houses are mostly in Mayfair, Belgravia and Kensington, and one wonders if the homeless workers of Stepney and Wandsworth could afford the rents which will be charged for them when they are evacuated. The Evening Standard does not complain of the waste of space in British Government offices, of unnecessary buildings such as Banks, income tax offices and Labour Exchanges, and it does not point out, for example, that one member of the British ruling-class with quite a small family does not need a vast town mansion as well as country residences at Sandringham, Balmoral and Windsor.

No, acquaintanceship at close quarters and under capitalist conditions with foreigners, however charming and well-behaved they may be, does not seem to further international friendship. But must the workers of the world always have feelings of suspicion, hatred and contempt towards each other? We Socialists do not think so. We are normal human beings, but we do not blame the strangers in our midst for all the minor and major evils of capitalism, and we address these words to our fellow workers for their consideration.

Workers must learn to think with their heads and not be guided by their feelings. They must understand, and they will do when they become Socialists, that there is a bond that unites them with their fellow workers, whether they are “enemies'' or “allies". This bond is not the superficial one of the same language, the same colour of skin, the same shape of nose, the same habits or allegiance to the same capitalist state, but the fundamental one of class interest. The workers of the world have one great task: to overthrow the system of their respective capitalistic masters and establish a world Socialist commonwealth, where the word “foreigner” will have no meaning.

John Moore

"Stand Up To The Yanks" (1947)

From the October 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

Early in September at meetings held in the London streets posters were displayed bearing the inscription “Stand up to the Yanks” They were not as might be supposed, put up by Mosley and his reawakening Fascists or by Tory Die-hards anxious to erect a barbed wire fence round the British Empire, but by the Communist Party of Great Britain. An older generation of Communists, whatever wrong theories they preached in other matters were in the main genuinely internationalist in outlook. What would they have thought of the degenerate views of their successors? What would they have thought of a Daily Worker editorial of September 9th, 1947, angrily protesting because some United States government official had said that Britain is “no longer an equal member of the Big Three”? Here are two passages from the Daily Worker article:

  “The spectacle of Britain being slurred, spat on, pushed around by its dear U.S. ally is so usual nowadays that it has almost ceased to be news.”
    "How much longer are we to tolerate a policy which brings this national humiliation?”

In saying this the Communists are as dishonest as they are inconsistent. When 19th century big business talked like this it knew that the words meant nothing without big armaments to back them up and prepared accordingly. Not so the Communists. They are campaigning for armaments to be reduced—here, of course, but not in Russia. All they are concerned with is to support whatever happens at the moment to he the foreign policy of State Capitalist Russia, and if this means inciting workers to ignorant hatred of Americans they do not hesitate. And if Russian policy should change the Communists will hurriedly switch their poisonous propaganda in another direction, as happened during the recent short-lived Russian attempt to cultivate the friendship of the Argentine dictator and during the period of the Stalin-Hitler Pact of friendship.of 1939.

In the meantime Communists in U.S.A., Palestine and on the Continent are telling their dupes to “Stand up to the British,” all with the same object of furthering Russian imperialist policy.

In Russia itself the old slogans of internationalism have long been discarded in favour of the cult of nationalism and the glorification of modern military heroes and those of Czarist times. In this the Russian Bolsheviks line themselves up with the patriotic boasters of all countries; with the Americans for whom that land is “ God’s own country," and with the poverty-stricken British workers who like to read that the British people are “the salt of the earth ” (Sunday Express, 3/8/47). Here is a specimen of the kind of lying stuff now being spoonfed to the wage-slaves of Russia:

  “A most important peculiarity of Soviet patriotism is the profound understanding of the superiority of the Soviet Socialist system over the bourgeois and all other class systems. It is precisely this peculiarity which above all characterises Soviet patriotism as patriotism of the highest kind. It follows that Soviet patriotism is in no way compatible with any manifestation whatsoever of obsequiousness by Soviet people before the modern capitalist world. Obsequiousness before foreigners is one of the relics of the past.

  ‘‘Our country has become the most advanced and progressive country in the world, and holds a leading place in the progressive development of the whole of mankind." (Izvestia, 13/8/47, quoted in the Times, 14/8/-47.)

It is legitimate for the socialist movement, being an international movement, to denounce exploitation, cruelty and ignorance wherever they are found, for socialists do not condone in one country what they condemn elsewhere. By the same standard it is sheer hypocrisy for Communists to denounce anything, anywhere, and if the Bolsheviks in Russia had any of the internationalism which characterised some of their members of a past generation they would be ashamed of the disreputable propaganda to which they and their foreign stooges have descended.

Socialists, while exposing and condemning world capitalism, extend the hand of fellowship to the working class of all lands, for only through international action by a socialist working class will Socialism be achieved.